European Society Shows The Right Way To Deal With Illegitimate Births
Charles Murray's at it again, in the just published, "Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010." Much of the discussion of the book has centered on Murray's statistical dissection of the white working class, particularly family breakdown as measured by births out of wedlock.
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Most European countries are above the OECD average of 35 percent (as is the U.S.). In the UK the figure is around 45 percent. Denmark is about the same. France is slightly over 50 percent. Sweden and Norway are slightly higher. Estonia, which has deep historical ties to Sweden nudges 60 percent. Iceland tops the global list with around 63 percent of children being born without benefit of clergy
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But if that were the case, Europe would be a festering sinkhole of social decay. That may be the view of hard-right opinion formers in Washington and Republican presidential candidates but it isn't the reality. Prisons aren't bulging over here (well, maybe in Britain, the nation whose views on crime and punishment and whose economy most closely mirror that of the U.S.). Vast vats of methamphetamine aren't being cooked up in the backyards of the working class.
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The idea of the traditional family has changed enormously in the last half-century, but so has the traditional idea of work. The absence of work is likely to trigger enormous strains in the lives of every family unit, whether blessed in the eyes of God, legalized by the state or existing as some acknowledged personal bond by having a child out of wedlock. In a way, illegitimacy is a pure expression of libertarianism, not liberalism. Work is the source of social cohesion. It is what holds families and societies together. If you take work away from someone - regardless of his class - his family is in for hard times. In extreme cases, where whole communities lose the source of employment, that will be the reason for social breakdown, not illegitimacy of children. Unless, and here is the big difference between the U.S. and Europe, you have a large enough social safety net to ameliorate the terror of joblessness. Most of the countries I mention all have higher unemployment rates than America. And that is not just in the current economic crisis, historically European unemployment rates have been higher than those in America.
Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/coming-apart-how-the-european-experience-of-illegitimate-births-is-different-than-americas-2012-2
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