Your Public Square: The Family is Prior to the State

Monday, July 7, 2008

The Family is Prior to the State

Los Angeles mayor Antonio Villaraigosa made an executive decision recently to keep certain inner city parks open until Midnight from the Fourth of July weekend until Labor Day. It’s hoped that the open parks will occupy youngsters who otherwise might be tempted to break the law.

According to the Los Angeles Times, “each park will be supervised by at-risk youths 17 to 20 years old, who will receive training and a stipend and work closely with adult gang-intervention worker.” This peer-watching-peer program will cost the city $950,000. It seems reasonable to ask why local governments are charged with minding young people in their neighborhoods. Where one might ask, are the parents? And if one were to be particularly bold, they might even question why young people are even up at midnight, let alone out and about.

Having conducted no polls on the subject, I can’t say what the reaction to such a proposal is, but I’d venture to say that it would be seen as proactive, progressive, community-minded, and the like. If one is to assume the very best of the Mayor’s intentions, it would seem he believes supervised arts and recreations programs will engage the youngsters, teaching them virtue, creativity and the futility of idleness.

The principal at work here – one which is common in large American cities – is that delinquency, crime and low academic performance among young people is the result of bad schools, poor recreations facilities, missing after-school programs or the absence of music, art, algebra, or (fill in the blank) classes for young people. And if teen pregnancy or HIV/AIDS is the concern, then surely a lack of sex education is the culprit. In short, the “community” under serves the area’s young people, resulting in predictable social pathologies, which signals that the state must do a better job of producing well-adjusted human beings.

It's important to understand that passing on the job of parenting to the state is a dereliction of duty, to say the least. Area schools, for example, indeed have important things to teach children, yet the most fundamental lessons on morality, self-control, religion and self sacrifice are entrusted to parents and not the local high school. “The education of the child belongs properly to the parent, and not to the state,” states Catholic historian Hilaire Belloc. “The family is prior to the state in right, and this is particularly true over rights of children.”

The Catholic Church has always understood the family as the original cell of social life. The Catechism of the Catholic Church points out that “authority, stability and a life of relationships within the family constitute the foundations for freedom, security and fraternity within society. The family is the community in which, from childhood, one can learn moral values, begin to honor God and make use of freedom.”

We now have a family breakdown in America. The most extreme example of this is in America’s black community. According to a recent story on National Public Radio, “recent figures suggest that now, almost 70 percent of black children are born out of wedlock.” Correctly understanding marriage as the precursor to having children, we can see that many of our communities will be places of chaos even if we managed to provide violin lessons, advanced placement calculus classes and Ivy Leagued-educated teachers.

There is certainly a place for government social programs, yet before we throw money at problems, those who claim to be leaders may find it cheaper and more honest to first challenge the culture of divorce, out-of-wedlock births, sexual promiscuity and the increasing approval of disordered lifestyles, along with the abortion clinics that set up in poor and minority neighborhoods. Christian churches, in particular, should once more emphasize traditional Judeo-Christian morality, self-control and the importance of taking responsibility for one’s actions.

We should demand – at the very least – that parents are responsible for making sure that those under 18 are in the house and not out committing crime on a warm, summer night in Los Angeles.