Updated: Keeps Coming Back To The Moynihan Report

Posted May 21, 2015 4:33 PM ET; Last updated June 4, 2015 9:29 PM ET



[From article]
In the most famous passage of the 1965 report, Moynihan, who would later become a Democratic U.S. senator, wrote, “From the wild Irish slums of the 19th-century Eastern seaboard, to the riot-torn suburbs of Los Angeles, there is one unmistakable lesson in American history: A community that allows large numbers of young men to grow up in broken families, dominated by women, never acquiring any stable relationship to male authority, never acquiring any set of rational expectations about the future — that community asks for and gets chaos. Crime, violence, unrest, disorder are not only to be expected, they are very near to inevitable.”
When he wrote these words, the illegitimacy rate among African-Americans was 25 percent while illegitimacy nationwide, stood at 7.7 percent. In the mid-1960s thanks largely to Great Society welfare policies, the out-of-wedlock birth rate began to climb rapidly. Today the out-of-wedlock rate for blacks is over 72 percent with even higher rates in inner cities. Illegitimacy among Hispanics is now over 50 percent, and for whites it has risen from the 3 percent in 1960 to 36 percent today.
Moynihan’s words were prophetic. As family structure virtually disintegrated, Baltimore’s core has become a center of poverty and violence. Recent unchecked rioting in Baltimore has been followed by a crime spree with 32 people shot and nine killed just over the Memorial Day weekend.
[. . .]
That pathology is clearly linked to children growing up without fathers. The data is clear that children born to teenage single women are more likely to live in poverty, to fail in school, to become involved in drugs and crime, and to end up in prison. According to the National Fatherhood Initiative, 60 percent of rapists, 72 percent of adolescent murderers, and 70 percent of long-term prison inmates are men who grew up in fatherless homes. Yet this “politically incorrect” evidence is virtually ignored by policymakers
[. . .]
If future generations are to be saved, community leaders and character-forming institutions — churches, synagogues and charities — must take a strong public stand in support of marriage and restoring the two-parent family.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/jun/3/ellen-sauerbrey-baltimore-broken-families-breed-br/

The dreadful truth of Moynihan’s prophecy
Broken families breed broken cities like Baltimore
By Ellen Sauerbrey

Wednesday, June 3, 2015

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[From article]
It's been frustrating not merely because government regulations and mandates have made me into a secretary filling out a myriad of online forms. It's been disheartening not only because leftist propaganda surrounds me and I am but one small voice in the academic desert trying to teach true American core values.
No, it's been a sad and sometimes heartbreaking semester because many college students' assorted troubles are related to the fact that they are bereft of wholesome father figures. The combination of resentment, hurt, anger, and defiant pride run through their writings. It affects everything they do, from having trust issues with the opposite sex to taking direction from anyone they view as an authority figure. Most carry an enormous chip on their shoulders and take offense at the slightest thing.
[. . .]
There are many decent and hardworking students careworn with responsibilities that they should not be obligated to shoulder. As long as the underbelly of popular culture with its anti-responsibility and anti-nuclear family messages reign supreme, these young people and generations to come will be battered and wounded. They deserve better.

http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2015/05/i_dont_need_no_daddy.html

May 18, 2015
I Don't Need No Daddy
By Eileen F. Toplansky