The Paper of Record and the Two-Parent Home
By David Blankenhorn, August 2001
 

For at least three decades now, the question of whether one-parent homes are generally worse for children than two-parent homes has been treated by the U.S. media essentially as an open question, subject to debate. Typically, therefore, news stories scrupulously refrain from reporting a clear answer, but instead delicately dance around the question, usually by quoting several "experts" who disagree with one another. You've seen these stories a thousand times. The question itself is presented as controversial and politically charged. As an empirical matter, one expert (often described as "conservative") is quoted as having concluded that family fragmentation is bad for children and society, whereas other experts have reached quite different conclusions. In addition, we are typically told that the issue is complicated, more research is needed, blah, blah, blah.

Amazingly, in a page one story on August 12, the New York Times broke decisively with this tradition, reporting that "a powerful consensus has emerged in recent years among social scientists, as well as state and federal policy makers. It sees single-parent families as the dismal foundries that produced decades of child poverty, delinquency and crime. And it views the rise of such families, which began in the early 1960's and continued until about five years ago, as a singularly important indicator of social pathology. From a child's point of view, according to a growing body of social research, the most supportive household is one with two biological parents in a low-conflict marriage."

These sentences are not quite important enough to justify William Butler Yeats' famous announcement - "All changed, changed utterly" - but almost. At a minimum, a journalistic corner has been turned. What has been treated for decades, despite the clear predominance of social science evidence pointing in one direction, as an empirically unsettled question has finally become, in the paper of record, at least for now, an empirically settled question. A moment worth noting.

A footnote to this footnote. As is reported elsewhere in Americanvalues.org, the U.S. Census Bureau in recent months has generated much needless confusion about the current living arrangements of U.S. children, including glibly reporting a nuclear family "rebound" in April of this year, despite presenting not a shred of credible evidence to justify that assertion. In recent weeks, however, independent scholars, drawing on unpublished data from the 2000 Census, have clearly uncovered some important and encouraging news. First, the trend of family fragmentation that began in the U.S. more than three decades seems to have come to a virtual halt in about 1995 and may be on the verge of turning around.  Relatedly, from 1995 to 2000, the proportion of African American children living in married-couple homes rose significantly, from 34.8 to 38.9 percent. Very good news.

Top | Marriage Archives List | Search