Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010

by Charles Murray

Trends in marriage are important not just with regard to the organization of communities, but because they are associated with large effects on the socialization of the next generation. No matter what the outcome being examined—the quality of the mother-infant relationship,5 externalizing behavior in childhood (aggression, delinquency, and hyperactivity),6 delinquency in adolescence,7 criminality as adults,8 illness and injury in childhood,9 early mortality,10 sexual decision making in adolescence,11 school problems and dropping out,12 emotional health,13 or any other measure of how well or poorly children do in life—the family structure that produces the best outcomes for children, on average, are two biological parents who remain married. Divorced parents produce the next-best outcomes. Whether the parents remarry or remain single while the children are growing up makes little difference. Never-married women produce the worst outcomes. All of these statements apply after controlling for the family’s socioeconomic status.14 I know of no other set of important findings that are as broadly accepted by social scientists who follow the technical literature, liberal as well as conservative, and yet are so resolutely ignored by network news programs, editorial writers for the major newspapers, and politicians of both major political parties. In any case, the change in the family structure in which the children of Fishtown grow up has been huge.