Depend on Dad

Father’s Day is Sunday. There’s plenty of serious data we can get to in a minute. But first, a couple of short videos that are more what being Dad looks like—and feels like.

This first is an award-winning animated short from Brigham Young University. You just need to see it.

Now another one for your viewing pleasure. The world has changed when a commercial has become a short documentary worth seeing. This Gillette commercial is so good, it might even sell their product. But, better than buying you dad shaving gear, watch this with him. Or just ask him something.

This third video is a little more serious. It's called "Black Fathers Matter," which Larry Elder did for Prager Univeristy--an online collection of informational videos that you should discover, if you haven't already. I suggest you watch the video first. But then, in case you didn’t take notes, I’m following it with some of the included data (which may have some minor discrepancies with other sources, but not enough to change the overall meaning).

·         Fatherless children are 5 times more likely to live in poverty and commit crime.

·         Fatherless children are 9 times more likely to drop out of school.

·         Fatherless children are 20 times more likely to end up in prison.

·         In 1960, 5% of American children began life with single mother.

o   By 1980, 18%.

o   By 2000, 33%.

o   By 2015, 41%.

·         Blacks during slavery, even for whom marriage was illegal, were more likely to be raised by their father and mother than black children today.

·         Between 1890 and 1940 a black child was more likely to grow up with married parents than a white child.

·         Black out-of-wedlock birth in 1965 was 25%; in 2015 it was 73%.

o   White out-of-wedlock births in 1965 was 5%; in 2015 it was 25%.

o   Hispanic out-of-wedlock births in 2015 was 53%.

·         In 1949, the national poverty rate was 34%.

·         By 1965, the poverty rate was cut in half, to 17%.

·         In 1964 (during Johnson's State of the Union Address), the War on Poverty began.

o   $20 Trillion has been spent on anti-poverty programs.

o   The poverty rate has remained stagnant for 50 years.

o   The likelihood of women being in poverty has dramatically risen.

o   64% of poor say the poor have more out-of-wedlock children in order to get more government benefits.

Let those sink in a moment.

Now, let me repeat the formula we know, through social science and economics, for avoiding poverty in America:

1.      Don’t have sex before age 20.

2.      Don’t have sex until after marriage.

3.      Stay married

4.      Obtain at least a high school diploma.

That’s a bare minimum, just to stay above the poverty line. Add some additional education, some consistent work ethic, and a stable, loving home, maybe a helpful and supportive religious community, and outcomes for children (and for parents) approach the American dream. Even in today’s bad economy.

Feminists have this hackneyed phrase, “A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle.” Fine. Live without a man. That’s a choice.

But for a woman who wants to be a mother, she—and the children—need a man. A good man. One worthy of being called Dad.

To those who are such a man, and to those blessed with one in their lives, Happy Father's Day!

Habits and Thoughts of Prosperity

There’s a formula for escaping poverty in America, and entering the middle class, which we’ve repeated here a number of times: here, here, here, here, here, here, and here. 

•        Don’t have sex before age 20.
•        Don’t have sex until after marriage.
•        Stay married.
•        Obtain at least a high school diploma.

The economic problem is solved with social/civilization solutions.

A couple of contrasting articles came to my attention recently. The first, “Telling Poor, Smart Kids That All It Takes Is Hard Work to Be as Successful as Their Wealthy Peers Is a Blatant Lie,” explains why the poor are so disadvantaged that no amount of hard work can overcome their disadvantage. The other, “Will Your Child be Rich or Poor? 15 Poverty Habits Parents Teach Their Children,”  explains the difference in ways of thinking between the poor and the wealthy.

The formula above is pretty minimal. Out of poverty means you’ve got housing, clothing, and food handled. But it might require a lot of hard work, lifelong struggle, and lack of the perks of wealth: travel; additional education; art and music for pleasure; luxuries and comforts; enjoying better foods, clothing, and housing.

Is that fair? People who think it is wrong for some people to enjoy things that all can’t enjoy are different from people who enjoy those things without guilt. And our beliefs determine a lot about our lives. So maybe those thoughts are worth looking at.

The you-can’t-get-out-of-poverty beliefs revealed in the first article are something like, “No one gets wealth just from hard work, good ideas, and social connections; they get that on the backs of the disadvantaged,” and “The deck is stacked against the poor, so no matter how hard they work, they’ll never get ahead.” The beliefs are self-fulfilling.

Changing thoughts can change the outcome.

There’s something to be said for social capital; it can make up for lack in a limited number of households. But if the larger community doesn’t have enough social capital, the disadvantages of social-capital-lacking families can be devastating.

The disadvantages can’t be overcome with money. Certainly they can’t be wiped out by taking money from the wealthy and giving it to the disadvantaged. Money is useful as economic capital, but it isn’t moral—it’s neutral.

The second article shows there's a difference in habits and ways of thinking that overcome the disadvantages, using a couple of lists. The first list contrasts habits of the wealthy and the poor. And the second describes what parents can do to teach the right ways of thinking that allow for wealth.

Here are a few of the contrasts (some of these I’ve paraphrased):

•         80% of the wealthy are focused on at least one goal vs. 12% of the poor.
•          83% of the wealthy attend/attended back-to-school night for their kids vs. 13% of the poor.
•          67% of the wealthy watch 1 hour or less of T.V. per day vs 23% of the poor.
•          9% of the wealthy watch reality T.V. shows vs. 78% of the poor.
•          73% of the wealthy were taught the 80/20 rule vs. 5% of the poor (live off 80% save 20%).
•          8% of the wealthy believe wealth comes from random good luck vs. 79% of the poor.
•          79% of the wealthy believe they are responsible for their financial condition vs. 18% of the poor.

The wealthy have different habits, and think different thoughts. They live their lives differently.

So what is on the list of what to teach? All of it assumes teaching them the minimal formula of escaping poverty, listed above; that goes without saying. Then, some of it is clearly economic, but much of it is social (again, somewhat paraphrased).

•          Limit TV, social media, and cell phone.
•          Require educational reading, in addition to recreational reading.
•          Get kids to physically exercise every day.
•          Limit junk food.
•          Teach goal setting—short-term and long-term.
•          Expect children to work to earn money, and to volunteer.
•          Teach children to save a large portion of their earnings and gifts of money.
•          Teach manners, and gratitude.
•          Encourage children to risk making mistakes, which can be used for learning.
•          Teach children to manage their anger and negative emotions appropriately.
•          Encourage sports and additional extracurricular interests.
•          Spend time talking together as a family every day.
•          Teach principles of good time management.

The poor need to learn that poverty can be a temporary place, and that within themselves lie great possibilities. Nothing keeps them in poverty more than thinking they’re stuck there, and then making decisions as though nothing they do matters.

Changing thinking would work better than taking all the money from all the top 1% of earners, and redistributing it to the poor. Those wealthy who are newly made poor are likely to recover, probably within their own lifetime, and certainly within an additional generation. Those given sudden wealth would remain in poverty, or return to it within a generation.

Prosperity requires certain economic practices, but it also requires living the principles of civilization. We don’t need ways to take wealth from those who have made it; we need ways to teach those who don’t have it what it takes to earn it. Teach them the habits and beliefs of prosperity.

Civilization in the Home

Mr. Spherical Model and I are coming up on our 33^rd anniversary later this week. We’ve been married about a decade longer than we were growing up and single. I guess that’s an accomplishment, in today’s world. In our typical circles—among extended family and friends from church—we’re very normal. We’ve done a lot of normal (but exceptional in the world) things that have contributed to civilization.

To start, we followed the formula for avoiding poverty:

1.      Don’t have sex before age 20.

2.      Don’t have sex until after marriage.

3.      Stay married.

4.      Obtain at least a high school diploma.
 

We went beyond that, as is very normal among Mormons. We were around 22 when we met. I had a college degree; he had spent two years as a missionary and was still working on a degree—eventually going on for a master’s degree. We were married in the beautiful, historic Salt Lake Temple, which requires that we come there worthy, including no sex before marriage.

We spent a few years in poverty, as students. It was the early ‘80s, with the country still digging out of the malaise of the Carter years, and sometimes we were without employment. Sometimes dinner was macaroni and cheese. And I think there was a year we didn’t go out to dinner except for our anniversary. (That meant not even McDonald’s.)

We lived in a trailer park, along with many other student couples, which we not-too-affectionately called “Poverty Park.” The jalousie windows froze shut in winter. Mold grew on the walls and crawled down toward us. We had a leak in a wall once that led to our waking up to mushrooms growing in the living room carpet.  Leaks in the ceiling used to soak into the popcorn ceiling (a standard sort of ceiling texture back in the day), and the plaster would plop down into my cooking. The swamp cooler (an air conditioner that is only useful in desert places) used to blow out the gas stove, which was kind of dangerous, since the gas was still flowing. Elm bugs used to infiltrate the add-on where our laundry and storage were; I was still finding their carcasses in boxes for another ten years.

But we grew a garden all around our place, so we had enough tomatoes to can. And we had music, because I brought a piano into the marriage. And we had books galore—one can never have enough bookshelves. We didn’t have a television for the first three years, but it didn’t seem to matter.

We never assumed that poverty was our destiny. It was just something to go through during the college years. It took probably five years before we nudged our way into the middle class, so it took some patience. It took eight years before we bought our first small home. And another nine years before we moved to Texas and built the nice home we’re in now. It’s the nicest home I’ve ever lived in, but still well below median for Houston. Thinking worldwide, though, we probably look really wealthy.

We’ve managed this mainly on a single income, since I became a stay-at-home mom in 1987. We still do our own lawn care and house cleaning. We still mostly cook at home. When our kids needed something better than public schools, we homeschooled. We’re not close to moving into the upper-middle class even now, but we’re comfortable.

We were both educated and capable of making a decent income. We could have both done that singly. But statistically speaking, the odds are that we made more together, even without my income most of those years, than we would have separately. Married people seem to have more purpose in working toward goals, such as buying  a home, and building wealth. Because there are other people counting on us.

Prosperity is one of the benefits of marriage.

There are also health benefits. Married men and women have significantly longer life expectancy than singles. Long-time married to one spouse have the best health scores. Married elderly are a lot less likely to be depressed and lonely, and more likely to stay active. I happened upon a story this week, in The Family in America newsletter, about marriage contributing to heart health.*  That has been known for men for some time. But this study showed that, while married and single middle-age to senior women have equal rates of developing heart disease, married women are 28% less likely to die from a heart attack. The study couldn’t identify the reason: no one else around to tell about the symptoms or notice the collapse? less social interconnectedness? or just less will to live for the sake of others? They simply found that, all other indicators aside, in a very large study in Britain, married women are more likely to live.

Then there are the quality of life issues. Family. I looked for the “deathbed quote,” and there are so many variations, it’s hard to identify the first, but this one is essentially it:

What do most people say on their deathbed? They don't say, 'I wish I'd made more money.' What they say is, 'I wish I'd spent more time with my family and done more for society or my community.'—David Rubenstein

What happened when we married was the birth of a family. We believe families are forever. We have three children (plus one waiting for us in heaven). Our three are grown, married, and beginning families of their own. Next month we get a third grandchild.

Grandchildren are one of the best benefits of marriage.
Little PS1 and Little PS2 at their great grandparents' farm

My parents had four children, all married. Added together, we’ve raised twelve kids, and so far we have ten grandchildren. My husband’s parents had six children. Together they have parented 30, and are, if I'm counting right, grandparents to 15. Because we’re mostly going beyond replacement rate, we’re increasing. And, for the most part, we’re increasing in contributing, educated, moral members of society. We’re building civilization.

We do that better than single people do. That’s just a fact. Statistically speaking, and also in our case in reality. Raising children with love, security, stability, opportunity—along with adequate food and shelter—leads to adults who form families and build more civilization.

Life is not about how successful you are in a career; it’s about success within your home. As David O. McKay famously said, “No other success can compensate for failure in the home.” If you don’t have civilization at home, you’ll be hard pressed to find it in your surrounding world.

You may be one of those without a successful family due to circumstances you can’t control. Still, what you can control is civilization within yourself. Like attracts like. If you live a civilized life, whatever your circumstances, you will find pockets of civilization to connect to. Even when you can’t choose all of the details of your life, you can always choose truth, love, and ultimate good.

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* Bryce J. Christensen and Nicole M. King, Forthcoming in “New Research,” The Family in America. Study: Sarah Floud et al., “Marital Status and Ischemic Heart Disease Incidence and Mortality in Women: A Large Prospective Study,” BMC Medicine 12 [2014]: 42. Web. See also http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/273837.php.

 

Random Observations

Today’s post is a few short observations on what’s been going on in the news, and whatever else comes to mind.

 

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I’m glad Trey Gowdy is on the team of truth. Jonathan Gruber didn’t have a chance, repeating a scripted line given to him as PR damage control. He never said he didn’t believe the things he repeatedly said about manipulating through deception to push Obamacare through; he said it was wrong to say those things, even to those who agreed with him, because word leaks out.

If you have to lie about your policies and their likely outcome in order to persuade people to go along, maybe they’re not such good ideas. Watch 6 entertaining minutes here: Post by C-SPAN.

 

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Whites aren’t privileged. Most people, of any race, are just doing their best to get by, get along, get ahead, against great hurdles—often placed there by too much government interference. If some are less privileged, or “underprivileged,” we need to help with urgent needs, and teach the principles that lead to self-reliance and success. Start with the formula for overcoming poverty in America:

1.      Don’t have sex before age 20.

2.      Don’t have sex until after marriage.

3.      Stay married.

4.      Obtain at least a high school diploma. 

 

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Hypocrisy is exemplified by those who claim there’s a huge portion of the American people who don’t value life if it’s black. That may be true, but totally opposite of how they mean it. They fail to call attention to the raging black-on-black murder rate in places like Chicago; apparently it’s OK for black criminals to kill other blacks, but it isn’t OK for white police officers to kill during dangerous arrest situations. And they fail to value the lives of black babies: 40% of black pregnancies are aborted; 75% of black babies are born without two married parents, which leads to endemic poverty and crime. See formula for overcoming poverty, above. 

 

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Even if Jeb Bush were right that Common Core was the best standardized education system that mankind could come up with (which it isn’t), he would still be wrong. Because it’s standardized. There is nothing in the US Constitution about education. That means it’s not an enumerated power; it is therefore left to the people and to the states. Anything done at a less local level than necessary will do more harm than good. If Common Core is so good, then put it in the free market and let individual school districts (or better yet, individual teachers, or individual families) decide whether to use it in part or whole. If it can’t tolerate competition, it isn’t good enough. I already know better than some bureaucrat in Washington how my children learn best, and I’m the expert on what I want my children to learn.  

 

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The  Republicans just won handily in the House and Senate—and state governorships and legislatures. The people are saying they repudiate Obama’s policies, and Democrat policies. PR threats about shutting down the government being blamed on Republicans are pointless. Refusing to fund what the president wants is not equivalent to shutting down government. The president, throwing a tizzy fit and saying the Republicans want no government, and then spending money to shut down things that aren’t even federally funded—remember when he shut down private parking at the privately operated Mt. Vernon, and shutting down access to private hotels and restaurants on the Blue Ridge Parkway (which wasn’t closed)? Remember hiring personnel to block the view to Mt. Rushmore from public roadways, to make shutting down national parks more painful? Yeah, that was our president.  

He also equated failing to lift the debt ceiling to failing to pay our debts. Because he’s willing to break contracts if he doesn’t have unlimited funds. 

I think the American public is beginning to realize he’s an ineffectual liar, and that the liberal media have been shilling for him. That’s why alternative news sources are turned to more than the old liberal dinosaurs.  

The point is, the Congressional Republicans ought to use their constitutional power of the purse to rein in the power monger’s overspending. 

 

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The Supreme Court just heard oral arguments on the Little Sisters of the Poor and some of the other 100 cases related to the Obamacare HHS mandate. We don’t know the results yet. But it should be obvious that, anyone who is forcing Catholic nuns to pay for abortion-causing drugs is on the wrong side. 

 

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Avoiding watching inflammatory video clips allows for a more open mind. This has been working for me since Rodney King days. When the grand jury came out in the Garner case in New York last week, my first thought was, “The grand jury must know more than the news is telling us. I wonder what it is.” I did not jump to the knee-jerk conclusion that the grand jury was wrong because of a 15-second video. Some of the additional information has come out. There was no damage to the trachea; there was no evidence of choking as cause death. What we may have thought we saw on the video looks different if you have enough additional information.  

That said, there’s something really warped about charging more in tax for an item—even an “evil” product like cigarettes—than the item itself costs. Cigarettes cost $4.50 a pack in Kentucky, but $14.50 in New York. And the government assumes they can charge that without causing a black market? And then they spend police resources stamping out black market sales rather than dealing with serious crime.

A wiser government would have let the free market handle cigarettes, leaving Eric Garner alive. A wiser Eric Garner—one who didn’t make a living selling on the black market, and one who didn’t resist arrest, and maybe one who had better maintained his health—might also still be alive. The loss of a life is tragic. But there’s no evidence that it’s racially caused. 

 

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So, let me get this straight: torturing of enemy combatants is so evil that America must risk the lives of people working in her service to atone for that badness. And “torturing” doesn’t include maiming, permanently injuring, or endangering life. However, killing an enemy combatant, without trial, without indictment—even when said person is a US citizen—and sometimes killing innocents nearby (euphemistically referred to as collateral damage) is OK.  

If you were a person given two choices: be captured and “tortured” for information by Americans or Islamists, you’d clearly choose Americans. If you were a supposed enemy combatant, unless you were into suicide missions, you would likely prefer being taken captive by Americans—where you have the guarantee of relative comfort and health and life—to being taken out by a drone, possibly along with your son and friend. 

Our president and cohorts seem to think the use of enhanced interrogation with the guaranteed limits listed above is beneath American values, but execution without trial along with possible innocents is copasetic. 

I’m not willing to say there should never be drone strikes against our enemy in the war against terrorists. But I do have a problem with a president who decides to be judge, jury, and executioner against an American citizen; if there is probable cause, there should at least be an indictment. As for torture—real torture—that’s already against the Geneva Convention for prisoners of war. But terrorists are non-uniformed enemy combatants, to whom the Geneva Convention rules do not apply.  

Since they are human, however, shouldn’t we avoid torturing them? Define your terms. If torture is sadistic, cruel and risks permanent damage or health, then I have seen no evidence that the US has done that. But I wouldn’t be sad if our enemies thought we were willing to torture. If we must do PR with the enemy, it should be to make them fear us more, not less. 

I would not use the term torture for making someone really uncomfortable temporarily for the purpose of extracting valuable urgent information. What we’ve seen evidence of might not seem nice, but it’s not even in the same category as beheading innocents. So, in summary, Dianne Feinstein’s report is hypocritical, politically motivated, and mainly untrue.

Character Trumps Tribe, Part II

In "Character Trumps Tribe, Part I" we started talking about the difference between loyalty to tribe and loyalty to goodness. This is a bigger discussion than race, but we have some examples in racism to describe the problem. So today’s Part II is about that particular type of tribe.

In Obama’s first term, a Boston area professor caused a kerfuffle at his doorstep when police arrived to follow up on a tip from a neighbor of what looked like a break-in. The police did nothing but come to the door and ask questions, and learn that the professor indeed lived at the residence and was not an intruder. But the professor decided the police had no right to follow up at his house, because he was a black man, and that meant the complaint came because of his race. When this hit the news, it should have been a non-story. But the president inserted himself, saying the police acted foolishly—without even checking to find out the police had done nothing amiss. The president has a knee-jerk racism reaction. He’s for tribe over character.

This showed up again with the Trayvon Martin case. The president decided, before all the facts were known, that a black teen had been killed because of his race, when he was just innocently walking through the neighborhood. And he announced that, if he had a son, he’d likely look like Trayvon Martin. He failed to wait for evidence that the “innocent” teen had beaten up the (Hispanic) man (with a non-Hispanic name) who shot him in self-defense. It was a tragedy. But it would have been avoided if the “innocent black teen” had not attacked the man to whom he looked like a hood-wearing black teen unknown in the neighborhood.

Then, recently there was the situation in Ferguson, MO. It was immediately purported to be a white cop shooting an unarmed young black man, Michael Brown, for no reason beyond race. Stories were even told that Brown was fleeing and was shot in the back. Based on this invention, race riots were instigated. The president apologized to the UN that racist tensions such as in Ferguson happen in the US, comparable to human rights violations like beheadings elsewhere in the world.

Except that the “black man murdered by cop” story differed from the story of the injured police officer and some other witnesses. Almost right away there was evidence the “victim” had just robbed a convenience store. Immediate evidence showed the victim was not shot while fleeing. And the eventual autopsy report matched the police officer’s original story, that the first shot came inside the car, with the man trying to attack the officer and get his gun, and that he seemed to be rushing the officer when the final shots were fired. Witnesses corroborating the officer’s story are afraid to allow their identities to be revealed, because their disagreement with the racism story makes them enemy targets of those pushing that story.

The victim was a very large, very strong nearly 300 pounds of muscle, judgment impaired by drugs, who had just committed a crime, refused to follow directions to get out of the middle of the street, and instead attacked a police officer in his car. He was shot because of his race? Really?
In each of these instances, the appropriate response from a civilized person (not to mention a person in a powerful position such as president) should be to stand back, wait for the facts, and say and do whatever is needed to further truth and justice. Instead, in each instance we got people putting forward their tribe—as though belonging to the tribe equates to rightness, regardless of behavior, regardless of facts.

This isn’t a singular problem with our president; it’s a problem with the overall “tribe.” Think back to the O. J. Simpson trial. It was constantly in the news, so simply waiting to observe the outcome was hardly allowed as an option. But, really, it was a murder trial little different from other trials—except that it involved a famous person. And the famous person—wildly successful in sports, media, and even movies, so not what you'd call oppressed—happened to be black. So there was a tribal defense of him—as though his actual guilt or innocence didn’t matter; what mattered was his color. Because there was perceived unfairness toward that “tribe” somewhere historically, he should be acquitted—for the sake of the tribe.

The tribe called that justice. But civilization does not.

There’s a conversation going on lately about “white privilege.” [I'm curious about the movie Dear White People, which I won't see, because I choose not to see R-rated movies. But some reviews say it is an intelligent, nuanced view, instead of just an attack on all of us as racists.] I don’t feel privileged. But I do have the advantage that, when people see me, they don’t grab their purses and fear I might be a criminal. But some of that has more to do with how I place myself in society—a law-abiding, modestly dressed, educated, middle-aged woman. Women in like categories—differing only in race—get treated pretty much the way I do.

What do we do when we meet blacks at Tea Party meetings, or Republican rallies? We welcome them. Their very being there separates them out from the 90% of their tribe who value tribal identity above character. Just by showing up and joining with those who think like we do, they have declared their preference for freedom, prosperity, and civilization. That puts them in the American greater society, even though it probably causes them ostracism from their race tribe. Their statement is a show of character. And to those of us who value character, we’re glad to welcome them.

So let’s consider behavior and choices. Think back to times when western settlers faced various native tribes. If you found yourself surrounded by natives dressed in the clothing and symbols of Apaches, you’d feel more fearful than you would in a group of peaceful Pueblos. The difference is not because you know the individuals involved; it’s from experience with those particular tribes.

In some urban centers, where the black “tribe” is a large segment of the population, you get a lot of crime, a lot of poverty. But it may relate more to the 70% of children being born without fathers in the home than with outside oppression. When families fail, in large numbers, you get savagery.

But if people escape the trappings of the tribe, dress as though they respect themselves, and follow the formula for success in America, they’re a lot less likely to strike fear in their neighbors as they walk down the street.

What is the formula? Again, it is:

• Don’t have sex before age 20.
• Don’t have sex until after marriage.
• Stay married.
• Obtain at least a high school diploma.

In Charles Murray’s book Coming Apart, he claims that part of the problem is that the successful fail to share this secret. There’s probably more to getting into the elite neighborhood Murray talks about, but this formula works so well that it practically guarantees getting out of poverty and into the middle class. And it builds social capital for the next generation. This formula works for any tribe—any group.

Character—living according to principles of ultimate good—brings about civilization. Squabbles between and among tribes can do no more than change the flavor of tyrannical power.

That is the main point of this discussion. But there’s another “tribe” in the ongoing intertribal war worth covering—the gender war. So we’ll take Part III to look at the so-called “war on women” and what that really means.

Family Superpower

I spend a lot of time with youth and young adult literature. Many of these feature young people with special powers, or at least special skills: magic (Harry Potter), electrical powers (Michael Vey), psychic control of objects (Freakling), wind (The Goose Girl), archery and strategy (Ranger’s Apprentice and Hunger Games). A young person goes about life thinking he/she is normal, or even less than normal, and then gets thrust into extraordinary circumstances that require using the newly discovered special skills.

There’s something fairly positive in the message that everyone has value, and everyone is important and special in some way. You just need to find your talent/purpose/superpower to benefit mankind.

I have been considering the idea that, in the ordinary real world we live in, some of us have significant advantages, just because of a connection to what has for millennia been ordinary: growing up in an intact, loving family.

The social data continues to grow, all of it showing advantages to children raised in intact families with married mother and father. I’ve written about the value of family, mothers, fathers, and marriage many times (a good starting list is in the April 23, 2012 post “More on Marriage”). I’ve written a few times (see “Family Ties to Economics” December7, 2012) about the well-established formula for preventing poverty:

1.         Don’t have sex before age 20.

2.         Don’t have sex until after marriage.

3.         Stay married.

4.         Obtain at least a high school diploma.

But what if there is an additional formula, not just for avoiding poverty, but for likely greater success? Last year I wrote  about Charles Murray’s book Coming Apart, which described four founding principles: industriousness, honesty, marriage, and religion. These were agreed upon as essential virtues by all the founders. They are agreed on as virtues today generally in the most successful areas (Murray referred to them as the SuperZips, identifying certain zip codes). The upper middle class adheres to these principles, and is thereby perpetuating success generation after generation, while lower middle class and lower class areas (by income and education) lack religious commitment, intact families, honesty, and all the behaviors that prevent decay.

As I write about at the Spherical Model, the answer to greater success is what it has always been for thriving civilization: strictly live the civilizing principles (essentially the Ten Commandments) and value family. Family is the way the civilizing principles pass from generation to generation. Schools can’t do it, especially without the support of the home. Government can’t do it. Without family, even the churches can’t do it.

I have a story, from almost two decades ago, that shows the passing on of the values. It was when our second son was in I believe fifth grade (still in public school at that point), and they were going through the first iteration of basic sex education. I had been to the school and reviewed the curriculum and talked with the school nurse ahead of time. While I would have preferred handling this entirely at home, this was before I became a homeschooler, and I felt satisfied with the way the school was teaching the information (family values included in that rather civilized corner of the country). Economic Sphere, as he frequently did, was excited about new information, and started a series of “did you know…” quiz questions when he got home. One of the surprising pieces of information was that children could be born even when their parents weren’t married. So we had a teaching moment.

Back in the day, our boys learning
superpower skills from their dad

At that time there was a young woman from our church, age 17, I think, who got pregnant and was going through the natural consequences. She was repentant, and wanted to repair her life and set things right. The young man was going off to college in another state, and they realized they did not want to be married. So she worked through the possibility of giving up the baby for adoption, a difficult decision for a young woman. Consulting with her parents, she concluded that placing the child with a married couple who had the same religious beliefs as her family would be best for the baby.

Even with that best-case scenario, the decision was heartbreaking. Then it was made more so when the young man’s parents insisted that, if she was going to give up the baby, they would adopt it, because letting go of a grandchild was unacceptable. In that state, they had the right to override the mother’s decision about who should get to adopt her child. She didn’t want them to raise her child; they might be loving grandparents, but they hadn’t done so well at raising the baby’s father, and she really wanted her child raised in her religion. So she chose to keep the child.

She had loving parents who helped out for several years, allowing her to live with them as needed while she went through nursing school so she could support herself and the child. At the time of the conversation with my son, the decision was made to keep the child, and I believe the child had been born. Economic Sphere and I talked about how the child would be surrounded by people who loved him: both parents would be involved, and all four grandparents. But that child would never have the opportunity to live in a home with both parents at the same time.

It was a major “aha” moment. The starkness of that lack of both parents in the home was very clear—and practically unthinkable. Any child could see that you need both a father and a mother. No other arrangement fills the child’s needs.

Because of the way we lived, and because of the clarity of contrast, we had that opportunity to pass along essential values to a son at a young age—so the decision about risky behavior was made years before teenage hormones could interfere with the brain. That is the power of families. Teaching moments like that come up day by day through the years, continually building the power.

I don’t want single mothers and fathers to feel worse about their situation. They may want the best for their children as much as married mothers and fathers. And there is nothing that says they can’t succeed. There is simply the fact that the odds are against them. Church, neighborhoods, community organizations like sports leagues and scouts can help make up for deficits in single parent families. But only if the social capital cost isn’t overwhelming. In the better neighborhoods, the SuperZips that Charles Murray illustrates, the few exceptions to intact families are easily floated aloft with the strong families. But in the already struggling neighborhoods, there’s not enough social capital to make up for the overwhelming deficit.

The idea that a marriage can always break up if things get tough is a tempting escape. One of the strongest incentives to work on a marriage and make it better comes from growing up in families that stayed together. I find myself feeling grateful that all three of my children married people who came from such families. Mr. Spherical Model and I both came from such parents. And grandparents. And great-grandparents. Our tradition of lasting families is not a guarantee that families will always last, but it is an extra power.

If you want to give your children even more power, practically a superpower in today’s world, save sex for marriage; choose wisely who to marry, stay married forever, and take your children to church with you. And then let your children know the value of the gift you’re giving them, so they will value it in the generations to come.

Family Ties to Economics

We’ve talked here before about the formula for success in America (which I wrote about here and here):

1.         Don’t have sex before age 20.

2.         Don’t have sex until after marriage.

3.         Stay married.

4.         Obtain at least a high school diploma.

I first had this formula spelled out in a speech from Richard Wilkins in 2001, the first time I met him. While going through various tributes following his early death (this is a good one, from Sharon Slater, who worked with him for Family Watch International), I found a link to one of his last speeches (full speech here) Richard Wilkins was the keynote speaker at the June 2012 UN event Standing for the Family: The Family in the Context of Human Rights. The speech is called “The Family as the Cradle of International Human Rights,” and again he asserts that the necessary solution to poverty and other social and economic issues worldwide depends on strengthening marriage and family. As always, it is clearly laid out and well documented.

He points out the founding UN documents that validate the family as the basic unit of society, and then laments the failure to abide by those founding principles.

During the past 65 years there has been great (and laudable) progress in individual rights and freedom, particularly with regard to equality for women. But the family—and the associated civic virtues of hard work, tolerance, patience, kindness, forbearance and forgiveness that are taught to children by wise and loving parents—has been ignored. It is well past time for the international community to acknowledge the fundamental roles played by the family and to take appropriate action to strengthen and support the family.

He spends the body of the piece outlining the specific benefits to men, women, and children—and to society as a whole—provided by marriage and family, well-documented by mounting social research. He then outlines social problems stemming directly from family breakdown. And ends with a call to strengthen family:

Because families are the fundamental unit of society, governments and other social assistance actors should not bypass the unit that can best strengthen society. Fathers and mothers, by and large, love their children. Policies and assistance that permit fathers and mothers to work together to strengthen their families to improve the condition of their children will not only be more successful than other possible approaches, they will strengthen society itself. By building a healthy family, we build a healthy society and—ultimately—a healthy world.

In the shadow of some looming economic catastrophes in our own country, I think we need to make the connection to family breakdown as the root cause and stronger families as the ultimate only solution.

Paul Rahe
Photo from Uncommon Knowledge interview

While I was thinking this, I happened to be doing a little catch-up watching of things I got behind on, and tuned in to Glenn Beck’s November 30^th show—last Friday. Glenn wasn’t there that day. BYU History Professor Paul Kerry  hosted, and his  main guest was Professor Paul Rahe of Hillsdale College (I recognized him from Week 3: “The Greek Miracle,” from Hillsdale’s free online History 101 course). Much of the hour talked about the need for a long-term view, and what perpetuates that view. Family is one of those things. Starting at about 21 minutes in, the discussion gets somewhat specific:

Paul Rahe: Let me give you some statistics that I think will shock you and surprise you. In 1940 what was the rate of out-of-wedlock births, in other words the percentage of children born who were not born to people who were already married? The answer is somewhere between 2 and 3%. That was true in 1950,2-3%. It went up to 5%, a shocking number, in 1960. And, among African-Americans, it went considerably higher than that, to about 12%, which caused Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who was an assistant secretary of labor, to work on the so-called Moynihan report about the crisis of black families.

Paul Kerry: And a Democrat as well…

Paul Rahe: Yes. By 1980 it was 18.4%. Last year it was 39.6%. Now, think about that. We are approaching a situation in which half of the children born in the United States are born to young women who are not married. This is a very good example of a lack of long-term planning. Because they’re taking on heavy responsibilities that it’s hard enough for two parents to manage, especially with one working full time and the other at home (which was the old pattern) to manage. And they’re doing this without thinking.

Now, it’s even worse than I say. Because, if you go back to 1940, there’s almost no form of contraception available. So, in the absence of contraception, the out-of-wedlock birthrate was 2-3%. With the presence of contraception, it’s 39.6%. And I’ve left abortion out of the picture. In 1940 there are almost no abortions; last year in the United States there were three-quarters of a million abortions. There have been 50 million abortions since 1973.

So the pattern, which is among young people—because 50-year-olds aren’t having this problem, since they’re not giving birth—the problem is a lack of impulse control. The problem is a lack of long-term planning. The problem is that a moral revolution has taken place.

So a question you  might want to ask yourself is, can a republic sustain itself in a world in which people are acting on impulse and irresponsibly—and I say irresponsibly, because there are other human being involved, not only the sexual partner but the offspring—can a republic be sustained in those circumstances? Because the women who have children out of wedlock are in fact going to be dependents on the state. And what they’re going to do is call upon other people to pay their bills, to take care of them. Not the father of the child, but welfare, food stamps, things along those lines.

It was a nice connecting of the dots. Who teaches impulse control and encourages a long-term outlook that helps individuals and communities? Families do that. Who does it in broken homes or single-parent households? No one. Especially if the broken family situation happened because of choosing short-term impulse over long-term perspective. In those cases the burden to teach the values falls on someone who does not hold those values.

The solution to economic problems is not to forcibly take income from successful people and hand it unearned to people whose behavior led to dire circumstances; the solution is to strengthen families, where the formula for success is taught. A backup is for churches and schools to also teach the values traditionally inculcated in families, rather than working against them. The social problems caused by an out-of-wedlock birthrate of 2-3% are much easier for society to solve than the overwhelming 39.6% rate. Too many problems, and too few successful society members to make up for the problems.

We know the formula for success. We know the path to take. Some of us will take that path no matter what. The question is, why isn’t that the direction followed by everyone who ever sought to be a leader? Because a leader moving people in any other direction cannot lead to success.

Formula for Success

There is a formula for avoiding poverty in America:

1.      Don’t have sex before age 20.

2.      Don’t have sex until after marriage.

3.      Stay married

4.      Obtain at least a high school diploma.

I first wrote down this formula back in 2001, in the notes I took at a lecture by Richard Wilkins, who was then a co-founder of the World Congress of Families, and is now head of the Doha International Institute for Family Studies and Development. I’ve come across the list a number of times since, and included it in a post last April 4^th. The formula, along with lots of backup data, have risen in public awareness lately due to the latest book by Charles Murray: ComingApart: The State of White America, 1960-2010. (The book was mentioned by Newt Gingrich in Wednesday's presidential debate in Arizona.)

Murray tends to write about data in a way that stirs up a hornets nest. This was true with The Bell Curve in the 1990s, and to some extent with Real Education a few years ago. While I don’t always agree with his analysis, his wealth of data is always enlightening.

This book looks at class differences in whites in America to avoid differences related to race; it’s not a racist treatment, but rather a way to look at differences aside from race. Looking only at whites, then, is a statistical control. What he finds is that there are some rather surprising differences between the newer wealthy and the stuck lower classes. There are many aspects of the growing divide that may be worth talking about another day (when I have finished reading the book), including a separation that makes the leader class more and more out of touch with the lesser classes. But today what interests me is the social formula so many of the wealthier are using. This summary comes in the article “Charles Murray’s Book of Virtues,” by Heather Wilhelm, February 2^nd:

In the new upper class, which amounts to about 20 percent of the country, out-of-wedlock births are rare: around 6-8 percent. For the more dysfunctional working class, which accounts for around 30 percent of the country, the number is mind-boggling: 42-48 percent. The numbers also turn a few stereotypes on their heads: In the lower working class, for instance, the rate of church attendance has dropped at nearly double the rate as that of the supposedly secularized elite.

America's working class, Coming Apart argues, has increasingly forsaken traditional values like marriage, religion, industriousness, and honesty—and, as a result, it is rotting from within. Happiness levels are down; participation in the labor force is down; television watching (an average of 35 hours a week) is up.

In short, those who have discovered the value of living the laws of civilization (as we outline at SphericalModel.com, keeping the Ten Commandments and valuing and protecting family as the basic unit of society) find themselves not only living a happier and more satisfying civilized life, but they enjoy economic prosperity and greater opportunity to participate in political leadership.

By several measures the Spherical Model family is in that top 20%. And we do indeed live the laws that lead naturally to prosperity rather than poverty. But unlike the subject of much of the book, we don’t feel distant from the less prosperous; we are very willing to share the formula, rather than isolate ourselves.

So, with something of a proselytizing spirit, let me share some comparison data: Only 10% of children in two-parent families live in poverty. But 50% of children living with a single mother live in poverty.[*] This is not intended to make struggling single mothers feel worse about their situation. Their burden is tough enough. But we need to recognize that accepting single parenthood as an equally valuable situation as a two-parent home is not only inaccurate but harmful. We must not encourage more problems for more people by subsidizing them.

Churches and local charities are a much better way of helping than the awkwardly broad brush of government. Locally, someone with social skills can work with the person in need to encourage living the civilization formula: no more sex outside of marriage; find ways to improve skills to become more self-sufficient; supplement the parent with community help (scouting, youth sports coaches, and other family serving auxiliaries), so that the deficits inherent in the single parent’s situation are mitigated, and the next generation is aimed toward more economically rewarding civilization, rather than being trapped in perpetual poverty patterns.

Poverty doesn’t have to be permanent. But the way out is much more likely to come by living the formula the successful use, rather than following the pattern that has so consistently led to poverty. Success won’t necessarily come instantaneously, but it can come within a single additional generation.

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[*] Craig H. Hart, Ph.D., “Combating the Myth that Parents Don’t Matter,” address delivered at the World Congress of Families II, Geneva, Switerzerland, available online at www.worldcongress.org.