Obama Ignores Dangers Of Father-Free Zones
The following Investor's Business Daily (IBD) editorial was shared a week ago at the referenced link in the article. ICYMI, the editorial is shared below under the Fair Use Doctrine for educational purposes. The editorial is more than "tongue in cheek." Unfortunately, we do not know which IBD staff member wrote the article, so thanks the entire staff. [Hat tip to one of our readers, Jeanette McDougal, for letting us know about this article.]
IBD Editorials - Violence: If gun-control worked, the president's hometown would be safe. Instead, gangs of fatherless youths daily kill other fatherless youths. How about an executive order endorsing marriage and intact families?
We do not know how history might have been different had the parents of Newtown shooter Adam Lanza not divorced in 2009, leaving the troubled young man with his mother in a single-parent home. But if there's a thread that links the carnage at Sandy Hook with the 500-plus murders in Chicago in 2012, it's not just the use of guns to kill. It's also the absence of an intact nuclear family.
Neither do we know if President Obama is aware of the now-canceled cable "reality" show "All My Babies' Mamas" that was dropped from Oprah Winfrey's Oxygen network after a public outcry. The show was to follow Shawty Lo, a rapper from Atlanta who fathered 11 children by 10 mothers.
We have certainly come a long way from "The Cosby Show." In 1965, Daniel Patrick Moynihan wrote "The Negro Family: A Case for National Action." At the time, 25% of black children were born out of wedlock, a number Moynihan called alarming. Today, 72% of black children are now born out of wedlock. In fact, 36% of white children are born out of wedlock. Of Hispanic children, 53% are born outside of marriage.
President Obama once said that if he had a son, he'd look like Trayvon Martin, the young African-American shot by a neighborhood watch volunteer in Florida. But the president failed to note that if he had a son, he would be in a home with two loving parents.
When Tracy Martin and Sybrina Fulton divorced in 1999, their son Trayvon was just a toddler. He lived with his mother. He was 17 when he was shot.
The consequences of fatherlessness are staggering. In such homes there is no male role model who gets up every morning, shaves, gets dressed and goes to work, then comes home to have dinner with his family. There is no male role model to restrain a young man's masculine impulses and guide him into adulthood.
The situation is made worse by the staggering unemployment among young black males that soaking the rich won't alleviate. These young men find their role models in promiscuous rappers and the leaders of street gangs.
Up to 80% of Chicago's murders and shootings are gang-related, according to police. By one estimate, the city has almost 70,000 gang members. A police audit last spring identified 59 gangs and 625 factions. Most are on the South and West sides.
As columnist Larry Elder reminds us, the solution to both crime and poverty is simple: "Finish high school, don't have a child before the age of 20 and get married before having the child." Yet of the president's 23 anti-gun crime proposals, not one deals with the documented disintegration of the American family, particularly African-American families.
We don't need another CDC study on the root causes of violence. We see it on the streets of Chicago and other heavily minority inner cities. Twenty children and six adults were killed in Newtown, Conn., last month. In the last couple of weeks in Chicago, 25 people have already been murdered. Most were young black and Hispanic men, murdered by other young black and Hispanic men.
It's not entirely true that President Obama has not done enough to promote marriage. After all, he now supports gay marriage and has ordered the Justice Department not to defend the Defense of Marriage Act. But that's not the kind of marriage we should be promoting if we are to rebuild and strengthen the nuclear families needed to nurture young men into stable and productive adulthood.
Maybe President Obama can have Vice President Biden form a task force on the subject.
Tags: Barack Obama, danger of, Father-Free Zones, IBD, Investment Business Daily, editorial To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. Thanks!
IBD Editorials - Violence: If gun-control worked, the president's hometown would be safe. Instead, gangs of fatherless youths daily kill other fatherless youths. How about an executive order endorsing marriage and intact families?
We do not know how history might have been different had the parents of Newtown shooter Adam Lanza not divorced in 2009, leaving the troubled young man with his mother in a single-parent home. But if there's a thread that links the carnage at Sandy Hook with the 500-plus murders in Chicago in 2012, it's not just the use of guns to kill. It's also the absence of an intact nuclear family.
Neither do we know if President Obama is aware of the now-canceled cable "reality" show "All My Babies' Mamas" that was dropped from Oprah Winfrey's Oxygen network after a public outcry. The show was to follow Shawty Lo, a rapper from Atlanta who fathered 11 children by 10 mothers.
We have certainly come a long way from "The Cosby Show." In 1965, Daniel Patrick Moynihan wrote "The Negro Family: A Case for National Action." At the time, 25% of black children were born out of wedlock, a number Moynihan called alarming. Today, 72% of black children are now born out of wedlock. In fact, 36% of white children are born out of wedlock. Of Hispanic children, 53% are born outside of marriage.
President Obama once said that if he had a son, he'd look like Trayvon Martin, the young African-American shot by a neighborhood watch volunteer in Florida. But the president failed to note that if he had a son, he would be in a home with two loving parents.
When Tracy Martin and Sybrina Fulton divorced in 1999, their son Trayvon was just a toddler. He lived with his mother. He was 17 when he was shot.
The consequences of fatherlessness are staggering. In such homes there is no male role model who gets up every morning, shaves, gets dressed and goes to work, then comes home to have dinner with his family. There is no male role model to restrain a young man's masculine impulses and guide him into adulthood.
The situation is made worse by the staggering unemployment among young black males that soaking the rich won't alleviate. These young men find their role models in promiscuous rappers and the leaders of street gangs.
Up to 80% of Chicago's murders and shootings are gang-related, according to police. By one estimate, the city has almost 70,000 gang members. A police audit last spring identified 59 gangs and 625 factions. Most are on the South and West sides.
As columnist Larry Elder reminds us, the solution to both crime and poverty is simple: "Finish high school, don't have a child before the age of 20 and get married before having the child." Yet of the president's 23 anti-gun crime proposals, not one deals with the documented disintegration of the American family, particularly African-American families.
We don't need another CDC study on the root causes of violence. We see it on the streets of Chicago and other heavily minority inner cities. Twenty children and six adults were killed in Newtown, Conn., last month. In the last couple of weeks in Chicago, 25 people have already been murdered. Most were young black and Hispanic men, murdered by other young black and Hispanic men.
It's not entirely true that President Obama has not done enough to promote marriage. After all, he now supports gay marriage and has ordered the Justice Department not to defend the Defense of Marriage Act. But that's not the kind of marriage we should be promoting if we are to rebuild and strengthen the nuclear families needed to nurture young men into stable and productive adulthood.
Maybe President Obama can have Vice President Biden form a task force on the subject.
Tags: Barack Obama, danger of, Father-Free Zones, IBD, Investment Business Daily, editorial To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. Thanks!
1 Comments:
I have seen this problem grow over the years. The younger the teen mothers got they started nurseries in the school to help the girls finish school. The increased the sex education classes to include everything except abstinence. They are taught about abortions, I can only speculate how many more fatherless children if they did not abort so many. The white and Hispanic are also bad, there is no shame in having a baby out of wedlock anymore, movie stars do it all the time, sports figures father and bring babies into the world and not be there for them too. It is a terrible situation, nothing makes me madder than to here a young girl or older women for that matter say, that is my babies daddy there. There is a total disconnect between the sex act producing the baby and the responsibility that baby is supposed to instill in the parents. We have allowed the situation to get to the point that I fear it will never turn around for the children and they will continue to do as their mom and dad (who ever he was) and irresponsibly populate the inner cities with more gang members and future statistics on the police bulletin board.
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