NYT Opinion: ‘Blind Spot’ — Liberals Must Admit Child Poverty Driven by Family Breakdown

A New York Times opinion writer is calling out liberals, whom he says ignore one specific factor contributing to child poverty.

“American liberals have led the campaign to reduce child poverty since Franklin Roosevelt, and it’s a proud legacy. But we have long had a blind spot,” Nicholas Kristof wrote in his article, published on Wednesday.

He continued:

We are often reluctant to acknowledge one of the significant drivers of child poverty — the widespread breakdown of family — for fear that to do so would be patronizing or racist. It’s an issue largely for working-class whites, Blacks and Hispanics, albeit most prevalent among African Americans. But just as you can’t have a serious conversation about poverty without discussing race, you also can’t engage unless you consider single-parent households.

Kristof gave one example, stating families led by single mothers are five times as likely to find themselves in a life of poverty when compared to families headed by a married couple.

In June 2022, the Republican Study Committee (RSC) shared a framework for what it hoped would be a red wave in the U.S. House of Representatives in November of that year, Breitbart News reported at the time.

The plan centered around strategies to “restore the American family.”

Breitbart News quoted its introduction:

Strong families are the cornerstone of a strong republic. In recent years, worrying trends have accelerated and now demand immediate attention from policymakers. Birth rates have hit all-time lows. The number of marriages has dipped precipitously too. Growing numbers of American children are raised in single-parent homes—or even worse, with neither parent present. Meanwhile, many parents struggle to find stable, dignified, and prosperous work, increasing the pressure of the “two-income family” trap.

“Supporting strong families should be the benchmark for conservative policymakers in both social and economic policy. If we ignore these trends, the American experiment will be undermined,” the introduction read.

In his opinion piece, Kristof said liberals often view the world around them “through prisms of privilege,” yet the group fails to discuss one of those so-called “privileges” that centers around a two-parent home.

Kristof admitted that many children raised in part by a single mother do well in life as they grow older. He also acknowledged children perform better academically and later earn more as working adults if their parents are a married couple.

In conclusion, Kristof stated, “The breakdown of family primarily among low-income Americans may be uncomfortable to talk about, but it is part of the apparatus of inequality in the United States. It doesn’t help when we avert our eyes, ignore the data and deny the existence of two-parent privilege.”

Thanks to the United States’ mass illegal and legal immigration, immigrant children now account for 4 in 9 of all poor children across the nation, the Times reported in April.

According to Breitbart News:

Though economist George Borjas has called the U.S. immigration system “the largest anti-poverty program in the world” at the expense of America’s working and middle class, President Joe Biden’s administration has lowered standards to ensure welfare-dependent foreign nationals can secure green cards.

It is also important to note that a record percentage of Americans are now living in single-person households, per U.S. Census data, as Breitbart News reported in July.