Arnold Kling on Family Breakdown, Inequality and Ideology
At the low end of the class distribution, children are likely to grow up not just with single parents, but with single parents who have serial partners, resulting in multiple step-siblings. She calls these chaotic families.
What is striking is that these facts about family breakdown are viewed so differently by liberals and by conservatives…
Liberals are inclined to see progressive policies as the solution to family breakdown. Conservatives are inclined to see progressive policies as the cause of family breakdown.
I think that the reaction of libertarians is to squirm with discomfort.
Full post at Econlog, with interesting comments.
In reality, government can only do so much to combat the breakdown of the family and the proliferation of single parents. Tax breaks for married couples probably helps, but only so much.
I’m a libertarian and I am not squirming in discomfort. Children having children out of wedlock cannot be a socially healthy thing.
It’s hard to say whether progressive policies caused family breakdown or merely enabled it. The truth is probably a combination of the two. It’s also relatively safe to argue that declining church membership and relaxed societal morals has contributed to family breakdown. The days when it was a shame to conceive out of wedlock are long gone. Fifty years ago neither where teenage children allowed as much freedom to mingle with members of the opposite sex. As a Libertarian, I don’t really want to return to the Puritan days of yesteryear. But I recognize that societal mores and peer pressure was partly what inhibited teen births and held families together.
Perhaps, just perhaps, some people (label them as you like) are not in favor of a system that privitazes gains and socializes risk?