The Decline of Families Tops List of Voter Worries

0 Comments | Insight on the News, Sept 25, 2000 | by Matt Daniels

Election Day 2000 may see the critical importance of the two-parent-household vote. That's the bottom line of a new national poll of American adults conducted by Wirthlin Worldwide on a range of issues related to marriage and families in the United States. The poll was commissioned by the Alliance for Marriage, a nonpartisan, multicultural coalition dedicated to promoting marriage and addressing the crisis of fatherless families in the United States.

This national Wirthlin poll of more than 1,000 American adults reveals 6 out of 10 Americans understand that the most basic social institution in our culture -- the American family -- is weak. In addition, an overwhelming majority of Americans -- regardless of party affiliation -- agree that the strength and health of American families should be priority No. 1 for our political leaders. In other words, to quote Democratic Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan of New York, an overwhelming majority of Americans understands that "the principal aim of American government at every level should be to see that children are born into intact families and that they remain so."

Specifically, 64 percent of all Americans rank strengthening families as a greater national priority than increasing job opportunities. Similarly, an overwhelming 77 percent of Americans regard strengthening families as a greater national-policy priority than even a cleaner environment. And, finally, a stunning 92 percent of Americans agree with the view that our nation can only go forward if American families are strengthened.

We at the Alliance for Marriage believe that there is an integral connection between the institution of marriage and the health of families in the United States. After all, in virtually every society on the face of the Earth, marriage is what makes fatherhood more than a biological event -- by connecting men to the children whom they bring into the world.

As the American people clearly understand, the American family is in serious trouble. At present, a historically unprecedented percentage of families with children in our nation are fatherless. In fact, more than 25 million American children (more than one in three) are being raised in a family with no father present in the home. This represents a dramatic tripling of the level of fatherlessness in America during the last 30 years.

Unfortunately, there is an overwhelming body of social-science research data, which shows that the epidemic level of fatherlessness in the United States represents a disaster for children and society. In fact, most of our serious social problems -- from youth crime to child poverty -- track far more closely with fatherlessness than they do with other social variables such as race, educational level or the condition of the economy. For example, the percentage of fatherless families in a community reliably predicts that community's rate of violent crime, while the community's poverty level does not. Similarly, white children in fatherless families in America are more than twice as likely to live in poverty as African-American children who have a father in the home.

My own personal experience offers something of a miniature portrait of the tremendous human and social costs of fatherlessness in America. After my parents married, my mother followed my father to New York City in the early 1960s. When I was two years old, my father abandoned my family. Divorce became the easiest way for my father to escape the responsibility of having to support a wife and child. Although my mother never expected that she would need to provide for a family, she obtained a position as a secretary and worked for several years to keep us in our apartment in a deteriorating part of Spanish Harlem.

A few years later, my mother was the victim of a serious violent crime. While coming home late from work one night, she got off at the wrong bus stop and was mugged by four men. She sustained injuries that left her with a permanent disability and lifelong depression. Around this time, she started receiving welfare benefits. Apart from a short period after she became terminally ill, my mother remained on welfare for the rest of her life.

If my father had not abandoned my family, many of the most difficult aspects of my own childhood could have been avoided. Another source of income in our home would have prevented my family from slipping into poverty and relying on public assistance. Another parent to help shoulder the burden of raising a child and helping to manage the affairs of our family might have prevented my mother from sliding into depression during a period of severe crisis. And a father would also have provided a critical male role model and a needed source of discipline in my home as I grew older.

Tragically, the modern epidemic of fatherlessness means that an increasing number of children in America grows up under similarly difficult conditions. In the end, we can at least be encouraged that a clear majority of the American people understands the real problem that faces America -- the decline of the American family -- even if some politicians and political leaders do not.