America Ascendant

by Stanley B Greenberg

  Working mothers, whether married or single, are managing work and family without the barest of social support—something that is provided in every other developed country in the world. America has witnessed nothing short of a revolution in women’s role in the economy and the character of the family. Yet, no new federal law has been passed since the Family Leave Act in 1993—requiring large employers to allow unpaid family leave. That is hard to understand, since there are so many models for doing it better. With social conservatives still contesting many of these social changes and business successful at resisting regulation and new mandates, America uniquely leaves working women with no help on day care, paid sick days or paid leave, or anything else. But they are poised to demand reform.

  MARRIAGE

  Unmarried households became a majority in the country in 2011. Many trends led to this tipping point for marriage. People are marrying much later; just one in five of those under thirty years of age is married today, compared to three in five in 1960. Those who never marry will soon be half of the unmarried. About half of working-class marriages still end in divorce. As a result, the number of unmarried couples, childless households, and single people is growing faster than the number of married couples with children in every state—a fact highlighted by the conservative American Enterprise Institute.8

  The marriage rate falling to half of the country is in part driven by other demographic changes, since minority populations experience a lower marriage rate and minorities are becoming a greater share of the total population. While racial discrepancies persist, the decline in marriage is now strongly evident in all communities. Over the past half century, the proportion of blacks living in married households dropped by half—from 61 to 31 percent. Hispanics saw a decline in marriage rates that was 6 points less dramatic but nonetheless significant, starting at 72 percent, comparable to the level among whites at the time, and falling to 48 percent. The fall among whites was 5 points less than among Hispanics, declining from 74 to 55 percent—and among low-income working-class whites, it has fallen to less than half.9

  People are postponing or abstaining from marriage, and that is also true of childbearing, though to a lesser extent. In 1960, only 5 percent of children were nonmarital births, with one-third of marriages precipitated by a pregnancy, but in 2008 that share of births reached 41 percent. While cohabitation used to follow marriage, it is more and more a prerequisite for marriage among the college-educated and an alternative among the non-college-educated today, as two-thirds of couples now live together before marrying. In fact, half of children born outside of marriage are born to cohabitating parents, though nearly two-thirds will be separated when their kids reach ten years of age.10

  “King’s Dream Remains an Elusive Goal; Many Americans See Racial Disparities,” Pew Research Center, August 22, 2013, p. 29. Note: White and black adults include only those who reported a single race. Asians, Native Americans, and mixed-race groups not shown. Source is the Pew Research Center’s tabulations of 1960–2000 Decennial Census and the American Community Survey (IPUMS).

  Marriage, or at least “traditional marriage”—a household with two parents, marriage before children, a male breadwinner, and a female homemaker—has been driven low by diverse economic and cultural forces and, as David Ellwood and Christopher Jencks understate it, “some changes may even be irreversible.” Ellwood and Jencks believe that three factors altered at least the timing and the order of marriage and childbearing. First, the link between marriage and childbearing was weakened by the Pill and legalized abortion, which “gave couples, and particularly women, far more control over the timing of births.” That allowed them to consider other factors including their changing economic options. Second, noneconomic incentives to marry became less important because “changing sexual mores”—in part driven by the sexual revolution, which “destigmatized premarital sex”—“made it more acceptable for unmarried couples to engage in sexual activity and live together.” And third, Ellwood and Jencks believe the dramatic changes in gender roles, which allowed more women and women with children to work, increased the financial benefits from delaying childbearing.

  Each of these dynamics allows economic considerations to become more important to decisions about when people marry and have children, and the combination is pretty powerful: “If women gain greater control over the timing of parenthood and if they have more opportunities in the labor market, some of them will find it advantageous to delay childbearing. If women are delaying childbearing, many will delay marriage as well.” This explains why more-educated women are more likely to delay childbearing than less-educated women, which in turn explains why they are also delaying marriage longer. On the other hand, less-educated working-class women “see few economically attractive mates” in an economy where working-class men are less assured of a stable, good-paying job, and “this might lead them to delay marriage but not childbearing.” All of these conspire to deal a “fatal blow to the traditional model of marriage,” concludes Richard Reeves, policy director for the Center for Children and Families.11

  But it has not dealt a deathblow to the institution of marriage itself—which “is undergoing a metamorphosis.” The “old form of marriage, based on outdated social roles and gender roles, is fading. A new version is emerging—egalitarian, committed and focused on children.” College graduates, led by the women, “are reinventing marriage as a child-rearing machine for a post-feminist society and a knowledge economy,” which means shared responsibility for parenting, home, and earnings. Reeves concludes, “It’s working, too.”12

  Well, it’s not working among the working class and those without a four-year degree, though they are equally committed to getting married. Three-quarters of all Americans say marriage “is very important” or “one of the most important things” to them, and among the unmarried, nearly half of both the college-educated and those with a high school diploma or less want to get married, a commitment that defies class lines and recent history. Half a century ago, marriage rates were no different for the working class and the middle class, but in 2010, almost two-thirds of college-educated adults were married, while just under half of those with less education were.13

  “The lack of economic security” is a “key reason people don’t get married,” the Pew Research Center concludes. More than a quarter of never-married adults cite not being financially prepared as the main reason they are not married. And a stunning 78 percent of never-married women say a steady job is the most important thing they are looking for in a potential spouse—and that tops all other considerations. But many of these women are bound to be frustrated as a good man by this criterion is harder and harder to find. For every unmarried woman, there are but 0.65 unmarried employed men.14

  The changed prospects for traditional marriage along with the changes in the economy have left the institution of marriage decimated among non-college-graduates and the working class. Conservative author Charles Murray tells the story of the lower-income, working-class whites—the bottom 30 percent. More than 80 percent were married in 1960, though less than half were fifty years later. The marriage rate for those at the top, on the other hand, has stabilized in the mid–80 percent range. The concept of being “never married” hardly existed before, yet now it has reached a quarter of those at the bottom. Divorce has accelerated, reaching one-third of low-income whites in 2010, while the divorce rate stabilized just above 5 percent among those at the top. The number of nonmarital births accelerated during this period for everyone except those with a four-year degree, rising highest among the least educated.15

  Moreover, lower-income and working-class whites report that they are less happy in their marriages and just less happy, period, as economic troubles tend to push people apart. They are increasingly less trustful of others and are substantially less involved now in their community, civic organizations, even their churches: more than 55 percent attended church regularly in the late 1970s, but now it is closer to 40 percent. These patt
erns are utterly reversed for those at the top 20 percent, reinforcing just how much this alienation from marriage and community predominates among those at the bottom of the socioeconomic scale.16

  These social trends in marriage rates and children raised with an absent parent have shaped the fortunes and misfortunes of blacks for a long time. The result is that 28 percent of black Americans live in poverty. Among black men, 41 percent do not graduate high school and 11 percent of black men over 20 are unemployed. In almost all respects, the increased poverty and blocked mobility among blacks is a product of compounding social trends more than race specifically, according to almost all the social science studies cited in the debate. But how do you begin to break the pattern of poverty and blocked mobility created by these powerful social conditions when more than 25 percent of nonincarcerated black men have a felony conviction, a huge obstacle to gaining employment?17

  Charles Murray, Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960–2010. (New York: Crown Forum, 2012), p. 154, Figure 8.3. Source: IPUMS, sample limited to whites ages 30–49.

  Charles Murray, Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960–2010 (New York: Crown Forum, 2012), p. 161 Figure 8.9 Source: Author’s analysis of alternative years of the Natality Public Use Files of the Centers for Disease Control, beginning with 1970. Sample limited to white women.

  A daunting one in six black men between the ages of 25 and 54 dies prematurely or is imprisoned, according to unique analysis provided by the blog The Upshot under the headline “1.5 MILLION MISSING BLACK MEN.” Black men in the United States are more likely to be imprisoned or die prematurely from homicide, accidents, heart disease, and other diseases. The result is that there are only 83 black men for every 100 black women, though among whites, the number “missing” does not vary for men and women.18

  The marriage gap also has immense economic consequences. In 1960, the median income gap of married households was 12 percent greater than that of unmarried households; by 2008, it was 41 percent: $77,000 versus $54,000. Marriage just matters: a single-earner in a married household now makes $63,000, but that shrinks to only $53,000 if you are unmarried.19

  Conservative Nick Schulz is not exaggerating when he declares “the collapse of the intact family is one of the most significant economic facts of our time.”

  “Nobody doubts that where marriage is, poverty tends not to be; the statistics are stark,” writes Annie Lowrey, economic policy reporter for The New York Times. She offers a stream of simple but powerful facts that make the economic consequences for families and children painfully clear: “Almost no marriages in which both partners work full time fall below the poverty line; about one-third of households headed by a single mother are poor. One in eight children with two married parents lives below the poverty line; five in ten living with a single mother do.” Putting economic issues aside, “children raised by two parents are less likely to have behavioral problems, be asthmatic or hungry; they are more likely to achieve at school and so on.” And a recent study of parents found that those living in poverty were “twice as likely to report chronic pain and mental distress” as those from families earning $75,000 or more, and those in poverty were three to five times more likely to be extremely stressed or in extreme pain. By the time they are young men and women, children raised by married parents are 44 percent more likely to go to college.20

  The father being absent is “similar to the effect of having a mother who did not finish high school rather than one who did,” according to a new assessment by Sara McLanahan and Christopher Jencks. The absence of a father produces “increased antisocial behavior, such as aggression, rule breaking, delinquency, and illegal drug use” and a teenager less able or willing “to exercise self-control.” These effects are harder on boys than girls, it seems, though the effects are similar for black and white children with an absent parent.21

  These conditions of the family and marriage contribute to an elevated inequality in the country and reduce the prospects that those born on the bottom rungs of the economic ladder will reach the top ones. That is the stark conclusion of the authoritative work conducted by Raj Chetty, Nathaniel Hendren, Patrick Kline, and Emmanuel Saez on intergenerational mobility at the level of community and nationally.

  Measures of family structure are the most important factors in their study, which calculated the proportion of adults who are married, the proportion who are divorced, and the proportion of children living in single-parent households. All three measures are highly correlated with upward mobility, but the proportion of children living in single-parent households has a correlation of −0.76 and, they write, it “is the strongest correlate of upward income mobility among all the variables we explored.” Moreover, the correlation between upward mobility and family structure is clear at the individual level and at the community level. So children of married couples have greater upward mobility when they live in communities with fewer single parents, and less upward mobility in communities with more single parents.22

  In practice, Kathleen Gerson shows in her book The Unfinished Revolution that the family today is dynamic and “changes daily, monthly and yearly” as children grow up in married, divorced, or remarried households with stepparents, or some sequence of those family types. But those differences over a lifetime have profound consequences for inequality and upward mobility, as Reeves shows. Children in the lowest quintile born to parents who are continuously married have a not inconsiderable one in five chance (19 percent) of ending up as an adult in the top quintile, but that probability is cut in half to 10 percent if their mother was married, though not continuously; it is cut in half again to a mere 5 percent when the mother has never married at all stages in the child’s life.23

  The college-educated and those with the highest incomes seem fully aware of the social trends and are renewing marriage with a focus on parenting. In fact, college-educated women are more likely to get married, marry later, marry better-educated men, have more resources, and have fewer children, and less than 10 percent have children outside of marriage, according to James Heckman’s work on the American family. By age three, their children demonstrate dramatically higher performance on standardized tests than the children of mothers with a high school education, even those with some college education. That gap is apparent for both white and African American children.24

  And what is the reason for the sustained gap? Their college-educated mothers are spending more time with their children at a young age and teach their children good behavior and values in addition to cognitive skills.

  James J. Heckman, “The American Family in Black and White: A Post-Racial Strategy for Improving Skills to Promote Equality,” National Bureau of Economic Research, March, 2011, p. 14.

  James J. Heckman, “The American Family in Black and White: A Post-Racial Strategy for Improving Skills to Promote Equality,” National Bureau of Economic Research, March, 2011, p. 24.

  When Heckman looked into the most cost-effective programs for raising future skill levels—which will in turn determine the opportunity for advancement—he found that early childhood investments produce a significant return on investment in human capital. Programs are most effective when you reach children under three years but also in preschool years. That is when children learn “soft skills” and foundational behaviors, and they are “as predictive, if not more predictive, of schooling, wages, participation in crime and participation in healthy behaviors as cognitive skills.”25

  You do not have to convince the people living in the most challenging working-class, low-income, and poor neighborhoods with high concentrations of single parents of the value of children learning “soft skills” early. They know the value of good parenting and the importance of values learned at home. But they face untold obstacles, and being on your own makes it very hard to keep kids on the right path.

  When I conducted surveys in the black, Hispanic, and white working-class neighborhoods in Chicago, people across the board gave very high support to
this statement: “We should not expect city government to raise a child, teach them good values, or make sure they do well in school. We need parents to be responsible for their children.” And when thinking about addressing the violent crime that receives so much national attention, they lamented that there were so many guns on the streets and not enough jobs, but also that parents were not spending more time with their children.26

  President Barack Obama went back to Chicago after the tragic, random murder of fifteen-year-old Hadiya Pendleton, weeks after she proudly performed at the president’s inauguration. He reached out to the community and was embraced back when he spoke about his own single mother, the great challenges facing families, and the need to promote marriage and fatherhood. The work to build the ladders of opportunity found in good communities, he declared, “starts at home.”27

  There’s no more important ingredient for success, nothing that would be more important for us reducing violence than strong, stable families—which means we should do more to promote marriage and encourage fatherhood. Don’t get me wrong—as the son of a single mom, who gave everything she had to raise me with the help of my grandparents, I turned out okay. But … we’ve got single moms out here, they’re heroic in what they’re doing, and we are so proud of them. But at the same time, I wish I had had a father who was around and involved. Loving, supportive parents—and, by the way, that’s all kinds of parents—that includes foster parents, and that includes grandparents, and extended families; it includes gay or straight parents. Those parents supporting kids—that’s the single most important thing. Unconditional love for your child—that makes a difference.