The Coming White Underclass

Question

What are the Issues and the Conclusions?
What are the Reasons?

Answer 1

Issue 1: Is now the time to take action in order to stop the trend of white illegitimacy in the United States?
Conclusion: Yes, now is the time to take action in order to stop the trend of white illegitimacy in the United States.
Reasons:
1. In 1991, 707,502 babies were born to single white women, representing 22 percent of white births.
2. The proportion of single mothers with less than a high school education who gave birth jumped to 48 percent from 35 percent in a single decade, and these numbers are dominated by whites.
3. White illegitimacy is overwhelmingly a lower-class phenomenon and will bring us to the emergence of a white underclass.
Sr1: Women with college degrees contribute only 4 percent of white illegitimate babies, while women with a high school education or less contribute 82 percent.
Sr2: Women with family incomes of $75,000 or more contribute 1 percent of white illegitimate babies, while women with family incomes under $20,000 contribute 69 percent.
Sr3: For white women below the poverty line in the year prior to giving birth, 44 percent of births have been illegitimate, compared with only 6 percent for women above the poverty line.
4. Now, the overall white illegitimacy rate is 22 percent, and the historical fact is that the trend lines on black crime, dropout from the labor force, and illegitimacy all shifted sharply upward as the overall black illegitimacy rate passed 25 percent.
5. Illegitimacy is the single most important social problem of our time.
Sr: It drives everything else.
6. Although American society as a whole could survive when illegitimacy became epidemic within black communities, it cannot survive the same epidemic among whites.
Issue 2: Should the rewards and penalties of marriage be restored in order to stop the trend of white illegitimacy in the United States?
Conclusion: Yes, the rewards and penalties of marriage should be restored in order to stop the trend of white illegitimacy in the United States.
Reasons:
1. A society with broad legal freedoms depends crucially on strong nongovernmental institutions to temper and restrain behavior, and of these, marriage is paramount.
2. Restoring the economic penalties of marriage translates into ending all economic support for single mothers, forcing single mothers to get support from somewhere other than the government.
Sr1: Enlisting the support of others raises the probability that other mature adults are going to be involved with the upbringing of the child.
Sr2: The need to find support raises the probability that a young single woman who keeps her child is doing so volitionally and thoughtfully.
sr1: The need to find support will lead many young women to place their babies for adoption.
sr2: The need to find support will lead many young women to take steps not to get pregnant.
sr3: The need to find support will lead many young women to get abortions.
Sr3: The pressure on relatives and communities to pay for the folly of their children will make an illegitimate birth the socially horrific act it used to be.
sr: Shotgun marriages have a wonderful and indispensable deterrent effect on those not on the receiving end.
Sr4: Society’s response to women who can find no support should be to make it as easy as possible for them to place their children for adoption at infancy by going back to using the old adoption policy, and if this occurs, some extremely large proportion of infants given up by their mothers will be adopted into good homes.
3. Restoring the rewards of marriage translates into making marriage once again the sole legal institution through which parental rights and responsibilities are defined and exercised.
Sr1: Little boys should grow up knowing that if they want to have any rights whatsoever regarding a child that they sire, they must marry.
Sr2: Little girls should grow up knowing that if they want to have any legal claims whatsoever on the father of their children, they must marry.
Sr3: A marriage certificate should establish that a man and a woman have entered into a unique legal relationship.
4. As recently as John Kennedy’s presidency, America’s elite accepted that a free society such as America’s can sustain itself only through virtue and temperance in the people, that virtue and temperance depend on the socialization of each new generation, and that the socialization of each generation depends on the matrix of care and resources fostered by marriage.