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.