Clearly single parenthood exacerbates poverty, but would marriage cure it? Yes. Research suggests that over 60% of poor children in mother-only families would be lifted out of poverty if they were in two parent households.
Would money help the problem? “Unless we slow down these social trends–out-of-wedlock births, crime, drugs, the breakdown of values–government money is not going to do much,” says Gary Bauer of the Family Research Council. Bauer concludes by saying, “Kids are not in poverty because Washington is not spending more money.” “Programs like AFDC combined with food stamps and housing assistance, although meant for good, have broken up more families than slavery ever did. As a result of these broken families, children are being raised without fathers in the house. This single fact contributes more than anything to the chaotic atmosphere in our inner cities,” writes Rev. John Perkins, a pioneer of African American self-help programs, in Policy Review a publication of the Heritage Foundation.
In spite of billions of federal dollars being poured into social projects since the War on Poverty began in the middle sixties, there are more poor people today than any other time in American history. Even in the idealistic decade of 1960-170, when everyone thought the war on poverty would be won in a generation, in spite of the fact that the government provided unprecedented resources for children, the well-being of children declined.
Young persons who grow up in single parent households are much more likely to commit crime than any other population group. Three out of four teenage suicides occur in households where a parent has been absent. Eighty percent of adolescents in psychiatric hospitals come from broken homes. Tracking studies indicate that five of six adolescents caught up in the criminal-justice system came from families in which a parent (usually the father) has been absent. In fact, in 1988 a government survey of 17,000 children found, according to one analyst, that “children living apart from a biological parent are 20 to 40% more vulnerable to sickness. As illegitimately increases, so does criminal activity. And most social scientists insist that there is a clear connection. In 1972, when about 10% of children were illegitimate, the federal and state prison population in the United States was 94.6 per 100,000 people. In 1982, the rate was 170 per 100,000. By 1992, when over 30% of American children were illegitimate, the prison rate had grown to 330 for every 100,000.