Angry in the Great White North

A pre-election meeting was held:

Prime Minister Paul Martin has committed to attend a high-level gun violence summit after a direct and impassioned plea by activists from Toronto's black community, who want immediate solutions to what they see as a "national crisis."

A coalition representing 25 community groups met Martin behind closed doors in his Langevin Block office for about an hour last night, and emerged to say the encounter had been fruitful, and in the words of one attendee "historic."

Immediate solutions? There are none. A generation of boys have been raised in an environment where men are expected to father children, then leave. These boys have been raised by single mothers who work as best they can, but for many, depend on government handouts.

This is a generational problem that will take a generation, maybe two, to fix.

And the solutions are unlikely to be acceptable to the black community or to Canadians as a whole:

As Barbara Dafoe Whitehead noted in her seminal article for The Atlantic Monthly:

The relationship [between single-parent families and crime] is so strong that controlling for family configuration erases the relationship between race and crime and between low income and crime. This conclusion shows up time and again in the literature. The nation's mayors, as well as police officers, social workers, probation officers, and court officials, consistently point to family break up as the most important source of rising rates of crime.(6)

At the same time, the evidence of a link between the availability of welfare and out-of-wedlock births is overwhelming. There have been 13 major studies of the relationship between the availability of welfare benefits and out-of-wedlock birth. Of these, 11 found a statistically significant correlation. Among the best of these studies is the work done by June O'Neill for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Holding constant a wide range of variables, including income, education, and urban vs. suburban setting, the study found that a 50 percent increase in the value of AFDC and foodstamp payments led to a 43 percent increase in the number of out-of-wedlock births.(7) Likewise, research by Shelley Lundberg and Robert Plotnick of the University of Washington showed that an increase in welfare benefits of $200 per month per family increased the rate of out-of-wedlock births among teenagers by 150 percent.(8)

The same results can be seen from welfare systems in other countries. For example, a recent study of the impact of Canada's social-welfare system on family structure concluded that "providing additional benefits to single parents encourages births of children to unwed women." [emphasis added]

The reference was Douglas Allen, "Welfare and the Family: The Canadian Experience," Journal of Labor Economics, January 1993.

So what is the link?

Of course women do not get pregnant just to get welfare benefits. It is also true that a wide array of other social factors has contributed to the growth in out-of-wedlock births. But, by removing the economic consequences of a out-of-wedlock birth, welfare has removed a major incentive to avoid such pregnancies. A teenager looking around at her friends and neighbors is liable to see several who have given birth out of wedlock. When she sees that they have suffered few visible immediate consequences (the very real consequences of such behavior are often not immediately apparent), she is less inclined to modify her own behavior to prevent pregnancy.

Proof of this can be found in a study by Professor Ellen Freeman of the University of Pennsylvania, who surveyed black, never-pregnant females age 17 or younger. Only 40% of those surveyed said that they thought becoming pregnant in the next year "would make their situation worse."(10)

With a supply of young women who don't think getting pregnant will have a deleterious effect on their lives, and gangs of young men who see no link between sex and the responsibilities of fatherhood, the results are not surprising.

If anything, the real surprise is that we haven't had summers as bad as this one in the past.

Is the solution cutting them off welfare? Maybe in the long term, but the short term consequences are so harsh that I don't see any politician voting for it. Maybe just no welfare for women who don't already have kids...

By the way, this is why the link between marriage and child-rearing is so important. This is why so many people are fearful of the long-term consequences of gay marriage, since gay marriage only makes sense when marriage is independent from the concept of children.

But no one was listening then, so I don't expect anyone to be listening now.

Back to the violence.

The guns are here. They aren't going anywhere. They won't be registered. They won't be handed in on amnesties (except the broken ones). Even increasing sentences for crimes involving firearms is a band-aid solution, since clearly there is a lack of any sense of responsibility among these young men.

They have never seen a man make a choice that benefits someone other than themselves.

Nor do they see a man as an important person in the community. A man has no purpose. A woman gets pregnant, the state steps in and puts bread on the table. Why bother sticking around? She's married to the government, who will feed her and clothe her and teach her children in school.

Our manhood devalued by a caring government. You want to see an angry young man? Make him feel like he's been castrated.

If a young man sees no value in himself, he won't see value in others. Other people, especially other men, are obstacles in a video game, to be blown away without consequence or remorse. They have no intrinsic value but are valued only in what benefit can be accrued by killing them or not killing them.

Do these people get it? Of course not:

The Coalition of African Canadian Organizations said it will take a series of initiatives aimed at root causes like poverty, school safety and social exclusion.

"Unless we address, in partnership with all three levels of government, those particular issues, we will never find solutions that will be lasting," said Hugh Graham, president of the Black Business and Professionals Association. The group said governments have dragged their feet in addressing gang activity and violence.

Government as the husband and father is the problem. But they expect Daddy Government to fix things. If the government were to refuse to help, to somehow compel these men to take responsibility, or at least punish them for not, then maybe...

Prisons for men who don't marry the women they get pregnant? Immediate release on the promise to take on the role of dad?

I don't see that happening. I'm pretty sure it wouldn't work, and not just because it is a whacky idea. A significant number of these women have children by several different men.

I guess we'll be saddled with this problem for a very long time.