One Step Forward, Two Steps Back

HOLD THE APPLAUSE. Before we congratulate the liberals and the Black community for recognizing the "crisis in the Black family," we should ensure that their response isn't an ineffective and self-righteous treatment of a critical problem.

The new awareness about the effect of female-headed families--particularly those headed by teenagers--on Black economic standing would ordinarily be cause for celebration. Unfortunately, the moralistic orientation of this new concern dims the hope that it can be translated into an effective remedy for the problem of teenage motherhood.

More and more, those concerned with the problem of teenage pregnancy among Blacks are advocating not specific programs, but a moral regeneration of the Black poor.

Black leader Roger Wilkins, for example, feels that "the hardest job is cultural: to arrest the moral deterioration occurring in the poorest segments of Black culture and to reverse it....Only Black people can do this," The media has blessed this point of view. A New York Times editorial praised Blacks for seriously considering the idea that such moral deterioration has led to the "catastrophic" condition of many Blacks.

When then-Assistant Secretary of Labor Daniel Moynihan first drew national attention to the teenage pregnancy problem in his famous report in 1965, Blacks and liberals accused him of racism. Until recently, Blacks suppressed any discussion of the deterioration of the Black family for fear of giving ammunition to those who had always blamed Blacks for their own difficulties.

Now, as The Wall Street Journal observed, "the rhetoric has cooled and the grim statistics stare everyone in the face, white and black." Unfortunately, in their belated acceptance of the problem of teenage pregnancy, Blacks and liberals have headed in the wrong direction.

ADVOCATES OF THE moral regeneration approach believe that the moral fiber of ghetto teenagers is inferior to that of mainstream America. Black leaders and others are now saying that they--from their higher socioeconomic position--have decided that ghetto Blacks must be morally reformed.

Comments such as "I believe teenage pregnancy cannot be stopped by programs. It has to be morals, and morals come from God," are counterproductive. It is not the task of those interested in remedying the problems of Black teenagers to pass judgment on their morals. Their strategy should be to seek to remedy specific causes of teenage pregnancy.

And yet, an editorial in this week's The New Republic on preventing teen motherhood barely mentions improved sex education and availability of contraceptives. Instead, the editors jump onto the moral regeneration band-wagon, stressing a moral uplift to be led by upper-class Blacks and the church.

The problem is not teenage sex but teenage motherhood, except in the eyes of self-righteous individuals who seek to impose their values on others. Moralizing is no substitute for policy recommendations to prevent teen motherhood and to make women self-sufficient as single parents.

Sex education programs can be implemented immediately, but vague talk of trickle-down cultural regeneration hardly translates into effective action. If the recently awakened concern leads only to a flurry of arbitrary moral judgments, it will fail of its promise.