News Analysis
Readers need not bother searching the Washington Post, New York Times or Wall Street Journal web sites for news about “The Demise of the Happy Two-Parent Home” report of Congresss Joint Economic Committee (JEC) because there isnt any.
At least not judging by multiple searches of those three media outlets web sites for news stories about the July 23 report. To be fair, this news story is the first to appear in The Epoch Times on the report.
And it has been an intense month, what with riots in major American cities, continued deaths due to the CCP Virus, also known as the novel coronavirus, and an intensifying presidential campaign of unprecedented and increasingly bitter partisanship.
Such issues pale in importance, however, for Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), the JEC chairman, who told The Epoch Times Monday that “everything comes back to the family. The family is the foundation of our society and, if the institution of marriage is suffering, then everything is suffering. Repairing the institution of marriage should be our top priority.”
The July 23 report is the latest in the JEC Republicans “Social Capital Project” series analyzing “the web of social relationships through which we pursue joint endeavors—namely, our families, our communities, our workplaces, and our religious congregations. These institutions are critical to forming our character and capacities, providing us with meaning and purpose, and for addressing the many challenges we face.”
The paucity of coverage for a major congressional report on the anchor of every recorded civilization in human history is also puzzling considering the consensus among researchers on the benefits of two-parent families.
“Researchers have well established that children raised by married parents do better on a wide array of outcomes. They have stronger relationships with their parents, particularly with their fathers. They are also much less likely to experience physical, emotional or sexual abuse,” the meticulously documented report said.
“They have better health, exhibit less aggression, are less likely to engage in delinquent behavior, have greater educational achievement, and earn more as adults. They are also far less likely to live in poverty,” the report continued.
Yet, as the report documents with more than 150 footnotes linking to multiple studies by researchers around the world in recent years, happy families with both parents present for their children no longer represent the majority in America.
“Today, around 45 percent of American children spend some time without a biological parent by late adolescence. That is up from around one-third of children born in the 1960s and one-fifth to one-quarter born in the 1950s,” the report said.
Among the effects of the decline is a steep increase in the number of children born to unwed mothers, which climbed from five percent of all births in 1955 to 40 percent in 2018, according to the latest available federal data.
Moreover, according to the report, “over two-thirds of births to black women (69 percent) are to unwed mothers, and over half (52 percent) of births to Hispanic women are.” The figure for non-Hispanic white women is 28 percent.
Similarly, the percent of married women aged 15 to 44 years has plummeted from 72 percent in 1962 to 42 percent in 2019. Meanwhile, the percentage of ever-married women aged 50 to 54 with divorces rose from 29 percent in 1960 to 45 percent in 2008. The latter has declined slightly, to 40 percent last year.
With more illegitimate children living with one parent come steadily worsening quality of life indicators, including higher crime rates, lower educational attainment, more poverty and less hope for the future, especially among Black and Hispanic children trapped in failing inner city public schools.
The report questions the current conventional wisdom that marriage and legitimacy rates are up because fewer women marry due to the lack of “marriageable” men capable of providing sufficient financial support.
“One study comparing identical twins who differ in their marital statusRead More From Source
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