The Atlantic Confused by 'Alarming Rise of Single Parenthood'

After decades of warnings that single-parent households may pose a major problem for America, The Atlantic is finally ready to join those worried over the “alarming rise of single parenthood in America,” though the left-leaning magazine feels there is “no easy explanation” for why it is occurring.

In a September 3 piece, the magazine notes that “single parents have more than tripled as a share of American households since 1960.”

The trio of authors find that this rise in single parenthood is “a huge problem” but finds the statistic is “without an easy explanation.”

The piece goes on to point out that the rise in “breadwinner-mom” families is really a rise in unmarried female heads of households. As the authors report, “This is really a story about a more astonishing fact: Single parents have more than tripled as a share of American households since 1960.” [Emphasis in original]

The magazine seems a bit amazed to discover that single parent households–whether made up of single dads or single moms–earn less than married couples. The Atlantic finds that single parents can’t advance their education, have little time for personal enrichment, and often cannot find full time work–all because they are the only ones home to take care of children.

One of the article’s last points is about how having children creates a major income disparity between unmarried heads of households and married couples with children, and the disparity is thousands more than the gap between the income levels of singles without children and married couples without children.

The dissolution of the traditional family unit is wreaking havoc on the entire country, and it is not just a recent trend. It has been in the making since the dawning of Lyndon B. Johnson’s “Great Society” and the imposition of the welfare state on the nation.

As marriage fails, America suffers. How, then, does The Atlantic sum up its shocking realization that single parent households are struggling? By suggesting a return to affording prominence to marriage so that families can do better?

Of course not.

Hence the rise of single parenting, particularly single mothers, represents both a promise and a problem. If this is the path forward for society, we need to do all that we can to ensure that for these families single parenting is in fact a dream, and not the enormous challenge that it currently is today.

Further, how does The Atlantic suggest we “ensure” that the lives of single parents are made into “a dream?” Likely big government, naturally–one of the very things that caused this situation in the first place.