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The decline of marriage drives many of our worst social problems, but the left is silent and the right not much better — because it’s not something politics or government can fix.
Comprehensive new research from the Institute for Family Studies charts the disaster geographically, outlining marriage “deserts” where nuclear families are rare and “gardens” where they flourish.
The “driest” zones, with the lowest share of householders 15-64 who are married, are urban areas — high-poverty ones (such as the South Bronx and nearby parts of Manhattan) but also spots dominated by younger people with good prospects (Lower Manhattan into Brooklyn).
The “gardens” are typically suburbs — and not just because that’s where folks move to when they want to raise families: The study also shows people as more likely to get married in the ’burbs
And it’s striking that the worst deserts (with the “best” of them hitting just 17% married) are in Boston, Chicago, Atlanta, Detroit and DC — all governed for decades by Democrats.
The left hates to acknowledge it, but low marriage rates — meaning, fewer kids raised by both biological (hitched) parents — bring higher rates of poverty, crime, addiction and general misery, along with far less educational success and shorter lifespans.
Some single parents raise successful kids despite the odds, but overall what used to be called “broken homes” are more likely to produce broken people.
Progressives have staked out a strongly anti-marriage/anti-family position for decades, with younger ones today now proudly critical of getting married and having kids.
And the left’s preferred policies — from defunding police to reducing educational standards to encasing every effort to build more housing or start a new business in red tape — create hostile conditions for marriage and families.
The result: a “disparate impact” of the kind the left usually screams about — and one that doesn’t remotely justify more government “solutions.”
Yet it’s also true that government action can’t readily increase marriage rates: Starting in 2010, Hungary has spent around 5% of GDP on family subsidies; that brought a small, initial bump in the fertility rate over two decades ago, but the gain faded as fertility moved back into decline.
This is a cultural problem that requires cultural solutions — restoring a broad understanding that traditional marriage, with its commitments and sacrifices, is most likely to make your life meaningful.
That battle is way upstream of politics, but a politics that ignores these truths is the highway to national misery.