The Singularly Ignored and Banned Discussion of the Number One Cause of Violence, Educational Deficits, Bullying and Poverty: Single Parent Families

85% of youths in prison come from fatherless homes

71% of high school dropouts come from fatherless homes

90% of all homeless and runaway children are from fatherless homes

Sources: National Center For Fathering and The Fatherless Generation

The American Thinker had a brief brouhaha last year between a writer and University of Maryland scholar Melissa Kearney, relating to her sincerity in supporting 2-parent families.

Coincidentally, around the same time, I had an exchange with her and found no conflict in her support of that social contract.

This may be the propitious moment to re-visit the issues of what single-parent families and fatherlessness bring to the sociology of families and criminality, violence, the economic effects, and general misery from which children in such families suffer.

No major problem is ever solved without it becoming an agenda item in public discussion, and single-parent families are mentioned in some media but completely banned in others.  For four years the Biden Administration tried to avoid illegal-migrant crime, and only in this election year did it become salient in many media.

Crime and violence in major cities is a permanent cliché.

Yes, there are periodic diminutions in homicides and rare lessening of carjackings, but the fact that urban areas are not safe and healthy places to live and raise children never changes for significant periods of time.

How to put a dent in the culture of dangerousness in such areas?

The solution is simple, but, again, largely undiscussed: stable two-parent families.

Recently, I have received another major piece of evidence of this from someone high in the Abell Foundation who has been with me philosophically during my lengthy ride warning of the dangers of incentivizing single-parent families, fatherlessness and the attendant ills of the explosion of such family arrangements.

He sent me a significant study by the Institute for Family Studies addressing the problems and solutions of rudderless children.

Some of the conclusions relating to single parenthood and wealth and violence from the study include:

1. [Across Ohio] For each 10-point decline in the percentage of married mothers, there is a 7.5-point increase in the percentage of children in poverty in the city

2. As the percentage of married mothers declines, violent crime rates rise exponentially.

3. In cities where single motherhood is the norm rather than the exception, rates of child poverty and violent crime are high.

The money paragraph in this fine piece is as follows: “Instead of handing out cash to new parents, it would seem wiser to initiate efforts to have public schools…do a better job of instructing students about the importance of marriage before childbearing for the success of a parental relationship and the future well-being of children.”

Crime, drug use, lack of education, lack of general safety, bullying (i.e., assault and battery), poverty, and poor parental guidance: all are major troubles, coming from primarily, in particular, single-parent homes.

Researchers are fond of saying that correlation does not prove cause, but in some cases the causal connection is indisputable.

In the relationship between single parenting and the high rate of crime, the cause of having only one parent is due to several obvious articulable connections.  A single parent cannot usually control a single male, let alone multiple males, their study habits, friendship choices, living in poverty, and group identification.  Gangs are always willing to substitute for absent parents.

A single parent, of course, is often unable to earn sufficient pay to raise a family, especially a large one.

You would think that a destructive social phenomenon such as this would be a topic of discussion and debate across the country, especially among those who are sensitive to Black inequities of violence, poverty, bullying and such.

But the pushback to anyone who insists on discussing the consequences of fatherlessness or single-parent families is profound.

There is no major source in favor of incentivizing marriage before child-bearing or even discussing it.  In Baltimore, for example,  it is rarely raised in any of the media, and those who insist on discussing it may be canceled, as I was 4 years ago by Baltimore’s WBAL-Radio after 40 years of regular and often paid commentary.

David Christopher Kaufman, writing in the New York Post, exactly a month ago, talks about the conspiracy of silence even to address the issue:  “Leading African-American progressives like writer Ta-Nehisi Coates perpetuate the ban on talking about black fatherlessness, even though he was raised in a home with two parents.”

Where is the mainstream media on this issue – nowhere to be found. Where is this discussed – endlessly in sources with little or no access to major media?

Many articles and discussions in less popular media have addressed this problem, only to be incapable of establishing traction in public discourse.

The persistent and never-ending opposition to criticism of single parenting is that the interlocutor always knows a woman who successfully – or at least arguably successfully – has raised a child who is a relatively well-functioning citizen.

For the umpteenth time, granted.

There are such families in a small minority of cases.  That proves nothing except that a minority of extraordinary mothers can dissuade their male children from leading a life of vandalism, fighting, poverty, crime, and non-productivity.

The only solutions are financial and psychological disincentives – money and stigmatization — for having children out of wedlock.  Too many states give thousands of dollars for each new child.   Having a child with no present father is no longer, unfortunately, a source of embarrassment.

On talk shows there is a persistent discussion of crimes and alleged causes: criminal element, gang influence,  mental illness, poverty, gun availability, etc.  Rarely are fatherlessness or stable families discussed at all.

Sixty years ago, in many communities having single-parented children was an embarrassment to the parent, and as a result only 25% of families were headed by only one adult.

In Baltimore — wherein the mayor never mentions single-parent homes which constitute 80% of the homes in Baltimore, or fatherlessness — and other major cities and indeed all around the country, the charge is clear: start reinforcing intact 2-parent families, and that will work toward – not eliminating — eradicating much violence, bullying, educational deficits and crime.