What a strange mix of important observations about social conditions and mores and stuff verging on culture war bullshit regarding "elites" etc.
For example:
> Those who sit at or near the apex of the social ladder (who decide what behaviors are prestigious) have decided that family stability is unimportant.
The author proceeds to quote an anecdote from a UN conference to supposedly back up this point.
In reality, what is actually going on here has nothing to do with "elites" at all. There is a political ideology (to which I suspect the author at least somewhat subscribes) that puts a high priority on self-reliance, "pulling oneself up by one's own bootstraps" and an avoidance of state intervention in the lives of individuals. There is another political ideology which acknowledges that we all benefit when society offers support and assistance to people in need of help, in part because none of us really know when or if we may find ourselves experiencing bad luck or bad judgement or both.
The latter political ideology wants to try to help and nurture everyone to whatever extent possible, to avoid judgement on the decisions/mistakes that people make and focus on how to get them back on their feet and how to minimize the social cost of those mistakes.
The former ideology opposes these efforts, and uses the tools of both the law and of funding choices to try to limit the extent and availability of a social safety net, in the belief it is an overall negative influence on society and the individuals that comprise it.
So when people who believe in the social safety net try to avoid condemning single parent families, what they are actually saying is not "family stability is unimportant". They are saying "we know that relationships sometimes, even often, do not work out, and we think that as a society we should provide as much support as we can so that the children and parents in such situations suffer the least harm possible."
They are met with responses like Rob Henderson's, that mischaracterize their concern and empathy, and with responses from legislatures that essentially say "We're not spending our money to support poor people who make bad choices, they should get their act together and hold themselves to higher behavioral standards."
I'm not taking a position here on whether either of these views is the correct one. But I do get tied of people like Henderson trying to fold fundamentally different conceptions about the role of government into some snide dig at "elites". There plenty of wealthy highly educated people in positions of economic, political and cultural power who both insist on the value of family stability AND refuse to provide meaningful support in cases where it isn't happening. Those people are "elites" too, just as much as people who suggest we should be more understanding and forgiving of these failures. Instead of taking cheap, meaningless shots in a useless culture war, it would be better to cogently lay out a rational basis for why your preferred political ideology is better for society overall, given the criticisms that already exist of its real world effects.