RICHARDSON: Falling in the gaps
GAP: An incomplete or deficient area; a break in continuity; a problem caused by some disparity.
-- Merriam Webster
There are all kinds of gaps -- income, education, nutritional, etc. -- but the one I see as the most important is the parental gap. If there is a parental gap, there is a greater chance you also will have the other gaps. They seem to run in a pack.
While there are all kinds of studies that show children in stable, two-parent homes achieve higher marks in school than children coming from single-parent households, none of the studies I’ve read can declare with certainty which gap (income, parental, etc.) has the most sway. And since gaps stand side by side, in most cases, which one do we want to eliminate first?
I say we take aim at the parental gap. It’s my belief that if we attack that gap, the others eventually will die on the vine. The parental gap is a foundational gap that gives birth to many of the other gaps.
We are in trouble because that parental gap gets bigger with every birth, particularly in the black community, where seven of 10 births are to unwed mothers. So when we say children have to stop having children, that is entirely correct, but statistics show that it’s not just teenagers having babies without a husband around. How do we address that? The short answer is, we can’t, but there are two approaches open to us.
According to the Center for Children and Families, there are two basic ways to address the parental gap. Both ways have been tried here at one time or another. One way is to build the skills of parents, and the other is to supplement their efforts through mentoring, early childhood day care and programs like KIPP. Remember the Saturday Parent University sessions? Remember the work with parents at the Welcome Center? Each school now has a staff person that’s supposed to reach out to parents and get them involved with their children’s education and maybe open the door for more advancement by the parents. Just because there is an income gap does not mean there has to be a parental gap.
For example, I don’t know about you, but my mother was a nurse who worked the graveyard shift. We never had a new car, just a series of jalopies. There were times we didn’t have a car. Was there income disparity? Sure, but there was no parental gap, and that’s why I am where I am today. Nothing changes overnight, but my mother’s sacrifices have paid off for me.
Needless to say, you don’t want any sort of gap, but the gaps we see today are entirely predictable. We have several generations of boys and girls who have never seen a functional family with a father and mother living in the same house. The absence of one parent, usually the father, means the family’s engine is working twice as hard to maintain speed. Twice as hard to get the kids to and fro. Twice as hard to check homework and prepare meals and talk to teachers. That produces one tired engine.
I wish it was as easy as waving a magic wand, and in a puff of smoke, wedding bells would start ringing and divorce would disappear, but that’s not happening, so what do we do? Solving the parental gap is one of the issues that is at the point of the spear for all of the agencies that signed up to work together at the Promise Center. We can’t eliminate poverty without addressing the parental gap. We can’t eliminate all of the other issues we face, particularly in blight-stricken Macon, without parental leadership.
I won’t suppose to tell you how this came to be. I will say it didn’t use to be this way. When children are allowed to grow like weeds in a field, we get the predictable results: more crime, less growth, more civic unrest.
Those who are committed to addressing our ills have to be committed to eliminating the parental gap as well. It’s a long-term commitment that must be undertaken, or this community will continue to suffer the consequences.
Charles E. Richardson is The Telegraph’s editorial page editor. He can be reached at 478-744-4342 or via email at crichardson@macon.com. Tweet@crichard1020.
This story was originally published February 1, 2015 at 12:00 AM with the headline "RICHARDSON: Falling in the gaps ."