Rep. Glenn Grothman (R-Wisc.) stumped D.C.’s top elected officials in a recent hearing on public safety when he asked what they’re doing to ensure that a higher percentage of children in the city are born with a father in the home.
I recall making the same connection between family structure and social outcomes when I worked in the city’s gun violence prevention office. It exposed the most important — and least discussed — racial disparity in the nation’s capital.
Close to 80 percent of babies in Wards 7 and 8 are born to unmarried parents. These are also the parts of the city where 60 percent of homicides occur. In contrast, 88 percent of babies in Wards 2 and 3 — where gun violence is far less common — are born to married parents.
Given the District’s racial demographics, such the disparity means that black and white children in D.C. begin life on very different paths.
This local reality reflects a larger national trend. Today, close to 70 percent of black children are born to unmarried parents. Forty-four percent of black children live with a single mother. Simply put, most black children in America today are no longer born to or raised by married parents.
Unfortunately, D.C. elected officials, like many of their counterparts across the country, assume there is nothing they can do to make families stronger. But they are wrong.
Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s famous report of 60 years ago called for the federal government to address the breakdown of the black family. My new report, “Moving Beyond Moynihan: A New Blueprint to Revive Marriage and Rebuild the Black Family,” includes recommendations on how key institutions — including elected officials and other government leaders — can create a culture of marriage and strong families.
The first step is for them to acknowledge that a child’s life outcomes depend far more on his home environment than on their political agenda.
For example, the poverty rate for black married couples has been in the single digits for decades. In contrast, the poverty rate for single black mothers is 31 percent.
The connection between family structure and financial security is encouraging, but unfortunately, married couples only constitute 28 percent of all black households, compared to a national average of 47 percent. Children living with their married birth parents also enroll in college at higher rates and have lower incarceration rates as adults.
City leaders can also use their bully pulpit to connect family structure to social outcomes. New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg launched a campaign to reduce teen pregnancy in 2013 that gave young people the three-step plan — “finish high school, get a job, and get married before having children” — that would virtually guarantee them a life free from poverty. Any leader could do the same today.
The government’s role in strengthening families is not limited to local leaders. One federal grant provides $35 million for marriage education programs. A local church could use this type of grant to run a marriage boot-camp for cohabiting couples with children, where successful completion of the program would mean participants are ready to say “I do” by the end of their training.
This type of program might seem controversial to some people, but it is based on two obvious truths. The first is that every child has a right to the affection, protection, and direction of the man and woman who created her. The second is that the ideal environment for this right to be exercised is in a loving and stable home with their married biological parents.
Today, however, D.C. programs like Strong Families, Strong Futures, an initiative that gives low-income mothers $7,500 over the course of a year, show that the working definition of “family” when elected officials think about poor black neighborhoods is a single mother and her children. It is the clearest example of why incorporating family structure into public communication, data collection, policy analysis, and program priorities would radically change how cities currently do business.
If 80 percent of black children in D.C. suffered a serious health condition that affected only 10 percent of white children, the city would make it a top priority to address that disparity. Given the serious consequences, the fact that most black children do not have the benefit of living under the same roof with their married parents should elicit the same response.
Young people in far too many neighborhoods today have no reason to believe that marriage should come before children because no one in their lives, including their elected leaders, has ever communicated that message. That can change, but only with a recommitment to the marriage culture and family structure that was the norm in previous generations.
Delano Squires is a research fellow in the Richard and Helen DeVos Center for Human Flourishing at The Heritage Foundation.
