Heritage report on marriage shows Dan Quayle right about 90s Murphy Brown
Friday, September 17, 2010 at 9:13AM 
Photo of newly married couple taken in May, 1943 is by Marjory Collins from the Office of War Information Photograph Collection.From US Library of Congress.Dan Quayle was right.
I remember the hoopla in the 1990s surrounding Republican vice-president Dan Quayle’s speech about the Murphy Brown character on the show of the same name. Candice Bergen played the lead role, and toward the middle years of the series, her character becomes a single mom.
The father of the child didn’t want to be a parent, something he apparently didn’t think about at a pivotal moment.
Quayle was critical of the Murphy Brown out of wedlock storyline because he believed it devalued fathers. He made a speech expressing that sentiment and the result was a poli-class furor.
How dare he undervalue single motherhood! That wasn't what he was doing, by the way. He simply was trying to make a point about fathers. Someone needs to repeat that point today, so many times that people listen.
The Heritage Foundation ‘re-confirms’ the benefits of both marriage and fathers in Backgrounder #2465, ‘Marriage: America’s Greatest Weapon Against Child Poverty.’
The trend in children being born out of wedlock began with policy set by Democrat president Lyndon B. Johnson. Johnson declared his War on Poverty with positive intentions—to help the poor and to garner Democrat votes. But one negative result was the elimination of the father as a central figure in the home.
We call the central government the ‘Nanny State.’ We should be calling it the ‘Daddy State.’
The results of the backgrounder should shock us—as births within marriage decline, out of wedlock births have risen sharply. Heritage found, “The flip side of the decline in marriage is the growth in the out-of-wedlock childbearing birth rate, meaning the percentage of births that occur to women who are not married when the child is born.[3] As Chart 3 shows, throughout most of U.S. history, out-of-wedlock childbearing was rare. When the War on Poverty began in the mid-1960s, only 6 percent of children were born out of wedlock. Over the next four and a half decades, the number rose rapidly. In 2008, 40.6 percent of all children born in the U.S. were born outside of marriage.”
Heritage based the backgrounder on a number of sources. Among them are US Census Bureau data and information from the Centers for Disease Control. It’s a lengthy backgrounder with eye-appealing charts and in-depth analysis, and it is definitely worth reading.
The US Report addressed this issue in an earlier column, ‘$100 billion dollar man.’ At that time, TUSR pointed out, "Single parenthood is glorified by the entertainment industry, with high profile celebrities having multiple children without the legally binding contract of marriage." Celebs of course have the money to fund their choices.
Heritage said, “According to the U.S. Census, the poverty rate for single parents with children in the United States in 2008 was 36.5 percent. The rate for married couples with children was 6.4 percent. Being raised in a married family reduced a child’s probability of living in poverty by about 80 percent.”
Also notable is this finding: “The federal government operates over 70 means-tested welfare programs that provide cash, food, housing, medical care, and targeted social services to poor and low-income persons.[10] In fiscal year 2010, federal and state governments spent over $400 billion on means-tested welfare for low-income families with children. Roughly three-quarters of this welfare assistance, or $300 billion, went to single-parent families.”
The government, obviously, cannot fill Daddy’s shoes. Quayle was right, but it’s doubtful Hollywood or neoliberals will ever admit it despite overwhelming evidence supporting his position. (By Kay B. Day/Sept. 17, 2010)