When someone alerted me to the article, I thought, well FINALLY! But take a special look at the stats on black children–looks like we ticked up to 73%!
What’s the matter with kids today? A great deal more than you might realize.
One-third are overweight or obese. Nearly a third drop out or can’t finish high school in four years. All told, 75% are in such a poor state that they are ineligible for military service for reasons ranging from health to drugs to criminal records to lack of education.
Last month came bad news about the rest: 23% of those who try to enlist fail the basic entrance exam.
Dismayed military leaders and education reformers are quick to blame failing schools, and they’re right. But there’s a deeper issue in play as well — one that
gets far too little attention.
In 2009, 41% of children born in the USA were born to unmarried mothers (up from 5% a half-century ago). That includes 73% of non-Hispanic black children, 53% of Hispanic children and 29% of non-Hispanic white children. Those are not misprints.
Some children of unmarried parents, of course, turn out just fine, particularly if the parents are economically secure or in committed, long-term relationships, or if the single parent is particularly strong and motivated. And as married parents will tell you, wedlock does not guarantee untroubled kids.
Even so, evidence is overwhelming that children of single mothers — particularly teen mothers — suffer disproportionately high poverty rates, impaired
development and low school performance.
A long-term study by researchers from Princeton and Columbia universities who’ve followed the lives of 5,000 children, born to married and never-
married mothers in 20 urban centers, is the latest to reach that conclusion, and it sheds light on the
reasons.
A large majority of the never-married mothers had close relationships with a partner when their child was born. But by the time the child was 5, most of
the fathers were gone and the child had little contact with him. As many of the mothers went on to new relationships, the children were hampered by repeated transitions that did more harm to their
development.
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