Puzzling Pathologies

This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

The New York Sun

The late scholar and New York senator, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, whose greatest gift was for the saucy phrase, once dared to call it “speciation” – a change in biological circumstances that heralds the creation of a new species.


What Moynihan was talking about back in 1994 was the cascade of alarming statistics about family life in the U.S.


The unprecedented number of single-parent families, Moynihan said – along with rising rates of divorce, teen pregnancy, illegitimacy and cohabitation – might indicate not so much a change in social convention as a fundamental, permanent restructuring in the way human beings behave, with consequences that were already starkly evident: high crime rates, rising numbers of abandoned children, widespread teen drug abuse, suicide and more.


It was the kind of remark – three parts exaggeration to two parts truth-telling – that Moynihan would often make to draw attention to something he thought other policy makers preferred to ignore.


We can only wonder what unusual word the great provocateur would reach for nowadays, given the current state of research. While data about family formation are still worrisome, other social troubles, which Moynihan and like-minded observers always assumed derived from family breakdown, are actually improving.


You can almost see Moynihan arching a fluffy eyebrow in surprise.


These upbeat social trends were documented by the writer Kay Hymowitz in a widely noticed article last year in the Manhattan Institute’s City Journal.


From the early 1990s through 2001, Hymowitz pointed out, juvenile crime rates fell across the board: from murder and other forms of violent crime to burglary.


Illicit teen drug use dropped by 11 percent between 2001 and 2003. Unmarried teen pregnancy rates dropped 28 percent from 1990 to 2001.The number of abortions among teenagers is also down, and so is the number of teen suicides.


At the same time, Hymowitz noted, the attitudes of young Americans toward family – attitudes formed just as Moynihan was fretting about speciation – are remarkably traditional.


She cited surveys showing that 93 percent of female high school seniors believed that having a happy marriage and family life were “extremely” or “very important.” Disapproval of casual sex was trending upward. More than 80 percent of college seniors hoped to marry and have children, and sooner rather than later.


To Hymowitz, statistics like these signal the end of a cultural moment. Americans, she said, are “knitting up their unraveled culture” after three decades of thinking that traditional families were merely an optional, rather than optimal, social arrangement.


Yet here’s the unexpected complication: Statistics on family formation are still alarming.


True, some data show a rebound toward the traditional family. The U.S. divorce rate, after peaking in 1980, has declined by almost 25 percent. Cohabitation rates have fallen, too.


But overall, the traditional family looks to be in much the same shape it was in 10 years ago. In some respects, it looks worse.


Every year, the National Marriage Project at Rutgers University issues its “State of Our Unions Report.” This year the report showed that, while the divorce rate has declined, it is twice what it was in 1960. Fewer people in general are getting married. The number of children in fatherless families, having briefly declined, is edging up.


This means that the traditional family remains in precarious shape. Why, then, do some social indicators appear to be improving?


Rutgers’s David Popenoe, co-director of the Marriage Project, puzzles over the seeming contradiction.


“What we’re seeing in a lot of these social pathologies is a leveling off, rather than an actual reversal,” he says. The number of teen suicides, for example, is declining, which is good. Yet the rate remains at a level that would have been unimaginable 40 years ago, which is bad.


“People, including young people, are affected more severely by rapid change,” he says. “And the change in family structure from the 1960s through the 1980s was very rapid. It couldn’t keep getting worse and worse forever. People eventually adjust.”


The leveling off, in other words, may just be a bottoming out.


Moreover, Popenoe says, Moynihan’s main point about the desirability of two-parent families remains unassailable.


“Where there’s been statistical improvement in these pathologies, it’s been across the board” in traditional and non-traditional families alike, he says. “What hasn’t changed is the gap: Kids who don’t grow up in two-parent families are two to three times more likely to suffer from these pathologies than their counterparts in intact families.”


Popenoe also notes that many contributing factors, quite apart from family formation rates, have also improved over the last 10 years. Crime fighting techniques are more effective. Schools have become more efficient at identifying pathologies for early treatment. Massive campaigns have been launched to find and work with troubled teenagers.


One possibility Popenoe didn’t mention: The direct causal connection between family structure and social pathologies, which Moynihan and others long assumed was ironclad, may be shakier than we knew.


What is certain, however, is that Moynihan’s speciation hasn’t happened. Apparently we’re still the same old species – more resilient than we knew and more puzzling than ever.



Mr. Ferguson is a columnist for Bloomberg News.


The New York Sun

© 2025 The New York Sun Company, LLC. All rights reserved.

Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. The material on this site is protected by copyright law and may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used.

The New York Sun

Sign in or  Create a free account

or
By continuing you agree to our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use