OPINION:
In 1965, Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan wrote: “The role of the family in shaping character and ability is so pervasive as to be easily overlooked. The family is the basic social unit of American life; it is the basic socializing unit. By and large, adult conduct in society is learned as a child.”
Moynihan’s words still ring true 60 years later, as evidenced in a report by Nicholas Zill of the Institute for Family Studies.
Mr. Zill examined the phenomenon of grade inflation, with more students in elementary, middle and secondary schools receiving A’s (and in many cases undeserved to keep parents and administrators happy), and found that students raised in intact, married homes were more likely to receive A’s than those raised in single-parent, stepparent, cohabitating or, in some cases, relative or nonrelative guardian homes.
As Mr. Moynihan pointed out so eloquently, this is not surprising because family structure is perhaps the most important factor in a child’s success or lack of success in life.
Without such structure, children suffer. Even Rahm Emanuel, the liberal former mayor of Chicago, understands this. After a particularly violent weekend in his city, he said: “This may not be politically correct, but I know the power of what faith and family can do. … Our kids need that structure.”
Unfortunately, politicians, activists and social commentators often overlook the critical role married parents play in helping their children succeed in school and in life. The breakdown of the nuclear family in American society is, in fact, the primary reason that the gulf between the “haves” and “have-nots” has widened over the past 50 years.
Robert Rector of The Heritage Foundation pointed this out when he wrote that the breakdown in marriage and the rise of out-of-wedlock births resulted in a society of castes. He found that in the top half of society, married, college-educated couples raise children, while in the bottom half, children are raised by single mothers with a high school degree or less.
As Mr. Zill discovered, that gap is continuing to widen. From 1996 to 2019, the odds of a child from an intact family doing better academically than one from a fragmented family increased from 1.45 to 1.68, with 60% of children from married families receiving mostly A’s compared with 47% of those from families that are not intact.
Better grades result in better opportunities, whether getting into college or seeking employment. On the other hand, lower grades tend to continue the cycle of economic and societal despair that negatively impacts so many young people today.
Returning to Moynihan’s prophetic words that the family is the basic socializing unit of American life and affects adult conduct, Mr. Zill found that students from non-intact homes tend to have more disciplinary issues than those from married homes.
He reports that parents or guardians of students raised in unmarried or fragmented families were likelier to receive emails about schoolwork and conduct concerns than those from married families.
Fragmented homes tend to lessen the overall effectiveness of schools. George Will perhaps put it best when he wrote, “The best predictor of a school’s performance is the quality of the family life which the children came.”
He said this includes the quality and quantity of reading material accessible to children in the home, the amount of electronic media to which children are subjected, the amount of homework performed there and, in his words, “most important — the number of parents in the home.”
He concludes, “Family disintegration is the stubborn fact that severely limits the efficacy of even the best education policies.”
Married parents tend to be more involved in their child’s education and overall lives. When parents are involved, children are more likely to succeed.
Children cannot benefit from their parents’ involvement in their education if no parent is capable of being involved, either because the parent is absent or because a single parent is struggling to keep the house functioning on a fundamental level and does not have the time or mental space to be highly engaged in their child’s education.
Children need the structure that married families provide. If we want all children to succeed, not just those from married, functioning families, we will need a rejuvenated national commitment to renewing, preserving and strengthening families and parenting.
That is how upward, rather than downward, mobility will occur, creating productive citizens and better and more effective schools.
• Timothy S. Goeglein is vice president of Focus on the Family in Washington and the author of “Stumbling Toward Utopia: How the 1960s Turned Into a National Nightmare and How to Revive the American Dream” (Fidelis Publishing).
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