Jean Bethke Elshtain

About the author: Jean Bethke Elshtain is the Laura Spelman Rockefeller Professor of Social and Political Ethics at the University of Chicago.

The disintegration of the American family is one of the most serious social developments that has taken place since the 1960s. Families have ceased to be the most basic social unit upon which the rest of society is built. The late-twentieth-century children of single-parent families are growing up violent, uneducated, addicted to drugs and alcohol, and bereft of values. Without solid families, America's children and society are both damaged.

In their November 17, 1993, pastoral message, "Follow the Way of Love," Catholic bishops reminded us that "the family exists at the heart of all societies. It is the first and most basic community to which every person belongs. There...