George Will Lectures Santorum about Unwed Motherhood

In his latest column, George Will explains why Santorum's presidential campaign is misdirected:

The entitlement state can be reformed by various known — if currently politically impossible — policy choices. But no one really knows the causes of family disintegration, so it is unclear whether those causes can be combated by government measures.

We do know the social pathologies flowing from the fact that now more than 50 percent of all babies born to women under age 30 are born to unmarried mothers. These pathologies, related to a constantly renewed cohort of adolescent males without fathers at home, include disorderly neighborhoods, schools that cannot teach, mass incarceration and the intergenerational transmission of poverty. We do not know how to address this with government policies, even though the nation has worried about it for almost 50 years.

To act like family breakdown is Obama's fault, as Santorum often does, is both wrong and unhelpful. He has offered no policy that might help, and I think cutting taxes on the rich, his main economic plank, would only further increase inequality and the social resentments that spring from it, making things worse for poor Americans.