by Dr. Thomas Patterson | Jul 19, 2024 | Opinion
By Dr. Thomas Patterson |
Well after 50 years from the end of the Civil War, black Americans in much of the country were not allowed to enter the homes of whites by the front door. Black men could be lynched for looking a white woman in the face. Schools, restaurants, even drinking fountains were all segregated.
Today, no such legal discrepancies exist. Yes, fringe actors still show that vestiges of racism remain and maybe always will. Yet even though Americans of all races mingle peaceably, the income gap between white and black Americans stubbornly persists. Racism itself can no longer provide a satisfactory answer.
Educational disparities account for some of the gap. Too many black children are still trapped in inner-city schools, where unionized teachers often can’t manage to educate even one student per school who acquires basic academic skills.
Unfortunately for the students, individuals who graduate from high school with ninth grade academic skills have the lifetime earning potential of a dropout. You can’t fool the real world with a meaningless diploma. It would be astonishing if there weren’t a sizable income gap when such educational inequities exist.
The overwhelming evidence points to fatherless homes as the main driver of black economic stagnation. In 1960, 24 percent of black children were born to single mothers. By 2018 the figure was 70 percent. Overall, 37 percent of black kids live with married parents, compared with 84 percent of Asians and 77 percent of whites.
Families headed by single mothers are five times as likely to live in poverty than those of married couple-headed families. We all know the depressing statistics for fatherless children—the increased incidence of incarceration and drug dependence, the lower probability of educational achievement, and the high likelihood they will create single parent-headed families themselves.
It’s neither fair nor accurate to blame black fathers exclusively for this social calamity. In fact, black men are often more attentive fathers than their white counterparts. Black fathers were more likely than others to have “bathed, dressed, changed or helped their child every day” according to a National Statistics report.
The problem is not the quality of black fathers but the quantity. Too many black fathers don’t stay to model fatherhood and provide the guidance and structure that children, especially boys, need.
Some critics ascribe this tendency to “black culture” as if something inherent in blacks is the cause. Others claim that poverty causes weak family structures, not the reverse. But history debunks both contentions.
The institution of the black family emerged from centuries of slavery, poverty, and bigotry virtually intact with strong and loyal family structures. By the time of the mid-20th century civil rights movement, family incomes and social standing were also improving. Ironically, it was the Great Society modern welfare state, offering an omnipresent financial incentive for family break-up, that marked the beginning of the decline of the black family, with all its devastating consequences.
Progressives, especially influential academics, and activists like Black Lives Matter argue that the nuclear family should be dismantled because it is…racist!
For example, a 2021 academic webinar promotion stated, “Family privilege is an unacknowledged and unearned benefit” that “serves to advantage certain family forms over others and is typically bestowed upon white, traditional nuclear families.”
So, the fact that more single parent families are black, according to this traditional Marxist interpretation, means that racism is the culprit? Hogwash alert: the number of parents in the family is a far better predictor of economic outcomes than race. You can look it up.
Although intellectual sophisticates preach tolerance of all family relationships, they are more traditional in their personal behaviors. The college educated mostly delay childbearing until after marriage and raise their children in a two-parent household. It’s called “talk left, walk right” or, in other words, hypocrisy.
Rather than stigmatizing families and their fathers, we should support, in meaningful ways, their importance to human well-being. Judging from the results, families without government “help” do a better job overall of rearing and feeding children, of caring for the dependent elderly, and of creating responsible, competent human beings than does government.
We will never close the economic and social gaps until we close the Dad gap.
Dr. Thomas Patterson, former Chairman of the Goldwater Institute, is a retired emergency physician. He served as an Arizona State senator for 10 years in the 1990s, and as Majority Leader from 93-96. He is the author of Arizona’s original charter schools bill.
by Carson Carpenter | Jul 10, 2024 | Opinion
By Carson Carpenter |
As an 18-year-old student graduating from Arizona State University this May, I constantly think about what is next. Many people in Gen-Z are often told, “After school, you need to find a good paying job” or “You should go to graduate school.” But I find it sad that there are so few people telling Gen-Z to “raise a young family and provide for them any way that you can.”
Generation Z has the moniker of being the social media generation. Because of that, many tend to think that the majority of my generation is made up of a bunch of degenerates. But the reality is quite the opposite.
Generation Z has a very high percentage of individuals who want to enhance their lives by placing family at the center. Vice Media Group reported, “73% [of Gen-Z] say that becoming a parent enhances who you already are as a person.” This is significant because it shows that Gen-Z recognizes the inherent value of starting and sustaining a family.
The birth rate in America has been declining for some time now, and births out of wedlock are at an all-time high. Many often wonder what has gone wrong in America for this to happen. The truth is that the deconstruction of the nuclear family unit and a growing lack of faith have played a significant role. But despite all this, there is optimism. Between 2010 and 2020, births out of wedlock did not increase for the first time since the 1930s. Between 2020 and 2030, there are reasonable projections that this number will decrease for the first time. This can be attributed to Generation Z starting families and reverting to traditional values.
This brings me to the 2024 election. There is so much on the line for younger voters this November, and many of them will vote for candidates who will focus on the economy and homeland security. These hot-button issues directly affect the ability and environment to have a family. Many do not buy the claim that “their vote doesn’t count” because they have seen how the ability to start and keep a family has been much more difficult under the Biden administration’s policies.
Another important issue for Gen-Z is the value of faith in family life, and recent research backs this up, showing a resurgence in religious faith among Gen-Z. After the COVID-19 pandemic, mental health issues were at an all-time high, especially within my generation, and the return to normal life after crippling lockdown policies was extremely difficult for many. Due to this, Gen-Z began to wake up to faith and become believers. Of course, this is not a new concept. After the Black Death that crippled Europe, many people thought of religion in new ways, which eventually led to Protestantism and other forms of Christianity. Before COVID-19, faith started to decline in the United States, and many people were leaving it for atheism. But now that the pandemic is over and we move into the mid-2020s, we may be in the early stages of a religious revival that could prove to be similar to medieval Europe.
Generation Z has been shaped by a unique time period. We’ve seen family and religious values fall to dramatically low levels, and we’re starting to see what that can do to a society. When Rome and Greece abandoned these values, their empires fell into ruin. Now, Generation Z has the opportunity to keep us from this same fate by resurrecting this country to focus on family and faith once again.
Carson Carpenter is an Arizona State University student majoring in Political Science. He is the President of The College Republicans at ASU and is the National Committeeman to Arizona for The College Republicans of America. He has also interned for Reps. Gosar and Crane.
by Dr. Thomas Patterson | Jun 24, 2022 | Opinion
By Dr. Thomas Patterson |
In 1965, Daniel Patrick Moynihan wrote a landmark report in which he contended that the rising number of black families headed by unmarried mothers would reduce the prospects for Blacks to rise out of poverty, in spite of that era’s landmark civil rights legislation.
Moynihan was furiously denounced for his efforts. But he was proven right, and he would be even more correct making the same observations today.
It’s been a tough half century for families. Although Moynihan focused his concerns on Blacks, family breakdown correlates as much with income level as it does with race.
Because there are more low-income Blacks, more black children are raised by single mothers, but the overall percentage of births to unmarried women has gone from 5% in 1960 to 40% today. In 1970, 84% of U.S. children spent their entire childhood with both biological parents. Today, about half do.
Partly because of the withering criticisms directed at Moynihan, the chattering classes have mostly avoided the issue of family deterioration, at least until recently. But the consequences have been enormous.
Harvard economist Raj Chetty analyzed the causes of income disparity and concluded that “the strongest and most robust predictor is the fraction of children with single parents.”
In fact, there is scant evidence that race or racial discrimination causes the multiple economic and societal problems associated with family breakdown. Government spending doesn’t seem to have any effect, nor even does education explain the income gap. It’s family status itself.
So, what caused families, long our core civic institution and the means for passing on our values, to falter? There’s no easy answer, of course, but scholars note a sea change in our views of almost everything that began about the middle of the last century.
Especially in developed countries, people became more anti-authoritarian and more critical of traditional rules and roles. Views about sex outside of marriage, divorce, cohabitation, and single parenthood significantly changed.
It wasn’t all bad. Many of the changes extended civil rights and created a fairer society. But some of the “progress” has been tough on the kids.
For example, it’s not judgmental, just descriptive, to note that the increase in cohabitation has resulted in more unstable family structures.
Even with children, cohabiting couples break up faster and more often than married couples. Unmarried fathers are even less likely than divorced dads to form lasting bonds with their children. What may appear to be simply a matter of documentation can have a profound impact on the well-being of children.
Changing mores regarding sex before marriage has resulted in millions of young women bearing children for which they have made no financial or other preparations.
It’s not judging. It is the essence of caring for each of us to do a better job of informing these potential mothers of the catastrophic lifelong consequences of their casual decisions, both on themselves and the new life they are bringing into the world. We should also do a better job of making unwed fathers, many of whom openly boast about the children they are not raising, accountable for the consequences of their actions.
As Ronald Reagan might say, government is not the solution to this problem. It is the problem. There’s no question that the Great Society welfare rules, requiring recipients to be unmarried and unemployed to qualify for benefits, led to countless women making the sensible decision to “marry the government” rather than the uneducated, undependable father.
Government has also mortally harmed families by taking over many of their traditional functions, especially care of the young and the aged. Families traditionally stayed together to assure that those unable to provide for themselves would be sustained.
Today, it is assumed that the elderly are entitled to be cared for by the government. Some adults are known to simply walk away from their families because they don’t see the need.
We need sound strong families for all Americans, not only the wealthy and privileged. It would help if government did less harm. But we need to do a better job of protecting and prioritizing our families, respecting the outsized role they play in making our country strong and our lives worthwhile.
Dr. Thomas Patterson, former Chairman of the Goldwater Institute, is a retired emergency physician. He served as an Arizona State senator for 10 years in the 1990s, and as Majority Leader from 93-96. He is the author of Arizona’s original charter schools bill.
