Each year lawmakers, educators and parents grapple with solving the problems in our public schools. Patrick Welsh, an English teacher in Virginia, recently drew attention to the connection between poor student performance and missing parents. Welsh asked his students who recently performed poorly on a test how many of them had fathers in their lives. “Not one hand went up,” he wrote. The nation’s public school system will not improve until we acknowledge the out of control, social problem causing students to fail: their missing in action dads and barely capable moms.
There isn’t an education gap but rather a “social gap,” as a preschool director told Welsh. Kids who succeed in school have both parents telling them to do their homework, checking their grades and pushing them to do better. It’s more challenging for a single mother, particularly low-income, to work and parent alone. Teachers cannot be mothers and fathers to students nor should they be required to.
Welsh’s students are “virtually all black” but he concluded that the achievement gap between white and black public school students had nothing to do with race or resources and everything to do with having a stable family with a mother and father. Statistics however suggest that race sadly has a lot to do with the problem.
More fatherless black kids than whites are attending the nation’s public schools. According to a study by the National Center for Health Statistics in 2007, 72% of black women gave birth out of wedlock compared to 28% of white women. The study also found of the 4.3 million births in the US 40% or 1.7 million were illegitimate. According to the U.S. Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics, one-half of black children, lived in mother-only households, compared with about one-fourth of Hispanic children and 16% of white children. Lawmakers and educators need to acknowledge that the disintegration of the family unit among low-income blacks is why so many black students continue to fall behind academically.
What’s disturbing about these statistics is they’re not new. In 1965, Daniel Patrick Moynihan wrote the The Negro Family: The Case for National Action predicting that absent fathers and rising illegitimate births would lead to the deterioration of the low income, urban black family.
While Moynihan found children from homes with fathers had higher test scores than those without fathers, he observed that race also bears a great influence in which kids succeed without dads. He wrote:
White children without fathers at least perceive all about them the pattern of men working. Negro children without fathers flounder — and fail. Not always to be sure… But such persons are always a minority. The common run of young people in a group facing serious obstacles to success do not succeed.
Moynihan noted the rise in black women heading households “deprives children of the kind of attention, particularly in school matters, which is now a standard feature of middle-class upbringing.” Eerily, Moynihan could have easily been writing about the economic and educational state of low-income blacks today.
Since he wrote those words, not much has changed. Education reform should make it a priority to identify ways to teach low-income Americans the hazards of having children out of wedlock, particularly when they are children themselves. We could start with mandatory sex education classes including discussions on the negative consequences of teenage pregnancy. We also need to find ways to educate unwed parents on the importance of being responsible parents. There is a mountain of evidence that demonstrates that the likelihood teenage parents and their children will become successful members of society is greatly diminished. Before lasting reform can occur in the nation’s public schools, we must first address the disintegration of the family unit and its damaging effects on student performance.
18 responses so far
1 MFarmer // Oct 24, 2009 at 3:28 pm
Until there are reforms in welfare, this situation will only get worse. These are kids are being thrown out into life and the job market unprepared, and as work becomes more technical it creates a division in society which grows each year.
2 joemarier // Oct 24, 2009 at 7:30 pm
We’ve tried the mandatory sex education route. It hasn’t worked out as well as one might hope…
3 Reason60 // Oct 24, 2009 at 9:34 pm
Ultimately, this is not an issue for governance.
Welfare pollicies of the 1960’s notwithstanding, government did not create the problem, and it can’t fix it.
Social mores are created by the population in general, having debates and arguments like we are having right here. When there is a sufficient social consensus, eventualy fathers will be ostracized if they don’t support their children.
4 balconesfault // Oct 24, 2009 at 9:54 pm
I’m just going to compliment Frum on using a teaser pic for this article that actually showed a white mother.
5 Kevin B // Oct 25, 2009 at 4:45 am
Have we? There is evidence that comprehensive sex education reduces pregnancy.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/health/2004293974_sexed20m.html
6 sinz54 // Oct 25, 2009 at 9:15 am
balconesfault:
Huh???
Crystal Wright is a light-skinned African-American.
7 balconesfault // Oct 25, 2009 at 9:38 am
Nope – not the pic of Crystal.
The pic that he has on the right hand side of the page where they promote stories.
http://www.newmajority.com/wp-content/uploads/wp-post-thumbnail/nuoC0N.jpg
8 JeninCT // Oct 25, 2009 at 9:48 am
Comprehensive sex ed won’t help. Many of these girls want to get pregnant because it gives their lives purpose, and the fathers know they’re off the hook becuase the government will step in with welfare, WIC, etc., and the maternal grandparents will help care for the kids.
Until the states hold fathers accountable for their children and stop incentivising single motherhood, the problem will only continue to grow.
I do have a problem with the title of the post, though. The responsibility for this problem is shared by the absent fathers, the single mothers and the government. Why is the focus always on the single mothers? What about absentee father reform?
9 Kevin B // Oct 25, 2009 at 10:08 am
That sounds like a testable hypothesis. Can you provide links to studies that support it?
The study I linked to showed that comprehensive sex education did reduce teen pregnancy compared with either abstinence only education or no sex education.
10 sinz54 // Oct 25, 2009 at 10:37 am
Actually, studies have shown that the percentage of black women having kids out of wedlock has been declining since the 1970s. Back then, the percentage was as high as 75% in some states; now as Ms. Wright says, it’s around 50%.
Perhaps the Gingrich welfare reforms of the 1990s had something to do with it.
Perhaps fear of AIDS has caused single black women to have fewer sexual partners and consider bonding with just one.
Or perhaps it’s just the increasing affluence of African-Americans. A single black career woman working as a Fortune 500 executive may feel she’s too busy to look after ANY kids by herself!
11 Single moms need reform school? « O Solo Mama // Oct 25, 2009 at 11:00 am
[...] Single moms need reform school? At NewMajority, where they have boldly dedicated themselves “to the modernization and renewal of the Republican party and the conservative movement,” the following photo was selected for a story about kids of single moms doing badly at school. (”No School Reform Until Single Moms Reform“) [...]
12 JeninCT // Oct 25, 2009 at 11:04 am
“kevin-b // Oct 25, 2009 at 10:08 am
That sounds like a testable hypothesis. Can you provide links to studies that support it?”
I don’t have any links to support it because it’s simply my opinion based on firsthand experience with pregnant teen girls and their boyfriends. And this is not a black/white issue, it crosses racial lines. This is the government becoming the father figure in our society and emmasculating the males by removing their responsibility to their women and children.
13 joemarier // Oct 26, 2009 at 1:56 pm
Kevin-B, keep in mind they’re going by “reported” pregnancies. And I’m talking generally about the large, multidecade time horizon here, anyway. The teen pregnancy problem did not start when federal funds were pulled from SIECUS.
14 Kevin B // Oct 26, 2009 at 5:08 pm
The teen pregnancy problem didn’t start when federal funds were given to comprehensive sex education, either, so the questiosn remain:
Do the teens who receive comprehensive sex ed from people other than their parents have fewer pregnancies than those who don’t?
Do teens who receive comprehensive sex ed have fewer pregnancies than those who receive abstinence-only sex ed?
I see what you’re saying about “reported” pregnancies, but it seems counterintuitive that abstinence-only education would cause teens to report more actual pregnancies than otherwise, or that comprehensive sex ed would make them more likely to conceal actual pregnancies. If you have peer-reviewed research that suggests this, then I’d like to see it.
Without good evidence to the contrary, I’ll assume that sixty-percent fewer reported pregnancies among the comprehensive sex ed recipients is largely attributable to fewer actual pregnancies among that group.
15 BoolaBoola // Oct 27, 2009 at 3:25 am
I don’t think it’s quite so simple. I’m willing to bet a single smart, motivated parent could raise a smarter kid than two stupid, lazy, and/or distracted parents.
I bet what you’re seeing is a confounder–some factor which causes both single parenthood and bad parenthood is creating the illusion of a causal link from one to the other.
16 Raider1 // Oct 27, 2009 at 9:39 am
Boola Boola I am tired of hearing the “better a good signle mom than bad mom and dad” argument because that is a false alternative. The overwhelming evidence shows that a child has a better shot at all aspects of life be it health, wealth, happiness, etc. growing up in a two-parent household. There is no “casual link” between single parenting and bad parenting…there is a direct corrolation.
This of course is anathema to liberals because that makes poverty now a social/moral issue than it does an economic one alone and thus is their favorite panacea for all of society’s ills, throwing money at the problem through increasing government largesse at the expense of taxpayers through ever more crushing wealth redistribution. Money is a band-aid not the cure. The wound is societal break-down that has condemned 70% of Black children, over 30% of hispanic and 25% of whites to perpetual single-parenthood (figures off top of head so may be a little off but generally ballpark).
yes, of course on loving mother is better than two alcoholic, drug addicted or physically abusive [arents, but these represent not the norms but the exception (certainly the latter). And anyone who has had two parents in their lives knows that both mom and dad bring something to the table to make the child a more complete person. Anecdotal: I saw a kid on the monkey bars at the playground recently. The mother was admonishing him to be careful and don’t fall. The father was encouraging him to make it all the way across and not be afraid. Prudence and risk-taking all in one lesson.
17 Raider1 // Oct 27, 2009 at 9:43 am
There was a time when single-parnethood was stigmatized. The more “enlightened progressives” thought this mentality backwards and cruel. The more conservative lot thought this a just desert of a destructive behavior. We are starting to see who was right. Bad behavior hurts society as a whole. Yet the welfare machine, engineered by well-meaning but nonetheless ignorant liberal democrats not only removed the stigma through “tolerance” education but even rewarded it through more cahs for more kids…and now we are reaping the whirlwind. And the very people liberals claim to care so much about were devsatated by these policies. With friends like liberals, the poor need no enemies.
18 Rockerbabe // Oct 28, 2009 at 3:06 pm
Some of the writer’s points are well taken and a rehash of the past. Now WHAT do really do about the situation. The point or inference I take objection to, is the notion that all the ills of society are the cause of single motherhood . . . I can tell you that the opposite is true. Most kids in our country are a or where part of an intact marriage and these kids are just as “mess up” as those that aren’t. Talk to any teacher and just having two parents in the house is no guarantee of success or good behavior.
As far as comprehensive sex education is concerned; it has been a “hit or miss” situation in this country. Where it is taught over the long haul, the fewer unplanned pregnancies. Here in Georgia, where teaching kids about responsible sex, is a non-starter topic, we have lots of unplanned pregnancies. Of course, we have repugs running the Governor’s and the Legislative branches of the government – enough said on that one! Not much enlightment there!
Leave single mothers alone, they have enough issues without the likes of Ms. Wright bad-mouthing their efforts in a society that values almost no one [at least those who do not generate profits for the top 3% of our population].
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