As a doctor, Theodore Dalrymple worked for 15 years among the poor in a hospital and prison in a major city. Writing about the experience, Dalrymple noted the routine violence in the lives of his patients, “the fluidity of relations between the sexes,” and “the devastating effect of prevalent criminality” in the community.
Fatherlessness among children born in the urban hospital was almost universal, and in most homes any adult male was “generally a bird of passage” instead of a long-term resident. The people had a poor work ethic and a sense of entitlement to welfare. They also shared a belief that the consequences of their destructive choices were someone else’s fault. Dalrymple argues these traits contribute to “the worldview that makes the underclass.”
The underclass Dalrymple describes may sound familiar to American ears—but Dalrymple is English, the hospital and prison in which he worked were in Birmingham, England, and the underclass he served was almost entirely white.
That’s important, because Americans tend to think of the poverty and the social pathologies of urban areas in terms of race. But the reality of a white underclass in England—with behavior mirroring that of the black underclass in America—suggests that something other than race or racism is the problem.
If you ask someone on the left about urban poverty, he will likely blame systemic racism. And it’s certainly true that vicious racism has been common in American history. However, Census Bureau data on other nonwhite races (and, increasingly, black immigrants from Africa) don’t paint a picture of a systemically racist America in the 21st century, at least with regard to the economy.
Nonwhite persons from all over the world come to the United States and excel, in some cases spectacularly so. If the American economy were systemically racist, Indian Americans, Chinese Americans, Japanese Americans, and others wouldn’t have higher per-capita incomes than white Americans have. Their success is strong evidence that the American free-market system, in 2020, is wide open.
What do these immigrant groups have that the urban poor do not have? Engaged fathers in intact families that stress education, no sense of entitlement from the state, and a belief that achievement is possible. They didn’t grow up in the culture created by the sexual revolution and the welfare state, a culture that considers fathers unimportant in the lives of children and that treats lifelong welfare dependency as normal.
Larry Elder, in a video for Prager University, outlines how fatherlessness in particular is a crisis in America. He points to statistics showing that fatherless children are five times more likely to live in poverty, nine times more likely to drop out of school, and 20 times more likely to go to prison. These statistics constitute a crisis because so many children are born to unwed mothers now: In 2015, it was 41 percent of American children overall (compared with 5 percent in 1960, before the sexual revolution and Lyndon B. Johnson’s War on Poverty) and 73 percent of black children.
Comments
CS
Posted: Thu, 10/29/2020 07:42 amGreat article!
Janet B
Posted: Thu, 10/29/2020 02:46 pmWe could start by reversing the income tax code that favors, or should I say encourages, unwed mothers. Start by giving a tax credit to couples the year they marry, and every year they stay married. We could give a tax credit or earned income credit for moms staying home to raise their children.
But we also need better instruction in our churches: honor God, stay in school, get financially stable, don't live together before marriage, get married and stable before having children. Churches need to teach the importance, preference, and sanctity of marriage to their youth, instead of acting like the world in giving a higher enthusiasm to good colleges and careers while failing to teach purity and commitment to God as first priority. No wonder they come home lost.
JD
Posted: Thu, 10/29/2020 10:50 pmI LOVE Larry Elder and Prager U! Every single video/ teaching from there is worth every minute! Thank you for the article addressing what is probably the single most important issue central to what we are seeing happening in our young peoples culture and lack of moral compass.
Steve Dossin
Posted: Fri, 10/30/2020 06:27 pmThank you for pointing out that the welfare system incentivises single-parent families. We need to stop means testing our government benefits that discourages responsible behaviors. See ComingTogether.info.
jtj51
Posted: Fri, 10/30/2020 09:25 pmMy husband worked for our county's welfare department for twenty-five years and saw first hand the sad scenarios you described. We both believe that the "systemic racism" in this country consists of keeping people dependent and trapping children in rotten public schools, as well as creating a culture of fatherlessness. As for a spiritual revival along the lines of the Great Awakening, God's people need to be praying more than ever.
CherylQuilts
Posted: Sun, 11/01/2020 02:03 pmAmen! Such a great article and wonderful comments! We definitely need to encourage fathers and encourage and pray for our families and parents who are raising their children in this difficult culture. Our pastor today shared this in his sermon today. Male headship of the spiritual family is vital and how God has designed it. Continue to fight against passivity. Get men to help you lead you and mentor you. As you go, so goes your family. Women should encourage and empower their husbands to lead and lead well. He preached from Acts 16. May God encourage us all. Thank you, Tim, for a great article and for Dr. Dalrymple and Larry Elder. Blessings!
Ann Marshall
Posted: Sat, 11/07/2020 12:12 pmJohn Rosemond calls what happened in the 1960's "a satanic attack on the family". Rosemond doesn't often use an adjective like "satanic" but for a cultural moment when the exercise of any authority within a family was denounced as evil tyranny, he pulls it out.
JENNYBETH
Posted: Sun, 12/27/2020 06:28 pmDoes anybody else catch the irony of that last sentence? This article is trying to make the point that fathers matter more than the government, and yet that last sentence actually assumes dependence on the government for societal improvement.
family8plus6sofar
Posted: Tue, 01/05/2021 08:04 amI disagree JennyBeth,
He's just saying that the present policies of government are adding to the problem. Any government policy that interposes itself into families is going to cause problems. The best "policy" would be to leave the "helping" to the church as "helping" is not in the government's constitutional purview ~ it's not one of the enumerated powers in the constitution... so the best governmental "policy" would be to stop taxing us "in order to 'help' the less fortunate." Less taxing would put our money back in our pockets in order to be able to support the mission and ministry of the church (made up of us individuals) where it belongs.