Income Inequality is the Leading Destroyer of American Families- says Marriage Therapist

This year's election has become a circus of fools and folly.

On the Republican side we have a reality TV star and a posse of human rights bandits manipulating a desperate and angry crowd.

On the Democratic side it's not much better. There are candidates who talk of the most important issue facing our nation — income inequality — but one's used her position of power to feather her own family's nest and the other speaks of income inequality in a polarizing voice.

America is not a socialist nation. It's a nation whose excellence was built on the hopes and dreams of a capitalistic system, a system where every citizen regardless of race, religion, gender and socioeconomic position can achieve a better life for herself and her family.

In order to get our great country back on track, we must focus first and foremost on reducing the gulf between the haves and the have-not's. This can only occur by reinvesting in the emotional and physical well-being of the American family in the full range of its expression.

As a licensed marriage and family therapist who works in the trenches with American families at all levels of the income spectrum, I see each and every hour of each and every day how the stresses and strains of income inequality are destroying the emotional and physical well being of our families.

At the heart of this ability to realize the American Dream is the well-being of America's marriages and families. To succeed in capitalism's competitive environment, our citizens must first have a stable and nurturing launching pad from which they can venture bravely out into the world.

Historically, the institution of marriage and the integrity of the family unit provided this pad. We've made great strides in honoring the institution of marriage by expanding the human beings who can enjoy its benefits, but we've blindly allowed the pernicious effects of income inequality to erode the well-being of the American family.

These stresses manifest in a host of addictive disorders including alcoholism and drug abuse, domestic violence, infidelities, divorce and parental neglect.

Recently, the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs and Department of Economics at Princeton University empirically confirmed my clinical impressions. In a groundbreaking study,* the researchers found that white middle-class Americans are living in an acute state of economic stress that has caused a sharp decrease in their physical health and an alarming increase in their death rates.

The families that come to me are broken, defeated by an economic system that has sold them a dream of class transcendence while delivering an economic nightmare. They are drowning in debt, victimized by our financial system, bullied by employers, and invalidated by a system that exploits their vulnerabilities.

Parents can no longer promise their children a better future while; their children are forced to bear the weight of a system that's built against them. Our children, who were once able to savor the joy of youth, now struggle under enormous financial pressures: How will they ever be able to support not just themselves and their future families, but also their aging parents?

We need to protect the expanded definition of marriage rather than limiting it. We must provide families with the resources they need to regain their footing: Early childhood education, parental support, affordable and free education for our citizens and affordable and free mental health and addiction treatment services for those families who struggle under its weight.

How will we pay for it? We'll pay in real dollars and cents rather that in the usurious emotional tax economic inequality is currently extracting from those families and individuals most unable to pay.

t's an investment we must make to succeed in the hostile and competitive world in which we Americans live, and it's the only way our incredible country can get itself back on track.

Dr. Paul Hokemeyer, Ph.D., J.D., is a licensed marriage and family therapist who is an internationally renowned expert in treating the behavioral and addictive disorders that impact individuals, couples and families. In addition to holding a Ph.D. in psychology he holds a doctorate in law (J.D.) and worked as a law clerk to a justice of the Ohio Supreme Court. His academic and clinical research has been published by Lambert Academic Press and The Journal of Wealth Management. He is a clinical member of The American Association of Marriage and Family Therapists and is regularly quoted as an expert in a wide variety of media outlets.

[*Rising morbidity and mortality in midlife among white non-Hispanic Americans in the 21st century. (Case and Deaton, 2015) Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs and Department of Economics, Princeton University.]