By Timothy P. Carney:
America’s elite — that is, the 30% of adults with at least a college degree — enjoy one very particular privilege that enhances their life and nearly guarantees their success. And too many of them refuse to share it.
The privilege isn’t a college education. That merely correlates with what really matters.
And the greatest privilege isn’t material wealth. That sure makes life easier, but wealth mostly correlates with the real privilege I’m referring to.
America’s elite have a secret weapon that steers them and their children away from drugs, early death, violence, dropping out of high school, dropping out of the labor force, and so many other modern social ills. It’s called the traditional family: A married couple raising their children at home.
As the wealthiest and best-educated Americans steadily tack toward the Democratic Party, this truth butts against some stubborn assumptions made by both sides.
Liberals in the media are handling the political realignment of the elites by pointing out that the blue states have better sociological outcomes than the red states. They assign these good outcomes to the open-mindedness that transcends tradition and old forms of living.
Conservatives, meanwhile, are apt to assume the liberal elites are a bunch of decadent swingers, eschewing marriage, embracing free love, and getting abortions for fun. We see Miley Cyrus, Charlie Sheen, and Cardi B celebrating their vice and debauchery, or we watch the oversexualized and amoral films produced by Hollywood, and we imagine that this is how wealthy liberals live in Los Angeles.
This is far from the truth. A new study by Brad Wilcox and Wendy Wang at the Institute for Family Studies lays out the real picture.
“When it comes to their own families,” the authors discovered, “California elites with kids overwhelmingly ‘live right’ in private, giving their children the benefit of growing up in a two-parent family.”
Read more: Washington Examiner
