Location: The Heritage Foundation's Lehrman Auditorium
A generation ago Americans undertook a revolutionary experiment
to redefine marriage. In place of the historic loving bond, largely
centered on the rearing of children, the new arrangement called for
an intimate - and provisional - union of two adults. Now, as Kay
Hymowitz argues, the results of this experiment separating marriage
from childrearing are in, and they turn out to be bad news, not
only for children, but also in ways little understood for the
country as a whole. The family revolution has played a central role
in a growing inequality and high rates of poverty, even during
economic good times. This family upheaval has hit African-Americans
especially hard, Ms. Hymowitz shows, as Daniel Patrick Moynihan had
famously predicted it would. When Americans began their family
revolution, they forgot to consider what American marriage was
designed to do: it ordered lives by giving the young a meaningful
life script. It supported middle-class foresight, planning, and
self-sufficiency. And, it organized men and women around "The
Mission" - nurturing their children's cognitive, emotional, and
physical development. As Ms. Hymowitz posits, our great family
experiment threatens to turn what the Founders imagined as an
opportunity-rich republic of equal citizens into a hereditary caste
society.
Kay S. Hymowitz, author of Liberation's Children
and Ready or Not, has written extensively on education
and childhood in America with articles in the New York
Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street
Journal, and the New Republic, among others. A Senior
Fellow at the Manhattan Institute in New York City, she is a
Contributing Editor of City Journal.