David Brooks, "The Opportunity Gap": Number of Parents Divided by Number of Children = Emotional Nourishment

In his latest New York Times op-ed entitled "The Opportunity Gap" (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/10/opinion/brooks-the-opportunity-gap.html), David Brooks bemoans the behavioral gaps opening up between the children of affluent Americans and the children of the financially stressed lower classes. Brooks observes that the wealthy spend more time with their children and invest more money in their education and development compared with the children of the less affluent. This in turn has led to lagging test scores and more limited opportunities for poorer children.

Brooks goes on to say:

"Traditional social norms were abandoned, meaning more children are born out of wedlock. Their single parents simply have less time and resources to prepare them for a more competitive world. Working-class jobs were decimated, meaning that many parents are too stressed to have the energy, time or money to devote to their children."

I agree with David that the level of attention, love and education provided to all of America's children is of critical importance to the nation's future. However, Brooks fails to take into account the differences in the number of children born to the affluent as opposed to unwed mothers.

According to statistics provided by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (see: http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/unmarry.htm), the number of children born to unmarried women has reached an astronomic level in America:

Unmarried Childbearing
(Data are for the U.S.)

• Number of live births to unmarried women: 1,693,658
• Birth rate for unmarried women: 50.5 births per 1,000 unmarried women aged 15-44 years
• Percent of all births to unmarried women: 41.0%

I would further postulate that the number of parents divided by the number of children in a family determines the level of caring, sustenance and emotional nourishment that each child receives.

Brooks concludes:

"Liberals are going to have to be willing to champion norms that say marriage should come before childrearing and be morally tough about it. Conservatives are going to have to be willing to accept tax increases or benefit cuts so that more can be spent on the earned-income tax credit and other programs that benefit the working class.

Political candidates will have to spend less time trying to exploit class divisions and more time trying to remedy them — less time calling their opponents out of touch elitists, and more time coming up with agendas that comprehensively address the problem. It’s politically tough to do that, but the alternative is national suicide."

Amen.