More on Dads and Poverty

The issue of fatherlessness and poverty has gotten some new attention the last couple days, following a compelling Washington Times article on the topic.  Maybe the most interesting insight to me was that fatherlessness seems to be a problem that tracks more closely with socioeconomic status than with geography or religious affiliation/practice.  The Times quotes Vincent DiCaro, vice president of the National Fatherhood Initiative, as saying, “We have one class that thinks marriage and fatherhood is important, and another which doesn’t, and it’s causing that gap, income inequality, to get wider.”  Later in the article, Mr. DiCaro says:

“In places you’d think values are at least talked about, they are not lived out necessarily. Education and income seem to trump them. The people who might not be preaching family values, like coastal upper-class communities, those are the people who are waiting to get married.”

These comments are reminiscent of some of the details on class divide provided in Charles Murray's 2012 book, Coming Apart.  The relatively well-off seem to have figured out that, religion and morality aside, having children within marriage tends to produce prosperity (or at least stave off poverty).  The poor seem stuck in a rut of fatherlessness, which contributes to poverty and indeed reinforces it - by failing to inculcate the "best practices" of marriage and family in the next generation.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/multimedia/image/fathersjpg/

Also in this article is some perhaps inadvertently conservative sentiment from a single mother interviewed from the story:

“We need more fatherhood initiatives,” she said, pointing to government- and nonprofit-funded programs at churches, prisons and community centers, such as those offered by Mr. DiCaro’s group, “so they can see what they’re missing.”

Just then, her daughter Nadya picked up a tree branch and strummed it like a guitar, jumping up and down, all smiles. Ms. Hawkins reconsidered her thoughts on government programs.

“Though to me, that’s the initiative right there,” she said. “You can talk till you’re blue in the face about how to do it, but ultimately, you just have to do it.”

"Just doing it" is easier said than done, of course, but perhaps her skepticism on the effectiveness of government programs (equated with "talking till you're blue in the face") is worth considering.  I think the political right and left might agree that a cultural shift is more likely to produce results in this area than any government initiative.  Getting some momentum behind such a cultural shift, without any government mandate, is undoubtedly a tough nut to crack.

Along those lines, the Times article quotes Mr. DiCaro as echoing Jonah Goldberg's sentiment from an earlier post in this blog, to the effect that President Obama could play a huge role in advancing the cause of responsible fatherhood, given his position as "a married African-American father who can probably make a huge difference with words alone."

The Daily Mail seemed to pick up on the Times article, and provides some additional census data and related information here.  Ben Shapiro comments directly on the Times article over at Breitbart.