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To the Editor:
Peter Wehner and Yuval Levin suggest that a new “morning in America” has dawned [“Crime, Drugs, Welfare—and Other Good News,” December 2007]. They correctly point out that by statistical measures, crime, drug use, and educational failure in America have all fallen since the 1990’s. This is puzzling, they note, because the “good news” has come despite the fact that the American family continues to deteriorate, as indicated by increases in single parenthood, cohabitation, and illegitimacy in the same period, especially among the poor, the working class, Latinos, and African Americans.
So what gives? Does the family influence the social health of the United States or does it not? The best evidence indicates that children and adults continue to benefit from living in intact, married families. Children who are fortunate enough to grow up with a married mother and father are about half as likely to experience poverty, depression, dropping out of high school, or a teenage pregnancy than their peers from cohabiting, single-parent, or step-families. Likewise, adults who are married tend to be healthier, wealthier, happier, and (in the case of men) better behaved than their unmarried peers. So in all likelihood, American society would be even healthier were it not for the continuing deterioration of the family.
Moreover, the rosy picture that Messrs. Wehner and Levin paint would be somewhat darker if they expanded the scope of their examination to two other important outcomes: inequality and incarceration. Since 1990, the poor and the working class have continued to lose ground against the upper-middle class and the wealthy in terms of wages. With more than 1.5 million Americans currently behind bars, our incarceration rate today stands at a historic high. More than one in ten black men lives behind bars—certainly nothing to celebrate. Indeed, one obvious reason that crime rates in America are falling is that we are throwing so many of our young men into prison. Messrs. Wehner and Levin acknowledge this, but do not dwell upon its implications.
There is strong evidence suggesting that family decline has played an important role in driving up inequality and incarceration in America. A recent study by the sociologist Molly Martin found that family fragmentation accounts for 41 percent of the increase in family-income inequality in recent years. Another study led by Sara McLanahan found that young men who grew up in a single-parent or step-family were twice as likely to end up in prison than those who grew up in an intact family.
Morning in America has not yet arrived, and, in my view, will not arrive until the day when most children—especially children hailing from poor, working-class, and minority communities—are privileged enough to grow up with their married mother and father.
W. Bradford Wilcox
University of Virginia
Charlottesville, Virginia
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To the Editor:
Peter Wehner and Yuval Levin indulge in a bit of wishful thinking about society’s capacity for “health” without the aid of the traditional family. Their discussion raises the following question: if rates of measurable sociocultural ills (drug use, crime, abortion) have been falling as the traditional family structure has continued to unravel, is it possible that old arguments about the importance of the family are flawed?
But the fact that crime rates are down while illegitimacy is up is irrelevant to the question of whether illegitimacy breeds crime. The only crime data with any bearing on that question concerns how children born out of wedlock fare next to children raised by their own married parents. And in fact, the first group is twice as likely to fall into delinquency than is the second, after controlling for factors like income and education. Similarly, the authors cite data that drug use is down, but ignore the fact that whatever the generalized level of drug abuse in the culture at large, the numbers are much lower for adults and children within married families.
On average, children raised by both of their married parents (as opposed to those raised in single-parent or step-family situations) are more likely to be physically and emotionally healthy, to do better and go further in school, and to earn more money in better jobs; they are less likely to be incarcerated, to be victims of abuse or crime, to have children out of wedlock, to live in poverty, to abuse alcohol or drugs, and to wind up divorced themselves.
Tracey O’Donnell
Barcelona, Spain
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To the Editor:
Peter Wehner and Yuval Levin observe that “improvements are visible in the vast majority of social indicators,” and conclude that our society has been growing healthier in the last decade and a half. But one may question the reliability of their statistical metrics. As a high-school teacher, I have trouble believing that the rise in test scores reflects anything other than more time spent by schools to prepare for tests (and less time on actual learning). Those who have set foot in a classroom know that practice test drills do not take the place of reading books, even if they are better suited for their narrow objective. And no doubt similar statistical games can be played when it comes to police work, social services, and other realms of government.
Michael Mattair
Dallas, Texas
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To the Editor:
Peter Wehner and Yuval Levin note that crime in America has gone down in recent years, and cautiously suggest that though we may not even know it and—with the family still in the doldrums—certainly cannot explain it, our culture may be healthier than it was just a short time ago.
Perhaps they are right. But I wonder if upon closer examination the drop in crime would be seen to be not much more than a lucky accident—that is, not the product of greater social and moral health but of the fact that crime is simply harder to get away with, given modern forensic science and accoutrements like surveillance cameras and cell phones to call police with. If this were the case, the “good news” that Messrs. Wehner and Levin herald is more precisely that social dysfunction exacts a lower price in crime than it once did, just as illegitimate children and disease need no longer be consequences of promiscuous sex.
The reduction in bad social outcomes is certainly to be celebrated. But we should not be lulled into a false sense of our society’s health. We have not reached nirvana, as the authors note, and it should not surprise us if our culture of endless self-indulgence eventually comes back to bite us in some other way.
Paul McFadden
Indianapolis, Indiana
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To the Editor:
Peter Wehner and Yuval Levin report that crime and immorality have been dropping in recent years, and that “we are seeing important progress in critical areas of youth behavior.” The reason? “Obviously,” they write, “no single explanation will suffice.”
I would point to what is perhaps the most significant cultural development in the period they examine (from 1990 to the present): the popularization of personal computers. Testosterone-laden boys no longer have to go out on joyrides to get their kicks; they can play games like Grand Theft Auto. And the camaraderie supplied by a gang can now be supplied on the Internet by sites like Facebook.
Barry Nester
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