A Few Good Men

Amy Wax had an interesting piece in yesterday's OpinionJournal.com. She writes about the decades long breakdown of two parent families among the poor.

"When it comes to single-parent families, Everybody's Doing It. That, it seems, is the received wisdom--but it's not true. As Charles Murray noticed decades ago and demographers have known for some time, the structure of families has diverged drastically by social class. The out-of-wedlock birth rate among women with no more than a high-school education has skyrocketed since the 1960s but remains very low among college graduates.

Interviews conducted...with more than 150 Philadelphia-area single mothers shed light on a dismal situation. Most of these women express a strong desire to marry and view extramarital childbearing as "second best." Yet almost all remained single. The authors' explanation: Expectations for marriage have risen across the board. A house, a well-paying job, and enough money for a nice wedding are now needed to tie the knot...The authors' message is clear: Out-of-wedlock childbearing is simply a matter of money. Raise economic prospects and the problem will fix itself. That objective is best addressed through government programs, not individual or community reform.

Nice try, but it misses the mark. The explanation is at odds with what these women say: Men's antisocial behavior, not their modest earning power, is the main obstacle to matrimony. The complaints are not of insufficient potential income, but of drug use, criminality, financial irresponsibility, violence, poor work ethic, defiant attitudes and, above all, flagrant sexual infidelity. That most boyfriends had children by other women was a source of great mistrust."

I should think so.