Newsweek's David Jefferson interviewed several of his classmates at Ulysses S. Grant High School in Los Angeles' San Fernando Valley to see how the class of '82 had been affected by divorce.

The divorce rate in 1982 was more than double that of the 1950s. It had grown in the fertile ground tilled by the feminists' message that "a woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle." It shot up partially because, in 1969, California Gov. Ronald Reagan signed the nation's first no-fault divorce law, allowing one partner to end a marriage simply by citing "irreconcilable differences." By 1981, the peak year for the divorce rate, 5.3 per 1,000 people were getting divorced every year. The rate is lower today, but marriage is also down.

Sadly, Jefferson wrote, every year approximately 1 million children see their parents divorce, triple the number who did so in the 1950s. Studies show these kids "are twice as likely as their peers to get divorced themselves," and more likely to postpone marriage, or never to marry at all. They also experience more academic, psychological and behavioral problems.

The Newsweek story delves into the personal impact divorce had on Jefferson and 12 of his now 44-year-old classmates. During high school, most of them were pretty quiet about how their parents' divorces were affecting them. There was a stigma around divorce then. The less said the better. If your last name was different than your parents' you were obliged to explain. But only best friends had to know about summers and holidays spent out of state or that you lived separately from siblings. And you certainly didn't advertise that you'd spent your elementary school years wearing a necklace with a key that unlocked a lonely house every afternoon.

Twenty-six years after graduation, fewer than half of David Jefferson's classmates are in their first marriages. Several admitted reticence to marry at all. Others are raising children alone. Two, including Jefferson, are in homosexual relationships. All describe divorce's negatives: sadness, isolation and loss of innocence. Still, most of them don't blame their parents.

The Newsweek story -- headlined "Splitsville" on the cover -- describes divorce in terms of the cost to human happiness. But divorce also exacts a price from society in dollars and cents. A study recently released by Georgia College & State University reveals that divorce and out-of-wedlock childbearing cost the American taxpayer $112 billion a year. Researchers set out to measure the cost of "family fragmentation" by analyzing the expenses associated with welfare, health care, criminal justice and education. The $112 billion also includes lost tax revenue from individuals who are more likely to be poor or to be imprisoned for a part of their wage-earning lives. According to the sponsors of the study, the major takeaway is that government should invest more in programs that advocate and strengthen marriage. These stats should certainly be dropped into the current battle over the funding of abstinence education. The research also provides ammunition for those seeking changes in divorce laws.

That's why it's crazy even to think about writing off social conservatism as a major factor in this election cycle. A lot of people are saying that the November election is going to be all about the economy. With the mortgage mess, the falling dollar, rising oil and food prices affecting voters, social conservatives are being told that their issues (life, marriage, family) won't be as prominent as they were in the last election cycle. Economic conservatives, pushing low taxes and small government policies as fixes for the economy, sometimes see the moral issues as a distraction. Their argument goes something like "Why should I care how people conduct their personal lives? In a free country, that's none of government's business."

But it should be. When people deviate from the biblical model for the family, it gets expensive for the country.

Overall, two-parent families are better off economically than families headed by single parents. Two-parent homes are much more likely to be financially self-sufficient and not to need help from the government. Divorce has a disproportionately negative effect on a woman's financial situation and that of the children she's raising. Households headed by women who were never married are even more likely to be poor. In many of these situations, the government has to come in to pick up the pieces, providing welfare, health care, job training and child care subsidies. Continued...