Single mothers are the have-nots in income and education

Single moms are making us broke

By Joe Soucheray

It was reported the other day on an inside page of the Pioneer Press, and without nearly enough fanfare, that more than six out of 10 women who give birth in their early 20s are unmarried. That is census data, from census demographers, from the very government that then becomes responsible for many, if not most, of those unmarried women and children.

If that isn't an astonishing statistic, it should be. Why, to any logical person's way of thinking, it explains everything in terms of government at all levels bloating out of control.

Supposing that even angels might fear to tread here, it being liberal dogma that I shouldn't be telling women what to do, or men, either, for that matter, I would submit that marriage would solve virtually every economic issue facing this country.

The census demographers said that single motherhood, on the increase since the 1940s, has accelerated mindblowingly. The birth rate for unmarried women in 2007 was up 80 percent in the almost three decades since 1980. Just between 2002 and 2007, it was up 20 percent.

The census people didn't use the word mindblowingly. I have chosen it because these numbers are chilling and so telling of the true nature of the government's insatiable spending. Just think of entitlement spending the next time the hypocrites in Washington want to take a snowplow off the road in Yellowstone or take a few flight controllers out of a tower because of this so-called sequestration. Who do they think they are fooling?

Statistically, you can avoid poverty in America by getting a high-school degree and waiting to get married before having a child. It's really that simple.

The census report would state it differently. The U.S. Census Bureau report said that women with college degrees and higher household incomes are less likely to be single mothers than are women who have lower incomes and less education.

Now, I suppose this is where I should acknowledge that not all women who choose to give birth without a marriage are consigning themselves and their child to a life of poverty.

But when more than 600 out of every 1,000 children born to women in their early 20s have single mothers, can anybody come up with a percentage for how many of them will flourish?

Single mothers in their early 20s instantly become the have-nots, statistically, in income and education. For so many women to have so many children without a husband is a complete abdication of personal responsibility, which leads to a complete shunning of any civic responsibility. We are going broke. And if you think taxing higher-income earners more is the answer, you haven't done the math. The men who are party to these births are, of course, just as irresponsible, just as uncommitted to a civic responsibility to take care of their own.

So what has happened as a result of this mind blowingly destructive trend? Well, most principally, what has happened since the 1940s is a government that has expanded to require more and more money to feed, clothe, house, educate and medicate the children of mothers who cannot afford to do it themselves because their education has stalled, knocking them off the path of growing their incomes.

We hear a hue and cry for all-day kindergarten, which I suppose makes sense because the children have no place else to be if their single mom is fortunate enough to have a job. Whole bureaucracies have been created to cut general assistance checks and food payments and housing vouchers and health care provisions. All because there is no conventional family in place to take care of these obligations.

I am hopelessly conservative in these matters and not in tune with all the wonderful life choices encouraged by liberal dogma.

But the numbers don't lie. More than 60 percent! Not for an air traffic controller or a snowplow driver are we going broke.