Fatherlessness Is Increasing Across Communities | Matt Walsh

We don't exactly know what it's what's necessary in a culture to instantiate that ethos of self-sacrifice and conscientiousness, but it does seem to be the case that it's more prevalent among the immigrant communities that do particularly well. Would you say this, uh, the issue I just raised with the marriage rates intact families, how much do you think that that plays into it? Even, even like that, that's a big part of raising kids to be conscientious is they have to, I would think, have a mother and father in the home who are focused on, you know, instilling that in them.

And, uh, in the black community, you know, the rates of fatherless out-of-wedlock births are like 70 to 80%, especially in the inner city. It's just that this is catastrophic, like apocalyptic-type numbers. You can't have a functioning community or functioning society when the numbers are that high.

Yeah, well, there we don't know the relationship between fatherlessness, let's say, and conscientiousness, and that's a study that should clearly be done. But we do know that we do know probably more accurately than we know anything else in the developmental psychological literature that fatherlessness is a catastrophe. Fatherless kids do abysmally well.

Here's an example, Matt: this is so striking, everyone listening should take this with a tremendous amount of seriousness. Fatherless girls undergo puberty on average more than one year earlier. Now, that's a walloping biological effect, and an early one. And the life expectancy of fatherless children is lower as well, and that's because they undergo chromosomal damage because of stress.

So, right at the biological level, there are massive consequences of fatherlessness. And probably, you know, having a father is an example of long-term other-focused commitment across all the ups and downs of life, right? If you have a father who hangs in there, if your parents are honest, you see them contending with each other, wrestling with each other, fighting with each other as they try to sort out the complex problems of life.

There's lots of tragedies that a married couple goes through, lots of difficulties, and the example of committed monogamy shows people that it's possible to make a voluntary bond, a contract, or a covenant that extends across decades regardless of the difficulties that life throws your way.

And you commented on the accelerating rates of fatherlessness in the black community, and that is a complete bloody catastrophe. And here's, I think, the explanation for it, Matt: you tell me what you think about this. So, imagine a pyramidal structure that represents economic position in the patriarchy, let's put it that way.

Okay, now imagine that you stress the system, and one of the ways you could stress it is by defining the family unit as the fundamental basis of oppression and that all other family arrangements are fine, and that it's okay to love whoever you want for as long as you want or for as short as you want, like, let's say, the next hour, and that's perfectly acceptable.

And then you throw that into the culture, which is what we did in the early 1960s. And then you might ask, well, who is that going to destabilize first? And the answer to that is crystal clear: the lower you are on the socioeconomic ladder, the more catastrophic the results of a sociological intervention like that are likely to be.

And so the black community tended to be at the lower end of the pyramidal distribution, and so that radical sociological change that emerged in the 1960s affected them first. And black families started to fall apart in the 60s, and that's been accelerating ever since until we get the numbers that you are pointing to.

But one of the things we should absolutely 100% be clear about is that Hispanics and Caucasians are not far behind. If you so there has been a decline in marital stability in the white and the Hispanic community since the 60s. And if you match the curves, the Hispanics and the whites are about 10 to 15 years behind the black community.

So that cataclysmic collapse is starting to spread through our entire culture. It's just that the black population happens to be at the forefront of it. And we know perfectly well that fatherlessness, apart from the biological effects, early puberty for girls. Why do girls hit puberty early if they don't have a father around? Well, how about so they become sexually attractive earlier so that a man shows up?

How about that for a theory, which seems to be precisely the explanation? And so that's not exactly so good because probably it's not that good to throw yourself into a sexual relationship when you're still psychologically a child, despite the fact that you might be physically mature. So that's quite the catastrophe.

And fatherless boys are much more likely to be in prison, they're much more likely to drop out of school, they're much less likely to attain gainful employment, they're much less likely to be reliable marital partners, and so it's a cascading effect. It's a complete bloody catastrophe. And even the conservatives have been stupid about this.

You know, I talked to a conservative leader the other day, um, and I asked him about families, and he said, well, you know, as long as two people love each other. And I think, no, I don't think so. Not just as long as two people love each other. Love each other? What does that mean? Love without commitment?

Does it mean love for tonight? Does it mean sexual desire, or does it mean that you're going to commit to someone for decades for better or for worse? Like, what does love exactly mean here? And then, you know, is there a model for love other than monogamous, child-centered, long-term committed family?

It's like, well, just can three people be a family? How about five? How about seven swapping sexual partners? How about a man and a man? That's not a model that's going to duplicate well across society because two men have a very difficult time reproducing in case anyone hasn't noticed.

And so the fatherless catastrophe is definitely germane, Matt, and it's not an issue that people are prone to highlight because they don't want to be tarred with the brush of, you know, prejudice and judgment. They're hard to dissociate from one another.

But I can't see any other model for long-term viability of children than stable, committed, long-term, child-centered, heterosexual, monogamous couples. And people can go to hell in a hand basket, as far as I'm concerned, whatever way they want. But we're bloody fools if we think there's any ideal at the center of a culture that can replace that.

And I think the evidence for that is everywhere, as you already pointed out.

Yeah, I think people, uh, well, the fact that we're not talking about it just means that no real improvements can be made culturally. Because this is, to my mind, the first issue that has to be addressed. And if we're not going to address it, then, uh, you can't solve anything else farther down, farther downstream.

Um, and I think that people don't want to talk about it because, yeah, it's not politically correct, it's not sensitive. Also, because I think we just talked about how everyone has their own personal bias. I think, uh, because fist rates and out-of-wedlock birth rates are so prevalent now, that a lot of the people who should be having this conversation don't want to talk about it themselves because they're a part of that very problem.

You know, they've abandoned their kids, they've abandoned their marriages, and so they don't want to indict themselves. Um, I do think, just to just to back up, you said, uh, you know, is it is it enough for two people to love each other? And of course, this is the common thing we hear on the left.

I think that, I think the answer to that is that it is enough for two people to love each other as long as we define love the right way. You know, if we all had the right conception of love, then we could—it could just be as simple as that.

Um, and if we define love, I think Thomas Aquinas said love is to will the good of the other. Uh, and you know, in a religious context, what I would say is that to love is to—another way of putting that is to love someone is to try to help them get to heaven. And that's my job as a child; as a parent, I help my children get to heaven.

Um, so if we define love that way, then, uh, then yes, in fact, that could be the guiding principle of your life. And if you are trying to will the good of the other at all times, then, uh, it can rarely steer you wrong.

But people don't see it that way. They see it as an emotional thing, a short-term emotional thing too, which is even worse because short-term matters.

Hey, I'll tell you something cool and interesting that's very relevant to this, and it's terrifying.