Family Instability Fuels Rising Nihilism Among Young Men
Many pundits and commentators focus on economic deprivation or sociocultural factors above all, racism to explain the recent wave of urban anger, triggered by Floyd s awful death. But the data show that American society has fewer people in poverty and less bigotry compared with decades past; and police use of force is far less pervasive than it was during higher-crime periods. What has been getting far worse, however, is family life. Stable families have been in free fall over the last few decades. In 1960, the out-of-wedlock birthrate in the U.S. was 3 percent. In 2000, it was about 30 percent. Today, it is 40 percent. (This figure obscures class divisions: for college graduates, only one out of ten children is born out of wedlock. For those with only a high school diploma, six out of ten are born to unmarried parents.)
The lack of stable families has contributed to the widespread mistrust of others and lack of social relationships among young people. It has, I believe, given rise to a sense of nihilism even in an era of relative material abundance, which has characterized some of the violent upheavals. My friends and I grew up poor, and we knew that we weren t headed for college right after high school that s why two of us joined the military. Still, we had food and cheap cell phones and cheap beer and we had one another, unlike today s friendless millennials. Yet I know that if the current riots had happened when we were in high school, we wouldn t have cared about lofty goals. My friends and I would have grabbed some baseball bats, paintball guns, and fireworks. We would be ready to see who could risk the most and care the least.
Is there someplace better than America though? Ireland? UK? Poland? Africa? Everywhere seems eff’d up.