Both Left and Rights thought that America was coming apart.
Although the 60s were dominated by the Vietnam War and the Civil Rights Movement, an equally big policy challenge was how to save the nuclear family.
The Left thought greater government support was needed:
- 1965, Moynihan published ‘The Negro Family: The Case for National Action’ or the Moynihan Report.
- This study of poverty in AA ghettos argued that the underlying cause of inequality between black and white was the family structure.
- Moynihan believed the growing incidence of single motherhood was raising a generation of AA males who lacked a male role model.
He advised Johnson that the solution was job training and education programmes that would empower black men. The welfare state would have to grow.
In response, Johnson declared a ‘War on Poverty’ creating entitlements to individuals.
The use of government subsidies to buy meals increased dramatically under both Democrat and Republican Administrations:
- The number of people using food stamps went from 500,000 in 1965 to 10 million in 1971.
- This was effective, the proportion of Americans living in poverty went from 19% in 1964 to 11.1% in 1973.
- However, Moynihan’s ambition to save the black family failed: Although median black family income rose by 53% in the 1960s, the rate of single parenthood also
- increased by over 50%.
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- They argued that government generosity undermined the family, encouraging crime, drugs and educational underachievement for those on the dole.
- It seemed to them as if those that were impoverished were not living the ‘American way’, forging their own paths without help from the government.Conservatives:
Conservatives claimed that the welfare state was not the solution but the problem, and that the real goal of liberals like Friedan and Johnson was to destroy the nuclear family.