Page 10 - American Conservative September/October 2015
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Front Lines
“research has shown that the likeli- hood of teen pregnancy, drug abuse, dropping out of school, and many oth- er social problems grew dramatically when fathers were absent.” Riley cites a 2002 study by researchers William Comanor and Llad Phillips of the Uni- versity of California, Santa Barbara. Their conclusions are sobering: “the most critical factor affecting the pros- pect that a male youth will encounter the criminal justice system is the pres- ence of his father in the home.”
The tragedy of the Great Society is the manner in which it helped cata- lyze the destruction of much of the family. In almost all categories that Riley researched—“including in- come, academic achievement, and employment”—black American fam- ilies have “stagnated or lost ground over the past half-century.” For in- stance, the poverty rate for African- Americans is about 30 percent, and four of every 10 black children are raised by single mothers living at or below the poverty line. Statistics
are dramatically different for black Americans who are married: the pov- erty rate is below 10 percent.
“One important lesson of the past half century is that counterproduc- tive cultural habits can hurt a group more than political clout can help it,” Riley writes. “Moynihan was right about that too.” Indeed he was, and devastatingly so.
Lest there be any thought that these trends have only affected black peo- ple, nothing could be further from the truth: according to the 2010 cen- sus, for the first time in American his- tory more than half of all babies born to American women 30 years of age and under were born out of wedlock.
In 1995, looking back at his four decades in public life, Moynihan was asked what had been the big- gest transformation he had observed: “The biggest change, in my judgment, is that the family structure has come apart all over the North Atlantic world.”
So how to think about the moral
Moynihan / Wikimedia Commons
revolution we are living through a half-century after Moynihan pub- lished his famous analysis? It seems to me that culture still leads and is upstream from what is happening in the politics of either party. Mor- als and manners—more than legisla- tion—primarily shape the direction of great nations. Any hope for regen- eration will likely arise from our fam- ilies with active and involved fathers, churches that foster family cohe- siveness, and various ministries and nonprofits that make strong, nuclear families a priority.
The enduring urgency of Moyni- han’s work after 50 years confirms what his friend George Will said about “the ecology of a nation,” namely that “the most important business of one generation is the raising of the next generation.”
Timothy S. Goeglein is the vice president for external relations at Focus on the Family. An earlier version of this essay appeared in Focus on the Family’s Citizen magazine.
10 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE
SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2015


































































































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