The single most disturbing statistic

By Phil Lawler ( bio - articles - email ) | Dec 17, 2015

America faces a danger every bit as serious as terrorism, and it’s not being discussed by presidential candidates. The Pew Research Center points to it, in a new report, “The American Family Today.”

…in 1960, the height of the post-World War II baby boom, there was one dominant family form. At that time 73% of all children were living in a family with two married parents in their first marriage. By 1980, 61% of children were living in this type of family, and today less than half (46%) are.

The evidence of the social sciences is clear, convincing—in fact overwhelming; study after study shows the same thing. Children who grow up with two married parents enjoy a huge advantage over the children of broken homes. Statistically speaking, a child born in the ghetto to parents who are unemployed—but married—has a better chance of success in life than a child born with a silver spoon in his mouth and parents in the divorce courts.

Children raised by single parents are more likely to suffer ill health, more likely to fail in school, more likely to have trouble with the law, more likely to use illegal drugs, more likely to be unemployed, more likely to die young. And to compound the problem, they’re also more likely to divorce, or to have children out of wedlock, so that the problems that afflicted them are passed down to the next generation.

If this trend continues, Islamic extremists don't need to use terrorist tactics. They can just watch American society destroy itself.