Decline of the American Dream: the marriage gap!

I have just finished reading a good and thought-provoking commentary by Maggie Gallagher, Marriage gap threatens dream. That is the title in The Washington Times today. The actual title at www.townhall.com is "The Marriage Gap threatens the Black American dream." According to data, here, in 2004-2005, 4.14 million babies were born in the United States with 37% or more than 1.5 million born to unmarried mothers. In a time beset with values and legal standards, these 1.5 million babies are born with their mother's last name and are therefore, even in polite society, bastards - fatherless children. Gallagher writes to income gaps and declining salaries for both white and black men. Some of the slack for the white men is that they have wives whose salaries off-set the decline in earning power of their husbands. Gallagher continues about earning gaps and the role the "marriage gap" plays in that over-all decline of various elements of attaining the American Dream. She includes a startling bit of data that goes a long way to explaining a fundamental cause for declining access to the American Dream for white and black children.

"When 25 percent of children in a community are born outside of marriage (bastards with no legal claims) as among whites today, that's a serious problem. When almost 70 percent of children in a given community today are born outside of marriage (as among Black Americans today) that's a tsunami blocking the intergenerational accumulation of human and social capital. So far, the silence about the issue among our leaders is deafening... Who will take up the challenge of reducing the marriage gap written so starkly in black and white? Who wants to rebuild the American Dream for all our children?"

A friend of mine once said, "Life is a do it to yourself project." His words somehow ring true in this underlying epidemic of bastard children, fatherless children for whom the government has skillfully replaced the father by giving someone else's hard earned money to support at a subsistence level, the generations of bastard children we have - through welfare - created. Senator Daniel Moynihan - a Democrat - wrote at length about the Great Society and how the government handouts would destroy the black family in America. Well, if 2 of every 3 black youth you see today are born to unwed mothers with no man legally claiming them - I mean legally on the printed page, no man stepping up to the plate and marrying the mother so that he can take pride and responsibilty in his family - the family he claims, then Senator Moynihan was right. Consider also that once shame and responsibility were components of our mores, no more. And the white children are being effected as well with 1 in 4 that you see falling under the not so politically correct rubric of "bastards". This is the disintegration of American society writ large. Writers/researchers have even posited that government incentives for unwed mothers NOT to marry has created a climate of no responsibility or accountability among many young men so that they almost naturally turn to gangs - not so much to engage in the criminal behavior as much at first as to have a place to be or practice being what they see as "manhood". How different would the lives of these bastard children be if their fathers were encouraged and lifted-up as good community role-models by becoming heads-of-households, responsible, accountable fathers in the very best sense of the term? To find how the destruction of the black family and the slide of the white family into tenuous status, look no farther than the policies of the Democrat Party and its Leninist leanings - from each according to their means to each according to their need. And if that need did not exist, the policies of the Democrats for a good 40 years created the "need" by making it easier for women to receive all sorts of handouts IF and only IF the man were not in the house. I have two views on the decline of the American Dream and whether this decline can be attributed to racism or behavioral? I believe it is both. I believe the racism comes from the policies of the Democrats, the Liberal Democrats, who have touted policies of "ending poverty" but have fulfilled their goal of destroying the black family and turned many black as well as white Americans into governmental dependents. Behavioral - in so far as black and white American unwed mothers have bought into the government programs designed to keep fathers/husbands out of the home. This dissolution of marriage, creating the "marriage gap", also leads to low self-esteem for the welfare recipient and for the father who is robbed of his manhood, robbed of his place. But MEN can change that. Men can stand up and take responsibility and refuse to allow their children to be born without a legal father. I call upon black (70%) and white (25%) American men who father children and then, for whatever reason, do not marry the moms, to step up to the plate, flash the middle finger at the government give-aways and say, "We are men and we will take responsibility for our children. These children are our future - the future of our nation. I want my children to carry my last name by law." I know American men can do this. And clearly 75% of white fathers and 30% of black fathers are being fathers in the most legal and legitimate ways possible. Cut down on the unwed mother population, cut down on the bastard population. Since the women seem not to want to be responsible, then American men must become a dominate force again and say, "No babies UNLESS we are married!" In other words, men saying to the women, "You can't use me as a sex object to give you a child and keys to the welfare trough then kick me to the curb. No marriage, no babies!" Now, wouldn't that be a great switch? Male dominance, birth control (not abortion), and the men putting their foot down - No marriage, no baby! But the issue goes to more core values and to extremely disheartening statistics. Children - bastards - with no legitimacy in the courts - generally do not do well in school, tend toward crime at an early age, and ultimately have no parent in the home when the mom is forced to work at low pay. Think about it, American men; reclaim your role in this society. Only you can keep this nation really great through individual effort and responsibility for the children you produce. And even sending childcare checks - although important - does not replace the importance of you in the life and development and future of your children. And the future of America.