The "Up All Night" problem

David Brooks today writes (behind TimesSelect) about the different approaches Barack Obama and John Edwards have toward poverty policy. He doesn't have a lot of confidence in either scheme, but he concludes:

If I had to choose between the two, I guess I’d go with the Obama plan. I’d lean that way because Obama seems to have a more developed view of social capital. Edwards offers vouchers, job training and vows to create a million temporary public-sector jobs. Obama agrees, but takes fuller advantage of home visits, parental counseling, mentoring programs and other relationship-building efforts.

The Obama policy provides more face-to-face contact with people who can offer praise or disapproval. Rising out of poverty is difficult — even when there are jobs and good schools. It’s hard to focus on a distant degree or home purchase. But human beings have a strong desire for approval and can accomplish a lot with daily doses of praise and censure. Standards of behavior are contagious that way.

A neighborhood is a moral ecosystem, and Obama, the former community organizer, seems to have a better feel for that. It’s not only policies we’re looking for in selecting a leader, it’s a sense of how the world works. Obama’s plan isn’t a sure-fire cure for poverty, but it does reveal an awareness of the supple forces that can’t be measured and seen.

That phrase -- "a neighborhood is a moral ecosystem" -- reminded me of something I learned from an inner-city firefighter on my recent trip to Louisiana. He works in a poor, predominantly black part of Baton Rouge, though he doesn't live there. He said that one of the strangest things he had to get used to when he started working at that fire station was seeing young children out in the streets till the wee hours of the morning. Night after night, he says, you'll drive through the streets of his service area seeing children, some in diapers, hanging out till past midnight -- in fact, he said, they don't come out till dark. He wondered how on earth those kids managed to make it through school living like that. He has acquired a very, very dim view of their parents.

His story brought to mind something a regular reader of this blog -- who may want to tell the story herself in the comboxes below -- told me recently. She'd had lunch with an African-American preacher, a woman she's known over the years, who ministers to poor black folks in the city. The preacher was pretty downcast about the community, saying that you can see children -- little children -- hanging out late at night, while their mothers are sitting in their houses watching TV with their boyfriends, as if they didn't have a care in the world. As I recall the reader's account, the preacher despaired of helping children whose parents cared so little for their welfare.

Another story: in Dallas, there's a prominent African-American minister who has a thriving church in south Dallas (no, not T.D. Jakes). When he and his wife first moved to Dallas, they wanted to start an afterschool ministry to give children of their (all-black, inner-city) church somewhere to go after school, so they'd stay away from trouble. What the minister and his wife discovered, much to their surprise, is that when the kids would come over, they wouldn't seek help with their homework. They'd fall asleep. All of them. What the pastor learned was that these poor kids had to live lives of such constant chaos -- particularly in the matter of their mothers staying up all night, partying with boyfriends -- that when they stepped into a well-ordered home, where there was peace and quiet, they slept.

How widespread is the "up all night" problem -- and how does a government program address it? Or is this something that only pastors and community leaders like them can tackle? How do effectively improve the moral ecosystem of poor neighborhoods by turning self-centered, neglectful parents into ones who put their children first?