Families with children are under assault. The assault is quiet, attracting few headlines, no congressional investigations, no knowing conversations at the office or at parties. The assault is stealthy, but the effects are profound.

This year, more families with children will file for bankruptcy than divorce. Motherhood is now the single best predictor that a woman will end up in financial collapse. And, contrary to every popular assumption, the parents who find themselves in the bankruptcy courts are not chronically poor. Rather, when measured by criteria such as occupation, college education, and homeownership, more than 90 percent of the families at the end of their financial ropes are solidly middle class.


The lines at the bankruptcy courts are not the only signs of growing middle-class distress. A family with children is now 75 percent more likely to be late on credit-card payments than a family with no children. Home foreclosures have more than tripled in less than 25 years, and families with children are more likely than anyone to lose the roofs over their heads. Economists estimate that for every family officially declaring bankruptcy this year, seven more have debt loads suggesting they should file for bankruptcy -- if only they were more savvy about financial matters. Why are families with children under such powerful, disproportionate, and growing economic strain? The costs of educating children -- once borne by taxpayers generally -- are increasingly the responsibility of individuals. The costs are bringing parents to their knees.

As the cost of educating children before they enter public schools has risen, so has the cost of educating children after they graduate high school. Once again, the change over the past three decades is stunning. A generation or so ago, polling data showed that Americans were likely to believe that there were many avenues for young people to make their way into the middle class, including paths that didn't require college diplomas. Today, however, Americans are twice as likely to believe that the moon landing was faked than they are to believe that a college degree doesn't matter. In a diverse culture full of contrarians who relish their differences with one another, faith in the power of higher education is the new secular religion. Americans now report that a college degree is the single most important determinant of a young person's chances of success -- even more significant than getting along well with others or having a good work ethic.

So what have parents done? They have paid and paid some more. After adjusting for inflation, in-state tuition and fees at the average state university have nearly doubled in less than 25 years. To put that in perspective, the price of college has grown twice as fast as the average professor's salary, three times faster than the cost of food, and eight times faster than the cost of electricity. To pay state-school fees, the average family would have to commit 17 percent of its total pretax income to this expense. For parents whose children can't get into state universities, the private alternatives are even more prohibitive. Middle-class parents routinely speak of college educations that cost more than $100,000 -- much of it funded by second mortgages, education loans, and credit cards.

Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan recently delivered a speech on "the financial health of America's households." Amid rising bankruptcies, mortgage foreclosures, and credit defaults, he concluded that families have nothing to worry about. "[T]he household sector seems to be in good shape," he said. He typifies today's relationship between the government and families with children: no acknowledgement of a problem and no help in sight.