Families in Trouble

There is mounting evidence that American children are more and more in peril, in part because they are less and less assured of the sustained care, support, and safety that comes only with order in their immediate environments. Children are bearing the brunt of a profound cultural shift whose negative features we are now in a position to observe and whose continuing costs will last much longer than our own lifetimes.

Youth themselves, that always suspect category, appear to confirm such dire assessments. Under the headline “Profiles of Today’s Youths: Many Just Don’t Seem to Care,” the New York Times recently sketched a portrait of an “indifferent generation.” The most apathetic and alien...