Statement of Professor James Q. Wilson¹, Malibu, California

I strongly endorse President Bush’s request for funds to support Maternity Group Homes. There are many humane reasons for wishing to help private organizations supply safe and decent shelter to unmarried teenage mothers. But I want to suggest a practical reason for doing so.

Out-of-wedlock births are, in my judgment, the central social issue facing this country. Over many decades, our culture (like that of Australia, Canada, England, and other nations) has lost its capacity to enforce a marriage obligation on people who create children. Today, over one-fifth of all white children and over one-half of all black ones live in a mother-only family. America is unique in one respect: we lead the world in the proportion of births to unwed teen mothers. In 1997, the proportion of births to unwed mothers under the age of twenty in large American cities was shown by the National Center for Health Statistics to be as follows:

I could add more cities to this list, but the story would be much the same. For the nation as a whole in 1997, 78 percent of all births to teen moms were out of wedlock.

As a result, children growing up without fathers are now a major source of social instability. Research has revealed these facts about out-of-wedlock children:

When the Department of Health and Human Services studied 30,000 American households, it found that at every income level save the very highest single-parent children were more likely to drop out of school, have emotional problems, and behave badly.

Among white children, those living with unwed mothers were much more likely to become delinquent, and this remained true even after the researcher held constant family income.

Among all children, those with an unwed mother were twice as likely to spend time in jail as were those with two parents even after the researchers held constant family income.

In predominately African American communities, the rate of violent crime is more closely correlated with family structure than with race.

To avoid poverty in this country, you need do only three things: finish high school, marry before having a child, and produce the first child after the age of twenty. William Galston, formerly an adviser to President Clinton, has shown that only 8 percent of the families who do this are poor while 79 percent who fail to do this are poor.

Welfare reform—the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996—has helped reduce the number of women obtaining welfare and increase the number who are working. But so far it has not had a large effect on out-of-wedlock births, especially among teenage girls. Despite its requirement that unmarried teen moms either live with their parents or, should that be undesirable, in an appropriate, adult-supervised residence, most states have done little to produce such residences.

But some states, such as Massachusetts, have done a great deal to create these residences, using public money and part of the TANF payment to teen moms to create what is called the Teen Living Program. Some of them are run by secular organizations, some by church-related ones. There are comparable programs in Georgia, Nevada, New Mexico, Rhode Island, and Texas.

The Federal government should insist that all states carry out the requirements of the 1996 law and offer them matching grants to make it financially easier to do so.

The goal of this effort, in my view, should not simply be to improve the lives of teen moms by insuring that they finish high school, stay away from drugs and alcohol, and avoid predatory boy friends. Its larger purpose should be to insure that these girls do not have additional children without first getting married and that their babies grow up in an environment in which they are not only given loving care but taught that romance ought to be a prelude to marriage, not simply an opportunity for sex.

This may be happening now with similar homes that are already in operation, but we do not know this with any certainty. Therefore, I suggest that Congress offer funds for such homes only on condition that these homes be evaluated by independent (that is, non-governmental) organizations. I would recommend that at least 10 percent of all federal funds appropriated for this purpose be earmarked for such evaluation efforts.

Such evaluations will take a long time because we need to learn from them what happens to the children as they grow up. We should not be worried about this delay. This nation has taken half a century to reduce the obligations, and thus to minimize the benefits, of marriage. It may well take twenty years or more for us to learn how best to undo the mischief we have created.

In taking these steps, I am mindful of the fact that some unmarried mothers (and some unmarried fathers) do a fine job of raising their children. But statistically they are a distinct minority. Today, violent gangs, drug-dependent adolescents, juvenile detention centers, and our state prisons are disproportionately made up of fatherless children.

From time to time, some people try to minimize this problem by pointing out that the number of such births is declining. But that is true only because the number of all births is declining. The ratio of out-of-wedlock births to all births has scarcely declined at all.

This is not a uniquely American problem. It can be found in most other English-speaking nations and in some European ones as well. Only slowly have some people living abroad come to appreciate the gravity of this problem. But America has one advantage: our leaders now view the problem seriously. This proposal is an opportunity to take a giant leap forward in bringing under control a profound source of social instability.

1. Wilson is an emeritus professor of management and public policy at UCLA and now lectures at Pepperdine University. He is the author of a book, THE MARRIAGE PROBLEM, that discusses out-of-wedlock births in greater detail. It will be published in January 2002 by HarperCollins.