| 1 | 1 | | Child poverty is epidemic in the United States. But poverty is unfashionable; most |
| 2 | | politicians struggle to show their unconcern with old-fashioned 'liberal' issues. So Daniel |
| 3 | | Patrick Moynihan, the senior senator from New York, should be congratulated for |
| 4 | | devoting his 1985 Godkin Lectures at Harvard University, reprinted in this book1), to a |
| 5 | | plea for concern. Children are, Mr Moynihan points out, 'the only age group |
| 6 | | over-represented in the poverty population'. The situation is particularly alarming among |
| 7 | | minorities - in 1984 almost half of America's black and over a third of its Hispanic |
| 8 | | children lived below the poverty line. We are compromising our future as well as our |
| 9 | | humanity. |
| 2 | 10 | | Moynihan has been worried about the effects of family breakdown for decades. As |
| 11 | | Assistant Secretary of Labor in 1965, he warned in a controversial report that the social |
| 12 | | disorganization of the black ghetto, reflected in the increasing rate of illegitimacy and |
| 13 | | number of female-headed families, would undercut the goals of the then powerful civil |
| 14 | | rights movement. The report was attacked as racist and the issues Mr Moynihan tried to |
| 15 | | raise were buried for years. He dwells on this episode in his book, noting that |
| 16 | | single-parent families are still much more common in the black than the white |
| 17 | | community and quoting at length black scholars who are now openly dismayed at black |
| 18 | | family disintegration. He is careful not to repeat his misadventure. He believes that |
| 19 | | family disorganization is now so pervasive among whites as well as blacks that the |
| 20 | | problem is no longer primarily racial. |
| 3 | 21 | | 'Poverty is now inextricably associated with family structure', he says. But his |
| 22 | | repeated claims about 'correlation' and 'association' between poverty and family |
| 23 | | breakdown avoid harder questions about the character and direction of causal relations |
| 24 | | between these two phenomena, and the degree to which government policy can affect |
| 25 | | either. No doubt single parenthood increases poverty; most women cannot earn as much |
| 26 | | as men. But has it been a significant contributor? |
| 4 | 27 | | Is family breakdown itself largely a consequence as well as a cause of poverty? Are |
| 28 | | changing family patterns the result of cultural as well as economic factors as the |
| 29 | | Moynihan report indicated? If so, are these cultural factors really common to the white |
| 30 | | and black communities, as Mr Moynihan now suggests, or different for each ? |
| 5 | 31 | | We need at least informed speculation about these complex causal issues before we |
| 32 | | can assess the major hypothesis on which Mr Moynihan's common-ground strategy |
| 33 | | depends - the hypothesis that Government can simultaneously improve the stability of |
| 34 | | families and the resources available to poor children. Many conservatives believe that |
| 35 | | welfare programs have been a major cause of family disruption and that the Government |
| 36 | | can therefore make families more stable by cutting these payments back, which would, at |
| 37 | | least initially, mean less money for the poor and their children. Mr Moynihan rejects that |
| 38 | | fashionable claim. But Mr Moynihan is also skeptical that welfare programs can improve |
| 39 | | family stability; he says family deterioration 'neither proceeds from nor responds to |
| 40 | | efforts at relief'. And he makes no other suggestions for reaching that goal beyond |
| 41 | | appealing to the responsibilities of local groups and institutions. |
| 6 | 42 | | Would it be right to withhold funds from hungry children just to induce adults to |
| 43 | | live together when they would rather live apart? Which comes first, children or the |
| 44 | | conventional family, when programs helpful to one harm the other? America is divided |
| 45 | | over the moral issues the se hard questions raise. We are divided over personal morality whether |
| 46 | | having children out of wedlock is a sin any national policy must condemn, for |
| 47 | | example - and even more deeply over a sovereign issue of political morality: the right |
| 48 | | balance between showing collective sympathy for poor children and promoting the |
| 49 | | individual responsibility of their parents. It seems unlikely that there can be any effective |
| 50 | | common ground until we recognize the serious impact of these conflicts on family policy |
| 51 | | and try to resolve them at least there. |
| | | |
| | | Betsy Dworkin in The New York Times Book Review, March 2, 1986. |
