—James Q. Wilson (1931 – )

James Q. Wilson has held professorial chairs at UCLA (management) and Harvard (government) and has served on a number of national commissions for public policy in the United States of America. In his book The Marriage Problem, he argues that Western culture has undermined marriage and that the decrease in respect for marriage has begun seriously to undermine society.

There have been times in our history when unemployment was high and public schools barely existed. Yet in those days we were not two culturally opposed nations. Boys did not carry guns on the streets, people were not shot to get expensive sneakers, drugs did not dominate our urban life, and students who had gone to school could actually read and write. Today, we are vastly richer, but the money has not purchased public safety, racial comity, or educational achievement.

The reason, I think, is clear: it is not money but the family that is the foundation of public life. As that foundation has become weaker, every structure built upon it has become weaker. When our cultural framework is sagging, the foundation must first be fixed.

The evidence as to the powerful effect of this familial foundation is now so strong that even some sociologists believe it.

When the department of Health and Human Services (HHS) studied some thirty thousand American households, it found that for whites, blacks, and Hispanics and for every income level save the very highest, children raised in single-parent homes were more likely to be suspended from school, to have emotional problems, and to behave badly.

The children of single moms are more likely than those of two-parent families, to be abused, to drop out of or be expelled from school, to become juvenile delinquents, to take drugs, and to commit adult crimes.1
Footnotes:
1

James Q. Wilson, The Marriage Problem (New York, Harper Collins, 2002), 7-8.

from Kairos Journal

posted by the First Baptist Church of Perryville, located on Route 40, 1 1/2 miles east of Route 222