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By Ellis Cose
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Late in life, Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan complained that big ideas were no longer the special province of the Democratic Party. But in the '60s, the party had big ideas aplenty. And none were bigger than those championed by Moynihan, then an assistant Labor secretary under Lyndon Johnson. After reviewing reams of statistics, Moynihan came to a startling conclusion: the Negro family was collapsing. But with a faith characteristic of the time, he conjectured that government might be able to set things right.
The so-called Moynihan Report, written 40 years ago this month, was never meant for general distribution. Its language was notably impolitic--describing, among other things, families trapped in a "tangle of pathology." When the report came out, in the aftermath of a riot in Watts that left hundreds injured and 34 dead, it set off shock waves of its own. Moynihan was denounced as insensitive, perhaps even racist. Though the "pathology" concept had originated with Kenneth Clark, a distinguished black psychologist, that did not soften the critical blows. Moynihan's daughter, Maura, 6 at the time, recalls "seeing my poor father in utter despair." She thinks she remembers him crying.
Moynihan's report died a public death--a victim of ideological politics, misleading press coverage and the report's own loaded language. Yet the truth is that Moynihan was on to something--just not precisely what he thought he was. Indeed, some of Moynihan's concerns were not so different from those that recently launched comedian Bill Cosby on a family-values crusade.
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Moynihan was actually telling two stories--one about the crushing, intergenerational impact of slavery and racism, which he got pretty much right, and the other about the transformation of the family, the scope of which he got wrong. His mistake was in assuming trends that he saw in black families were somehow peculiar to the black community and that the white family was a model of stability. What he was actually seeing, as historian Stephanie Coontz puts it, was "a rehearsal for something that was going to happen in the white community."
He was alarmed that nearly a fourth of black families were headed by females and that the illegitimacy rate was climbing. In his view, this "matriarchal structure" was a major problem because it put the "Negro community... out of line with the rest of American society." Moynihan could not foresee that the statistics, so alarming about blacks, would eventually describe reality for many whites. Nearly a fourth of non-Hispanic white children currently live in something other than a two-parent household. Roughly a third of American births are to single women, as are nearly a fourth of all non-Hispanic white births. White women under 25 are more likely to have a child out of wedlock than in.
As Coontz sees things, Moynihan erred not only in misdiagnosing the breadth of the phenomenon but in seeing pathology where it did not necessarily exist. A woman's decision to be alone is not always a bad thing. In her forthcoming book, "Marriage, a History," Coontz makes the case that many things we see as social improvements--from increased employment opportunities for women to widespread acceptance of the notion that spouses should be in love--inevitably have undermined the institution of marriage. Also, the very fact that many social indicators got better (crime rates went down, educational rates went up) even as single-parent families were on the rise shows that something more complicated was going on than Moynihan realized, Coontz contends.
No serious scholar argues that the trends Moynihan highlighted were essentially for the best. Single-parenthood, as he correctly surmised, tends to be associated with a host of bad things--including poverty and an increased likelihood of children's dropping out of school and into jail--especially if the single parent is un-educated and unemployed. Practically speaking, it's not so much single-parenthood that is the problem as the things that often come with it.
Moynihan can hardly be faulted for not foreseeing the implications of the data floating before his eyes. He sounded an alarm and made a passionate argument for true equality. Had more people paid attention, we might be farther along in figuring out how to solve the problems he sensed but only dimly understood.
Instead, Moynihan learned that some subjects were simply not to be broached--not by certain people, anyway. It's hardly surprising that five years after his report imploded, he advocated a period of "benign neglect"--an era that, with notable exceptions here and there, has essentially lasted for decades. By now, 40 years after Moynihan's ill-fated study, it should be clear to his critics and defenders alike that silence will not make difficult problems go away. Generally it just makes them that much harder to understand.
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