A family breakdown among blacks, not poverty or racism (“institutional” or otherwise), is the most urgent problem. But there’s no money or perks in looking into a mirror. No special Interests here.
In 1965, Democrat Daniel Patrick Moynihan, then assistant secretary of Labor, sounded an alarm about the rising rates of illegitimacy in the black community (about 24 percent at the time) in a report titled, The Negro Family: The Case For National Action (dubbed the Moynihan Report).
The collapse of the black family, he contended, would have devastating social consequences. Branded a racist for merely stating facts, Moynihan was drummed into silence.
As we all know, Moynihan was vindicated. Today, only a third of black children are born to married parents. Over 70 percent are born outside wedlock. Children born into illegitimacy face higher risks of all sorts of social pathologies, including delinquency, drug use, criminality, and unwed pregnancy.
Marriage is not about shaming individuals regarding homosexuality.
Marriage is not even about sexual orientation.
Marriage is simply about managing the intrinsic forces of males and females making babies together.
Marriage functions through legal consequences and social expectations.
The problem with widening the expanse of marital functions is chiefly related to changing the social expectations that the institution of marriage produces.
Marriage helps for fathers as well.
It gives the man more legal force for his parental rights than he would have purely biologically.
It gives the man more legal force for his parental rights than he would have purely biologically.
It also provides a social institution that helps prevent forceful conflicts arising out of custody disputes and unwanted pregnancies.
Have we evolved as a society to the point where we are as safe and secure having sex outside of marriage as within it?
I interviewed Brown University history professor James T. Patterson about his book examining the tragic rise of illegitimacy rates, and the American political elite’s refusal to address the problem for decades. MP3, 50 minutes. During the course of our discussion, I mentioned my own writing about successful early intervention programs for at-risk children; that writing is contained in this Barry Law Review article, text at notes 214–28. (A much more detailed analysis is contained in my book Guns: Who Should Have Them?).
Marriage divorce rates of White Americans at 41% is Equivalent to Black American in the 1960s. Present Black American marriage divorce ratio is around 70% now.
