George Will goes monocausal

In his column today, George Will, a political philosopher turned pundit, offers a monocausal explanation of social behavior that would make Karl Marx blush. Apparently, "most social pathologies" ranging from "crime to schools that cannot teach" are caused by single parent families:

[Washington Post reporter and author Thomas] Edsall notes that one-third of American children -- and almost 70 percent of African American children -- are born to unmarried mothers. Then, in an astonishing passage about this phenomenon, which is the cause of most social pathologies, from crime to schools that cannot teach, he explains how Americans differ concerning what he calls "freedom from the need to maintain the marital or procreative bond."

There's no question that out-of-wedlock births are associated with increased crime rates and lower educational achievement (among other problems) and that the number of such births has gone up over time, but are they really "the cause" of "most social pathologies"? Call me crazy, but I'm pretty sure there was no shortage of criminals, bad schools, or other social pathologies back in the 1950s.

Comments

[Dave Schuler]

I'm not a George Will fan and, since I lived in them, I don't think the 1950's were utopian. However, I don't think there's much doubt that the crime rate was lower and the public schools were better. Consider just one crime statistic: homicides. The rate per 100,000 in each year of the 1950's was better than the best year in the 1990's.

I'm sure that all sorts of explanations and rationalizations can be found to explain why that might be. Obviously, there are problems. We should be discussing what their origins are rather than whether we have them.