Poverty No Excuse for Poor Parenting

I enjoy mostly reasoned liberalism, it helps clarify my thinking sometimes. Juan Williams, noted NPR and Fox News panelist most recent offering, while impassioned, offers nothing in the way of solutions. That may be because he can't think of any, or worse, because the ones that might have a chance aren't doable in the current cultural, social and political climate.

The lack of father figures as household anchors offering commitment to family, moral values, discipline, and encouragement are well documented, and appalling for the continuing increase in numbers.

When a solution is so obvious, that a motivated head of household, namely a father who stays and cares, can absolutely prevent the majority of cultural problems drowning successive generations of poor and minority males, and now females, what prevents it's epiphany in these communities?

Answer? The lack of leadership and example setting by religious, cultural and political leaders.

When black cultural icons like Bill Cosby can receive such acclaim for stating these truths, why aren't more leaders taking up the mantle?

Why isn't Juan Williams?

The acceptance of responsibility for providing social commentary carries with it the attendant duty to offer solutions. Reasoned, practical, achievable solutions; even ones that are unpopular, and may carry the consequence of political approbation. When Williams offers that 22% of white children, 31% of Hispanic children and 56% of black children are "fatherless," he misspeaks; they all have fathers, absent an astonishing number of virgin births; but those biological implanters are absent, and assume little, and in most cases, no parental responsibility; financially, as role models, as caregivers.

They are fatherless for sure, but in the sense of abandonment, of distance, a lack of concern.

What cultural imperatives dictate this astonishing lack of responsibility?

What lack of cultural, political and religious leadership tolerates, even encourages the debasement of their societies?

The trend seems to be giving the state the responsibility for care giving, from meals to activities, from breakfast to dinner, five days a week. "In Loco Parentis," with the government taking more responsibility for growing numbers of "fatherless" children, seems to be a solution without end.

Men and women have the biological capability of generating large numbers of children, but where is the commensurate responsibility for their care; their nurturing, their learning of individual responsibility, to contribute to society in a positive way?

Do we want government to take that responsibility? Why not just have kids, and turn them over to state-operated creches; many would be better off than the circumstances they "enjoy" today.

Why have cultures allowed their women so little self-respect that they are just baby factories for similar lack-of-self-respect young men?

Let's digress to the economics of solutions. A ten percent increase in the number of motivated father/male headed households offers a) A twenty percent potential reduction in criminal behavior of all types, particularly drug use and culture, and gang membership; b) A potential twenty-five percent, maybe much more, reduction in the number of additional births in the same households, as a result of the realization that providing for an existing, and hopefully planned-for family, argues against diminishing the standard of living for the family by adding to the financial pressures through more mouths to feed, clothe, and educate; and much, much more.

So let's have more positing of workable solutions that provoke and motivate the poor and minority communities to demand more leadership from cultural, religious and political leaders; and stop just throwing more money at problems that can be solved with compassion, and leadership.