Franke: Cultural Change and the Decline of the Family
by Mark Franke
“The changing structure of the family unit has degraded cultural values and economic stability.”
This was the provocation addressed recently by my Socratic discussion group. We call our monthly topic a “provocation” because it should provoke probing questions and lively debate. This one did, so much so that near the end of our mandatory two-hour limit we wondered if the provocation should be stated in reverse: Degraded cultural values and economic stability have caused changes in the structure of the family unit.
Regardless, the assumption is that there is demonstrable causation involved. One causes the other to happen. It is not simply a matter of things happening by coincidence or due to a common cause. This causation-versus-correlation determination is a critical analytic tool that was drummed into my young brain as an undergraduate economics major. It is the academic term for the old “chicken or egg” question as to which came first.
Poverty levels, juvenile delinquency, adult incarceration and low educational achievement are all markers of something being very wrong for a segment of our population. At the same time, there is a decline in the traditional family structure of two parents in the household. Church attendance also has fallen, suggesting a weakening of the family’s spiritual foundation.
The correlation is so strong that one can’t help but see causation. As long as I have started using fowls to illustrate my point, here is another. “If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck and quacks like a duck,” you have a strong indication of what the thing is.
One argument for causation is the so-called Success Sequence. The term became popular back in 2009 as a result of two Brookings Institution researchers doing a longitudinal study of a cohort of Millennials who had reached age 28. What were the defining differences between those Millennials who had moved from poverty into the middle class and those who remained in poverty?
The researchers found a sequential set of decisions made by a high percentage of these successful young adults. They graduated from high school, held a full-time job and delayed having children until at least age 21 and only after marriage. Only two percent of these 28 year olds were living at a poverty level compared with 15 percent of the total peer group.
This appears to be a rather strong argument for part of our original provocation, that is, changes in family structure caused this economic instability.
So, can the converse be valid? Is the culture encouraging disintegration of the traditional family unit? Watch TV for a few hours. “Father Knows Best” is not a sitcom that will be coming back anytime soon.
What about our governmental programs that provide disincentives to replace welfare with paid employment? Check out any graph showing the “welfare trap” to see that it takes about $80,000 in after-tax wages to replace the welfare received at a $30,000 net wage level. The economic principle that people generally act rationally in their own interest is the salient theory being applied here.
What should intelligent people of goodwill do? Elections do matter, as we found out in 2020 and are relearning now. But that is at the macro level. There is only so much positive change that can come from Congress and the White House.
Our group came up with a laundry list of ideas. For example, what if every senior citizen helped just one person in need? There are nearly 60 million of us, most of whom have the time and experience to be useful volunteers. Several youth organizations are refocusing on career exploration and can use our help. We all had careers; can we be a positive influence on these impressionable young people?
A well-known proverb, attributed to multiple people, is that you can eat an elephant if you do it one bite at a time. You don’t have to change the whole world, because you can’t. Start with what you can change.
Mark Franke, M.B.A., an adjunct scholar of the Indiana Policy Review and its book reviewer, is formerly an associate vice-chancellor at Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne.
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