Critics
are perhaps too quick to judge America’s young people, citing declining SAT
scores, obesity, drug overdoses, addiction to smart phones, bizarre alterations
of personal appearance and high rates of (alleged) mental illness. It’s
just too easy to be annoyed at how some of the cashiers at the local grocery
store seem unable to carry on a conversation or have chosen to mutilate their
faces with pieces of metal. We are perhaps too quick to condemn the
crazed behavior of young protesters in recent years without fully considering
what our government, society and culture have done to these poor souls.
Let’s
begin at the beginning. Forty percent of Americans are now born out of
wedlock. Single parent families are associated with a long list of social
maladies:
“Children
who grow up with only one of their biological parents (nearly always the
mother) are disadvantaged across a broad array of outcomes. . . . they are
twice as likely to drop out of high school, 2.5 times as likely to become teen
mothers, and 1.4 times as likely to be idle — out of school and out of work — as
children who grow up with both parents. Children in one-parent families also
have lower grade point averages, lower college aspirations, and poorer
attendance records. As adults, they have higher rates of divorce. These
patterns persist even after adjusting for differences in race, parents’
education, number of siblings, and residential location.” Sara McLanahan, “The
Consequences of Single Motherhood,” American Prospect(Summer
1994).
In addition, a large number
of marriages will fail. That means that close to sixty percent of
children will not grow up in the classic nuclear family of the 1950’s.
How much of this change is due to government policies is hard to
say, however, as government grows, the traditional family shrinks. When
government subsidies to single parent families increase, so do the number of
such families. As Jack Kemp used to say, when you subsidize something,
you get more of it. Yes, culture also plays a role but don’t forget that
government can change the culture as well. Women tend to come out ahead
in Family Court—they get the house, the kids and much of the man’s spare change
thanks to unrealistic support formulas. This provides an incentive in
marginal cases for women to seek a divorce. Increases in divorces made
them more socially acceptable over time.
Even with intact families,
the idyllic norm of the 1950’s, where the mother typically stayed home to take
care of the kids until they reached school age and perhaps even long
afterwards, has been destroyed. These days, in the typical American
family, both parents work fulltime which means that a very large percentage of
children are consigned to daycare. Daycare was virtually unknown in my
world growing up in the 1960’s. On the working class South Buffalo street
where I grew up, I don’t recall any mother with young children working
full-time. The overwhelming majority were housewives while a few would
get part-time jobs after the kids started school. I was not aware of any
daycare centers in the neighborhood and certainly do not recall anyonewho ever attended one.
The statistics bear this
out. Daycare was once unusual for the middle class, but now over
two-thirds of children lack a full-time stay-at-home parent. (Source: Center for American Progress) Like
single parent families, daycare carries with it a long list of undesirable
likely consequences. These include “more mental and behavioral problems, more
mind-altering drugs, more STDs, more obese, unhappy and institutionalized
children of all ages.” Mary Eberstadt, “Home-Alone America: The Hidden Toll of Day Care,
Behavioral Drugs, and Other Parent Substitutes” (2004)
(A fabulous but widely-ignored book).
Thus, in the critical first
five years of life, the vast majority of Americans are deprived of the obvious
benefits of growing up in an intact family with the mother at home in the
pre-school years. We baby boomers took this for granted. That world
is gone with the wind. Why? Two main reasons: feminism and
progressive big government. Feminism encouraged women to get out of the
home and out from under the alleged control of husbands who allegedly
controlled the family finances. Traditional mothers were derided as “baby
factories” as if working in an actual factory making widgets was somehow more edifying than
nurturing human beings at home.
Second, the trend toward ever
larger and more intrusive big government that started in the Progressive Era
around 1916, hadn’t yet weighed down the economy to the extent that two incomes
were needed to support a family in the 1950’s and 1960’s. Yet, government
grows steadily under progressive ideology, and after the twin shocks of the
Great Society and the Vietnam War, by the 1970’s stagflation kicked in and it
became increasingly difficult to support a family with one income.
Married women, whether they liked it or not or were under the sway of feminist
ideology, were pushed into the labor market if only to have most of their wages
seized to pay the dozens of taxes the family must pay. The take-home pay
of many women is barely more than the family’s total tax bill.
Ironically, “women’s lib” ended up converting women from baby factories into
full-time tax livestock.
It gets worse. After
five years of being raised by strangers and deprived of maternal care, 90% of
American youth are compelled to attend government schools for 12-13
years. As I explained in my book, Government Schools are Bad for Your Kids,government schools are rife with crime,
drugs, promiscuity, mediocre education and political propaganda.
Next
comes college for about 70% of Americans. While many young people thrive
in college, many others graduate with huge debt and poor job prospects and a
hard left ideology poorly suited for success in life. Leftism teaches
resentment of others, inculcates a victim mentality and teaches some students
to hate their skin color while teaching others to blame the skin color of
others for the difficulties they will face in life. Leftism does not
inculcate the positive thinking, initiative, work ethic and perseverance in the
face of adversity which are the hallmarks of successful people.
Finally,
we send this disadvantaged group of young Americans into a very hostile job
market. Here, we saddle them with their per capita share of government
debt as the guarantors of the fraudulent campaign promises of dead progressive
politicians such as FDR and LBJ. A good accountant could figure how this debt
translates into increased per capita taxes by dividing the number of taxpayers
by the annual debt service. It is perhaps $2000 per person. Next
comes student loan debt, a contrivance once again of dead progressive
politicians to benefit overpaid progressive and left professors and
administrators. This can easily be yet another $2000 per year.
Young
people are shunted into the job market because the progressive state has made
starting a business extremely difficult with a bundle of taxes and
regulations. The mere process of getting a job, which used to take a few
days in the free market, now takes many months. Many jobs require government
permission. Employers need to vet employees more carefully to avoid a
plethora of costly discrimination lawsuits. Young workers’ productivity
is largely eaten up by the direct and indirect effects of a myriad and taxes
and regulations, often leaving workers with just enough to pay the bills but
not move forward, have families or save for the future. As a result, a
record number of young people are forced to move back in with their parents.
The startling message I want
to convey is that modern America treats its young people abominably from birth
through young adulthood. This is largely because of the direct and
indirect effects of numerous destructive progressive policies. This
explains the numerous problems many young people are having. They have a
right to be angry but need to focus on the true cause of the overwhelming
majority of these problems: progressive big government. To the young
people of America, I say: take the red pill; then, don’t get mad; get
even. Make life better for your own children than what progressive
America foisted upon you.
James
Ostrowski is a trial and appellate lawyer in Buffalo, NY. He is the author of
several books including Progressivism: A Primer on the Idea Destroying America.
See his
website. Follow him on Twitter @JimOstrowski.
Copyright © 2018 James Ostrowski
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2018/12/james-ostrowski/what-america-has-done-to-its-young-people-is-appalling/