The nuclear family has always been the backbone of American liberty and prosperity. However, the latest information from the Census Bureau shows that the nuclear family, if not dead, is on life support. Only the smallest fraction of American children are being raised in traditional two-parent households.

Leftists have been waging relentless war on the nuclear family for decades in ways big and small. The big ways began in the 1960s with women’s liberation and no-fault divorce. While both of those may have relieved women from desperately bad marriages and dead-end jobs, they also served to take women out of their role as homemaker and the child’s primary teacher, often transferring those roles to immigrant women when the children were small and public schools when the children were older.

The welfare state also struck a blow at the nuclear family. Many women will acknowledge that, even if they like or love men, the latter aren’t always easy to live with, a problem that can go far beyond leaving up the toilet seat. Having a regular “paycheck” without the man attached can be a real blessing.

Even worse, welfare is structured so that having a father in the family can depress the woman’s income, and so that, the more children a woman has out of wedlock, the more money she gets. This isn’t money that would sustain the middle-class comforts many of us like but, as I happen to know from acquaintances, not everyone wants the middle-class lifestyle. Many people just want a check that will pay for rudimentary shelter, food, and drugs.

The Pill and abortion also attacked the nuclear family by decoupling sex and marriage. Women could pretend that they could have consequence-free sex and men could definitely have consequence-free sex. Without children binding them together, both men and women have drifted along avoiding adult responsibilities. Men can still grow up in their 50s and start a family; women cannot.

Lately, the primary attacks on the family have come through the LGBTQ revolution, especially the nonsensical claim that people aren’t male or female (sperm and egg; mother and father) but are, instead, endlessly sexually mutable organisms that can change sex—and abandon the biological responsibilities of their sex—as the mood strikes them. In addition, Black Lives Matter made explicit that it seeks to destroy the nuclear family (a claim it deleted when called out upon it).

Image: Family. Piqsels.

The inconsequential attacks on family have come via Hollywood’s popular culture. Once—especially after WWII—Hollywood cranked out material celebrating the intact, traditional family, with Dad earning a living and Mom keeping a nice home and raising nice, respectful children.

Soon, though, those shows became the targets of leftist opprobrium and ridicule, and were replaced by a culture in which bumbling single parents trail haplessly and helplessly after their hip tweens. Pop culture also celebrates hook-up sex, abortions, divorce, the whole LGBTQ panoply, and anything else that diminishes the nuclear family.

The left’s attacks on the family have a purpose because the family is the backbone of America’s two greatest gifts: liberty and prosperity. An intact family is a powerful economic unit, for both mother and father strive economically to benefit their children.

It is a powerful liberty unit because it is a counterpoint to the government. “Julia,” Obama’s fictional woman, was entirely dependent on the government, giving the government disproportionate power over the individual (and her children)

And of course, an intact family leads to subsequent strong and prosperous generations, for boys raised in such families are less likely to become criminals and girls are less likely to become promiscuous. The family is a powerhouse.

These realities make deeply depressing the Census Bureau’s recently released information about two-parent families:

The number of homes in America with the traditional ‘nuclear family’ of a married couple with children is now the lowest it has been since 1959, according to Census data.

The Census Bureau’s count showed that 17.8 percent of the United States’ 130 million households featured married parents with children under the age of 18.

That’s only down from 18.6 percent from last year but down much more significantly from over 40 percent in 1970.

There are currently just 23.1 million American homes with those ‘nuclear families,’ which is the fewest since 1959.

Other statistics show that America’s fertility rate has dropped over the last two years (from 58.5 births per 1,000 in 2019 to only 55.4 per 1,000 this year). Fewer Americans are getting married, with only 50% having a spouse compared to 87% in 1960.

This is bad news for children and bad news for America’s liberty and prosperity.

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