Children of the welfare state

There's a story in the Daily Mail about three black men in Tennessee who between them have fathered 78 children with 46 different women. The men do not financially support these children - the state steps in to do that job.

The state is propping up a culture of low investment fatherhood and single motherhood. Three men were able to find 46 women willing to bear their children without any commitment or expectation of involved fatherhood - that's a really significant change from the norms of the past.

And society will bear the burden not only financially, but when these fatherless children hit their teens and can no longer be controlled by their mothers. A fair proportion of these children will join the ranks of an underclass.

This response to the situation isn't exactly encouraging:

Attorney Warren Campbell told Action News 5 if a person does not pay child support, the state ends up paying and there is no legal way to stop people from having children.

There might not be ways to stop people from having children, but there are ways to remove incentives to out of wedlock births.

What if the parents of those 46 women were expected to contribute to the welfare bill? Wouldn't that encourage a culture which respected marriage a bit more? What if the women received a payment, but only on the condition of a certain number of work hours in return? Wouldn't that then increase the value to these young women of men who actually had a job?

It's not looking good when it's so easy for these men to find so many women to make into single mothers. Something has to change.