I was fortunate indeed to have a good father. He wasn't a big man, physically; see the photo above for proof of that. When we were taking that picture, my uncle walked past and observed, "Either of those boys of yours could put you in his shirt pocket and walk away." But Dad was a giant in every other way. He worked hard all his life, and one of his hobbies was stonemasonry, which I can tell you (as I was often dragooned into helping) is a physically demanding thing.
The best thing Dad did for my brother and me was to set an example. Talking with my brother after Dad died, I mentioned to my brother that "...we two, you and I, are the men we are because of him." My brother agreed.
That's the value a father can and should have in a family. To support and provide for his children, to set an example for them, especially for his sons. Boys and young men in particular need a strong male role model, and that role is best filled by their father. But the American welfare system has, for almost sixty years, been designed, as if on purpose, to remove the father from poor families and to replace him with a welfare program.
We are now seeing the results. At Human Events, George Harizanov has produced an essay that makes this case very vividly.
For decades, the Left has waged a two-front war on the family: one cultural, the other economic. The cultural front attacks the idea of a strong, stable, two-parent household. The financial front, more subtle but even more destructive, is the welfare state. Economist Thomas Sowell has long warned that well-intentioned government programs have dismantled the institutions that once held communities together.
Sowell’s critique is rooted in complex data. When the government replaces the role of the father, families begin to break apart. His research shows that before the expansion of welfare programs in the 1960s, Black families in America had stronger marriage rates and more intact households. This was true even in the face of segregation and systemic racism. What changed? The rise of welfare incentives that penalized marriage and rewarded single parenthood.
This is, of course, precisely the problem. The welfare state, as it is currently constituted, is a massive fraud on the taxpayers. Dr. Sowell (one of my personal heroes) himself pointed this out:
The welfare state is the oldest con game in the world. First you take people’s money away quietly and then you give some of it back to them flamboyantly.
As he generally is, Dr. Sowell is precisely correct here. If the goal of the welfare state is to reduce or eliminate poverty, then it has been a massive failure. This lunacy began in large part by President Lyndon Johnson's "War on Poverty" and has only gotten more ridiculous; it is nothing more than a system by which liberal and "progressive" Democrats can play Santa Claus by offering voters an ever-increasing gravy train of free stuff at other people's expense, and in so doing, buy votes.
But that's not the worst thing that the welfare state has wrought on the American people. In urban areas in particular, the welfare state has done more to destroy the traditional family structure than anything else possibly could. It has replaced fathers with welfare payments, replaced work with sloth, and removed valuable role models, specifically, a father who has had to work and produce value to provide for his family. And worse, children, boys, and young men in particular, are badly affected by this disintegration of the family:
A study published in PubMed by the National Institutes of Health, which tracked over 8,000 children, found a clear link between early childhood father absence and increased depression during adolescence and young adulthood. The study concluded that the psychological effects of fatherlessness are comparable to the impact of severe trauma.
Look to our cities today to see many examples of this. Crime rates are rising. People I can only describe as feral youths are attacking others without provocation. There is rampant disregard for the law. Crowds flare into riots at any provocation. There are fewer traditional families than ever before, and the pathologies caused by that are more apparent every year. This is an existential crisis, and must be addressed with a major overhaul of our welfare system. What needs doing?
- Welfare must be a hand up, not a handout. There should be a lifetime limit. The SNAP (food stamp) program should be reformed: No junk food, no take-and-bake food, no pop, candy, or pastries. Being on public support should be a little uncomfortable. Right now, these incentives go all the wrong way.
- Incentives for families. Right now, the welfare systems are geared to replace fathers. Somehow, they must be reworked to reward traditional families, to encourage fatherhood. One way to do that is to make being on public assistance, as I note above, a little uncomfortable. Make it so that a single parent can't easily shoulder the burden alone.
My friend and colleague Brandon Morse has weighed in on this and other social topics:
See Also: We Have More Proof That Welfare Hurts, Not Helps
Neo-Feminism Will Drive Men Into the Arms of AI Women in a Big Way
Our cities are falling apart, and the destruction of the traditional family by an overbearing welfare system, a system wherein all the incentives go the wrong way, is the largest reason for this. The system is broken. It requires not repair, but rebuilding from the ground up - and until that happens, our cities will continue to disintegrate.
Children need fathers. Boys and young men in particular need fathers - strong, capable, responsible fathers. That has been the case for thousands of years, and no amount of bloviating by leftist politicians seeking to buy votes will ever change this elementary bit of human nature.
