When the Poor Suffer From Middle Class Liberation

An article of interest: Kay S. Hymnowitz's "Marriage and Caste" from The City Journal. She argues that although the revival, post-Katrina, of "civil rights liberalism"

only lasted for about five minutes, the post-Katrina insight was correct. There are millions of poor Americans, living not just in down-on-your-luck hardship but in entrenched, multigenerational poverty. There is growing inequality between the haves and the have-nots. And there are reasons to worry whether the American dream is within the reach of all.

But what two-America talk doesn’t get is just how much these ominous trends are entangled with the collapse of the nuclear family. While Americans have been squabbling about gay marriage, they have managed to miss the real marriage-and-social-justice issue, one that affects far more people and threatens to undermine the American project. We are now a nation of separate and unequal families not only living separate and unequal lives but, more worrisome, destined for separate and unequal futures.

She goes on to argue, with lots of useful statistics, that the "liberation" of marriage has been very bad for the poor, and much less so for the educated who promoted it — who promoted it for, though she does not say this, their own generally selfish ends. You may more argument to this effect in W. Bradford Wilcox's two Touchstone essays, Reconcilable Differences and especially The Facts of Life and Marriage.

Comments

[Judy Warner]

In 1993 Myron Magnet, also at the Manhattan Institute, wrote a book called The Dream and the Nightmare. Its thesis was that the educated class had instituted vast changes in many areas of society in the name of liberation -- their "dream." These changes filtered down to the less educated and poorer, and for them it was a nightmare. As this article points out, in the case of marriage the educated class was able to turn things around when they saw their revolution didn't work. But the poorer classes are not able to turn it around and they are caught in a terrible trap. Perhaps they are just lagging behind: and eventually the popular culture will reflect upper-class values and promote marriage, and then marriage will come to seem desirable again throughout society. But I don't see how marriage will ever regain its former status as something that's taken for granted that everybody does.

[Steve Nicoloso]

Judy, take some comfort that society will eventually come around to appreciating ancient wisdom (what other kind could there be?) even if it must be in the time of the post-consumptive, post-choice, post-cheap-oil apocalypse. What comes around, goes around.

[Tony Esolen]

I'm not sure I have the quote exactly right, but it's a good one:

"The vices that addle the rich, devastate the poor." Lord Acton

[GL]

I don't see how marriage will ever regain its former status as something that's taken for granted that everybody does.

I guess I risk being like the man with a hammer who sees everything as a nail, but I am becoming more and more convinced that contraception is the root of much of our present evil and abandoning it is the cure. Look at the rate of children born out-of-wedlock and who are children of divorce. As that rate increases, it feeds off itself and produces even more of the same in the next generation. If Christians with stable marriages fail to reproduce at the same rate as those who reproduce out-of-wedlock or who end up divorced, then we contribute to the problem of the growing rate of those fractured families in the next generation. If we reproduce at a higher rate, and if we successfully instill traditional values in our children (a big if), then we can contribute to a decline in the percentage of fractured families. Christian couples who are infertile should consider adoption as a means of adding souls to the kingdom to come and restoring the prominence of traditional family life for the next generation here on earth. It will take several generations of doing this to restore the prominence of stable family life once common in our land.

Producing more offspring from stable families than come from fractured families must be a part of any long-term solution to this problem--and there is no short-term solution. This part of the solution is not glamorous and it is not popular, even among conservative Christians, but I see no hope for restoring the prominence of stable family life without it.

[Steve Nicoloso]

Keep right on pounding, GL. And it was all predicted by Paul VI... all to a chorus of boos and jeers from without and within the Church he allegedly led. Sometimes a nail is just a nail.

[GL]

Steve,

Well, since you asked . . . ;-)

I am surprised we have not seen a thread on the Jan. 4, 2006 piece from the Wall Street Journal, It's the Demography, Stupid: The real reason the West is in danger of extinction. I suggest reading the entire piece, but to the point, a brief excerpt:

"Replacement" fertility rate--i.e., the number you need for merely a stable population, not getting any bigger, not getting any smaller--is 2.1 babies per woman. Some countries are well above that: the global fertility leader, Somalia, is 6.91, Niger 6.83, Afghanistan 6.78, Yemen 6.75. Notice what those nations have in common?

Scroll way down to the bottom of the Hot One Hundred top breeders and you'll eventually find the United States, hovering just at replacement rate with 2.07 births per woman. Ireland is 1.87, New Zealand 1.79, Australia 1.76. But Canada's fertility rate is down to 1.5, well below replacement rate; Germany and Austria are at 1.3, the brink of the death spiral; Russia and Italy are at 1.2; Spain 1.1, about half replacement rate. That's to say, Spain's population is halving every generation. By 2050, Italy's population will have fallen by 22%, Bulgaria's by 36%, Estonia's by 52%.

* * *

Of the increase in global population between 1970 and 2000, the developed world accounted for under 9% of it, while the Muslim world accounted for 26%. Between 1970 and 2000, the developed world declined from just under 30% of the world's population to just over 20%, the Muslim nations increased from about 15% to 20%.

* * *

Just to recap those bald statistics: In 1970, the developed world had twice as big a share of the global population as the Muslim world: 30% to 15%. By 2000, they were the same: each had about 20%.

And by 2020?

So the world's people are a lot more Islamic than they were back then and a lot less "Western." Europe is significantly more Islamic, having taken in during that period some 20 million Muslims (officially)--or the equivalents of the populations of four European Union countries (Ireland, Belgium, Denmark and Estonia). Islam is the fastest-growing religion in the West: In the U.K., more Muslims than Christians attend religious services each week.

Apply this analysis to the problems of fractured families and out-of-wedlock births. Why is the percentage of children born out-of-wedlock growing? Two reasons: first, the obvious one--more children are being born out-of-wedlock than in the past and second, the less obvious one--fewer children are being born to married couples. There is not much we can do to stop the former; we (that is Christian couples) can do something about the latter: WE CAN HAVE MORE BABIES. If we did, then the proportion of babies born out-of-wedlock would fall even if the number of children born out-of-wedlock remained the same.

It's as simple as that. But its easier to cast stones at unmarried couples having babies than to change diapers and wake up four times during the night for years on end, not to mention that having more babies means less money for exotic trips, McMansions and nice cars which 21st Century Western Christians believe are evidence that we are in God's will rather than evidence of our moral decline.

Both because of the clash of civilations and the moral health of our nation, we must get serious about this issue.

[Steve Nicoloso]

GL, yeah I guess it is a bit surprising the Mark Steyn article didn't get coverage here. It did everywhere else. (Maybe that's why it didn't need to get brought up here.) They had a fair and intelligent discussion on the topic over at GetReligion.