Continuing on my culture riff, today I was thinking about the nexus of culture, illegitimacy and crime. It is widely accepted, especially on the political right, that illegitimacy is a leading cause of crime and other aspects of societal breakdown. A lack of fathers is often blamed for violent and unruly conduct by the children of single mothers. It makes sense and is an argument I have long subscribed to.
But is that all there is to it?
Perhaps nothing better captured the debate on illegimacy in the U.S. in the 1990s than the controversy over Murphy Brown, who was famously denounced by then Vice President Dan Quayle for promoting out of wedlock births as a legitimate alternative to raising a child with a partner you are married to.
Here's my question: Is the problem really single motherhood per se, or is it the culture of the single mother raising the child?
Let's say that Murphy Brown was a real person -- a college educated middle-aged professional. How sure are we that her child would have been destined for a life of crime or some kind of sub-par existence? I'm not at all certain that would be the case. Now, it's absolutely reasonable to think that child would be more likely to engage in crime or be a bad person than someone raised with two parents, but the fact that the child was raised by a single mother strikes me as insufficient to guarantee that it would have a dire future.
Now, let's imagine that the same child was raised by someone without even a high school education who worked in menial labor (if she even worked at all). What are the odds that child would wind up in a life of crime? Who knows, but it's almost certainly higher than the progeny of Murphy Brown.
Now, certainly part of that stems from the simple fact that Murphy Brown is wealthier and lives in a nicer neighborhood than the imagined latter single mother. Her child would almost certainly attend a better school and be surrounded by people with superior values and character than the child of the other mother. But part of it would also have to stem from the fact that she would probably pass along superior cultural values such as an emphasis on education, respect for others, a work ethic, etc.
Seems to me that we can actually test out this theory. What if people from a country with a successful and respected culture experienced high illegitimacy rates? Would crime and other signs of societal breakdown suddenly shoot through the roof? Well, as it just so happens we do have examples of this:
But is that all there is to it?
Perhaps nothing better captured the debate on illegimacy in the U.S. in the 1990s than the controversy over Murphy Brown, who was famously denounced by then Vice President Dan Quayle for promoting out of wedlock births as a legitimate alternative to raising a child with a partner you are married to.
Here's my question: Is the problem really single motherhood per se, or is it the culture of the single mother raising the child?
Let's say that Murphy Brown was a real person -- a college educated middle-aged professional. How sure are we that her child would have been destined for a life of crime or some kind of sub-par existence? I'm not at all certain that would be the case. Now, it's absolutely reasonable to think that child would be more likely to engage in crime or be a bad person than someone raised with two parents, but the fact that the child was raised by a single mother strikes me as insufficient to guarantee that it would have a dire future.
Now, let's imagine that the same child was raised by someone without even a high school education who worked in menial labor (if she even worked at all). What are the odds that child would wind up in a life of crime? Who knows, but it's almost certainly higher than the progeny of Murphy Brown.
Now, certainly part of that stems from the simple fact that Murphy Brown is wealthier and lives in a nicer neighborhood than the imagined latter single mother. Her child would almost certainly attend a better school and be surrounded by people with superior values and character than the child of the other mother. But part of it would also have to stem from the fact that she would probably pass along superior cultural values such as an emphasis on education, respect for others, a work ethic, etc.
Seems to me that we can actually test out this theory. What if people from a country with a successful and respected culture experienced high illegitimacy rates? Would crime and other signs of societal breakdown suddenly shoot through the roof? Well, as it just so happens we do have examples of this:
High illegitimacy regimes (with slower growth rates)That's pretty astounding -- Sweden's illegitimacy rate is over 50 percent! Now, has crime surged in Sweden? Actually it has. But there are considerable signs this is due to a great extent to Muslim immigrants, i.e. products of another culture:
Denmark: 1980: 33.2 percent; 2000: 44.6 percent
Sweden: 1980 39.7 percent; 2000: 55.3 percent
According to the National Council for Crime Prevention, citizens of other countries make up 26 percent of Swedish prison inmates. Among those serving sentences longer than five years — which in Sweden are given out for only serious crimes like major drug dealing, murder and rape — about half are foreign citizens, and these figures exclude the foreign-born who have become Swedes.The point is not that illegitimacy should be discounted -- I remain convinced it should be strongly discouraged -- but that the role of culture in this equation can not be discounted.
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