Why do we have the high instances of failure in the black and poor communities in this country? From the 1960's, government programs rewarded single parent households for children; the more children they had... the more benefits they received. Girls from unstable or incomplete backgrounds, beginning at puberty, stood to gain financially by having children out of wedlock. Unemployed males were liabilities. This brought about a rise in the number of unwed mothers and fatherless children that is still on the increase today.
We all know that in a group and family, accountability must be assigned and respected, or no one person will have the support of other members, they will not assume accountability, problems will not be addressed and original missions of the group will often fail. In the unstable family environment which contributed to the problems of these mothers in the first place, it is easy to see how stability and responsible behavior are often lacking from those same family members.
Logically speaking, all of these fatherless kids did not fall to this "absent parent" situation, but a significant percentage of them have. Welfare benefits being inadequate for full support, these single parents still struggle, they have to work, and their children end up being cared for by grandparents and other extended family members. As such, the situation, logically speaking, is often less than ideal and sometimes far less than adequate.
Significant percentages of the children end up being left to daily activities without adult input or supervision. Neighborhood children, spending after-school and weekend time together "playing", benefit or suffer experiences and develop mores and values more common among children with negative inputs from their experiences all around and without any constant or significant positive adult management. My point is that these children basically raise each other. And I believe that is why gangs are so numerous and strong. Gangs are more of the same...raising each other! Makes sense, doesn't it?
They do not have a parent who brings them in in the evening, one who puts a hot supper on the table every night, one who actually talks and shows interest in them and what's going on in their lives. Their parent is too busy to know who they are spending time with and what their activities with their friends are during the day. These kids end up raising each other without benefit of adult supervision. Since the 1960's, we have henceforth ended up with 4 generations of young people who have had children out of wedlock as single parents as a rule rather than the exception.
These at "risk and losing" youngsters have no frame of reference for success for themselves. Their only desire is for immediate gratification with little concern for the future or the consequences of their actions. They have no experience with treating each other or anyone else with respect. Their code is immediate gratification instead of the Golden Rule, do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Unfortunately, instead, it is to get what you can while the getting is good.
These kids grow up with drug and alcohol abuse as a large part of their lives. You know that instances of sexual abuse by dysfunctional elders and other children have to be common. Is it any wonder that impulsive, destructive behavior is so much in their lives? They do not understand success. They take it personally that they do not have the material things that successful people have. They believe prejudicial rhetoric by national figures that lay the blame for their apparent failing condition and unhappiness at the feet of the successful.
We see terrible acts by people with no hope of escape from the consequences. It is a real question why young people seem to act in ways that destroy their lives.
I believe that they don't see success in their futures. They see what they have before them, more negative and disappointing results, failure, suffering, death or incarceration at a young age. Their outlook is to take what they can get today because there may not be a tomorrow. This fatalistic view is very real for them. We see that and we scratch our heads at wonder...how could he do something like that? If he had had a father and a mother, if he had been taught to respect other people at a young age, if he had been raised with positive feedback instead of worrisome negatives , if he had had supper with his family everyday and was convinced to do his homework and study... to anticipate success and happiness with his own family with his own bright future, would he have been shot down by another drug dealer on the streets at 3 am?
Raising a family is not something that should be taken lightly. It is labor intensive and expensive. Those who decide to do it alone risk failure, the welfare and futures of their children who may be raised by other children, and most certainly will be raised in part by family members who have no responsibility for the outcome. It is not impossible to do a good job but it is not easy, and for various reasons many seem not to have been able to pull it off, at the cost of perhaps 3 or 4 lost generations.
The extremely high rate and number of abortions by young, black women says something about how they are realizing that having a child alone is not all flowers and laughter and love. There is no doubt that love in a home is what they yearn for, but one must work hard and prepare one's self for it. It is a shame that they have to come to that action further damaging their own self images further.
Given plenty of financial assets it may appear easy for a liberal minded young woman to have a baby on her own, but the appearance quickly changes when reality sets in. Hollywood's Murphy Brown was a liberal dream, a wonderful place where an alone female handled all of the responsibilities with little problem sailing through all of the challenges with easy success. That's a Hollywood illusion. The negative outcome can just as easily be the single, white Sandy Hook mother with adequate money and a kid who buries his head in violent computer games blows away an elementary school.
That's how Hollywood fiction, national celebrities and liberal politicians are literally beating the hell out of minorities, helping to create a sub-population of hopeless people with no vision of a successful future or a productive, fulfilling life. Instead they create the illusion that all will be well without a father for their children. It's easy to buy into the illusion. The picture they paint doesn't address the situation fraught with difficulties that a "modern woman" faces to raise a child on her own who cannot imagine the risk and pain they are bringing to their families and their soon to be troubled and destroyed children. Murphy Brown does not exist. There are no "super women". There is only reality. A father's job is to teach this and the Golden Rule to his children. It takes a village to raise a child is not reality. Hillary says it takes a village. I say if you leave your child to the Hillary's village, that child will suffer because of it. It takes two to raise a child...a mother and a father.
Jim Self
