Families of all shapes and sizes: Tom McDermott

Editor's note: The following is a reply to Kul Gautam's article of September 19, 2023 - Well-being of children in single vs. two parent families. Our software allows only a little over 4,000 characters in a comment, so it is presented here as an article.

...........


Kul - I often agree with you, but on this one I don't. I also usually agree with Nick Kristof, whose article, The One Privilege Liberals Ignore, you introduced and linked. On the other hand, the author, economist, Melissa Kearney, (whose articles you also link) is someone I have not read before.

In your introduction to these three articles you suggest that liberals - thanks to their sense of 'political correctness' - are somehow unable to accept the idea that the numbers of children growing up in one-parent homes is tied closely to child poverty. Really? If so, not the liberals I know.

With very few exceptions liberals and conservatives agree on the obvious - that there are significant advantages to children who grow up with two loving parents who stay together reliably present throughout childhood. It is for this reason that a 'traditional family privilege' is written into US tax laws and many other forms of federal and state laws and policy. Indeed, what we face is not how to spread what Kearney calls "the two parent privilege", but rather how to adjust existing laws to support the the large numbers of children grow up with only one parent present - usually the mother.

Kristof is correct in noting that from the 1960's onward the war on drugs and the resulting explosion of incarceration among Black boys and men has been an important factor in forcing poor Black children to grow up in mother-headed households. I think he is wrong, on the other hand, in suggesting that this situation for Black families has worsened significantly in recent years. At least, he presents no such evidence of worsening for Black families in his article or in the Census Bureau report he links. Instead, all Kristof and Kearney show is a doubling in the number of mother headed households without any indication of the racial group in which this 'explosion' took place. In fact, the situation of Black families may actually have improved since the 1960's, thanks to continuing campaigns by Black leaders and ministers to encourage men to take responsibility for their families. Malcolm X and many other Black leaders of the 1960's era argued that the resulting breakdown of the family and the absence of the father had already at that point been at a crisis point at least since the 1930's and that it was up to men to break the cycle.

The history of the absent Black father is a long and sad one with its roots in slavery, racism, lynching of Black men who 'looked the wrong way at White women', severely limited employment opportunities, and continued irrational fears among Whites of Black males - egged on by lopsided news, film and TV focus on violent crimes committed by Black men rather than often 'higher level' crimes by White men.

I managed a tutoring project for several years in one of the poorest Black neighborhoods of Harlem. This meant that I spent many evenings sitting with children and their mothers in tenement apartments where fathers had been seldom if ever seen. Mothers were then, as now, the element that held the family together. Yet, ironically, absent a family of children to care for, opportunities for Black women were somewhat better then than for Black men.

Where the situation has changed dramatically in recent years is among White families at all economic levels from poor to middle class and rich. Family structures have been breaking down with far fewer people feeling obligated to marry, or, if they marry, access to easy divorce with little social disfavor for parents who choose to split. And, of course, for the past two decades there have been rapidly improving employment opportunities for women.

This is hardly the first time for such a phenomenon to occur in US history. During World Wars I and II, the saying was that, "Men went off to war and women went off to fill their jobs. When the war ended the men went back to their jobs and the women went back to their kids". The difference between then and now is that the extended family structure of grandparents, aunts and uncles who could care for absent parents is no longer available. Moreover, today few employers, much less any woman, would feel obliged to give up a good job simply because a man came back from war or whatever.

Both Kearney and Kristof talk a lot about the problems of the one parent family, but they offer no real alternatives that fit today's society. The reality is that many people will form couples who live together, but do not marry; others who marry, but stay together for only a few years; and still others who will choose not to have children at all. Reality is also that most men and women will need to work when they find opportunities to do so - indeed, in today's economy few have any other choice.

So what do Kearney and Kristof want in terms of government policies in order to push people back to a traditional two parent family (beyond the many advantages already established in law)? Set disincentives for women who want to work? End no-fault divorce? Limit child support payments for those who are not married or have only one parent at home?

Surely not.

Yet some right-wing politicians do have those policies in mind - policies that would take us back to the 'good old days' - lock down access to abortion, limit or eliminate access to contraception, limit sex education, end no fault divorce, shame women and couples who choose to work but not have children - all good ways to keep to keep women at home with the babies and the husband off at work. Welcome back to the 1950's.

But try as some might try - governments cannot recreate a family structure that no longer fits society.

As Robin Williams said in the 1993 movie, 'Mrs. Doubtfire', "“There are all sorts of different families. Some families have one mommy, some families have one daddy or two families. And some children live with their uncle or aunt. Some live with their grandparents, and some children live with foster parents." Today we might add, "Some families have two daddies and some have two mommies." I think one point on which we might all agree is that it is important to respect and be willing to work with and support all sorts of families, regardless of their composition. The most important element for a child growing up is to have at least one loving parent - or two - and plus, where possible, loving grandparents, aunts and uncles.

Government has to support the society which elects it, not with images of a supposedly glorious past. This is neither a question of conservative vs. liberal, nor of political correctness. It is a question of living with reality.

I should add a qualifier. I was one of the many childre in the post WWII era who grew up in a one parent household with a mother who had to work full time to support us. I was fortunate to have grandparents who could help raise me when my mother worked. I missed having a father, but seeing families of friends with dysfunctional families, with violent, alcoholic, and abusive fathers, I often thanked God that my mother made the choice she did.

Tom