•November 18, 2015•

By Jim Nowlan
NP Guest Columnist

I have written before in this space about my concerns over the fraying, even unraveling, of The American Family. After talking recently with 15 school social workers in my rural area, I am more distraught than ever.

How do we break the cycle of one generation after another of single mothers unable to meet the needs of their children? I have a thought or two, but such probably won’t go down easily with some readers.

I also worry that the influential “one percenters” along the prosperous lake shore north of Chicago, comfortably insulated from social mayhem elsewhere, have no clue about what is going on in small town Illinois where, ironically, many of their parents and grandparents grew up.

The school social workers I met with work for a cooperative of eight small town and rural school districts with maybe 7,000 students total, mostly white, non-Hispanic.

Extrapolating from figures for my own rural county, I am guessing that half the children in the cooperative come from single-parent families. In one district, in a small, once industrial town, 75 percent of the students are eligible for free or reduced price lunches; in the other districts, 40-50 percent or more is typical.

We didn’t have social workers when I was growing up in this area in the 1950s, not that things were idyllic back then.

Why do we need them today, I asked the mostly young, female social workers?

After a slow start, the social workers poured out their concerns.     Login or Subscribe to read the rest of this story.