Smoking Bad. Fatherless Families Good.

Amidst all the whining about inequality of income distribution, a huge inequality goes virtually unmentioned. In fact, it's actually endorsed by our cultural and government leaders.

Married couples with children have an average income of $80,000. The average income for mothers with children, but no husband is $24,000.

The inverse relationship between poverty and two parent households could not be more striking. It's almost as obvious as the relationship between smoking and disease.

Hmmm. Let's look at how our country reacted to the realization that smoking was injurious. Initially, government threw it's weight -- banning cigarette advertising and printing on-pack warnings. As usual, such efforts to change ingrained human behavior were relatively ineffectual. Then we started to get smarter. We made it much more expensive to smoke (average price of a pack in the 1960s? 35 cents. Today? $5.50). The entertainment industry stopped portraying smoking as glamorous. On-camera smoking was effectively banned (Johnny Carson still tapped his cigarette box nervously, but never used it on air). PSA campaigns -- like "Smoking is Glamorous" -- became quite visible. Smokers became pariahs, targets of the righteous wrath of the non-smoker. They were banished to the sidewalks outside office buildings. What about the personal freedom to choose behaviors that might be harmful to you? Bah!

Result: Smoking incidence dropped from near 50% in the 1960s to under 20% today.

Let's contrast that with how we react to the fact that fatherless households are severely injurious to the well being of children.

Have single-parent households been removed from the TV? Hardly. They are everywhere. They are portrayed as the norm (just like smoking was in the 1950s). They are glamorized. Single mothers are portrayed as noble and heroic. Have we imposed punitive taxes on single parents? Just the opposite. If the typical single mom were married, she would lose many of her government welfare payments. Have celebrities run PSAs against single parenthood? No, they grace every tabloid cover and Entertainment Tonight show with testimonies as to how wonderful it is to raise a child without a father (and if you earn a million dollars a year, it might very well be). Have we banished single mothers to the sidewalks? No, we set up subsidized daycare centers at work to make it easier for them to remain fatherless. Are they ridiculed? No, we make up cute names for them like Baby Mama. What about the wrath of two-parent families? They are mocked as "the religious right". Bad behavior? No, just exercising my freedom to choose a lifestyle. Who are you to judge?

Result:  Over just the last decade the number of two-parent households decreased by 1.2 million. Fifteen million U.S. children live without a father. In St.Louis only 40 percent of families have two parents. In Baltimore it is 38%.

There's certainly no lack of concern.  Every day the media makes us look at children in poverty or those who fail in school and asks "how can we help?" But they seldom point out why such children need help in the first place. We pretty quickly got past contemplating why people smoke (Was it fun? Was it hard-wired human behavior? If your parents smoked weren't you doomed to smoke also?) and moved on to changing deleterious behavior. We stopped promoting smoking, we made it more costly, and we started socially ostracizing smokers. We didn't say "don't be so judgmental" or "just exercising my freedom of choice."

Anti-smoking efforts worked. We changed the behavior from the norm to the exception. We took it from a sign of sophistication and glamour and made it unsophisticated and dirty. We saved people's lives. We could do the same thing about fatherless families, but we haven't. Is that because the consequences are less costly? Are they?