Falling Families, Rising Deviance

Reversing Postmodernism's Devaluation of Traditional Marriage and Family

The traditional family is the social institution that holds the most promise in guaranteeing the continuity and longevity of our free republic. The body of evidence that supports the traditional family as the greatest insulator against poverty, child abuse, and criminal proclivity is large and compelling. Without doubt, the emergence of alternative families has created significant disadvantages for children of such families, as well as a frightening risk to the overall welfare and continuity of a free society. As of 2004, 12.9 million children under eighteen, or 17.6 percent of all children, live in poverty. (Strober, pg 524) Social sciences data tell us that 33.4 percent of single-parent families live in poverty compared to 5.4 percent of traditional families. (Rauchut, pg 179) Children born out of wedlock or children of divorced parents score worse on several measure of well-being than do the children of tradition families. (Rauchut, pg 181) Children of single parent families are six times more likely to live in poverty than children of intact families. (Rauchut, pg 181) Equally alarming, 75 percent of children living in homes without a father will experience poverty by age eleven. (Horn, pg 580) Further, children who grow up with only one parent are likely to remain impoverished much longer than children who grow up with both biological parents in the home. (Rauchut, pg 181) Children living with two parents are 44 percent less likely to be physically abused, 47 percent less likely to be physically neglected, 43 percent less likely to be emotionally neglected, and 55 percent less likely be subjected to any form of child abuse. (Santorum, pg 571) The evidence leaves little room to question Dan Quayle’s frank assessment of the traditional family in his now famous “Murphy Brown Speech.” “We cannot be embarrassed out of our belief that two parents, married to each other,” Quayle proclaimed, “are better for children in most cases than one.” (Rauchut, pg 179)

The causes are changes in social norms and changes in government policy, both of which continue to threaten our nation’s sacred institutions of marriage and family. Postmodernists view traditional institutions, such as marriage and family, as merely social constructs that must be torn down and reconstructed, with the new model forcing conformance to some leftist idea of egalitarianism. The social revolution of the 1960’s, and the second wave gender feminist movement in particular, brought about a fierce assault on the traditional family structure and an affirmation that the institutions of family and marriage were inhibitors to gender equality that must be annihilated. (Rauchut, pg 189) In other words, the acknowledged interdependencies of the sexes that characterized traditional ideals of marriage, wherein male weaknesses were supplemented by female strengths and vice versa, were the adhesives that cohered two individuals to form the family unit. The feminist movement rejected the belief that the sexes were necessarily interdependent, which was effectively a rejection of the belief that woman and men were bound into a single unit by mutual dependencies. Feminists fervently asserted that woman could only find happiness in a career. (Graglia, pg 540) In the words of the influential and well-known feminist activist Gloria Steinem, “A woman needs a man about as much as a fish needs a bicycle.” (Rauchut, pg 189) The culture of the 1950’s, which was epitomized by the decade’s most popular television shows “The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet” and “Leave it to Beaver,” gave way to a phenomenon of marriage and family devaluation. By the 1960’s, the view that marriage and childrearing were two completely separate and unrelated life events had firmly taken hold. (Hymowitz, pg 562) By the 1970’s, it was not unusual to find a single parent, most typically the mother, to be raising children alone. The trend quickened throughout the 1980’s, and by the 1990’s, single-motherhood was conventional, even glamorized, as Dan Quayle pointed out in his controversial assessment of the television show “Murphy Brown.” (Skolnick, pg 518)

The consequences of changing social norms have been, and continue to be, exacerbated by government policy that encourages family disintegration and the devaluation of marriage. The negative income tax (NIC), an organized system of wealth redistribution through which cash payments are channeled to households below the poverty line, was proven in the Seattle-Denver Income Maintenance Experiments of the 1970’s to induce separation rather than to preserve marital relationships. (Lerman, pg 531) Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) promised single parents with children an infinite cash subsidy for as long as the recipient did not work or marry someone who worked. (Horn, pg 533) Welfare programs such as the NIC and AFDC increase the economic independence of individuals and encourage the abandonment of marriage. (Lerman, pg 531) Social welfare programs are progressive and designed to provide the largest benefit to the poorest individuals. (Lerman, pg 531) Consequently, due to the nature of the progressively administered welfare model, one whose economic status improves will experience a reduction in benefits that is relatively proportionate to their increase in income. (Lerman, pg 531) One who falls into this category will correctly reason that marriage will significantly improve their economic standing, thus reducing or altogether erasing the welfare eligibility status held while still single. (Lerman, pg 531) The end result is the perpetuation of cyclical poverty in which children are reared in single parent homes, and who ultimately go on to become single parents to yet another generation of future single parents, and so forth. Government welfare policies have therefore created a social condition of generational poverty recidivism, an unintended consequence of income subsidization and other government entitlements.

There are benefits associated with being a working mother, and to suggest that working mothers gain nothing from their lifestyle choice would be disingenuous. For example, studies show that children of working woman have more positive views of woman and less rigid views of sex roles, and that woman who work have a lower risk of heart disease. (Parker, pg 573 & 574) Regardless, the benefits seem comparatively few when recited in juxtaposition to the litany of statistical facts that expose the deviance that has grown out of the devaluation of traditional marriage and family values. Overcoming such disheartening realities conveyed in the statistics appears an overwhelming task. To secure our health as a nation, however, many are beginning to express a sense of urgency for the implementation of counter-measures designed to halt and reverse the disintegration of the traditional family. (Santorum pg 572) The yearn of woman, as many as 70 percent based on a 1991 Canadian survey, to rear their children at home as full-time mothers is compelling both woman and men to question, as evidenced in the emergence of the “pro-family movement,” the feminist view that woman can only find fulfillment in the marketplace. (Crittenden, pg 568 & Horn, pg 582) Government policy, particularly the creation of the welfare state, has played a critical role in the disintegration of the family unit. Does it not stand to reason then that reverse-engineering the postmodernist experiment that deemphasized family and marriage will also require government involvement? The erosion of the traditional family has inarguably given us increased child abuse, higher divorce rates, an increase in emotional problems among children, and rising crime rates. There is little to suggest any meaningful break in the upward trend of family devaluation, disintegration and their resulting incarnations of deviance. What are the long-term impacts to liberty of this escalating deterioration of family and marriage? Does such a trajectory lead to incremental government controls, and more bureaucratic encroachments, all of which ultimately culminate in the loss of personal liberty and possibly even the demise of our republic?

Carefully consider the following three steps that government could take to initiate a reversal of the damage caused by the abandonment of marriage and family values. First, we should consider the slow and ordered deconstruction of the bureaucratically administered welfare system, and the concomitant transition to a laissez faire model of social aid distribution that is managed and administered by private organizations. Second, changing the federal income tax code to more aggressively encourage marriage could precipitate a reduction in crime, child abuse, and other ills associated with single parent childrearing. Specifically, incrementally return the savings realized from the shrinking welfare state to married couples, and married couples with children through tax cuts. Further, provide additional tax incentives to single income families to further enable one parent to stay home with children. Third, we should assess whether or not an increase in tax breaks associated with the charitable contributions made by small and medium-sized businesses, large corporations and individuals, would sufficiently fund private charities and enable them to completely assume responsibility for the administration of assistance to the underprivileged.

A Critique of "White Privilege" Theory

How the Progressive Racial Blame Game is Perpetuating Hostility

Heckler on Race in America

During a recent discussion about race in America, I was challenged to read an essay by the feminist academic writer, Peggy McIntosh. The title of her essay is "White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack". The basic idea of her essay is fairly simple. McIntosh believes that Caucasians hold power over people of color, and that white people are unable or unwilling to see or admit their position of advantage. She goes on to list twenty-six scenarios from her own personal life that she believes are examples of her privilege as a white person. In her view, whit e people must use their "unearned power" to weaken the social construct that keeps people of color oppressed by the system of white advantage. By the way, she also believes the exact same hidden power structure exists to subjugate woman to men. So, the really bad people, in her view, are white males, as they secretly repress both people of color and woman.

Now, there is no doubt in my mind that racism exists in this country, and anyone who says it doesn't needs to have their head examined. But what strikes me about McIntosh's article is that she attributes the problems of racism in America exclusively to whites, and she leaves the reader feeling that the only solution to the problem is for action on behalf of whites. But, think about it. Is the scope of racism really so broad that it is better labeled a conspiracy that secretly engages an entire race of people, or are racist acts isolated to the ignorant behavior of a few individuals?

In my opinion, it's the latter. The white privilege argument and its many variants are critically flawed, not to mention extremely divisive. One of the fundamental premises of McIntosh's argument is that white people deny, or are unable to see, their designation as an advantaged class. So, reflect for a moment on what she is truly saying about white people. That is, they either deny or are unable to recognize their status as an advantaged class.

In other words, the white people who know they are advantaged will deny it if asked. So, they are all deceitful - liars. If they're not being deceitful about it, then McIntosh says that whites cannot see their advantaged position, or that they have been taught not to recognize it. Does someone who is in a place of authority and advantage not know and recognize it as such? Frankly, to suggest that whites cannot see their advantage is to believe that whites are ignorant. It also asserts that elite academic liberals (like McIntosh) are the chosen ones, enlightened and capable of seeing white racism, since white people are too ignorant and unintelligent to see their position of advantage.

So, in short, McIntosh is saying three things: 1.) white people know they are advantaged, but lie and say they are not advantaged when confronted with their white racism, or 2.) they are too ignorant and closed-minded to see their position of dominance over people of other races, and 3.) only progressively-minded, liberal, elitist academics are brilliant and enlightened enough to perceive white power.

First of all, any theory that bases its argument on the assumption that an entire race of people are either deceitful or ignorant should immediately be discredited as fallacious, and most definitely has no place in a discussion on racism, especially when you consider the assumptions inherent in McIntosh's argument are themselves extremely racist. Saying that whites are too dumb or too deceitful to see their racist ways is egregiously racist and frankly deeply offensive to millions of good, ethical white people.

What would happen if someone put forth an argument, with the fundamental premise being that either most woman or people of color are ignorant, or are all liars? Would that person not be excoriated and permanently branded as an abhorrent bigot that is no better than a cross-burning kkk grand wizard? But since the target is white people, and the proponent is an elite academic, the theory is heralded inside the world of academia as genius! brilliant! - an intellectual discovery as momentous as the discovery of E=MCsq! The reality is that it's very wrong to assume such horrible things about any group of people. The hypocrisy buried in the white privilege theory is stunning.

The truth is, whites are fully aware that they have no special advantages in life, and if they did, the majority of them would admit it and not lie about it. Why? Because white people want to end racism as much as any other group in society. They are tired of the false accusations, the ongoing marginalization, the reverse discrimination, and the divisive rhetoric of the "white privilege" proponents. Do people not realize how demeaning it is to say that whites secretly oppress people of color? If all whites had to do to end racial tensions was to admit their secret hold on power, they would do it in a heartbeat.

The reason the white privilege theory has failed to solve anything, and has been completely ineffective in easing racial tensions is because its premises are false and unfounded. Further, you can't solve issues of racism by advocating more racism. If we are truly interested in improving racial tensions, people from all sides of the issue need to first understand that blaming all whites, or all blacks, or all men, and so forth, only exacerbate and deepen racial divides.