When the right-wing says "family breakdown" causes poverty and crime...

[Ken Burch]

Why doesn't any major political figure on OUR side of the spectrum(including the supposedly "liberal" hosts on MSNBC) call them out for their insistence on maintaining the social policy that did more than anything else to cause "family breakdown"-the rule that only single-parent families were eligible for most forms of government assistance?

Why doesn't anybody on our side point out that, if you give people a choice between keeping a two-parent household together with no possible chance of either of those parents getting work(due largely to redlining and other policies that essentially amounted to an internal economic blockade of large parts of this country's cities)or having one parent move out so that the kids don't starve, ANY decent parent in that situation would likely choose the second of those two options?

Why doesn't anybody in public life tell those people"if we were going to subsudize tobacco, why the hell didn't we subsudize intact families as well"?

It's right there...we all know it...why doesn't somebody in a position of visibility on "our side" have the stones to say it?

What the hell do they think they have to lose?

[951-Riverside]

1. Apparently single black women are incapable of raising children on their own and when they do...

They end up raising blood thirsty monsters. If we're to believe the likes of Rand Paul, Ben Carson, Alex Jones and Larry Elders

but you do make a great point which I wish would be addressed, unfortunately many people on the left also subscribe to this idea that just having a "man in the household" solves all the ills of society.

[Igel]

2. Because the change in family structure didn't just apply to those on government assistance.

That may have helped speed the change in some subgroups, but the change was rather widespread. It affected college grads and working class, those on assistance and those in the 50-90% range of family income.

Those on assistance, more than one researcher has pointed out, are merely less able to adapt and compensate for the change in family structure. It also continued in the bottom 50% of society (by income) after the trend stabilized and partly reversed in the upper 50%. Still, "bottom 50%" =/= "those on government assistance."

BTW, to subsidize "intact families" would be to say that there was something somehow pathological about single-parent families. Even saying that income is higher for such families because of family structure was problematic. This would have gotten you gutted, drawn and quartered at one point, with other coming along to flense you at their leisure if you were still so much as quivering. Still may.

Nobody wants to be told that personal choices affect their offspring or their future. When it comes to corporations some like to say that we shouldn't privatize reward and socialize risk, but individuals are much like corporations when push comes to shove. We want to do what we want to do; we want to avoid the negative consequences of choices or of failing to see what was coming down the pike.

[Ken Burch]

5. My point was that the right DOES say there's "something pathological" about 1-parent families

Last edited Sat May 2, 2015, 10:32 AM - Edit history (1)

Therefore, if they felt that way, they should feel obligated to back anything that would make it easier to keep single families together.

As to families above the poverty line-yes, the divorce rate increased dramatically after World War II-should the state have tried to pressure people to stay married if they had kids, no matter what? Even if it was clear that the two parents despised each other and could never be happy or even civil together again? Even if the relationship had become abusive? Is it doing kids any favor to raise them in a house filled with rage and fear?

[fadedrose]

3. They'd rather incarcerate one of the couple

at a cost of about $75K a year to the government, then pass a law raising minimum wage and requiring some schooling for those accused of simple crimes who have no jobs. Some sort of incentive is needed to encourage employers to hire them, and the only incentive they need is a "reward" like so many stores give on certain purchases, and it would be monetary.

[Lyric]

4. They got their equation a bit wrong.

Poverty causes family breakdown--not the other way around.