“If the Occupiers were right about one thing, it was that there is a growing inequality in American life,” writes David Paul Deavel in One Percent or 33: America’s Real Inequality Problem in the Acton Institute’s Religion and Liberty. But to the extent they articulate any explanation, they leave out a very important one, one he thinks explained in great and persuasive detail by Mitch Pearlstein in From Family Collapse to America’s Decline: The Educational, Economic, and Social Costs of Family Fragmentation. Pearlstein, writes Deavel,
focuses on the 33 percent. This is the percent of children living with one parent rather than two. These children, victims of what many call “family fragmentation,” start out with tremendous social and educational deficits that are hard to narrow, nevermind close. These are most often the children for whom upward mobility has stalled. Their economic well-being has led to decline in American competitiveness and also the deeper cleavages of inequality that have been so widely noted.
One (this is me, not Deavel) doesn’t have to discount the wickedness of bankers to see that a dysfunctional family will severely reduce most children’s ability to live successfully in a world in which bankers are wicked. One might, as Chesterton did, suggest a connection between the bankers’ self-interest and their promotion of programs that destabilize and undermine the family. (Who invests in this stuff, after all?) This would seem to be a n0-brainer for the Occupiers. But the sexual revolution and its effects on the formation of children is one of those aspects of the contemporary establishment of which those earnest critics of the establishment are oblivious. Judging from Deavel’s review, Mitch Pearlstein sees it clearly.
December 29th, 2011 | 8:55 pm
Let us not multiple entities beyond necessity. These children also serve Big Welfare, which actually implemented the programs, and their parents, and in due course, they themselves are voters for politicans who voted in the programs.
Bankers are unnecessary until it has been demonstrated that these two forces are insufficient.
December 30th, 2011 | 6:49 am
The proposition that people are poor because they live in unmarried-mother families has always struck me as more than a little bit self-serving. Isn’t it more likely that people live in unmarried-mother families because they’re poor?
Specifically, when a man can’t find work, he’s not likely to propose to his girlfriend, she’s not likely to accept if he does, and, once the children begin arriving, she won’t want him around, eating (and drinking) her meager paycheck.
But one does feel so much more virtuous blaming it on them. That way nobody has to fork over any money to help them out. He’s just a loser, and she’s loose. Taxpayers love to hear that, and everybody knows taxpayers vote.
December 30th, 2011 | 7:20 am
The bankers that I know are people who are a lot like you and me. No more wicked, no more virtuous, just trying to make a living by serving the common good. So I’m with Mary on keeping the eye on the more root causes.
Seems to me that in our land of plenty (notwithstanding our recession, which is real enough, we are still richer than almost everybody, and than we ever were in the past), poverty is largely a chosen condition. The poorest quintile is largely made up of 3 groups: newcomers, whether legal or illegal, who decided that poverty here is better than whatever level they enjoyed in the home country. Most of the rest are those who have chosen single parenthood–either bearing children routinely out of wedlock, or leaving their marriages. A third major category (not totally distinct from the previous one) are those who are generational welfare recipients.
The immigrants tend to move to higher wealth categories within a generation; the others have the opportunity to do the same, but seem to take advantage of it less frequently.
Bottom line: the bankers have nothing to gain from family breakup or from poverty itself. They are not to blame. Chronic poverty in the US is mostly a moral problem. Blame you and me for a) permitting the sexual revolution to run its course unchecked; b) failing to provide good examples, eg by endorsing contraception, abortion, serial monogomy, etc; c) failing to move our church leaders to preach and teach the moral code of Christianity.
December 30th, 2011 | 8:49 am
I agree with Mary and Joe–I don’t see how bankers profit from poverty, but I surely see how politicians do!
Felapton proposes a chicken-and-egg problem of poverty and suggests that poverty causes the avoidance of marriage. In my observation, yes and no. (I am a community college teacher.) I meet some young people who are “engaged” couples with children. Usually they are cohabiting and planning to marry “someday.” The arrangement may continue for years. Do they feel that they can’t afford a wedding? Or are they reluctant to make the commitment? The issue is not that the mother doesn’t want the father around!
However, I see many more single mothers who were dating the fathers of their children and had no serious intentions of any kind; once the pregnancy occurs, the two realize that they do not want marriage. They are very young, they have not finished college (sometimes not even high school), and their career and job choices are very limited. Voila: poverty.
It’s hard to convey how the culture of young people just ignores marriage; the idea of “waiting” for sex until marriage is foreign to most.
Of course another category is the divorced single mother (or sometimes father). Does poverty cause divorce? I don’t know, but divorce certainly causes poverty.
I see the same sad stories over and over again. Believe me, it’s not a matter of feeling “virtuous”: it’s more like watching a slow-motion train wreck and being powerless to prevent the coming disaster. Sadness is the predominant emotion.
December 30th, 2011 | 10:25 am
Felapton — that doesn’t explain how until recently, most of Western society was poorer in real terms and standard of living than today, but unmarried-mother families were fairly rare, especially if you don’t count those taken in by extended family when the misfortune of an out of wedlock pregnancy occurred.
December 30th, 2011 | 12:54 pm
[...] Decline: The Educational, Economic, and Social Costs of Family Fragmentation has been picked up by First Things and Mere Comments. Deavel’s review was published in the Fall 2011 issue of Religion & [...]
December 30th, 2011 | 1:31 pm
The proposition that people are poor because they live in unmarried-mother families has always struck me as more than a little bit self-serving. Isn’t it more likely that people live in unmarried-mother families because they’re poor?
No.
While it is true that poverty can cause single motherhood, there is compelling evidence that single parenthood causes poverty.
A single-parent family (whether headed by a woman or a man) is inherently weaker and less stable than an intact family.
It is not only true in America, but also in third world countries where the single biggest risk factor for poverty is the absence or death of a parent.
There is also evidence suggesting that larger families are more resilient/resistant to poverty than small ones.
My own personal definition of poverty is an invisible line, sort of like the government’s cutoff but defined by function rather than by some arbitrary number. It is the point where, if you fall below this point, you can’t get yourself back out without some sort of assistance. A middle class family whose breadwinner becomes unemployed could fall below this point at the moment when the breadwinner no longer has enough money to get himself to a middle class job interview (that is, he lacks the money to get his suit dry-cleaned, buy a plane ticket or pay for the gas, etc.) – every member in a family is a resource; a large family has a much larger pool of resources. An uncle can loan you a car; a sister can get your suit dry-cleaned for you; a grandparent might know someone who can help you find a lead or tip that helps you find a better job. Consider: according to research cited in the book “What Color Is Your Parachute?”, most jobs are filled from within networks, starting with small networks and expanding outward only as needed. A family is a rich network. A broken family is a fragmented network (or a network with huge chunks missing entirely).
(For an extreme/exaggerated and almost entirely fictional example of what sorts of economic and social favors a strong family can provide, see the Mario Puzo book “The Godfather”.)
December 31st, 2011 | 9:31 am
The multi-generational poor families headed by single mothers is worrisome. What interests me is the recent phenomenon described by Anonymous—the increasing number of single women at his college impregnated by boyfriends whom they never considered marrying. Many of this new cohort are from middle class and upper middle class families. I can think of at least 10 such women in my family and those of friends. None planned the pregnancies. Several are no longer with the babies’ fathers—despite appearances, they say they were “not serious” in the first case. Most have moved on to new boyfriends, although the same lack of “seriousness” seems. None are self-supporting. They might not show up as public welfare recipients because they live on hand-outs from their middle-class relatives. None talk of marriage; indeed, they resent the idea—why should people get married when they’d “probably just break up later anyway”?
These women are no longer upwardly mobile and are not really in the middle class anymore. I dread the implications for our society. Ruth Marcus addressed this issue in the Washington Post recently, but otherwise I don’t think it has gotten the attention it deserves.
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