From Don Peck’s March 2010 article in The Atlantic, “”How A New Jobless Era Will Transform America”:

… unemployed men are vastly more likely to beat their wives or children.

In the article, he quotes W. Bradford Wilcox, the director of the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia:

The marginalization of working-class men in family life has far-reaching consequences.

“Marriage plays an important role in civilizing men. They work harder, longer, more strategically. They spend less time in bars and more time in church, less with friends and more with kin. And they’re happier and healthier.”

Communities with large numbers of unmarried, jobless men take on unsavory character over time.

He also quotes Harvard public policy prof and family life expert Kathryn Edin:

“When young man can’t transition into formal-sector jobs, they sell drugs and drink and do drugs. And it wreaks havoc on family life. They think, ‘Hey, if I’m 23 and I don’t have a baby, there’s something wrong with me.’ They’re following the pattern of their fathers in terms of the timing of childbearing, but they don’t have the jobs to support it. So their families are falling apart — and often spectacularly.”

Yikes.

What to do?