Marriage orients men and women toward the future, asking them not just to commit to each other but to plan, to earn, to save, and to devote themselves to advancing their children's prospects.
The principal objective of American government at every level should be to see that children are born into intact families and that they remain so.
As the family goes, so go the children.
At 14 you are still in most respects a dependent youth, in some respects a child. At 24 you are an adult. In between, extraordinary turbulences take place.
The United States in the 1980s may be the first society in history in which children are distinctly worse off than adults.
