CRYING LESSONS

A few postings ago, I addressed the seemingly liberal tone of this blog. I tried to make a distinction that put this bias in context. I made the case that the blog is not so much liberal as it is more collectivist – as opposed to being individualist – in its treatment of governmental and political affairs, especially as they apply to civics instruction. I pointed out that since major corporations favor conservative policies and they, in turn, foster an individualist bias of their own, my concerns against the effects of corporatist policies cast many of my claims in a liberal posture: by promoting a more collectivist agenda, my arguments tend to favor what has come to be associated with liberal causes. Let me quickly make a clarifying, definitional distinction. By liberal, I mean what has come to be called liberal. In the referred-to posting I used, instead of liberal, the term progressive. In any case, I will admit my own political leaning to be liberal, but probably one that favors the center more than the extreme. I am definitely a collectivist, at least compared to what is in vogue today, but definitely not an extreme one. I am a federalist, in the more philosophic sense.

In the previous posting, to which I am referring, I claimed that there can be positions that are both conservative and collectivist. This posting is dedicated to one such position – one with which I agree. That is, we, as a society, have ignored and treated the most federalist of all unions shabbily. The family has come under severe attack and we are reaping the unfortunate consequences of such treatment. We shouldn't be surprised. With the prominence of the natural rights perspective in our political and social relations, we have found promoting the values necessary to support the family to be intrusive and, in some context, old fashioned. Yet the universal need for strong family structures is true today, is true here, as in any other time and place.

This concern for the family has been a long standing conservative position. I find their approach a bit holier than thou, but I believe they truly feel and believe in the importance of families from a practical, as well as a spiritual point of view. My interest, particularly as it relates to this posting, is on the practical. For you see, those negative consequences I alluded to above have more to do with the fate of our youngsters. All of this came to mind as I read a report by Kay S. Hymowitz.¹ The report reminded me of a time when I happened to mention to my class at Miami Beach High how single parents, especially single moms, were the head of an inordinate number of poverty ridden households. Well, that message hit a tender spot for one of my students who proceeded to take me to task. You see, I was accurate, but unintentionally, I hurt the feelings of a daughter of a single mother. Apparently, they, mother and teenaged daughter, happened to be doing just fine and she took exception to how I depicted such families. I stuttered an apology, and tried to approach the subject more sensitively.

The point is, liberals have been shy about addressing this issue. But the facts are what they are and they include the persistent high incidence of poverty and immobility, both social and financial, among families headed by single mothers. Why is this the case – it's not so bad in other advanced nations. In these other countries, they have much more generous public assistance policies, but is that it? According to Hymowitz, there's more to it than that.

As for the differences that exist between us and these other nations, single parenthood, it turns out, is quite different in the US. Let me mention some of these distinctions: in the US, young women become mothers at younger ages and they live in communities where there are higher incidents of single motherhood. This develops, unfortunately, a sort of norm for such arrangements. Offspring arrive as a result of a lack of using contraception and pregnancy encourages the coupling of young adults that have little going for them besides sexual attraction. These are people who are, for the most part, strangers and who find little to hold them together after the attraction wanes. They have a child, but that isn't enough. It seems that only about a third of such relationships survive through an offspring's fifth birthday. Then we have the following conditions: “multipartner fertility,” disaffected biological fathers – as mothers attach themselves to new partners or fathers begin families with other women – and dysfunctional stepfathers. “There's substantial research showing that stepfathers are sometimes worse than none at all.”² I might be wrong here, but this last point, I think, was the hidden message my student was communicating to me as she objected to my comments so many years ago.

What to do? First, a sober perspective of the situation is essential. We have to hold people accountable and just writing off irresponsible behavior will not do. I know we want to avoid the old days when young girls would just disappear to have out of wedlock babies. But public policy on this front cannot continue to be absent. Can government dictate dating habits? Of course not. But laws and the enforcement of them seem to be reasonable. If a person is responsible for the birth of a child, that person needs to be held, to the best of his/her ability, responsible for taking care of that child. That includes not only mothers, but biological fathers, whether they live with the child or not. And, of probably more importance, our common language should support that people be held to those responsibilities. It should shame those who shirk their responsibilities. And there seems to be hope in that regard. According to Hymowitz, there seems to be a higher level of realization that having a baby outside a meaningful relationship is not a good idea, especially if you're a teenager. As for welfare programs, we should keep them, but we should devise policies that take into account and rectify the disincentives that such government largess promotes. As Hymowitz points out, we might be providing for today's disadvantaged children at the expense of those in the future. As for this last point, I wish I could be more creative and give you a solid way to run productive welfare programs, but whatever expertise I might have lies elsewhere – in civics education.

And as for civics, the chief aim would be to bolster the more responsible language I mentioned above and with it such thinking that would lead to better decisions. This issue should have a place in a civics curriculum. The treatment should take on directly the basic idea that such dysfunctional choices, as having children outside of meaningful relations, have social as well as personal consequences. Instruction should get at the mode of thinking that has led to a certain level of indifference toward this issue. That is the line of thinking that holds we can do what we want to do as long as we don't hurt others – a la the natural rights construct. We should bring this view under severe criticism. Instruction should ask quite seriously: what constitutes hurting others; where's does the line lie between hurting someone and not hurting someone else? Does having children with an attractive person – a person for which one hardly knows or has any binding affinity – constitute moral or prudent behavior? Of course, such a message and questions ensconced in a more general curriculum that repeatedly deals with substantive moral questions would have a greater impact. No, no guarantees, but a general moral tone that encourages more responsible thinking and considerations can become one of those cultural expectations that do have a positive impact. We know that what we teach in schools has an effect. We also should know that what we don't address in school, if it relates to those predisposed desires we all share, in effect, gives related behaviors a green light.

1Hymowitz, K. S. (2014). How single motherhood hurts kids. The New York Times, February 9, Sunday Review section, p. 5.

2Ibid.