Family Life in the 21st Century
In a column on May 10th in the New York Times, columnist Ross Douthat offered some interesting information that, in one way or another, applies to all of us. Titled Red Family, Blue Family, Douthat starts by stating that "Fifty years ago, American family structures were remarkably uniform. The rich married at roughly the same rate as the poor and middle class. Divorce rates were low for the college educated and high school graduates alike. Out-of-wedlock births, while more common among African-Americans, were rare in almost every region and community."
And now???
Things are quite different. "The intact two-parent family has been in eclipse for decades now. ...the Pew Research Center reported that in 2008, 41 percent of American births occurred outside of marriage... And from divorce rates to teen births, nearly every indicator of family life now varies dramatically by education, race, geography and income."
He goes on to say, "In a rare convergence, conservatives and liberals basically agree on how this happened. First, the sexual revolution overturned the old order of single-earner households, early marriages, and strong stigmas against divorce and unwed motherhood. In its aftermath, the professional classes found a new equilibrium. Today, couples with college and (especially) graduate degrees tend to cohabit early and marry late, delaying childbirth and raising smaller families than their parents, while enjoying low divorce rates and bearing relatively few children out of wedlock.
For the rest of the country, this comfortable equilibrium remains out of reach. In the underclass (black, white and Hispanic alike), intact families are now an endangered species. For middle America, the ideal of the two-parent family endures, but the reality is much more chaotic: early marriages coexist with frequent divorces, and the out-of-wedlock birth rate keeps inching upward.
When it comes to drawing lessons from this story, though, the agreement between liberals and conservatives ends. The right tends to emphasize what’s been lost. They argue--using a theme that suggests you CAN go home again, that most Americans — especially the poor and working-class — would benefit from a stronger link between sex, marriage and procreation. The left argues that it’s the right-wing backlash against abortion, contraception and sex education that’s preventing downscale Americans from attaining the new upper-middle-class stability, and reaping its social and economic benefits."
A new book “Red Families v. Blue Families,” by two law professors, Naomi Cahn and June Carbone explores this issue further. They claim that a culturally conservative “red America” is stuck trying to sustain an outdated social model. By insisting--unrealistically--on chastity before marriage, the authors argue that social conservatives guarantee that their children will get pregnant early and often, resulting in teen childbirth, shotgun marriages and high divorce rates. This cycle could explain why socially conservative states have more family instability than the culturally liberal Northeast.
With the many problems facing our nation, this issue has not been receiving the attention it merits. For all of us, the way it plays out is vital to the long-term health and resilience of our nation. For those who would like to read more about the topic, go to http://www.amazon.com/Red-Families-v-Blue-Polarization/dp/0195372174
