Social inertness is surely a response in part to the breakdown of the traditional social order itself: The waning of the life scripts provided by family, religion, and widespread traditional social norms leaves younger Americans less sure of where to step and how to build their lives.

Among other things, this likely contributes to the growing tendency to look to politics for such scripts, and so to seek more assertive and moralistic social agendas, whether of the left or right. The case for such agendas easily becomes too strident and desperate, and it runs the risk of drawing some among the young into a depraved and vicious vitalism. But it is rooted in the valid perception of a moral void that is surely at the bottom of much of the pathological passivity we now encounter.

There are also more practical and material sources of this enervation. Both blue-collar and white-collar work have become less friendly to family formation in some respects in recent decades. And elements of both the right and left have been uncomfortable with the notion that encouraging marriage and parenthood should be political priorities and public-policy objectives. Yet the case for aggressive family policy has probably also overstated the material challenges to be overcome. Many younger Americans now think it was much easier than it really was for their parents to live on one income or have that additional child. They don’t recognize that their parents also wanted these things more, and were more willing to take serious risks to achieve them. The assertive family policy we need would seek to encourage today’s younger Americans to do what their parents needed less encouragement to do. The waning desire for family formation is both a cause and an effect of the waning of support for families in our economy and politics.