
 |
|
May 13, 2013
David G. Savage: Church-state, literally? Supreme Court weighing public school graduation in a church
May 10, 2013
Rabbi Berel Wein: Be all that you should be
May 8, 2013
Peter Ford: Why China is welcoming both Israel's Netanyahu and Palestinians' Abbas
Warren Richey: Obama administration quietly backs out of appeal over new contraceptive mandate
Fred Weir: At Kerry-Putin meeting, US-Russia relations thaw --- a tad
The Kosher Gourmet by Leela Cyd Ross : Almost too pretty to eat, this colorful salad with Sicilian inspiration will tickle the taste buds and delight your visual sensibility
May 6, 2013
May 3, 2013
Kids, kittens the Same? With employee perks at struggling Internet pioneer Yahoo! it's hard to tell
Sandy Kleffman: Artificial kidney offers hope to patients tethered to a dialysis machine
April 29, 2013
Roy Gutman: Poland's new Jewish museum celebrates life, doesn't revisit Holocaust
Mark Clayton: Terrorism in America: Is US missing a chance to learn from failed plots?
Kim Murphy: Boston Bomber's 'Svengali' Revealed
Pete Spotts: Tiny satellites + cellphones = cheaper 'eyes in the sky' for NASA
April 26, 2013
Clifford D. May: Defense in the Age of Jihadist Terrorism
Sharon Palmer, R.D.: How to feel your best -- with plenty of energy, a healthy weight and optimal mental and physical function -- without driving yourself batty
April 24, 2013
Morgan Housel Admit it: No one has any idea what's going on
April 22, 2013
US man departing country arrested on terror charges
Barbara Williams: An unorthodox but growing treatment in a 9-year-old's battle against cancer
April 19, 2013
Caroline B. Glick: Why Obama's visit to Israel had no impact on public opinion or government policy
Morgan Housel: Gold collapse: The start of something big?
Pete Spotts: Livable super-Earths? Two candidates among Kepler's latest finds
April 17, 2013
Shira Rubin: Too much of a good thing? 'Palestinians' realize downside of foreign aid boom
Morgan Housel: BAD NEWS: EVERYONE IS RIGHT!
April 15, 2013
Kristen Chick: Egyptian Christians respond with harsh words to attack -- rocks, Molotov cocktails, and gunfire -- against main cathedral
Marcy Darnovsky and Karuna Jaggar: High Court to decide if you should own your DNA
Howard LaFranchi: US bracing for more Russian blowback after taking action against 18 more human rights violators
April 12, 2013
Mark Clayton: New cybersecurity bill: Privacy threat or crucial band-aid?
Jewz in the Newz by Nate Bloom: Jackie Robinson's Friend, Hank Greenberg; CNN's Jake Tapper; Texas County in the News is named for 19thC. Jewish soldier and Congressman
The Kosher Gourmet by Susan Russo: FRUITY QUINOA STUFFED PEPPERS: A flavorful, colorful and edible vessel of delicately fluffy, mildly nutty filling combined with chewy apricots, tangy cherries, and crunchy pistachios
April 10, 2013
Peter Grier: North Korean missiles: Could US shoot them down?
Morgan Housel: Warning: Don't waste your capital being fooled by profit prophets
Donald Hensrud, M.D.: Mayo Clinic Medical Edge: Take vitamin supplements with caution --- even approved, they may actually do damage
Eryn Brown: 74 DNA discoveries move cure closer for three cancers
April 8, 2013
Jonathan Tobin: What Part of No Preconditions Do American Jews Not Get?
Fred Weir: Is Putin finally trading his own party for a new power base?
|
| |
Jewish World Review
Dec. 4, 2006
/ 13 Kislev, 5767
Lifestyles of the poor and anonymous
By
Suzanne Fields
| 
|
|
|
|
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
Lifestyles of the rich and famous have never been the same as lifestyles of the poor and anonymous, but for a while we acted as though they were. As Kay Hymowitz reminds us in her persuasively documented book called "Marriage and Caste in America," a typical single mother is neither the fictional version of Murphy Brown of sitcom fame, whose kid practically disappeared in the show because the writers didn't know what to do with him, nor Angelina Jolie, who is considered half a couple with Brad Pitt, with their natural daughter and several adopted children, but so far without a marriage license.
Few people today think divorce and single parenthood are equal-opportunity misfortunes in a house on the beach of Malibu or a trailer camp in West Virginia, but we're still slow in finding solutions for the disastrous consequences of single parenthood in the underclass, which more than any other single ingredient contributes to a caste system in America.
| BUY THE BOOK |
| Click HERE
to purchase it at a discount. (Sales help fund
JWR.).
|
|
Welfare reform did much to remove financial incentives for poor women to continue having illegitimate children, but illegitimacy remains a big problem for poor blacks, and the caste systems widens for children who grow up without fathers. Poor single mothers generally lack marketable skills that will carry them into a higher financial bracket, and their children are at a major educational disadvantage when competing with children of middle-class families.
These single moms have lost considerably more than a man in the house. They've lost the middle-class script for planning for the future, and they've lost the traditional institutional arrangement that's required for upward mobility, made all the more crucial in a knowledge economy when a college drop-out can no longer find a job in manufacturing.
When Daniel Patrick Moynihan, as assistant secretary of labor in 1965, sounded the call of a prophet, drawing attention to the soaring numbers of fatherless families in the black community, he was excoriated by so-called revolutionary scholars, radical feminists and civil rights leaders who branded him a "racist" blind to the positive power of the black matriarch "role model."
Well that was then, and this is now, and despite welfare reform, the ghetto is still reeling from cultural attitudes that contribute to a black youth's rapper vocabulary that celebrates irresponsible behavior of boys in the 'hood, who look at women as "hos." When the white revolutionaries in the '60s narcissistically valued independence over bourgeois marriage, they overlooked the importance of marriage as a social institution. Ideologically, we moved from a child-centered nation to an adult-centered one, separating children from parents, function from form.
Marriage is not only a private contract, but a public one, too, with attendant laws governing care and responsibility for children. Traditional marriage, at its best, fosters social attitudes to help build self-reliant, competent, industrious, self-governing citizens. "The foundation of national morality must be laid in private families," John Adams wrote in 1778.
We don't have to read about soccer moms and dads and all those ambitious white and black middle-class parents who today fight to get their children into the best nursery schools to realize that many men and women have recovered from the bad old days, but it's also clear that the black ghetto families have not made the same recovery in rediscovering the benefits of marriage.
"The old-fashioned married-couple-with children model is doing quite well among college-educated women," writes Kay Hymowitz. "It is primarily among lower-income women with only a high school education that it is in poor health." Children in this environment don't get an educational message that teaches them society's manners, providing the structure to learn from what sociologist Brigitte Berger calls the "family's great educational mission." Education is the daily drip, drip, drip of details that engender in young children the aspirations and the tools to make a better life for themselves in their pursuit of happiness.
Neither of my parents, for example, graduated from high school, but they were determined that their two children would go to college. That was and is the message in many families today, but it's a message lacking in the ghetto. That's what Bill Cosby meant when he told parents: "You've got to straighten up your house! Straighten up your apartment! Straighten up your child!"
Many critics, of course, accused him of blaming the victim. But he wants to encourage a counter-revolution, a generational backlash against lost opportunities. That will require a sense of "can do," and "I do."
Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.
Comment on JWR contributor Suzanne Fields' column by clicking here.
Suzanne Fields Archives
© 2006, Creators Syndicate, Suzanne Fields
|
|

Arnold Ahlert
Mitch Albom
Jay Ambrose
Michael Barone
Barrywood
Lori Borgman
Stratfor Briefing
Mona Charen
Linda Chavez
Richard Z. Chesnoff
Ann Coulter
Greg Crosby
Larry Elder
Suzanne Fields
Christine Flowers
Frank J. Gaffney
Bernie Goldberg
Jonah Goldberg
Julia Gorin
Jonathan Gurwitz
Paul Greenberg
Argus Hamilton
Victor Davis Hanson
Betsy Hart
Ron Hart
Nat Hentoff
A. Barton Hinkle
Jeff Jacoby
Paul Johnson
Jack Kelly
Ch. Krauthammer
David Limbaugh
Kathryn Lopez
Rich Lowry
Michelle Malkin
Jackie Mason
Ann McFeatters
Dale McFeatters
Dana Milbank
Jeanne Moos
Dick Morris
Jim Mullen
Deroy Murdock
Judge A. Napolitano
Bill O'Reilly
Clarence Page
Kathleen Parker
Star Parker
Dennis Prager
Wesley Pruden
Tom Purcell
Sharon Randall
Robert Robb
Cokie & Steve Roberts
Heather Robinson
Debra J. Saunders
Martin Schram
Greg Schwem
Culture Shlock
David Shribman
Roger Simon
Lenore Skenazy
Michael Smerconish
Thomas Sowell
Ben Stein
Mark Steyn
John Stossel
Cal Thomas
Dan Thomasson
Bob Tyrrell
Diana West
Dave Weinbaum
George Will
Walter Williams
Byron York
ZeitGeist
Mort Zuckerman

Robert Arial
Chuck Asay
Baloo
Lisa Benson
Chip Bok
Dry Bones
John Branch
John Cole
J. D. Crowe
Matt Davies
John Deering
Brian Duffy
Everything's Relative
Mallard Fillmore
Glenn Foden
Jake Fuller
Bob Gorrel
Walt Handelsman
Joe Heller
David Hitch
Jerry Holbert
David Horsey
Lee Judge
Steve Kelley
Jeff Koterba
Dick Locher
Chan Lowe
Jimmy Margulies
Jack Ohman
Michael Ramirez
Rob Rogers
Drew Sheneman
Kevin Siers
Jeff Stahler
Scott Stantis
Danna Summers
Gary Varvel
Kirk Walters
Dan Wasserman

Tech Q&A
Mr. Know-It-All
Ask Doctor K
Richard Lederer
Frugal Living
On Nutrition
Bookmark These
Bruce Williams
|