The New Democrat Family

With the Democrats having been in power almost 12 years out of the last 16 years, their political agenda has changed the meaning of an American family. No longer is an American family viewed as a father and mother, creating and rearing children. No longer are the family finances reliant on the work of the family members. There has quietly been a seismic change is the makeup of what’s called the American family. Welcome to “the new Democrat family.”

The new Democrat family was born in the 1960’s as a result of the expansion of the federal government. With Lyndon Johnson’s creation of the war on poverty, the makeup of the American family began to change. Prior to the war on poverty, the makeup of the widely held traditional American family was father, mother and the children. But the 1960’s were turbulent years and the moral values of the times were questioned. One of the mantras of the time was the acceptance of the idea of free love. The sexual norms that had prevailed before were quickly overthrown. This lead to casual couplings that lead to children being created outside the accepted norms that creating children were only in the arena of married couples. The stigma of divorce was also quietly broken down and the result was women becoming the only adult person raising the children.

One area of Johnson’s war on poverty was that financial help was provided for single mothers who were raising children by themselves. And as part of this financial compensation was that the makeup of black families, being led by both father and mother, was about the same as white families. And if you look at the educational achievements of the children of both groups were about equal. But as time went on, this all changed and the numbers of single parent black families steadily rose.

This brings us to today. The changes that happened over the last 50 years, has resulted in a drastic change in the makeup of a typical American family. Today, the percentage of families led by a single adult has skyrocketed for both blacks and whites. But blacks are the largest group in this category.

So as this change in the American family has grown, so too has government family programs. Today, the government provides housing via programs such as Section 8. Food stamps and school lunch programs, many of which provide food all year long, are now becoming the main source of food on family’s dining room tables. Government assistance with utility payments provides heat and light for these families. Government provided free child healthcare is the norm. Monetary welfare payments have become the main source of cash for most of these families.

And on the surface, these programs are needed to provide a safety net for the less fortunate. But their passage has not been without side effects. One of the biggest side effects is the decrease of individual responsibilities. Prior to the war on poverty, it was held that the responsibility for raising the children that were conceived by the man and woman involved was totally theirs. That has been wiped away and today we have the new Democrat family. Men and women are free to “hookup” and the responsibility of their actions is no longer theirs, but rather the governments and the taxpayers who fund the government.

Why is this article titled “the New Democrat Family? Well that’s because of the difference between how each political party views the solutions to the side effects of the shifting responsibilities. Democrats view the shortcomings of these policies being that of a lack of funding. They are constantly looking for ever larger amounts of money. The Republican’s view is that there can never be enough funding to bring about the elimination of poverty via these policies. Their position is that the focus of the government should be directed at bringing back individual responsibility and a focus on providing jobs that will put these families on a firm financial footing.

And with the Democrats, being in control of the government for 12 out of the last 16 years, the growth of each of these programs has been pronounced. And at the same time, the other side effects of these programs, such as crime growing among the children these programs were supposed to help, is rising, along with the rise in generational poverty and a sense of entitlement. The focus of these programs has to change from one that aims to provide all the daily needs of the people currently participating in them, to one that leads them out of their situation to a position where they can provide for themselves.