Volume 41, Number 6 · March 24, 1994
The Welfare Blues
By Michael Massing
Life for Me Ain't Been No Crystal Stair
by Susan Sheehan
Pantheon, 174 pp., $21.00
Once again, single motherhood has been declared a national emergency. On October 29, 1993, the Wall Street Journal published an article, 'The Coming White Underclass,' in which Charles Murray, a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, called attention to the sharp rise in the proportion of white babies born to unwed mothers—22 percent in 1991. Murray went on to warn of the threat posed by unwed mothers of all races. 'Illegitimacy,' he wrote, 'is the single most important social problem of our time—more important than crime, drugs, poverty, illiteracy, welfare or homelessness because it drives everything else.'
Review, 5392 words
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