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Single Mothers and Conservatism
I would like to pose two questions to my follow Ricochet members: What should be the conservative answer be to unwed single mothers? How should the GOP/Conservatives support existing single mothers (to include widows, separated, divorced, unwed)?
I think we have a tendency to focus on the origins of the issue of single mothers — such as the rise of the welfare state and the sexual revolution — without addressing how we would support those single mothers that need help today. Social Conservatives are pro-life, pro-motherhood, and pro-marriage. However, the Left perpetuates the stereotype that Conservatives are not supportive of single mothers, and it works for them politically. In the 2012 presidential election 75% of single mothers voted for the Democratic ticket.
So what say you, Ricochet? Should we cede that portion of the electorate to the Democrats and to likely dependence on the state? I believe we can do better than that.
Published in Culture, Marriage, Politics
The heck of it is that there already exists the perfect system to provide incentives to “single mothers” and a host of other people. This society rewards those who: stay in school, stay off drugs, and who are married before having children. That cluster of factors is the single most powerful predictor of poverty avoidance, i.e., success.
What the Republicans should do is ruthlessly, viciously, constantly point up the foul alternative sponsored at great expense by democrats. The real world is already providing incentive enough to get it right. Big Government has something to say about that, and that is one reason we hate big government.
All (well most) of this talk of incentives through programs is just a family argument on a wagon headed for the cliff. These are tweaks that change neither the direction nor the speed of our current unsustainable trajectory.
So I don’t care what happens to “single mothers” as an isolated group any more than I care about any other isolated group. None of us are isolated, elevated, insulated from the coming ruin, except for those who already have personal security and enough money to ride out the storm.
My family could easily have been on welfare for a couple of stretches there, but you wouldn’t catch any of us dead in that office. That sentiment alone is the solution to the single mother problem. When dependency is closed off as an option, other solutions will appear worthwhile.
Jojo,
The eitc is compatible with the framework of a transfer payment. But it’s also flaccid and impotent in size and efficacy if the goal is to alleviate poverty.
I do think that there is a possibility that the welfare state is not going anywhere any time soon. For many awful reasons.
So, let’s flip the script. If we want to win support let’s talk about the ways the current welfare state has accomplished nothing, and let’s talk about a solution that is measurable understandable and effective.
That’s the conservative way. Let’s get something done. Something constitutional, something that really helps. Something that’s truly for all Americans. It’s the leftist that’s all show and no go. Let’s accomplish a goal, and actually solve a problem.
Let’s make the case to rid ourselves of current spiderwebs of programs that allow busy bodies to leech off of the system. The murky waters of the myriad programs gives them cover. Shine the daylight of simplicity so that we can understand and discuss what’s really going on in the welfare rolls.
So, let’s flip the script. If we want to win support let’s talk about the ways the current welfare state has accomplished nothing, and let’s talk about a solution that is measurable understandable and effective.
Yes! That!
The compelling argument against welfare is this one: At great expense, we’ve created a welfare-funded underclass that is bad for everybody, an underclass in which the single mother you heard on the radio was probably right: working is for fools, because the system is set up to punish work and reward idleness (and single motherhood). I would imagine that she considers marriage for fools, too, since we’ve created a set-up in which men are worse than useless—they’re dangerous mouths to feed on a limited welfare budget.
Work is not just how we keep body and soul together. Work is power, agency, meaning. Even prisoners who are completely supported will seek out opportunities to work. Criminals—gang bangers, mafiosi—will work astonishingly hard, long hours not because they are getting rich, but because work is power, agency, a major source of meaning. Not working is dehumanizing in the most literal sense of the word. And it’s boring. (Bored people, especially bored young men, are trouble.)
I can agree with this . . . who da thunk I would have ever agreed with Kate! ;-)
Jojo—sorry, I haven’t been on this thread for a couple of days. Anyway, I wasn’t saying YOU were grandstanding, I was admitting that I was!
:-) back atcha!
See—we could make this work, A.L.W.T.!