Many of Americans today do not take the time to realize that our nation is little by little falling apart. Our leaders are corrupt, our environment is being destroyed, and there are thousands of children being born each day. The three major social problems facing the American citizens in the 21st century are births to unmarried woman, being able to trust or government and or leaders, and lastly destroying the environment. .
The first major social problem facing America today is the crisis of births to unmarried woman. In "Straight Line to Calamity" George Will writes, "rising illegitimacy is a self-reinforcing trend because of the many mechanisms of the intergenerational transmission of poverty. The principal one is: People tend to parent as they were parented."(228). During the 60's and 70's a lot of people were having unprotected sex. This age in time most people were not worried about getting pregnant so they didn't wear a condom to stop the pregnancies. This led to many unwanted pregnancies at early ages for girls. They were bringing up children when they were barley coming out of their teens. As the children were growing up, as Will states, the children were following in the parent's footsteps. Most young parents really do not understand how to raise a child properly, meaning that they would raise their children the .
same way they were brought up in the 60's and 70's. Later in the essay Will states; "Two supposed signs of the "crisis" are America's high rate of infant mortality and low rate of .
immunization of preschool children. Many of the children that were being born were either under weight or not strong enough to survive. The use of drugs during this time was heavy, and this resulted in many infant deaths. The large-scale deaths to infants were due to the large number of teenage pregnancies, many of which were "born dead". It is hard for a doctor to save a child that weighs less than 2 pounds and cannot breath on its own.
