The Fatherlessness Pandemic.

• Author: Vatz, Richard E.
• Position: POLITICAL LANDSCAPE - Single mothers - Column

TAKE THE WORST PROBLEM of social pathology and examine why it may never be alleviated: self-concerned leaders in politics, communities, and religion would rather have social disarray and death than be a profile in courage and risk power to quell it. The city of Baltimore, the state of Maryland, and the nation as a whole have a problem, and it will not be solved by curtailing drug use, curbing police corruption and incompetence, nor wiping out poverty. All of these are quite troublesome, but not the root cause of murder, assault, bullying, and intimidation that now defines the U.S.

The key to identifying a root cause is that its solution leads to the elimination of the outcomes for which the cause is sought. Otherwise, the efforts to pacify, for instance, dangerous cities, are just one dispiriting, depressing game of whack-a-mole. The troubles root-caused by fatherlessness are clear, and come into even greater focus by era comparisons and contrasts.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention notes that, of the 3,977,-745 babies born in the U.S. in 2015, 1,600,208 of them (40.2%) were born to unmarried mothers. According to National Vital Statistics Reports, "The percentage of all births to unmarried women was 39.8% in 2016."

"During the 1960-2016 period," states the U.S. Census, "the percentage of children living with only their mother nearly tripled from 8 to 23 percent." Both white and black fatherlessness have tripled in that time.

In Baltimore, in 2016--the latest year for which there are reliable statistics--the "percentage of children in single-parent households was 64.8%," points out the city's Health Department.

What accounts for the tremendous increase of single mothers'? The moral relativism movements of the 1960s and 1970s, such as the "Do Your Own Thing" crusade--with a general liberal lifestyle and contempt for the value of individual responsibility--are a good place to start.

In 1965, Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D.-N.Y.) warned of the impending societal problems that would result from what then was an alarming statistic: 25% of black children were born to unwed mothers. His subsequent, and predictable, excoriation by so-called liberals and then progressives served as a disturbing indicator for how the issue would be dealt with in the decades to come: first ignore the problem; next, lionize and absolve of accountability those directly responsible, in this case separated families and women who had children out of wedlock...