Midnight Mike
2006-12-16, 05:39 PM
http://www.investors.com/images/editimg/issues03121106.gif
The 'M' Word
INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY
Posted 12/8/2006
Illegitimacy: Three years after President Bush's healthy-marriage initiative, the Centers for Disease Control reports births to unmarried women at a record high. The consequences do not bode well for America's future.
In 2003, Bush issued a proclamation making Oct. 12-18, 2003, Marriage Protection Week, saying marriage was "a sacred institution, and its protection is essential to the continued strength of our society."
He was widely ridiculed for proposing "a healthy marriage initiative to help couples develop the skills and knowledge to form and sustain healthy marriages."
That assumes that people in our disposable society want to get married and stick it out.
Bush and society were up against strong cultural winds that seek to redefine marriage and question the need for it.
The National Center for Health Statistics, the statistical arm of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, has released a report , "Births: Preliminary Data for 2005," that shows the nuclear family is in meltdown, with out-of-wedlock births reaching 1.5 million last year, or 36.8% of the total.
Among non-Hispanic blacks, the illegitimacy rate reached a staggering 69.5%. Among non-Hispanic whites, the rate is up to 25.4%. The illegitimacy rate for Hispanics increased by 1.5% in just one year, and now stands at 47.9%.
Of these nonmarital births, 52% were to women without a high school diploma vs. just 9% to women with a graduate or professional degree. Princeton professor Sara McLanahan reports, "You're beginning to see these households composed of a mother and three children and three different ex-partners" — situations "where children are being raised in very unstable families."
Countless studies have shown that children raised in a two-parent family are less likely to be raised in poverty, less likely to do drugs, less likely to be criminals later in life, and more likely to graduate from and do well in school.
Married people tend to take care of themselves better and live longer. They typically eat better, have more settled lives with less stress and fewer risky habits, monitor each other's health, and are quicker to seek medical attention for problems that arise.
Married people, particularly those with children, seem to be motivated to save and invest more for the future and to live longer to enjoy their savings and their children's future.
Out-of-wedlock births increase the national incidence of: lowered health for newborns; retarded cognitive, and especially verbal, development of young children; lowered educational achievement; lowered job attainment as young adults; increased behavioral problems; lowered impulse control (aggression and sexual behavior); and increased anti-social development.
It's been said you need only do three things in this country to avoid poverty: finish high school, marry before having a child and marry after the age of 20. Among those who follow such advice, only 8% are poor, while 79% of those who do not are poor.
The consequences of this trend are crime rates higher than they should be, graduation rates lower than they should be and a treasury depleted in the name of trying to solve both problems by throwing more money at them.
No culture can remain healthy with illegitimacy rates like these. And it is simply impossible to understate the socially catastrophic consequences of America's crisis of illegitimacy. The family is still the best department of health, education and welfare ever invented.
The 'M' Word
INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY
Posted 12/8/2006
Illegitimacy: Three years after President Bush's healthy-marriage initiative, the Centers for Disease Control reports births to unmarried women at a record high. The consequences do not bode well for America's future.
In 2003, Bush issued a proclamation making Oct. 12-18, 2003, Marriage Protection Week, saying marriage was "a sacred institution, and its protection is essential to the continued strength of our society."
He was widely ridiculed for proposing "a healthy marriage initiative to help couples develop the skills and knowledge to form and sustain healthy marriages."
That assumes that people in our disposable society want to get married and stick it out.
Bush and society were up against strong cultural winds that seek to redefine marriage and question the need for it.
The National Center for Health Statistics, the statistical arm of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, has released a report , "Births: Preliminary Data for 2005," that shows the nuclear family is in meltdown, with out-of-wedlock births reaching 1.5 million last year, or 36.8% of the total.
Among non-Hispanic blacks, the illegitimacy rate reached a staggering 69.5%. Among non-Hispanic whites, the rate is up to 25.4%. The illegitimacy rate for Hispanics increased by 1.5% in just one year, and now stands at 47.9%.
Of these nonmarital births, 52% were to women without a high school diploma vs. just 9% to women with a graduate or professional degree. Princeton professor Sara McLanahan reports, "You're beginning to see these households composed of a mother and three children and three different ex-partners" — situations "where children are being raised in very unstable families."
Countless studies have shown that children raised in a two-parent family are less likely to be raised in poverty, less likely to do drugs, less likely to be criminals later in life, and more likely to graduate from and do well in school.
Married people tend to take care of themselves better and live longer. They typically eat better, have more settled lives with less stress and fewer risky habits, monitor each other's health, and are quicker to seek medical attention for problems that arise.
Married people, particularly those with children, seem to be motivated to save and invest more for the future and to live longer to enjoy their savings and their children's future.
Out-of-wedlock births increase the national incidence of: lowered health for newborns; retarded cognitive, and especially verbal, development of young children; lowered educational achievement; lowered job attainment as young adults; increased behavioral problems; lowered impulse control (aggression and sexual behavior); and increased anti-social development.
It's been said you need only do three things in this country to avoid poverty: finish high school, marry before having a child and marry after the age of 20. Among those who follow such advice, only 8% are poor, while 79% of those who do not are poor.
The consequences of this trend are crime rates higher than they should be, graduation rates lower than they should be and a treasury depleted in the name of trying to solve both problems by throwing more money at them.
No culture can remain healthy with illegitimacy rates like these. And it is simply impossible to understate the socially catastrophic consequences of America's crisis of illegitimacy. The family is still the best department of health, education and welfare ever invented.