On Point: Incubators of decline

Published November 28, 2006 at midnight

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The recent government report that out-of-wedlock births rose again in 2005 to a record high - 37 percent of all babies - was recognized with a single wire-service story in many news outlets and little if any commentary. It's as if no one wants to be branded a fogy who thinks married fathers remain crucial to their children's lives.

Or perhaps our usually vocal commentators were transfixed by the kernel of good news in the report. Didn't it also say that the birth rate among unmarried teens actually dropped?

Yes, it did - but that's hardly cause for rejoicing given the overall trend. As Kay S. Hymowitz, author of the new book Marriage and Caste in America, pointed out in an article earlier this year, while the prospects for single mothers in their 20s "may be a little better than their teenage sisters' would be, they are not dramatically so."

No doubt this explains Hymowitz's alarming prognosis. "While Americans have been squabbling about gay marriage," she writes, "they have managed to miss the real marriage-and-social-justice issue, one that affects far more people and threatens to undermine the American project. We are now a nation of separate and unequal families not only living separate and unequal lives but, more worrisome, destined for separate and unequal futures . . . .

"The old-fashioned married-couple-with- children model is doing quite well among college-educated women. It is primarily among lower-income women with only a high school education that it is in poor health."

Hence the title Marriage and Caste.

If Hymowitz is right, America's evolving caste system will contain an explosive racial and ethnic element, too, given the sky-high rate of single motherhood among blacks and the fact that out-of-wedlock births are growing fastest today among Hispanic women.

We'd better keep adding jail space, too. As David Blankenhorn, author of Fatherless America, explained to me some years ago, "Boys in fatherless homes are at much greater risk of aggressive behavior, acting out in school, juvenile delinquency and going to prison."

Wal-Mart strikes back

A belated congratulations to Wal-Mart officials - Thanksgiving week got in my way - for skewering John Edwards with the same gusto that he denounces them, rather than countering his attacks with the usual polite protest and PR boilerplate.

You were not surprised, admit it, to learn that the former Democratic vice presidential candidate and North Carolina senator is a Wal-Mart critic. He harbors presidential ambitions, after all. But Edwards may be a special case even within the anti-Wal-Mart posse. The wealthy trial lawyer is apparently immune to the irony of his son - you'll recognize the boy from his silver spoon - deploring the fact that a classmate purchased shoes at Wal-Mart. Edwards actually boasted about his son's attitude, as if Americans deserve to be berated for practicing thrift.

The company got its chance to pounce, however, when a wayward Edwards staffer, apparently without the ex-senator's knowledge, contacted Wal-Mart to see if he could buy a PlayStation3 for the politician's family.

"The company notes the PlayStation3 is an extremely popular item this Christmas season," Wal-Mart said in a press release, "and while the rest of America's working families are waiting patiently in line, Sen. Edwards wants to cut to the front. While we cannot guarantee that Sen. Edwards will be among one of the first to obtain a PlayStation3, we are certain Sen. Edwards will be able to find great gifts for everyone on his Christmas list - many at Wal-Mart's 'roll-back prices.' "

Edwards may be as oblivious to humor as he is to irony - as he also is, for that matter, to economics. But the dig by Wal-Mart was a good one nevertheless, and in a style more companies should adopt when confronting politicians who want to run their businesses.

Vincent Carroll, editor of the editorial pages, writes On Point several times a week. Reach him at carrollv@RockyMountainNews.com.

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