Who destroyed the American family?
The argument can be made that the Great Society programs initiated the destruction of the nuclear family structure. The blame starts with President Lyndon B. Johnson's set of domestic programs in the mid-1960s that were used to fight 'poverty' but only discouraged work and destabilized families.
Six long decades of socialist welfare programs have aided in the break up of the nuclear family structure. In fact, a central tenet of Marxism is to dismantle this structure.
Remember, the Black Lives Matter organization and Marxism share similar goals. BLM stated in 2020 it wanted to abolish the family as we know it:
We disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure requirement by supporting each other as extended families and "villages" that collectively care for one another, especially our children, to the degree that mothers, parents, and children are comfortable.
So clearly, there's been a half-century war on the nuclear family. The latest US Census data shows that a record number of Americans live alone.
Census data shows 27.6% of all US-occupied households were one-person households in 2020, up from just 7.7% in 1940. The largest share of people living alone occurred between 1970 and 1980, when the percentage increased from 17.6% to 22.7%, right after the welfare programs started.
So what's the result of progressives tearing down the nuclear family structure? Well, Just The News recently noted:
First, the US has the highest rate of single-parent households in the world. Second, the connection between single-parent households and crime is very strong. According to research carried out by Jerrod Brown, a behavioral specialist at Concordia St. Paul, the extant literature "suggests that children raised in single-parent households experience more physical and psychological problems compared to those raised in two-parent households." Moreover, he added, the "implications of homes in which fathers are absent may be important to explore for criminal justice and mental health professionals."
Maybe this whole Great Society experiment has gone terribly wrong. Let's try something different. Maybe bring back the family unit and dial back welfare programs.
