For Children, "Two Parents" Is Not Enough

Yesterday in the Washington Post, George Will again reminded us of  Daniel Patrick Moynihan's 50 year-old study, "The Negro Family: The Case for National Action." In his piece, Will uses Moynihan's conclusions to again remind us of the importance of the "two-parent" family model. "The assumption that the condition of the poor must improve as macroeconomic conditions improve was to be refuted by a deepened understanding of the crucial role of the family as the primary transmitter of the social capital essential for self-reliance and betterment," said Will.

Do we really need studies and data to show us what common sense and sound morality has always revealed? A culture that continues to ignore Scripture and depart from biblical truths does. Although, like the biblical account of the rich man and Lazarus, even if the ghost of Moynihan himself appeared with his study--and a thousand others like it--in hand, it seems that most liberals today would continue to deny the truth.

In focusing mainly on economic outcomes, Will conveniently left out an extremely important fact for children when it comes to the presence of two parents in the home. Given the tragic and perverse turn we've taken with marriage in our culture, this truth cannot be ignored. It's not simply two parents, with the implied dual incomes, that are necessary for the proper upbringing of children. Ridiculous as it is to have to say (again, and again, and again), children need a mother and a father. Of course, preferably their biological mother and father in a healthy marital relationship.

There are factors far more important than those in the economic realm when it comes to the family. And just as the work of Moynihan and many others has revealed the sad economic outcomes for children raised outside of the biblical family model, there is a mountain of research that reveals the same sad outcomes for these children in everything from education, to mental health, physical health, sexuality, criminal behavior, and so on.

Though liberals can somehow deduce a link between (supposed) rising global temperatures, and the rise of the likes of ISIS, the plain eternal truths on marriage, family, and children seems to escape them. When discussing the family, conservatives like Mr. Will would do well to remember this.

Copyright 2015, Trevor Grant Thomas
At the Intersection of Politics, Science, Faith, and Reason.
www.trevorgrantthomas.com
Trevor and his wife Michelle are the authors of: Debt Free Living in a Debt Filled World
tthomas@trevorgrantthomas.com