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March 28, 2007
Hymnowitz on "the marriage gap"
An good essay on marriage: Kay Hymnowitz's Marriage and Caste in America, a paper given at the Heritage Foundation. she discusses what she calls "the marriage gap":
We are becoming a nation of separate and unequal families that threatens to last into the foreseeable future. On the one hand, well-educated women make more money. They get married, only then have their children, and raise them with their husbands. Those children are more likely to grow up to be well-adjusted, to do well in school, to go to college, to marry and only then have children.
On the other hand, we have low-income women raising children alone who are more likely to be low-income, to drop out of school or, if they do make it to college, go to a less elite college, and to become single parents themselves.
Posted by David Mills at 07:48 PM | Permalink
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Kay Hymowitz has an excellent article on the "Marriage Gap" in America: We are becoming a nation of separate and unequal families that threatens to last into the foreseeable future. On the one hand, well-educated women make more money. They... [Read More]
Tracked on Mar 29, 2007 3:23:27 PM
Comments
Excellent article and resonates with what I see at the pregnancy resource center where I volunteer. I learned a new word too--"piker", as in American wedding extravaganzas make Marie Antoinette look like a piker (loose quote from Ms. (Dr.?) Hymnowitz). Quite a laugh on that one.
Posted by: Pam | Mar 28, 2007 8:59:17 PM
"Piker." Nice! It means something like a Scotsman from Missouri, according to the internet.
Posted by: Ethan Cordray | Mar 28, 2007 11:54:11 PM
If you'd rather watch and listen than read, you can view this presentation here. Scroll down to January 30.
Posted by: Judy Warner | Mar 29, 2007 4:53:28 AM
Allow me to suggest another piece of the puzzle. This piece will probably alienate a large share of the readership here, but I think it's valid.
One reason men are reluctant to get married and often have to be hounded into it, one reason that marriage often doesn't "work out", is the change in the power relationship over the last several decades.
It used to be that men led and women followed, broadly speaking. The practical consequences of this fact and the fact that divorce was highly stigmatized and difficult to obtain, was that the man felt like he "got something" out of the marriage. He got a wife who knew her role was to follow his lead. He got children who knew exactly who was in charge. He got a family clearly under his leadership and a wife who was mother, housekeeper, babysitter, etc. as well as lover. He got the freedom to work and make a good living for all without having to concern himself with the implications of the role of being a "partner" in a marriage.
Being a "partner" in a marriage means that a man not only has no real power within the family (unless it is economic power during the duration of the marriage itself), but also means that the wife can leave, whenever any spirit moves her, with the children, and all the man will have to show for his marriage is child support and possibly maintenance. This is not a trivial concern because almost half of all marriages end up that way.
Now, of course, because feminism has taken its toll on even conservatives, no one has the courage to point this out. But men know it. They just can't or won't talk about it. They simply act on it by being reluctant to get and to stay married.
Unless we're all resigned to this being a permanent problem (and I think most people actually are resigned), then fixing the apatriarchal nature of our society ought to be a serious concern. Problem is . . . well, it's obvious isn't it? How do you get women to go along with something they have been conditioned (for two generations now) to believe is against their individual and collective interest? Answer is: You don't. Thus we have a problem which will only be solved over a long period of time. Trends change. Logic plays itself out in social carnage. A society comes to accept uncomfortable truths when the alternatives appear even less appetizing - - but not quickly. It takes generations to forget old, wrong lessons learned.
Posted by: Scott Pennington | Mar 29, 2007 3:17:02 PM
And...uh, men got something else out of it, too, besides headship of the family and so forth. That "something else" is now widely available with no strings attached - and that, too , is partly a legacy of feminism.
(Something about "milk" and "buying cows", if I remember the old saying.)
Posted by: Joe Long | Mar 29, 2007 3:54:19 PM
Dear Joe,
You mean women didn't get the same "something else" out of marriage too? :-)
Posted by: James A. Altena | Mar 29, 2007 4:08:16 PM
I don't know how much of the readership you expect to alienate, Scott. That sounds an awful lot like what Esolen and Hutchens often say around here. Feminist values paradoxically devalue women as they assert their rights to marital equality. Greater sexual "liberation" meant that whereas once women had to guard against marrying a bounder, now men have to, too.
Speaking economically, decreasing the barriers to divorce has decreased the value of marriage, as long-term gains become more risky.
I wonder if that economic effect is partially responsible for the divide Hymnowitz cites? It may be essentially rational for poor women to avoid marriage, as the arrangement is less likely to have a positive economic effect for them, and it would stand to reason that their economic insecurity would make them more risk-averse to the potential costs of a failed marriage.
Richer, more secure women would be less averse due to their greater ability to absorb ill effects, while also likely anticipating a higher payoff based on their own past experiences (especially from their parents).
If you have benefited from a good marriage yourself, you are likely to try for the same result, but if your parents' marriage failed you you are going to be more pessimistic. What makes this a lot sadder for the poor women is that such expecations are to a large degree self-fulfilling.
One could go deeper and speculate on whether women are primarily considering their own interests or that of their children, and whether each outcome represents an unequal but stable strategic equilibrium -- but I'm already trying to punch above my weight here!
This sort of analysis also points up a potential policy solution: increase the economic payoff to successful marriage, particularly in a progressive manner (meaning make the benefit larger for poorer people). Tax breaks seem like an obvious tool. Also, increase the barriers to leaving marriage, resecuring the long-term benefits. That's not likely to happen, though.
I wonder where addressing all this inequality falls on the Democratic political agenda?
Posted by: Ethan Cordray | Mar 29, 2007 4:14:27 PM
There's a book by Myron Magnet called The Dream and the Nightmare. I read it when it first came out in 1993 and it explained a lot of things to me. Its thesis is that the educated classes engaged in all sorts of social experiments for themselves, and they could absorb the consequences because of their financial, cultural and intellectual resources. But their experiments became common social mores, and when they were adopted by poorer and less educated people the results were disastrous. Think about college kids smoking marijuana versus crack addicts in the inner city, for example.
I think this describes what happened with marriage. The looser divorce laws were a result of educated people deciding that they wanted to be "free" to hop around from relationship to relationship. These laws haven't had a great result for educated people, but for poorer and less educated people they've been catastrophic. And then the points Ethan mentions have kicked in, perpetuating the cycle.
Hymowitz points out that those with more education are coming out of this sorry episode, but the lower classes are not. It is a legacy of frivolous baby-boomers that will take a long time to mend, if it ever does.
I'm not sure what role working women play in this, Scott. I know women in a variety of situations -- working full time, part time, not at all, childless, homeschooling, and so on. I don't see any connection between any particular situation and the quality or length of the marriage, though it would stand to reason there could be one. I think the risk of divorce and risk of losing the children is more important than the power relationship.
Posted by: Judy Warner | Mar 29, 2007 5:20:28 PM
While I am as disturbed as the author about these social trends I can't help but admire these women who choose to have these children. My observation has been that the reason middle class women don't have children out of wedlock is because they get abortions. At least these poor women are allowing the children that they conceive to live.
Generally speaking, middle class educated women are just not stupid enough to have babies by men that won't at least marry them and provide a home. And these women are just as likely to sleep with the men in their lives as poor women. Both have equal access to birth control although I'd assume that the middle class women are more likely to use it (another thing in favor of the poor women) but few women are 'religious' about it (at least in my observation). So why not as many unwed middle class educated women? It's got to be because of abortion. That's what I see amongst the women I know.
The author has a good point but that script for middle class that she speaks about causes abortions.
Posted by: Jennifer | Mar 29, 2007 8:25:03 PM
Ethan,
Yes, maybe I was too diplomatic about my point. Maybe I'm too used to avoiding talking openly about the subject myself. What I had in mind though was something that I think that most political conservatives would cringe from as well.
It's like the issue of child care. You rarely if ever see stories in the news, even the new cable news, about the harm done to children by day care. The reason is that you have women news anchors, producers, etc. who work in the news departments and this strikes a nerve with many of them - - too close to home.
The same with the marriage problem. About the only people I know that live in a patriarchal environment, the type that Christains have had up til the recent past, are the Amish.
They have a substitute for legal (and physical) coercion behind male leadership. Ostracism. People raised in that environment often fear shunning more than anything else. Thus the chain of command is preserved.
Posted by: Scott Pennington | Mar 30, 2007 10:55:31 AM
Scott, I'm happy to say that I've recently read reports in my local paper (which has a conservative bent) about day care causing increased violence and misbehavior.
Posted by: Ethan Cordray | Mar 30, 2007 11:55:54 AM
Ethan, if I had never read you before I would think that an awfully peculiar statement.
Posted by: Judy Warner | Mar 30, 2007 12:57:10 PM
Yes indeed, Judy! Happy to read reports, not happy that day care causes disfunction. :-)
As an early beneficiary of home schooling, I do derive perhaps too much satisfaction from seeing my parents vindicated.
Posted by: Ethan Cordray | Mar 30, 2007 2:34:36 PM
And as a home-schooling mother for 9 years I am happy to be vindicated. Oh, wait. My daughter was at a baby-sitter on the day or two a week I worked. She thought of it as a social outing, though.
Posted by: Judy Warner | Mar 30, 2007 2:46:41 PM
David Mills, I just now noticed the typo. It's Hymowitz not Hymnowitz. That's what happens when you put a Jewish name on a Christian website.
Posted by: Judy Warner | Mar 30, 2007 2:52:07 PM
I have to agree with Jennifer. Yesterday I attended a neighbor's family birthday party. This family are the descendents of one married couple who had 12 children. Most of those children married, divorced, and remarried. Their children are now grown and most of them have children; none of the women appear to even have ongoing relationships with their children's fathers. But there are 65 great-grandchildren of the original couple.
Compare this to my family. My maternal grandparents were each one of 11 and 6; my parents were each one of three. I am one of two and I have two side cousins on my father's side and three on my mother's; an aunt and an uncle on each side is childless. I have one child. I'm almost 33.
Do I even need to tell you that my neighbors are black, working class, uneducated, and my family is white, professional class, and moderately educated (we run to JDs and MAs in education which aren't exactly high intellectual accomplishments)?
A culture that expects its women to spend their fertile years doing something other than childbearing will be swamped by cultures that takes normal human reproduction in stride. What Kay Hymowitz is freaking out about - bad school performance, unemployability, violence, abuse - doesn't matter at all in the face of the simple fact of existence.
On the one hand, well-educated women make more money. They get married, only then have their children, and raise them with their husbands. Those children are more likely to grow up to be well-adjust ed, to do well in school, to go to college, to marry and only then have children. This last ought to read "Those children are more likely to grow up to be well-adjust ed, to do well in school, to go to college, to marry and then have only children."
Posted by: Common Reader | Apr 1, 2007 12:09:12 PM
"Why aren't women having babies anymore?"
"I don't know, but this stork is delicious."
Posted by: Bobby Winters | Apr 1, 2007 3:32:10 PM
Another aspect of the problem seems to be that low income individuals in America are less likely to get married in the first place. I read about this in a recent newspaper article. The article never really explored why this is the case though.
For whatever reason, sociologists are pointing out that marriage is increasingly becoming the sole province of the wealthy in America.
Posted by: Seth R. | Apr 3, 2007 7:22:37 AM
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