A little military discipline would do them all good. While I think the all voluntary military is the way to go, there is something in me that wouldn't object very loudly if each and every male were required to do minimum service of one term in the military. It would do society good if by nothing else teaching some needed discipline to the entitlement mentality generation.

Get up in the morning, stop taking shortcuts in life.

You put the problem very well, but the case is not entirely hopeless. In the past, other groups of people have pulled themselves out of the muck and gone on to join the middle class. In England, in the 19th century, there were movements to bring hygiene, education and religion to the urban poor. And think of the Irish in America. Remember where the term "paddy wagon" came from.

The first step is to be honest about the problem and not denounce anyone who talks about it as a racist or an Uncle Tom.

It should be no surprise that the biggest supporters of the "women's lib" movement and abortion on demand were guys like Hugh Heffner.
They got sex without consequences and women got turned into objects.

But I wouldn't be so down on society. The beginning of the 20th century, public morality was at the point when Hasema burqa swimwear was boderline obscene. And that public morality was in response to an earlier morality that can best be described as bawdy.
Its cyclical, eventually society will get tired of the excesses of Mrs. Spears-Federline & Co. and slowly evolve back to a more stringent public morality. Figure it'll take a century.

...
So what can government do to turn a cultural, sexual revolution back? >

Stop incentivising unwed welfare baby production - after you've squeezed out the first one, the checks don't get any bigger for subsequent ones.

Harsh medicine? You bet. There's no lack of birth control or abortion availability.

Its all about the money -- everything is about the money.

Hmmm, how about if the parasites take any sort of government largesse they have to undergo a sterilization program ala Mararet Sanger?

That reminds me, wasn't Sanger the one who started Planned Parenthood Federation?

She was into a lot of it...SANGER

Years ago, I saw I guy totally infuriate the studio audience on the Oprah Winfrey Show by suggesting that fathers were of cardinal importance.

He was the author of a book on the importance of fatherhood. He had all kinds of data which showed that growing up in single-parent families headed by women correlated strongly with everthing from low educational achievement to criminal records to suicide. However, there were no such correlations for kids from single-parent families headed by men -- those kids did as well as anyone else.

His argument was that the presumption in divorce cases that the mother should get custody, especially of young children, was exactly backwards, and relatively modern. He thought we should go back to the presumption of a bygone era where children routinely were put in the custody of fathers in the event of a divorce, largely because fathers were the breadwinners. According to him, it was far better for the kids, and it also gave both parents a powerful incentive to make the marriage work. Dads don't want to raise kids without a mom, and moms don't want to be separated from their kids.

What a quaint notion -- staying together and working things out for the sake of the children.

By the time the show ended, most of Oprah's largely female audience, apparently including many single moms, were ready to tear this guy's head off. The abuse heaped on him was just insane, as one woman after another rose to give tearful testimonials to their wonderful single mom, or tell him off because they were doing a great job and their kid was fine.

Rosemary, the problem with bringing "hygene, education and religon" to the ghettoes is that most of those programs were what we'd call "faith-based" today, and NOBODY in our society is willing to admit how important religon is to a good society and a worthwhile nation.
If you had an honest to G-d Salvaiton Army- type drive for Christian education and all of its benefits in the inner city today, you'd face everything from 60 Minutes ambush journalism to speeches in Congress about how hypocritical, dangerous to democracy, illegal, unethical, and above all religous you were. To Hell (metaphorically speaking, of course) with the number of lives you'd save or the improvement to the community- you brought G-d into it, and that's wrong and bad.

Also many years ago (about the time my daughter was born) I read an article about a survey taken of women who were highly successful in their fields. The point of the survey was to identify what these women attributed their success to.

By far the most common answer was: their fathers.

Wow... Michael and Jay: your comments were certainly thought provoking .. (and I believe correct, especially about the benefit of conscripted service)

Who’s gonna stand for that in the face of a single Anderson Cooper interview of an American mother holding a malnourished American baby? Not me.

Well, me.

The problem will go away in a hurry if we stop rewarding out-of-wedlock births. If you get pregnant, the state does not give you a dime. If you (and your boyfriend and your family and your church) can't support your child, the state will take it away and put it up for adoption. In the end, this would be far more merciful for all concerned.

I'm not saying this is politically feasible. But it would work, and would do more to improve the lot of the underclass than all the liberal poverty programs ever imagined.

the state will take it away and put it up for adoption. In the end, this would be far more merciful for all concerned.

This sounds like a winner to me.

Maybe someone has some good ideas, but I ain't heard em yet.

Want to hear a good idea? Try taking responsibility for you own behavior instead of blaming the state we are in on "society's mores" or because you're a guy and can't be bothered controling your own dick. And labeling women skanks, whores or sluts does not make men morally superior. It just makes you the type of guy who labels women skanks, whores or sluts. The Veronica Mars post and comments pretty much demonstrates the double standard I see here.
Now, I'm sure I'm going to be attacked unmercifully. Nothing I can do about it since I've got to go to work. Happy to get this off my chest, though.

A few indications from the government that we as a society frown on illegitimacy could help. Give married couples priority for public housing, or restrict some housing projects to two-parent families only. Do not allow unwed mothers in our regular public schools (this used to be standard -- even married youth could were not allowed to attend regular high school). Just give a little edge, a little incentive to those who do things right.

A while back 60 Minutes (yeah, i know) had a piece about a black English kid who was, to use the parlance of our days, a "thug". He got kicked out of school when he was 15, and he was on the highway to being dead or in jail at 18.
Then he went to one of those "old school" British colleges...
I know the kind of finantial burden on putting these kids through such colleges would be immense, but as another poster said, why not military school? I think that would be better then having them shooting each other in the streets.

A few indications from the government that we as a society frown on illegitimacy could help.

Maybe such "indications" would help, but I fear the cultural breakdown of the underclass (and yes, that's mostly a code word for poor blacks) is so entrenched that half measures will not work.

There was a time not so long ago when the most important elements of the black community were family and church. White people stood in awe of the strength and durability of these institutions.

And we killed them. We systematically destroyed the engines that could have propelled blacks into full participation in American life.

I blame Hubert Humphrey and his ilk. I have this irrational hatred of Hubert Humphrey. I hope he's friggin' rotting in hell.

Mandatory male birth control until age 21..Yeah it needs a technical solution but...

Mandatory education until age 18... don't go to school then go to jail (with classes).

Marriage licenses require a High School diploma or G.E.D.

Failure to comply with the above...no government welfare benefits until above requirements have been met.

Sounds Fascist? Not to me. It sounds compassionate.

And you old fashioned women? Well, how strong is your ‘no sex til marriage’ negotiating leverage anymore when the rest of your union is jumping into bed long before they ever get near the bargaining table? How long are you gonna stay in the ‘hold out’ camp? Somewhere, a sluttiness ‘tipping point’ was reached. (And try getting that genie back in the bottle.)

I think a lot of people out there don't understand how big of a shift has occurred on this front. My sister works as a manager of a fast-food restaurant in a poor, black area, and the stories she has told me over the years amaze me. For one example, one younger girl that worked there was a virgin that was upset because her boyfriend of a few months was pressuring her to have sex and said he was going to leave the relationship if he didn't get it. Guess what the advise was from all of her female coworkers? Yep, they told her to give it up. In fact, many of them mocked her for making a big deal out of it and for going out with a guy that long and not getting it on with him. Not one of them said anything along the lines of if you're not comfortable with it and if he really cared then he wouldn't be pushing you that hard.

My sister before this experience had been so liberal on race issues that she considered it heresy to even suggest that there was anything wrong with black culture. That was blaming the victim, you see, when it was clear all the problems were due to racism. After a few years of experience in this neighborhood, though, she started sounding borderline racist at times, ranting about how the black women that worked for her would have multiple kids from several different guys and their kids would be hungry and dressed in rags while they spent most of their paychecks getting their hair done and fancy patterns painted on their nails every Friday and then partying the whole weekend.

At times I had to remind my sister that all black people certainly did not act this way so she qualify her statements accordingly. Quite a change from the "how dare anyone blame these poor people" attitude she'd had previous to exposure to poor, black culture.

It is not governmental programs that will influence a decrease in fatherlessness, but a lack. The issue is that government is seen as the father figure, the god figure in so many of our lives. You don't need to have responsibility, goes the liberal (and increasingly republican) line, because government will be there to pick up the pieces.

Want to build your home in a flood plain? Go ahead, because FEMA will pick up the pieces.

Want to skip school? No consequences, say the governmental programs, because there will be training, etc.

Don't want to take the personal responsibility of getting out of the way of a dangerous Cat 5 storm? That's oK - there are buses that can get everyone to safety. Oooops.

The lesson yesterday, today, and tomorrow is that you HAVE TO TAKE RESPONSIBILITY for your lot in life. There is a facade of respectibility / capability that the government has built for itself as tax revenues have increased since the '80s. With money, you can buy the veneer of potential. As long as the responsibility is to perpetuate a note of seriousness about serious issues or to increase the size of bureaucracy, these government dollars achieve a high degree of effectiveness. But if you want results, then the bottom line is that you have to go do it yourself.

The crime isn't that the government fails - it's that anyone believes them to begin with and that somewhere we kept trying because we kept caring. People with sense ceded the moral highground to people who never held it to begin with. Somehow we confused the notion of a helping hand / safety net with the notion of a benevolent and capable federalist deity, in spite of the experience of success.

And it's not just poor individuals who are believing the hype. It is all of us. We cede a portion of our individual wealth to the government so that "they" will take care of "it." This affects no one more than those who cannot make the differentiations and who have not experienced the power of personal responsibility, wherever they fall on the spectrum.

DDG

Our society pretty consistently mocks "traditional values" (or just hijacks the term to mean "abortion on demand" and free money for your illegitimate children), but we too easily forget that the moral codes within traditional religion evolved as self preservation methods for both individuals and society. Everything from Honor thy Father and Mother to not eating pork, which in the climate where the prohibition originated could be deadly, were meant to protect the individual and the society from the very kinds of problems we are discussing here. While many of us Christians have concerns about promiscuity for moral reasons, it is helpful to remember that abstinance is the only certain preventative for pregnancy and STD's. Our society has thrown the baby out with the bathwater. In fact, religion was thrown out precisely because its corolary morality/survival code interferred with the ability of irreligious individuals to carry on without the encumberance of external behavioral controls.

As for the government doing anything to control the problem of illegitimacy, good luck. Ann Coulter once wrote that if you want more of something, subsidize it. That is essentially what we have done with illegitimate children in America. Even in the case of deadbeat dads, our courts are completely useless in enforcing child support orders, and only spend tax payer dollars creating the illusion of effort as with the welfare system. One area where this does work however is when a child goes into foster care, and the State wants to recover their costs. You can bet that the DA's collect support in those cases. Actually you don't have to. Just take my word, they do. No questions asked.

So, why can't they collect in cases where welfare is being paid? Instead of a publically supported welfare system, we should have a publically administered child support collection and distribution program. You get a choice between getting a job and paying your own child support or going to live in a work farm where your earnings go to support your offspring. If you qualify, and they will have you, you could enlist in the military to do the same and live in barracks and eat in the mess hall while your check goes to child support. If the reality was that men would be forced to pay all of the expenses of their children one way or another, and the alternative to voluntary child support payment was mandatory unpaid labor, a lot more men would take responsibility for their own sperm.

Craiggers, when liberals actually go to live and work among poor black people (who they previously only knew as the noble savages on television shows), the first reaction is out and out bigotry. Their previous unrealistic candy-ass worldview melts like a sandcastle at high tide.

But hopefully your sister will get through this having met some really good people, which will walk her back from that initial reaction.

Part of the problem is intrinsic to the fact that Men have no reproductive rights, only reproductive responsibily. That is, mothers hold ALL the cards, and fathers have little to no say about the lives of their own children. We have to correct the gender inequality that was created by Roe v. Wade before fathers can ever be considered equal to mothers.

I also think divorce should be outlawed. Okay that may be a bit draconian, but we should at least start by getting rid of the so-called “no-fault” divorce, which is just an easy way to let adults reneg on their most serious committments.

One slight, small change that could have....interesting....consequences: change child support so that it applies only to the father of the last child. Once a woman has a child with another father, all child-support obligations of previous fathers cease, and the last sperm donor picks up the tab for all kids in the household.

I think that could possibly be the Minimum Necessary Change (anyone geeky enough to come up with the S-F reference?).

If you get pregnant, the state does not give you a dime. If you (and your boyfriend and your family and your church) can't support your child, the state will take it away and put it up for adoption.

So someone who has a child out of wedlock can have the kid conveniently taken off their hands and permanently removed from their life? How would that discourage irresponsible sexual practices? I would argue that with a policy like that, pretty soon you'd be knee-deep in children who are both fatherless and motherless. I don't even want to know what affect that will have on society.

Technology and markets will solve this problem within 50 years. Once the first Sony Pleasurbots (tm) start appearing in stores near you, we'll see a lot less teenage births.

My wife left me to live on welfare. With five kids she could get more in AFDC than I could provide after taxes, healthcare deductions, work related expenses, and my own food and clothing. She also no longer had to put up with me having any say in how the money should be spent. My point is that you can get as punitive as you want with "deadbeat dads" it won't do any good as long as the incentives are in place for the mother to raise children with no father. Perhaps we need to punish both parents.