I’ve taken two days to write this post. I feel very, very strongly about it — more than about any post I’ve written in, well, at least a few months.
In the latest issue of First Things (not available yet online except to subscribers), W. Bradford Wilcox reviews Marriage and Caste in America: Separate and Unequal Families in a Post-Marital Age, the latest from conservative family scholar Kay S. Hymowitz.
I haven’t read Hymowitz yet, but I always seem to have a bone to pick with Brad Wilcox. I’ve taken issue with him in three separate posts: here, here, here. Wilcox is a Virginia Cavalier (and I have a soft spot for all things Charlottesville), and he’s an important family scholar in his own right. I agree with him on almost nothing, but admire his writing style.
Wilcox has this way of saying things that are so stunningly wrong that I leap up from the couch or chair or desk and start madly pacing about. From this month’s First Things review:
The rise of the marriage gap also reveals that a large minority of working-class, poor, and minority adults no longer “believe in marriage as an institution for raising children.” They have lost touch with a marriage orientation that requires them to keep an eye on the future, to work hard, to discipline their sexual (or at least reproductive) behavior, and to be discriminating in their choice of romantic partners. In making this point, Hymowitz provocatively turns on its head the standard liberal argument that the poor do not marry because they do not have good jobs, adequate income, and decent housing; instead, she persuasively argues that the disappearance of a marriage orientation—and the virtues and values associated with this orientation—among the poor and working class is a big part of the reason that they and their children are more likely to end up at the bottom of the social ladder.
I may be blaming Wilcox for Hymowitz’s sin, but his approval of her stance (the bold is mine) is clear. It’s like reading something from the Gilded Age of nineteenth-century social reform, when earnest upper-middle-class types tut-tutted about the licentiousness and immorality of the poor and the brown. The urban poor (particularly, I suspect, Wilcox and Hymowitz mean black and Latino people) have — get this — no work ethic and no sexual self-control. Why? Because the “po’ folks ain’t gettin’ married no mo”. Wilcox and Hymowitz, like most social conservatives, see marriage as the panacea for all social problems. Sexually frustrated? Get married. Worried about social security? Get married. Want to have happy children? Get married. Want to end global warming, cure the common cold, and hasten the return of the Lord? Get married.
If you believe that marriage is the solution, then any problems afflicting the unmarried must be due to, you guessed it, the fact that they’re not married. Endemic racism? The decline of purchasing power? The growing gap between rich and poor? Gang violence and poor public schools? Nothing some good old fashioned marriage couldn’t cure!
The reason it’s tempting for the prosperous (and more likely, married) middle-classes to suggest that poverty and marriage practices are correlated is that in doing so, we the prosperous get to avoid the unpleasant suggestion that our own racism and our own privilege may be part of the problem. Instead of critiquing a culture that sends staggering numbers of young black men to jail, instead of pushing for sentencing reform, instead of pushing for economic revitalization — things that might raise middle-class taxes — we can lecture the poor about the need to show some self-restraint and get hitched. After all, we’re married and well-off. It’s convenient to assume a causal relationship, especially because it absolves us of the responsibility to change our lifestyle. All we have to do is tell the poor brown folks to be more like us.
Ah, but this marriage crisis is at least the fault of one group, and Brad knows who. Who? The feminists, of course, the bogeywoman of the fervid right-wing imagination!
Hymowitz does not write much about the sources of America’s marriage malaise, but she rightly points to the sexual revolution and the feminist movement as key contributors to the retreat from marriage, largely because they succeeded in getting people to think and act in ways that suggested that sex, children, and marriage need not be packaged together. “For the first time in history—not just American history but the history of known human society—people began to toy with the idea that children and marriage were really two discrete life phenomena.” She also calls elites to account, especially for their complicity in turning a blind eye toward or even celebrating the breakdown of the black family after the 1960s.
Hey, except for the odd remark about feminists “celebrating” the breakdown of the black family (who, Brad?), I agree with a lot of that paragraph. Feminism came along not to encourage irresponsibility but to liberate both men and women from the pernicious notion that heterosexual marriage was the foundation stone of civilized society. The perniciousness of the “marriage ideology” is that it so often turns out to be a raw deal for women. Whether it’s the “Second Shift” that so many married women end up working, or whether it’s the sense that so many married women have that their husbands are more like sons, there’s a lot about marriage of which feminists can be rightly critical. And yes, when it comes to having children, it is a sign of genuine progress that we live in a world where a woman can, if she chooses, have a loving relationship with a child without needing to be enmeshed with that child’s father. And it is a sign of progress that a happily married couple can conclude that their lives are complete without children. On this issue above all, the theological and ideological gulf between left and right is vast indeed, and I think even Brad Wilcox would agree with me that it is widening.
So if the failure of the poor to marry is feminism’s fault, and the poor are poor largely because they don’t marry, then Hymowitz and Wilcox have a teeny problem with, uh, history. How to explain that urban poverty existed before the sexual revolution of the 1960s? If welfare and feminism are to blame for the plight of the urban poor today, what was to blame for the plight of the urban poor a century ago? Modern feminism can’t be the cause of a problem that pre-dates the influence of feminism. Or maybe, in “social conservative fantasy land”, it can.
I am a great believer in marriage. But I also am under no illusion that it is the only, or even the best, option for how to order society. I have found that for me — and clearly for others, perhaps including Brad Wilcox — marriage is a wonderful vehicle for continued personal growth. Of course, I’m keenly aware that the happiness and contentment I enjoy with my wife today is entirely contingent on the right to divorce, a right pushed for and won by feminists. Our little family’s present bliss depended on the break-up of a previous family order. (As any military historian will tell you, the quality of America’s armed forces improved dramatically when we shifted from a draft to a volunteer military.) Folks tend to be more committed to things into which they were not coerced. While no social conservative wants (as far as I know) to make marriage mandatory, many in the current administration have been eager to spend a fortune to encourage marriage as a solution to a variety of social ills. Marriage becomes less a private arrangement than a social obligation, and as many a tired homemaker will tell you, duty is the enemy of delight.
Poverty has many parents. Some are institutional, some are personal. The prosperous lament the bad decision-making of the poor, wondering why — often multi-generationally — some continue to make self-destructive personal choices. But what we in the middle class see as short-sighted decisions (like having a child out-of-wedlock at age 16) may seem like the best and most enduring chance for happiness. People show discipline and restraint and foresight when they have something to hope for. They marry when they have hope, not in order to have hope. Good marriages are freely chosen ones, and they might be one happy outcome among many of a rise in hope. But the willingness to enter into marital obligations is the consequence of social change. It cannot be its catalyst. To suggest otherwise is to abdicate the collective responsibility of the haves to the have-nots, as we replace a genuine commitment to justice with patronizing sermons to “be as we are.”
Hugo,
Poverty and marriage practices *are* correlated. That’s not merely a “suggestion” that the “prosperous” and “middle class” make to avoid the accusation of white privilege. It’s a fact that’s clearly proven by all the social scientific evidence. A causal link, as I understand it, is harder to prove, but heck, no harder to prove than that “lack of hope” is the definitive cause of urban poverty. In fact, you may be making rather patronizing and offensive assumptions of your own here, by suggesting that married people/middle class people are *white.* That’s not true. What *is* true, and what people like Hymowitz point out, is that most middle-class families (of any race) are families within the context of marriage.
Kate, I never denied correlation, I denied causality. Yes, the middle class marries more often than the working class. This is not new. (It was true decades ago, a hell of a long time before feminism.) But though prosperity and marriage correlate, it’s just as easy to argue that the former leads to the latter as it is to argue the reverse.
But you’re right, I ought to have been better about distinguishing “white” from “middle class”. Wilcox jumps back and forth muddies the waters a bit by talking about both race and class almost interchangeably here, but I ought to have done a better job of not following him into the mess.
One reason why wealthier women are less reluctant to marry than their poorer sisters is simple: an educated woman will be able to support herself in the event of a divorce much better than a woman with little or no higher education. As a consequence, placing “all your eggs in one basket” (that’s almost literally true in some sense) with another human being is an exponentially riskier proposition for the poor, especially women.
Hugo, I guess I mistook your sentence about how it’s tempting for the prosperous and middle class to suggest that poverty and marriage practices are correlated as an implicit claim that they *aren’t* correlated. Thanks for clearing that up.
Your claims about one of the reasons that poor women are more reluctant to marry just don’t make sense to me. Why are poorer women so reasonable about the risks of “putting all their eggs in one basket” and so much less averse to the far greater risk of out-of-wedlock child rearing?
Isn’t part of Hymowitz’s point simply that culture matters, and that the various “liberation movements” of the last thirty years or so, while laudable and truly liberating in some respects, have had a negative impact on classes whose “margin for error” is much narrower than the more privileged among us (who have an economic buffer when they occasionally discover that experimentation and liberation isn’t all it’s cracked up to be)?
No, it’s not new that the middle class marries more often than the working class, but that doesn’t mean that rates of marriage and out-of-wedlock childbirth and child-rearing among various classes have remained the same — far from it. Doesn’t Hymowitz address a lot of this in her book?
Late 19th reformers like Jane Addams of Hull House made the exact observations - that poor people didn’t marry as much as middle class or rich people and therefore the problem was their lack of marriage.
This is yet another example of the way in which social conservatives have yet to grasp the idea of systemic problems requiring systemic solutions. In a family in which no one has ever gone to college and in which everyone has married young and produced children quickly, and yet remained in poverty, the allure of marriage is illusory. Poverty is a systemic problem but conservatives reject systems analysis as well as systemic solutions out of hand.
As our conservative commentators in this country grow ever more callous toward those who do not conform to their morality, such analyses are going to become more common. The entire core of Hymowitz and Wilcox’s argument is that the poor are poor because of their own moral failings. It is an argument almost explicitly designed to make the rest of us feel good and refuse to take action. In wingnut world, every social ill is cured by marriage because in wingnut world the problem isn’t poverty, it isn’t social injustice, economic exploitation or increasing economic inequality, no the problem is people have sex of which social conservatives do not approve. Again and again, social conservative analysis of social problems devolves into questions of who is doing what with whom in the bedroom.
glendenb,
I’m guessing you haven’t read the book, either. Nice speech, though.
Kate, I’m responding to Wilcox’s paragraph. If you’re bewildered about why poor women choose motherhood over marriage, then you need to read a work by a pair of sociologists who actually, um, live and work with the urban poor:
http://www.amazon.com/Promises-Can-Keep-Motherhood-Marriage/dp/0520241134
I reviewed it here, and it’s won plaudits across the spectrum.
Hugo, thanks for the book recommendation. I’ll take a look at it. You might be interested in Hymowitz’s book, too.
Was the comment about “actually, um” living and working with the urban poor meant to suggest that Hymowitz lacks authenticity because she (presumably) doesn’t? Does that mean you’re more inclined to listen to someone like Theodore Dalrymple who has actually, um, worked and lived with the urban (and non-urban) poor?
Yes, I think urban sociologists ought to base their work on their actual experience with the poor. Hymowitz isn’t a trained sociologist, she’s a trained English professor who teaches literature, and she has never done front-line social science research. In other words, her qualifications and mine to wax philosophical about the urban poor are equal. (Her book, which I haven’t read, is a compilation of previously published essays — many of which I have).
Kathryn Edin and Maria Kefalas, who wrote the book I recommend, are sociologists who do real research. And to be fair, Brad Wilcox is also a sociologist, unlike the woman whose book he reviews here.
I have not read the book, but based on the quote you provided I believe you have engaged in hyberbolic misrepresentation of Wilcox’s main point. He indicated that there has been a diminished sense of “marriage orientation”, not marriage per se. “Marriage orientation” means something entirely different than “marriage”, so to imply that by proposing that the loss of orientation equates to marriage itself being a panacea for all social ills is misleading.
Marriage is both a religious institution and legal construct. For many, but clearly not all based on your comments, it is also a serious and mutually binding commitment despite peaks and valleys. Had Wilcox meant that the construct of marriage itself was the cure, he would have rephrased your quoted comment to say something to the effect that “young people need to get married so that they can then keep an eye on the future, discipline their behavior, etc.”. This would have implied that marriage was the “miracle cure” that you claim he is representing it to be, but this is clearly not what he said and it actually reverses the cause and effect point that he is trying to make.
Again, having not read the whole argument, one could infer that “marriage orientation” implies (but is not limited to) a few things like:
–Valuing a monomagous relationship, with the goal of achieving a lasting one–or commitment.
–A perspective that directs one’s actions beyond immediate desires–or fidelity.
–A willingness to sacrifice or at least compromise one’s own desires for a partner’s, to move beyond a self-centered perspective on desires–or duty.
There are other characteristics which lead to a strong marriage, and thus could be considered constituents of a “marriage orientation”.
I think that the statistics regarding the correlation between single parenthood and poverty are incontrovertible–single parents are, by and large, the largest demographic group in poverty each year. In addition, the % of children born into single-parent households also continues to increase greatly each decade.
Wilcox is not saying that the lack of marriage itself is the source of these problems, but rather the lack of value placed in the qualities that make for a successful marriage. The marriage rate (like the divorce rate) is indicative of cultural shifts that have yielded fewer traits of “marriage orientation”–such as commitment, fidelity, and duty. Marriage does not create these traits, but a lack of these traits within individuals leads to fewer successful marriages.
With respect to the social justice aspect of this argument, one could argue that a lack of these “marriage orientation” traits has other adverse effects as well in terms of education, the workplace, and other areas. This does not mean that other factors, such as poverty or racism, are not extant as well. But to acknowledge one and not the other makes no sense, and one of these factors can be changed by the individual by changing his or her character.
You espouse proactive measures to discourage the victim mentality in a man within a marriage (husband more like a son). So presumably you would discourage this mentality as it relates to the case of the individual dealing with “social injustice” as well.
Thank you, Married Tom. Excellent points.
I do find it strange that some are inclined — in rather knee-jerk fashion, it appears — to brand Hymowitz and Wilcox (and me) wingnuts because we would presume to give the same advice to urban poor women (don’t have children out of wedlock; if you get married, try your hardest to stay married, absent abusive situations) that we would give to upper and middle class women. Even the book Hugo suggests apparently recognizes the harm to women (and children) of rampant out-of-wedlock child-rearing. The study of the reasons *why* women might choose an option that is harmful to their own and their children’s future looks interesting and worthwhile, but that doesn’t negate the fact that out-of-wedlock childbirth and child-rearing *are* very harmful to poor women and children, or at least that there’s an extremely strong correlation with negative outcomes. It seems to me the height of disingenuousness to suggest — as glendenb does — that any “conservative” who is concerned about the correlation between poverty and marriage practices only really cares about “people having sex of which conservatives disapprove.”
I don’t assume that anyone who disagrees with me is arguing in bad faith. It’s always nice when those who disagree with me refrain from making the same assumptions.
[This is not directed at Hugo.]
Married Tom, if you read the Wilcox piece (I’m sorry, it’s not online, you gotta buy the magazine) you get a clearer sense of marriage as panacea than my quotes provide. Here’s how he ends it:
If Hymowitz’s book tells us anything, it is that the American republic is unlikely to integrate its Two Americas, separate and unequal, until that day when the institution of marriage once again regains its pride of place as the nation’s preeminent locus of sex, childbearing, and childrearing.
That seems pretty straightforward; Brad ain’t just talking ’bout an orientation, he sees the institution of marriage as the great catalyst for social justice. And he is wronger than a Florida Gator at a FSU-Miami game.
And Kate Marie, let me hasten to say that I don’t think most social conservatives are arguing in bad faith. We do caricature each other too often. I reject the notion that all of my conservative opponents are killjoys, eager to outlaw or restrict pleasure. I am sure sensible conservatives reject the assertion that we liberals just want a sexual playground with the government picking up the tab. These are nasty stereotypes, and I’m trying not to make them.
glendenb -
Late 19th reformers like Jane Addams of Hull House made the exact observations - that poor people didn’t marry as much as middle class or rich people and therefore the problem was their lack of marriage.
I would be very surprised if Addams had, in fact, said this. About as surprised as I am that you seem to call her a social conservative who failed to grasp that systemic problems require systemic solutions. Hull House, after all, was all about continuing education, providing poor families with childcare resources (what we would today call kindergartens and daycare), and labour organisation. It was also closely tied to organisations promoting labour laws (including restrictions on child labour) and women’s suffrage.
Married Tom -
The marriage rate (like the divorce rate) is indicative of cultural shifts that have yielded fewer traits of “marriage orientation”–such as commitment, fidelity, and duty. Marriage does not create these traits, but a lack of these traits within individuals leads to fewer successful marriages.
What you call a `marriage orientation’ — virtues of commitment, fidelity, and doing one’s duty — aren’t particular to marriage. They’re — to borrow some language from virtue ethicists — habits that are needed to successfully pursue any project and lead a good human life. So, at least for the sake of argument, I’ll happily agree that, in particular, they’re needed to successfully pursue the very large and demanding project of marriage. And one way of explaining the high divorce rate — among many other explanations — is that these virtues are generally not practiced by most people throughout our society. (NB. I am *not* agreeing, even for the sake of argument, that this explanation is a good one on its face, or is consistent with empirical studies on the high divorce rate, or even that these virtues are generally not practiced by most people throughout our society. It is somewhere in these final steps that I, and Hugo, and glendenb seem to disagree with you and Kate Marie and so on.)
But they (the virtues) are also needed to successfully pursue, say, the very large and demanding project of learning to play the piano very well. And one way of explaining the fact that relatively few people play the piano very well today is that these virtues are generally not practiced by most people throughout our society. (Repeat the same qualifications as from the last paragraph here, with the appropriate changes.) I would even suggest that playing the piano very well is as highly correlated with the sorts of economic markers with which marriage, divorce, and extramarital children are correlated.
In short, we can substitute `playing the piano’ and related ideas in for `marriage’ and related ideas in all the arguments you and other social conservatives want to give. And yet we do not see books by social conservatives about the problems with a lack of a piano orientation, or arguing that it is absolutely vital for their economic or more general well-being that poor people learn to play the piano, or whatever conclusion it is you’re trying to argue for here, only with `playing the piano’ substituted for `marriage’. So, why is marriage so special that it gets all this attention of social conservatives when piano playing does not?
There is one possibility: being married somehow cultivates these virtues in ways that learning to play the piano does not. This is the causal hypothesis. And yet, in the quotation above, you concede that this is not the case — you say that social conservatives don’t assume the causal hypothesis. (I would note that Kate does not seem to concede this point in her response to your comment.)
The only other reasonable hypothesis I can see is the one Hugo is making here, and it’s the one I’m inclined to accept: if the debate is focussed on marriage, it is not focussed on classist, sexist, and racist structural features of our political and economic system that make it rational for poor Black women to act the way they do, and this means the debate will not end up challenging the economic, sexual, and racial interests of relatively wealthy, anti-feminist, and overwhelmingly White social conservatives.
(Sorry this was so long, but I didn’t see how to eliminate any of the steps in this argument.)
I have never even heard the fancy term “virtue ethicist”, but my sense is that the notion that characteristics of an oustanding pianist are highly similar to those of being an excellent spouse are demonstrably wrong…
http://www.opinionjournal.com/la/?id=110010774&mod=RSS_Opinion_Journal&ojrss=frontpage
To become an outstanding pianist, one must have a very rare, innate skill that is coupled with a discipline to learn music theory, practice constantly, and dedicate oneself to a complex and lonely craft for countless hours. Not unlike becoming a collegiate or Olympic swimmer or distance runner or any other number of similar endeavors.
To truly excel in these fields, one must have both a unique, rare God-given talent coupled with a discipline and commitment to foster that talent to its potential. One does not immediately become endowed with these traits upon his or her decision to become a pianist. Some were there via genetics, but the ability to commit to long hours of practice with patience comes from the character of the prospective pianist. And these traits are also grown through the process of practicing and working towards–they are self perpetuating.
Fortunately, one has better odds of thriving in marriage than playing Rachmaninoff in Carnegie Hall. But to build a successful marriage, it is not enough one day to decide “I want to get married”–some combination of responsibility, empathy, fidelity must exist as part of the character of each spouse for the thing to work. Preferably, some of these characteristics are there at the time of the wedding. Many will be built over time assuming a commitment to the “institution of marriage” for the thing to work.
Thus I would argue that both the terms “marriage orientation” and “institution of marriage” are proxies for the values required for a successful marriage. As you pointed out, there are some similarities between marriage traits and piano-playing traits (such as dedication, whether to practicing scales daily or keeping the yard mowed weekly ragardless of desire). Others, such as fidelity, duty, love, teamwork, forgiveness, etc. are virtues unapplicable in this case. But they are applicable to someone in a steady relationship while hit on at a party. Or someone too hung over to make it to school. Or someone responsible for managing a team of people at work. And so on.
Marriage is not a panacea, true. But to be in a successful marriage, each spouse must to a certain degree either have these traits prior to the union or develop them through the union. The commitment of marriage facilitates this, but it is the focus on these traits, which are seemingly less abundant in today’s culture, which is key to the “marriage orientation” or “institute of marriage”. I will admit causality here, a successful marriage does help build these traits.
I think that the debate on social impact of marriage is a logical result of the statistical elephant in the room that liberals like to ignore–the massive correlation between poverty and single parenthood. You can attribute poverty to lots of factors–race, education, cultural influences, etc. But it is risible to posit that marriage in households with children is not a significant contributing factor with such a glaring correlation between the two.
By `playing the piano very well’, I didn’t have in mind being of the caliber of someone who plays Rachmaninoff in Carnegie Hall. Being able to play some Rachmaninoff, period, would be enough. This is, I think, less difficult than having a thriving marriage, though I don’t want to argue about how much less difficult. Certainly both are difficult, requiring much time and effort, and require the virtues we’re talking about.
You now want the causal hypothesis — that these virtues are cultivated in the process of building a thriving marriage. But they are also cultivated in the process of learning to play the piano well. You might be right that one does not develop virtues of empathy or sympathy in learning to play the piano. I would disagree, but set this aside for the moment. Still, what about learning to play basketball or soccer or act well?
I’m asking you to identify the something — the virtue or good or whatever else you like — that marriage, and only marriage, can contribute to one’s life. I claim, not that marriage cannot provide the things you have named so far, but that other things can provide them as well.
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Even if you do this, however, your account of the correlation between poverty and single parenthood still has a gap. This is because these virtues are not correlated with wealth and economic success. This country is not a meritocracy; indeed, I take it as obvious that the wealthiest members of our society are among the most vicious (that is, the most lacking in these virtues), and achieved their wealth by vicious acts.
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Liberals like me certainly don’t ignore the correlation between poverty and single parenthood, much less like to ignore it. `We’ (of course I can only speak for myself here) claim that the correlation is due to a common cause. To quote my last comment, `classist, sexist, and racist structural features of our political and economic system … make it rational for poor Black women to act the way they do’.
Noumena,
I’m a great believer in marriage, but I’m perfectly willing to concede that better outcomes can be achieved simply if a child’s biological parents stay together (married or not) to raise the child. There is , in my opinion, a virtue or good in this particular arrangement that only such an arrangement can provide (I believe some studies of domestic arrangements in France and the Scandinavian countries bear this out). I much prefer that such arrangements be formalized, but maybe that’s due to my own temperamental and religious biases. In any event, marriage is an institution which both embodies and encourages particular virtues, and it is also an institution — like religion, I suppose — which has grown organically from civil society and is thus a buffer between the individual and the state. The less marriage (or at the very least the idea of staying together to raise the children) matters, the more the state is called upon to rush in to fill the gap. And an impersonalized and bureaucratized state is much less efficient in protecting children and ensuring opportunities for their future.
Now, you claim that racist, sexist, and classist structural features of the political and economic system are the true cause of out-of-wedlock childbirth and child-rearing. But there are no studies that I know of which make any *more* convincing a causal case for your theory than for Hymowitz’s theory. As I understand it, the correlation between marriage practices and poverty is much stronger than between race/sex and poverty. And do you argue that the political and economic system has become *more* structurally racist/classist/sexist over the past thirty/forty years? Even if you claim the system has remained the same, how can it be the *cause* of the explosion in out-of-wedlock birth statistics among poorer and minority communities? Why haven’t such conditions always obtained?
To follow up on Noumena’s comment, I’ve read a fair amount by and about Jane Addams and I’m also unfamiliar (not to mention skeptical, given what I do know of her views) with the view that glendenb ascribes to her. I’m actually working on an article about, amongst other things, Addams’ views on democracy and family life, and if this is accurate, I’d certainly like to know about it, so by all means if you’re still reading glendenb please tell us where you find evidence for this view.
Kate, what sort of better outcomes do you think can only be achieved by having a child’s biological parents raise her together?
Statistics from the US census:
Women are several percentage points more likely than men to live beneath the poverty line.
Black and Hispanic people are more than twice as likely as Non-Hispanic and Asian people to live beneath the poverty line.
Non-citizen immigrants are roughly twice as likely as citizens to live beneath the poverty line.
And families headed by unmarried women are more than twice as likely as families headed by unmarried men, and more than five times as likely as families headed by married couples, to live beneath the poverty line.
This table is missing one crucial factor: growing up under the poverty line. This, as I recall, is even more strongly correlated with living in poverty as an adult.
Also, according to this graph (PDF), the poverty rate has remained between 10% and about 16% since 1965. Now, according to the tables available here, the percentage of children `living with one parent’ only has risen from 11.8% in 1968 to 28.4% in 2006. However, according to this table, the percentage of children living below the poverty line was in the mid-teens in the 1960s, rose to the low twenties in the 1980s, and is currently back in the mid-teens. Today, the poverty rate and percentage of children below the poverty line are in roughly the same place they were 40 years ago.
That is, the poverty rate and percentage of children living below the poverty line have moved together (which should not be a surprise) within a relatively narrow range over the period of time for which the percentage of children being raised in `single family homes’ has more than doubled.
I would not argue that our political and economic system has become significantly more unjust over the last 40 years. I would argue that our political and economic system today has not changed much over the last 40 years, at least with respect to factors that might are relevant to the poverty rate. This is consistent with the way the statistics suggest not much has changed with respect to poverty and child poverty.
By contrast, you claim that `single parent homes’ have a causal effect, and yet the purported effect does not seem to exist.
When the previous comment goes through, I apologise for the amazingly poor editing. Here’s a better version of the last two paragraphs:
I would not argue that our political and economic system has become significantly more unjust over the last 40 years. I would argue that our political and economic system has not changed much over the last 40 years, at least with respect to factors that are relevant to the poverty rate. This is consistent with the way the statistics suggest not much has changed with respect to poverty and child poverty.
By contrast, you claim that `single parent homes’ have a causal effect, and yet the purported effect does not seem to exist.
Noumena–Wow. “I take it as obvious that the wealthiest members of our society are among the most vicious (that is, the most lacking in these virtues), and achieved their wealth by vicious acts.”
Can someone please explain to me how such a sweeping indictment of the character of a group of people is not a racist comment.
What if I said “I take it as obvious that, since the percentage of violent crimes in this country is highest among a certain ethnic group (http://www.nc-f.org/findings.htm), that group constitutes the most vicious members of our society”. Would you think that to be a racist comment?
Is is conceivable that taking as a given that a certain strata of society exhibits such a deep, consistent and evil character flaw may lead to bias in your subsequent analysis?
While many or most wealthy people are white, being wealthy is not in itself a racial category. You might be trying to say that my statement was classist.
The statement you offer isn’t an exact parallel to mine. One exact parallel would be `I take it as obvious that the Black members of our society are among the most violent, and achieved their Blackness by violent acts.’ This is clearly ridiculous. Another would be `I take it as obvious that the most violent members of our society are Black, and are that violent because they are Black.’ This is racist because it’s asserting that being Black causes or leads to violent behaviour — that a propensity for violence is a feature of a certain race.
By contrast, I asserted that being vicious caused or lead to the wealth and financial success of the wealthiest people in our society. The causal link is running in the opposite direction, from the behaviour to the demographic, and I am not claiming to have identified any intrinsic trait. Rather, I am claiming that certain behaviours — in particular, certain vicious behaviours — are rewarded in our society. So I don’t think this statement is classist after all.
And your comment doesn’t really respond to the point I was making, that the virtues are not correlated with wealth and financial success in our society, and there is therefore a gap in your line of thought from marriage to economic success or stability.
Nuomena, you are correct. My argument was comparing apples to oranges. A more apt comparative statement would have been “I take it as obvious that the poorest members of society are among the laziest, and their poverty can only be attributed to their lack of effort”. This statement keeps race out of the equation.
I would argue that both the vicious and lazy statements are biased. When treated as a foregone conclusion regarding a group of people, this represents a bias. Racism is a form of bias in which one assumes negative traits about a broad swath of people on the basis of one factor.
Just like many of the impoverished are in their situations due to circumstances other than laziness (youth being the biggest factor, and this lack of experience and/or marketable skills), so it could be argued that many of the wealthy achieved this state through traits other than viciousness–hard work, dedication, good luck, lucky sperm, whatever.
The statement is biased if not racist, but certainly founded in the same type of irrational calculus that drives racism. It simplifies a complex set of circumstances for a group and can thus be used to justify a variety of positions against the group that is, in this case, obviously vicious.
Your statistics do not provide any evidence against the “purported effect” of children born into single parent households, since it addresses only poverty and single parent households independently (which have, by your statistics, increased 141% over the period of time). Dig deeper into the correlation between poverty and marriage, and it confirms my “purported effect”:
From http://www.capmag.com/article.asp?ID=5056
For the most part, long-term poverty today is self-inflicted. To see this, let’s examine some numbers from the Census Bureau’s 2004 Current Population Survey. There’s one segment of the black population that suffers only a 9.9 percent poverty rate, and only 13.7 percent of their under-5-year-olds are poor. There’s another segment of the black population that suffers a 39.5 percent poverty rate, and 58.1 percent of its under-5-year-olds are poor.
Among whites, one population segment suffers a 6 percent poverty rate, and only 9.9 percent of its under-5-year-olds are poor. Another segment of the white population suffers a 26.4 percent poverty rate, and 52 percent of its under-5-year-olds are poor.
What do you think distinguishes the high and low poverty populations? The only statistical distinction between both the black and white populations is marriage. There is far less poverty in married-couple families, where presumably at least one of the spouses is employed. Fully 85 percent of black children living in poverty reside in a female-headed household.
Whether marriage actually keeps people out of poverty or the traits that lead to getting and staying married help keep people out of poverty, the statistics indicate an undeniable correlation. Is this the case with everyone? In this case, I would not jump to an instant conclusion for all couples since I don’t think that marriage is a panacea for all people any more than I think that all rich are vicious or all poor are lazy. But to claim that there is nothing to the marriage argument in light of these statistics seems to be quite a stretch.
Tom, it’s simply false that the poorest members of society are among the laziest. And an article in an online magazine published by followers of Ayn Rand citing the Heritage Foundation and an unnamed `University of Michigan study’ is not a reliable source.
The reliable statistics you quote — the ones from the US Census, the same source I quoted above — only show that there is a correlation today between poverty and `single parent homes’. I never denied this. What I’m calling suspect is the causal connection you want to claim between poverty and `single parent homes’. This causal connection is suspect because, over the past forty years, as the percentage of children in `single parent homes’ has more than doubled, the childhood poverty rate has stayed within a very narrow range. If there were a causal connection, then, all other things being equal, we would see a historical or long-term correlation between the poverty and `single parent home’ rates. This historical correlation does not appear to exist.
On the other hand, we do see a historical correlation between the poverty rate and the `big government’ social welfare programmes that were implemented under FDR, Truman, Kennedy, and Johnson — for example, in the dramatic and thus-far-permanent drop in the poverty rate between 1959 and 1965 (see the PDF graph I linked to a few comments back). These policies were specifically designed to counteract or eliminate classist features of our political and economic system, did (as far as I know) little or nothing to encourage biological parents to raise their children together, and there is statistical evidence indicating that they have been at least somewhat successful.
Nuomena, OK, it’s simply a false statement that the wealthiest members of society are the most vicious. I was making that statement as a means of illustrating the bias in your statement, not because I believe the poor are the laziest. If you are not willing to concede that the “vicious” statement is biased, and that this bias affects your judgment elsewhere, then so be it. Not too surprising.
As you pointed out, the poverty rate has been essentially flat for 40 years. It has remained constant despite the significant increase in single parent households, which are much more likely to be in poverty. Assuming that the number of single family households remained constant for the last 40 years, ceterus perebus, would the poverty rate have decreased over this period of time? Could the increases that should have materialized from the significant social investment in fighting poverty have been offset by the increase in single parent households?
I think the analysis is more complicated than this since both the marriage rate and the constituents of the “war on poverty”–welfare in particular, are not independent variables. Any program that will pay you and your children more than minimum wage, yet still just at the poverty rate, as long as you do not work and do not get married to a working spouse is going to rationally discourage both work and marriage among a certain group of people.
Personally I think that, like the war on drugs, the trillions of dollars invested in the “war on poverty” to achieve flat results is nothing to crow about. It hardly makes the case that more of this type of investment is needed, since clearly it did not achieve the desired results after 4 decades.
Tom, AFDC/TANF is not the only form of welfare — and it has been severely restricted for the past ten years. WIC, Medicaid, housing assistance, and Head Start are, arguably, far more important than AFDC, as they help many more people.
You’re right that we don’t have the access, expertise, and time (at least in my case) to pour over the statistics in the depth needed to make solid cases for our two sides. However, I think the data we have traded are perfectly clear on one point: AFDC, WIC, Medicaid, housing assistance, Head Start, and similar programmes are effective in reducing poverty rates to historically low levels and keeping them there. If you’re right, and they do this despite the poverty-creating effects of `single parent homes’ — though I note that you still have absolutely no evidence to support this causal hypothesis — then this makes them still more impressive. It does not show that they have failed in any way.
Finally, you speculated another causal connection, between welfare programmes and `single parent homes’. Here are statistics refuting that connection:
* Between 1969 and 1992, the average AFDC family size went from 4.0 to 2.9 persons;
* In 1992, the average yearly AFDC family payment was $4,572, and food stamps for a family of three averaged $2,469, for a total of $7,041. In that year, the poverty level for a mother with two children was $11,186. Thus, these two programs paid only 63 percent of the poverty level, and 74 percent of a minimum wage job. Also, I believe this link notes that the aid increased $90 for each additional child, which is hardly a compelling economic incentive.
* Mississippi has the second highest rate of children born out of wedlock in the country. It also has the lowest welfare and food stamp benefits for AFDC mothers in the country. This correlation generally holds across the nation as well — states with higher-than-average AFDC benefits tend to have lower-than-average nonmarital birthrates.
Not only is there a negative incentive to have children while on AFDC/TANF, there is also a negative correlation between the size of AFDC/TANF assistance and the rate of `single parent homes’.
(As any military historian will tell you, the quality of America’s armed forces improved dramatically when we shifted from a draft to a volunteer military.)
Uhh, no.
http://johntreed.com/militarydraft.html
The current system is classist, racist, and also inefficient, because it tends to attract recruits who have no other options.
Ted Kennedy and Ralph Nader were among many rich, white draftees.
(Humorously, the Army saw Nader’s Harvard Law degree and appointed him a cook).
K, this is thread drift, but I said “military historian”. Comparing the efficiency of the Vietnam era military with today’s, it’s hard to argue that we were considerably better off in 1967. And for heaven’s sake, having a draft doesn’t mean that the sons of the rich go to war; ask our current and previous president about that. And making comparisons between an immensely popular war like ww2 and Vietnam or Iraq doesn’t make much sense either.
All the stuff I’ve seen says morale is much higher in an all-volunteer force.
Still, as interesting as this discussion is, it is indeed thread drift, so let’s stay on marriage here.