The 1960’s ushered in a myriad of government programs designed to help low-income families. Fast forward to 2019 where crime, violence, drugs, and poverty is flourishing in most of our nation’s inner cities along with the explosion in the growth of single parent homes. Our government engineered a problem in subsidizing the single parent family.
This is what government does; it creates a problem and seeks more regulation and money to solve it. Jacksonville Mayor, Lenny Curry, stated in an October 2018 interview with WJCT(1), “So treating it like an epidemic, treating it like a disease, treating it like a health issue… you look at the causes, like you would a disease or an epidemic, and you try to disrupt those causes,” when announcing more than $300 thousand would be available to use to combat violence; more money.
There is no shortage of organizations that have analyzed this epidemic of crime and fatherless homes. In a 2005 article (2) “The Black Family: 40 years of lies” Charles Murray, Lawrence Mead, and Thomas Sowell point to the welfare policies, disincentive for marriage, as the source of inner city problems. A 2016 Pew Research Center report (3), “Social and Demographic Trends”, points out that in 2014 54% of black children were living in a single parent home. Two times that of white children 19%. The National Fatherhood Initiative (4) points out that children in fatherless homes are 297% more likely to carry a gun and deal drugs than peers living with families. A 2018 Minnesota Psychological Association paper on father-absent homes (5) points out that children in fatherless homes are more likely to have contact with the criminal justice system, have gang involvement, have mental health issues, and poor school performance.
The evidence is out there; fatherless homes, yet across the nation city leaders and elected officials continue to create more solutions/programs to help these disenfranchised children. More money is not the answer as the 2008 report titled “The Hundred Billion Dollar Man” (6) pointed out that in 2008 the public cost of subsidizing the fatherless home was just under $100 billion.
So, Mayor Curry, will you step up and address the real problem or will you continue to create more programs, spend more money, and increase law enforcement to Band-Aid the real issue of fatherless homes?
After almost 20 years in the aviation industry, she went back to college to change professions. Going back to school as an adult that had lived all over the United States and abroad she had experience in culture and circumstance, which created an incongruity with the material being taught. At that point she began questioning the validity of the material and made the observation that to pass her courses she had to agree, at least on paper, with the material.
She graduated about the same time as the Wall Street crash of 2008 and jobs were now difficult to find. So, with time on her hand she began to look into other areas to see if the incongruity existed outside of the college curriculum as well. This is where her mission for the truth began.
Since then she has worked to get facts out to the public.
(1)Rivers, Brendan, and Bill Bortzfield. “Mayor Curry Looks At Whether To Implement ‘Cure Violence’ Program.” WJCT, WJCT, 31 Oct. 2018, news.wjct.org/post/mayor-curry-looks-whether-implement-cure-violence-program.
(2) City Journal citation
Hymowitz, K. S. (2005). The Black Family: 40 Years of Lies. Retrieved January 21, 2019, from https://www.city-journal.org/html/black-family-40-years-lies-12872.html
(3) Pew Research Center citation
Demographic trends and economic well-being. (2016, June 27). Retrieved January 21, 2019, from http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2016/06/27/1-demographic-trends-and-economic-well-being/
(4) National Fatherhood Initiative citation
“The Proof Is In: Father Absence Harms Children.” National Fatherhood Initiative, www.fatherhood.org/father-absence-statistic.
(5) Minnesota Psychological Association citation
Brown, J. (n.d.). Father-Absent Homes: Implications for Criminal Justice and Mental Health Professionals. Retrieved January 21, 2019, from https://www.mnpsych.org/index.php?option=com_dailyplanetblog&view=entry&category=industry news&id=54:father-absent-homes-implications-for-criminal-justice-and-mental-health-professionals
(6) Housing and Urban Development citation
Nock, Steven L, and Christopher J Einolf. The Annual Public Costs of Father Absence. National Fatherhood Initiative, 2008, The Annual Public Costs of Father Absence, www.hud.gov/sites/documents/100_BILLION_DOLLAR_MAN.PDF
