Silken Slippers and Hobnail Boots Surviving the Decline and Fall

by R.E. Hannay

  * Juveniles have become the driving force behind the nation’s alarming increases in violent crime, with juvenile arrests for murder, rape, robbery and aggravated assault growing sharply in the past decade as pistols and drugs became more available, and expected to continue at the same alarming rate during the next decade. “Justice Dept. Issues Scary Report on Juvenile Crime,” San Francisco Chronicle (9/8/95). “Crime Wave Forecast With Teenager Boom,” San Francisco Chronicle (2/15/95).

  * Criminal behavior experts and social scientists are finding intriguing evidence that the epidemic of youth violence and gangs is related to the breakdown of the two-parent family. “New Evidence That Quayle Was Right: Young Offenders Tell What Went Wrong at Home,” San Francisco Chronicle (12/9/94).

  3) TEENAGE PREGNANCY

  * “Daughters of single parents are 53% more likely to marry as teenagers, 164% more likely to have a premarital birth, and 92% more likely to dissolve their own marriages. All these inter-generational consequences of single motherhood increase the likelihood of chronic welfare dependency.” Barbara Dafoe Whitehead, Atlantic Monthly (April 1993).

  * Daughters of single parents are 2.1 times more likely to have children during their teenage years than are daughters from intact families. The Good Family Man, David Blankenhorn.

  * 71% of teenage pregnancies are to children of single parents. U.S. Dept. of Health and Hu-man Services.

  4) CHILD ABUSE