From Robert Whitcomb’s “Digital Diary,’’ in GoLocal24.com

In another sign of our society’s dysfunction, Providence Mayor Jorge Elorza has put forward a plan, which apparently isn’t going anywhere for now, to spend $50,000 to buy washing machines to put in schools. The idea is that this would reduce absenteeism by students embarrassed to come to school in dirty clothes.

But cleaning clothes is a household function, not the schools’. Why are some parents – and their children - not dealing with this? I suspect it’s connected with the chaos at home of some single-parent (overwhelmingly it’s the mother) households. Please, let’s bring back marriage and two-parent households, especially in low-income places. For the schools to provide such basic services as laundry will only encourage people to throw more such intrinsically private obligations onto the public sector.

Far too many young people are ill-prepared economically and psychologically to be parents.