This is not news what the OP brings us. This is an almost 2-year-old story.
What is useful about it is that it shows that Republicans are hypocrites in that they say they want to get government out of your life, but then try to pass Big Brother laws that actually require a whole set of people to say specific words to other people in an attempt to co-relate single-parent families with the scourge of crime out there.
It's a stupid bill, plain and simple, because 1) it is not based in reality and 2) it does nothing for the people. It is of no benefit to anyone that such a bill exists other than to make one moron's view of the world into law.
In the last three decades, crime has gone down while divorce and single-parenthood have gone up. Those are the facts. They are indisputable and they prove that this one state senator's bill makes no sense whatsoever.
You have to be careful with raw data. Statistics are often misleading, and I will give you one very relevant example. There is no doubt – based upon official data – that Blacks as a group commit disproportionately more crimes than Whites as a group. Based upon this information many people would conclude would that Blacks were more prone to criminal activity than Whites; however, they would be wrong.
When one analyzes the data and compares it to factors other than race, it becomes apparent that the real cause of the epidemic in crime among Blacks has nothing to do with genetics; instead the phenomenon can be traced to a marked decline in the Black family structure. Most Blacks who commit crimes were raised by unwed mothers. When Blacks are compared to Whites with similar family structures, the racial element disappears. I's about family structure, not race. No surprise there.
The situation with Blacks is a fairly recent development. In the early and mid 1900s, about 80% of Black children lived in 2-parent households compared to about only 30% today. It should be obvious that something happened since then, something that has nothing to do with race, that caused this change. Many experts believe that the Black family was destroyed by two wars: the war on poverty and the war on drugs. Here is a link which explains it fairly well.
The Collapse of the Family Unit as the Building Block of Society
I humbly suggest that the above analysis is not negated by the fact that divorces have been increasing as crime is falling. Assuming that the crime statistics are accurate, the fact that more people are divorcing is statistically insignificant because it does not establish how far into the marriages the divorces occurred. It is possible, even likely, that many of these divorces occurred after the children spent much if not all of their growing years in a 2-parent family. Further, even after divorce a father usually maintains contact with his children providing support and comfort. Even when divorce occurs, the woman often remarries and the child still has a responsible male role model in his/her daily life.
Conclusion: Children who are reared in a 2-parent household (whether by a mother and father or a mother and step-father) are statistically much less likely to become involved in crime than those who are reared by a single mother and an absent (and far to often unknown) father.
But that is only my own humble opinion (OK, I lied about the humble part). Joking !!
