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Nov. 6, 2009
Rabbi Berel Wein: Choosing to hear
JWisdom.com Zero to 1/60th: How to Empower An Hour with Gavriel Aryeh Sande (7 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick The mullahs' big week
Suzanne Fields A Fallen Wall for Fallen Man
Nov. 5, 2009
The Kosher Gourmet: Three scrumptious -- but simple -- butternut squash dishes
JWisdom.com Hidden Hints: Unlocking Faith & Prayer with Rabbi Jay Yaacov Schwartz (10 minutes)
Nov. 4, 2009
Tom Hamburger and Kim Geiger: Should prayers be covered?
JWisdom.com When God played peacemaker With Rabbi Sroy Levitansky (5 minutes)
Nov. 3, 2009
Martin Peretz: Beware, Barack. Beware, Rahm. Beware, Axelrod
JWisdom.com Are you are closet idolater? With Sara Yoheved Rigler (10 minutes)
Nov. 2, 2009
Paul Greenberg: The Holocaust is now on Facebook
JWisdom.com Abraham's Strange Change With Rabbi Yitzchok Fingerer (5 minutes)
Oct. 30, 2009
Rabbi David Aaron: Secret to Immortality
Caroline B. Glick Silencing dissent in America
Oct. 29, 2009
Lini S. Kadaba: Do tactics avert flu or reduce humanity?
JWisdom.com We Must Revamp our Religious Vocabulary With Gavriel Aryeh Sanders ( 10 minutes)
Oct. 28, 2009
Rabbi Yonason Goldson: Atheists in Bubbleland
JWisdom.com Why what we wear impacts who we are With Rabbis Mordechai Becher, Menachem Golberger and Aliza Bulow ( 10 minutes)
Oct. 27, 2009
Paul Greenberg: The United Nations Is Outraged Again, Or: Department of Mideast Static
JWisdom.com The Science of Love With Rabbi Jonathan Rietti ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 26, 2009
The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Damaging disclosures with a twist
JWisdom.com Wisdom and Wonks With Rabbi Eytan Feiner ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 23, 2009
Rabbi David Aaron: Are you ready for the ultimate pleasure?
JWisdom.com Watermark and oneness with Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 4 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick Stop using limited powers in a way that expands our enemies' advantages over us
Oct. 22, 2009
Steven Emerson: Terror Cases Share Desire to Kill Americans
JWisdom.com No More More Family Fights --- Really? By Sarah Chana Radcliffe ( 5 minutes)
Oct. 21, 2009
Tonya Alanez: Holocaust denier sues survivor, calling Auschwitz memoir 'vicious lies'
JWisdom.com Meditating Jewishly: A Panacea for Success by Sarah Yoheved Rigler ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 20, 2009
Dennis Prager: Obama and Dalai Lama: Why Israel Worries about U.S. President
JWisdom.com Abraham was not religious By Rabbi Yitzchok Fingerer ( 6 minutes)
Oct. 19, 2009
JWisdom.comWhy Good People Do Bad Things By Rabbi Eytan Feiner ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 16, 2009
Rabbi Yonason Goldson: The Perfect Number
JWisdom.com Hearing Voices By Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 5 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick How Turkey was lost
Oct. 15, 2009
Jeff Jacoby: Peace vs. the 'peace process'
JWisdom.com: Former MTV producer and stand-up comedian Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff: Taming a Control Freak (A VERY fast 15 minutes)
Oct. 29, 2003
Mortimer B. Zuckerman: Graffiti On History's Walls (MUST-READ!)

Jewish World Review Oct. 12, 2007 / 30 Tishrei 5768

Family-unfriendly policies

By Mort Zuckerman

Mort Zuckerman
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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | You will hear a lot about the American family in the election campaign. For most of us, that calls up an image of a man and wife and two or three children. Forget it. Predominant as the social pattern for several hundred years, that American family has lost its place. Households of unmarried couples and households without children outnumber "American family" households. And only about 20 percent of families fit into the traditional structure with father as the only breadwinner.


Here is what has been happening: In the 1950s, 80 percent of adults were married; today, roughly 50 percent are. Why? Partly because people are delaying marriage, with the median age for a first marriage rising by four years for men and about five years for women. Second, divorce rates have more than doubled since the 1960s as marriage evolved from a sacrament to a contract. Third, millions more cohabit before marriage. Fourth, births to unmarried mothers, white and black, have risen from 5 percent in 1960 to about 35 percent today. So the new American family is a household with fewer children, with both parents working, and with mothers giving birth to their children at an ever older age, having fewer children, and spacing them further apart.


This is not good news. Twice as many married people indicate they are very happy as compared with those who aren't married. But it is the children who are most affected. The stable family of two biological parents — surprise, surprise! — turns out to be the ideal vessel for molding character, for nurturing, for inculcating values, and for planning for a child's future. By comparison, the children of single parents or broken families do worse at school and in their career. Marriage, or the lack of it, is the best single predictor of poverty, greater even than race or unemployment.


The result is a serious new divide in our society between the children of poorer, less educated, single parents and those of richer, better educated, and married parents. The married parents typically earn more than $75,000; in only 20 percent of cases do married parents with children earn less than $15,000.


The startling increase of those who grow up with only one parent has markedly added to poverty among children, shifting poverty from the old to the young. Children in mother-only families are more likely than those with two parents to be suspended from school, to have emotional problems, to become delinquent, to suffer from abuse, to take drugs, and to perform poorly on virtually every measure.


Working moms. The culture has also changed. Once, about 40 percent thought that a wife should help her husband's career rather than have one of her own. Now, 81 percent think she should have her own career, and 70 percent think that both husband and wife should earn money. Parental time with children has dropped from about 30 hours a week to around 17 — yet 70 percent believe that children are not affected negatively by having a working mother unless they are under school age. Moreover, the vast majority of working mothers now say that even if the family did not need the income, they would continue working.


So a big question for everyone is how to reform Social Security and welfare so as to nourish marriage and raise the proportion of children who grow up in two-parent families. We should worry about a welfare system that pays unmarried mothers enough to have their own apartments and has led some to prefer babies to husbands. Research indicates that a 10 percent growth in welfare benefits increases by 12 percent the chances that a poor young woman will have a baby out of wedlock before the age of 22. This has been true for both whites and blacks.


This is one reason that, even after a significant reform of the welfare system, the single welfare mother has become the public symbol of much of what is wrong with America's social service programs. We must find ways to educate people to understand that it is a good idea to be married before having children. Federal aid should give incentives for couples to form and sustain healthy marriages, not encouragement for single parenthood and nonmarital birth. Social service benefits that phase out fairly quickly after marriage, for example, can actually create a marriage penalty. Nor should the tax code penalize couples who marry.


This dramatic shift from traditional to contemporary family structures and values is unlikely to change. But the bulk of the nation's most intractable social problems would benefit from tempering that trend by nurturing the American family. Public policy should not contribute to an a la carte menu of sex, love, and childbearing. It should emphasize the benefits for all from the package deal of marriage.

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JWR contributor Mort Zuckerman is editor-in-chief and publisher of U.S. News and World Report. Send your comments to him by clicking here.

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© 2005, Mortimer Zuckerman

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