You'd think that even Democrats could connect the dots. Over 70 percent of adolescent murderers come from fatherless families. Girls who grow up in these homes are three times more likely to bear children out of wedlock and twice as likely to drop out of school as those from intact families. Taxpayers bear the burden of singleness and single-parent families in increased expenditures for welfare, law enforcement and health care. But liberals fret, lest Washington take cognizance of this reality and tilt the tax code, ever so slightly, toward marriage.
Married couples matter.
There are deductions for charitable donations on the same basis. As recently as 1946, the individual exemption was high enough to keep the average family of four off the federal tax rolls. For decades now, normative families have been forced to subsidize solo parenting, through Aid to Families with Dependent Children and give-away programs. The children raised by married couples will pay the retirement benefits of the childless. The survival-conscious society doesn't treat families that foster normality and those that generate pathology impartially.