I write and read about the culture and habits of elites because it is a way for me to understand this unfamiliar world I find myself in.
I read less about the culture of the poor and working-class because I experienced it firsthand. I’m familiar.
But occasionally I do read about it.
One insightful book is Promises I Can Keep: Why Poor Women Put Motherhood Before Marriage by Kathryn Edin and Maria Kefalas.
In their book, Edin, a sociology professor at Princeton, and Kefalas, a sociology professor at St. Joseph’s University, explore why low-income women are disproportionately likely to be unmarried and uninvolved with the father of their children.
A common answer from the chattering class is money. The conventional view is that a lack of money leads to out-of-wedlock births.
But broken homes are a fairly recent phenomenon.
In 1960, across social classes, the vast majority of children were raised by both of their birth parents. By 2005, there was a massive divergence.
What happened?
Today, one in six American men between the ages of 25 and 54 are unemployed or out of the workforce altogether: about 10 million men. This number has more than doubled since the 1970s.
Over the past half-century, the number of men per capita behind bars has more than quadrupled.
Among white American males in the bottom 30 percent of socioeconomic status, the number of prison inmates per capita has quintupled since 1975. For those in the top 20 percent of socioeconomic status, the rate has remained virtually unchanged.
From Edin and Kefalas:
“Most social scientists who study poor families assume financial troubles are the cause of these breakups. After all, these young people grow up in a context of extreme disadvantage, at least by American standards, and they come of age with little education, few skills, and not many future prospects. Lack of money is certainly a contributing cause, as we will see, but rarely the only factor. It is usually the young father’s criminal behavior, the spells of incarceration that so often follow, a pattern of intimate violence, his chronic infidelity, and an inability to leave drugs and alcohol alone that cause relationships to falter and die.”
Poor behavior from young males is an important and often overlooked reason why rates of fatherless homes have increased.
The authors continue:
“Conflicts over money do not usually erupt simply because the man cannot find a job or because he doesn’t earn as much as someone with better skills or more education. Money usually becomes an issue because he seems unwilling to keep at a job for any length of time, usually because of issues related to respect. Some of the jobs he can get don’t pay enough to give him the self-respect he feels he needs, and others require him to get along with unpleasant customers and coworkers, and to maintain a submissive attitude toward the boss.”
It used to be high-status to hold a job and take care of your family. Not so much anymore.
Those who sit at or near the apex of the social ladder (who decide what behaviors are prestigious) have decided that family stability is unimportant.
In a fascinating article, Patrick Parkinson, a law professor at the University of Queensland, recounted his experiences at an international expert group gathered to discuss family policy at the UN headquarters in New York.
At the event, Parkinson stressed the importance of stability and two-parent families for children.
Many members of the group, comprised of academic elites, took exception.
But privately, some of them whispered agreement.
Parkinson writes:
“I was surprised then, when one of the members of the Expert Group who was most insistent that two-parent families were just an ideal, said to me quietly, as we were packing up, that she agreed that family stability mattered. She described the strict and ordered regime in her own home (one with two biological, albeit unmarried parents). Her young children had routine, and clear boundaries. She restricted their television usage. It was a reward, not a staple of their entertainment diet. Yes, she agreed, stability does
