Sooner or later, we always seem to give a pass to destructive behavior, so long as the victims are children and they aren’t actually abused. If millions of men neglect or abandon their kids, it can’t be because they’re irresponsible or self-centered, or because they’ve embraced a large and growing sub-culture that no longer puts the welfare of children first.
No, it must be the economy that made them do it.
“When a father can’t provide monetarily for his offspring, he often becomes estranged,” Beth Latshaw, an assistant sociology professor at Appalachian State University, told The Associated Press in a recent article on “the changing role of parents as U.S. marriage rates and traditional family households fall to historic lows.”
Welcome to Father’s Day 2011, when “nearly half of American dads under 45 . . . say they have at least one child who was born out of wedlock.”
Latshaw was attempting to explain why the more educated a man is, the more likely he is to be married when he fathers a child. College graduates get better jobs, you see. “As a result, many women now raise children outside of marriage or without a father figure,” she added.
The trouble with this analysis is that the percentage of out-of-wedlock births has been increasing for decades. The trend took off in earnest in the 1960s, accelerated through the 1970s and 1980s, stalled briefly in the late 1990s, and then resumed its course.
Only 5 percent of babies were born outside of marriage in the early ’60s; now it’s at least 41 percent.
Is it really possible that the only time the economy produced enough decent jobs for non-college graduates during an entire half-century was at the height of the dot-com boom? And what does it mean that “a father can’t provide monetarily for his offspring”? As Robert Rector of The Heritage Foundation points out, “Eight out of 10 unmarried fathers were employed at the time of their child’s birth,” collectively earning more than the mothers.
Marriage wouldn’t have plunged their offspring into poverty. It would have lifted many out of it.
Sure, many non-married dads try to be part of their kids’ lives, often living with the mothers for a spell. But a long-term study by Princeton and Columbia researchers charting what happens with such arrangements is not encouraging. As USA Today explains, “By the time the child was 5, most of the fathers were gone and the child had little contact with him. As many of the mothers went on to new relationships, the children were hampered by repeated transitions that did more harm to their development.”
Children from single-parent homes may of course reach the pinnacle of success — see our president for Exhibit A — but on average they have more problems than their peers in two-parent homes. And that’s controlling for income and education. Dads do matter, as quaint as the notion may seem.
If you’re a college-educated parent with a college-educated spouse, you probably don’t notice the extent of family meltdown because out-of-wedlock births are still rare in your circles. But it’s become the norm in other social classes and no one seems to know why, let alone what to do about it.
But at least let’s talk about it honestly. A few years ago, Slate’s Emily Yoffe noted that readers “like to rebuke me for my preference that two decent people who are committed to each other . . . should provide the stability of marriage for their child.” They would tell her, “You are simply out of touch with modern culture.”
“That may be,” she explained. “But it also means that modern culture is out of touch with the needs of children.”
And more so, it seems, with each passing year.
E-mail Vincent Carroll at vcarroll@denverpost.com. Read his blog at .
