Based on Robert Putnam's book, Our Kids.

From the AEI.

Our kids, at least many of them, are not doing very well. The reason, writes Harvard professor Robert Putnam in his just-published Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis, is the “two-tier pattern of family structure” that emerged in the 1970s and 1980s and continues to prevail today.

Starting in the late 1960s, rates of divorce, unmarried births and single parenthood rose sharply among all segments of society. About a decade later they fell and leveled off among the college-educated, who almost entirely raise their kids in Ozzie-and-Harriet style families today (except that mom usually works outside the home).

Among the bottom third of Americans in education and income, however, the negative trend accelerated. In 1965, Daniel Patrick Moynihan was alarmed that 26 percent of black births were to unmarried children. The rate is about twice that for the least educated third of Americans of all races today.

This shouldn’t come as a surprise. Charles Murray’s 2012 book Coming Apart describes the same phenomenon among white Americans. Curiously, Putnam refers only glancingly to Murray’s work. But Putnam agrees with Murray (perhaps grudgingly) that this is bad for the kids involved.

They’re careful to concede that single parents have a hard job and that some do well at it. But the data says those are the exception rather than the rule. On average and by a wide margin, children raised in such households do worse in school, have more trouble with the law and make less money and gain less satisfaction in life than those from the stable families of the upper third.

Putnam is troubled by the resulting inequality and lack of upward mobility. He begins Our Kids in Port Clinton, Ohio, where he grew up in the 1950s in a community unequal in income, but egalitarian in manners and mores. Since then, Port Clinton’s factory jobs have mostly disappeared and the town seems riven between the gleaming condominiums on the now-clean waters of Lake Erie and gritty neighborhoods where many kids grow up in disorderly homes.

With a corps of researchers, Putnam fanned out across the country and found similar trends from fast-growing Bend, Ore., to the down-at-the-heels Kensington neighborhood of Philadelphia. He tells the stories and quotes the words — often heart-wrenching, sometimes heart-warming — of specific kids identified by first names. 	

“America’s poor kids do belong to us and we to them,” he concludes. “They are our kids.” The nation as a whole has to do something to help them. But what?

Send them money is one answer. But as the Manhattan Institute’s Scott WInship points out, low-level wages and incomes, taking into account proper inflation measures and fringe benefits, have not fallen over the last 40 years. Food and clothing has become less expensive (thanks, Wal-Mart) and most households classified as poor have smartphones, microwaves and big-screen TVs that did not exist in the 1960s.

Like Sen. Mike Lee and other reform conservatives, Putnam would increase the Earned Income Tax Credit and expand the child tax credit. Marginal help. He hails the bipartisan support for reducing incarceration for minor offenses and helping ex-convicts. And let’s, he says, eliminate pay-for-play fees for extracurricular activities.

Other proposals sound unavailing, like moving low-education households to more upscale suburbs; Section 8 housing subsidies already do that. And Putnam’s faith that child care centers and mandatory pre-school can make a difference haven’t been supported by research, except for two experiments more than 40 years ago whose results haven’t been replicated.

Putnam doubts the chances of “a reversal of long-established trends in private norms,” though they’re common in history: The gin-soaked mobs of 18th-century London became the orderly Victorian masses. Like most high-education Americans, he doesn’t want to denounce people for breaking old moral rules even when that hurts their kids.

The libertarian Murray doubts that government can do much. But he thinks that high-education elites, with their strong family structures, can. They need to “preach what they practice.” Bloomberg’s Megan McArdle, agreeing, nominates Hollywood for a lead role. Midcentury America’s universal media — radio, movies, television — celebrated the old rules.

There are signs this is happening. Teenage birth and violent crime rates have been falling. Younger millennials may be learning delayed gratification and self-restraint. Maybe, as they grow older, divorce and single parenthood will become less common too. Few kids in broken homes will read Our Kids or Coming Apart. But they already know the story.

So what's there to talk about here. Kids are fucked, broken families not supplying the right environment for a child leads to a domino effect in younger generations. Not only is it dysfunctional families but it's "functional" families as well.

And? What else is there to say here, exactly?

You'd be surprised how many people seem to think family structure doesn't matter.

All the more reason to keep those faggots from marrying and ruining our society!

I literally have no idea how you managed to get that from what I posted.

Quote from: Sandtrap on March 27, 2015, 03:41:21 PM

So what's there to talk about here. Kids are fucked, broken families not supplying the right environment for a child leads to a domino effect in younger generations. Not only is it dysfunctional families but it's "functional" families as well.

And? What else is there to say here, exactly?

You'd be surprised how many people seem to think family structure doesn't matter.

No I wouldn't. Because people are fucking stupid. It's not surprising. It's expected, really.

It's not so much a breakdown as it is an evolution.

Quote from: GethKhilafah on March 27, 2015, 05:58:14 PM

It's not so much a breakdown as it is an evolution.

I'm not convinced.

there's historical precedent for it, just look at the family dynamics on the Overland Trail, or the development of slave families, or the realities of family life before/during the Great Depression. times of dire need tend to either strengthen family bonds or redefine what family means- we are very versatile when it comes to the development and maintenance of kinship groups.

Sandtrap is right, beyond a young age most people within a family are separated from each other by their activities. Ffs, I only see my brother 2-5 times a day and I share a room with him, I only see my mother a handful of times too.

But, this does not affect any of negatively, in fact I would go as far to say it is of benefit.

Bonds are not as strong in a family the less time is spent with other family members. And the excuse, "Well I dislike my brother/mother/father," is a dysfunction. I'm not saying every family is peachy either. And I'm not saying a dysfunction  marks everything as fucked.

Every family has a dysfunction.

But the real, key thing about what a family is, is what they do with their dysfunction.  Do two brothers grow up and separate from one another, never saying a word to one another because they dislike one another?

Or does one of them try and figure it out, and maybe, understand, or at the very least, try to ease the tension. Ease the dislike down to a relationship that's agreeable?

Does a son outgrow their parents, but not abandon them out of spite, but instead try to show them what they did wrong and work things out with them?

The true, and real problem with families today is complacency.

Complaceny is not negativity. It's essentially a blindfold. It's ignoring the dysfunction that exists, and continuing on with one's life despite that flaw that exists.

I'm not saying every family can ever be repaired into tip top shape.

But I'd bet you if you removed that distance, artificial or no, between modern family members, society would improve a great deal.

I witness this first hand working in a school. I've seen and heard things, some speculation, some rumors and some just down right obvious. Even having step-parents is better than having just seperate parents, I'v experienced step-parents first hand.. and in fact, the step-parents, I found to be far more noble than my regular parents.

My younger, half-brothers though.. are suffering far more than I was.. Their mom (My step-mom) is divorced from my Dad, stopped living together for awhile, now living together temporarily till she's ready for her own place..

All this moving, switching parent duties on a weekly basis is too much.