We are seeing some of this in the Australian indigenous population, but also in white society. Investors Business Daily quotes columnist Larry Elder: "The solution to both crime and poverty is simple: 'Finish high school; don't have a child before the age of 20; and get married before having the child.'"
The middle and upper classes in Australia and those who are tertiary educated, more or less follow this formula but many in the lower socio-economic groups seem trapped in a cycle of poverty fuelled by the absence of stable marriages, a revolving door of serial de facto relationships and out of wedlock births.
How to break this cycle will be addressed at the World Congress of Families 7 and academics and the Australian government should take note. Already there is much angst about the cut to single-mothers' benefits but our economy would find it difficult to sustain a budget if our single-parenthood rate approached the current 72% level of the African-American community.
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However, there really is no such thing as a "single" mother. There is another parent out there - the absent father. Where are the government efforts to re-integrate the father into the lives of his children - not only in terms of maintenance payments but as a role model and authority figure?
Investors Business Daily highlights that countless studies have shown that children raised in two-parent traditional families are less likely to be raised in poverty, less likely to do drugs, less likely to be criminals later in life, and more likely to graduate from and do well in school and that the evidence on this is overwhelming: "The traditional family is still the best department of health, education and welfare ever invented."
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About the Author
Babette Francis, (BSc.Hons), mother of eight, is the National &
Overseas Co-ordinator of Endeavour Forum Inc. an NGO with special
consultative status with the Economic & Social Council of the UN.
Mrs. Francis is the Australian representative of the Coalition on
Abortion/Breast Cancer - www.abortionbreastcancer.com.
She lived in India during the Partition of the sub-continent into India
and Pakistan, a historical event that she believes was caused by the
unwillingness of the Muslim leaders of that era to live in a secular
democracy.