Liberal social and educational activists can do very little to save children from violence ("Advocates aim to save Baltimore children from impact of violence," Dec. 13).
The root cause of the violence, poverty and other maladies afflicting such children is single parenthood.
The Great Society programs of the mid-1960s saw a massive increase in single parenthood financed by a shift of focus from welfare for two-parent families to welfare for single mothers. All this was overseen by an expanding, well-paid industry of advocates.
Back then, out-of-wedlock birth rates for whites and blacks were, respectively, 3 percent and 23 percent. Today those figures are 28 percent and 73 percent. In Baltimore's inner-city black neighborhoods, the rate of out-of-wedlock births is well above 90 percent.
The levels of both domestic violence and street crime, as well as poverty, addiction, school failure and other problems, are directly proportional to the rate of out-of-wedlock births in a community.
There may be no solution to the mess created by liberal big government. But if there is, it must begin with the cultural and governmental rejection of the unfortunate notion that single parenthood is morally equivalent to the two-parent family.
Barry C. Steel, Phoenix