NPR: Why children of married parents do better, but America is moving the other way

[The Nehor]

3 hours ago, Rain said:

I don't see it as snide.  What about it makes you see it that way?

The use of the word privilege. It comes across as tongue-in-cheek in this context.

[bluebell]

9 minutes ago, The Nehor said:

The use of the word privilege. It comes across as tongue-in-cheek in this context.

How so?  

[Damien the Leper]

What future does marriage and kids offer other than repopulation, societal enslavement, debt, the possibility of forced military service at the expense of being someone else's cannon fodder, etc? Does the piece of paper outweigh the sanctity of mutual agreement and commitment between 2 people? Let God sort out eternity and let's allow people to not feel pressured into a 1950s "nuclear whatever". People are going to have kids no matter what. Pressuring young adults with unnecessary expectations about "stages of life" needs to stop. It is absolutely 100% okay to not want to get married or have kids. 

[Nofear]

4 minutes ago, Damien the Leper said:

What future does marriage and kids offer other than repopulation, societal enslavement, debt, the possibility of forced military service at the expense of being someone else's cannon fodder, etc?

I think there is some room for you to answer that question in a serious manner with a bit of research -- both from a pragmatic what-happens-in-practice and a theoretical perspective. The amount of actual data on the topic is quite substantive.

[Benjamin McGuire]

I didn't find anything in the book that was terribly groundbreaking, and I think that the 4 points the author argues for and the 5 points they argue against are reasonable (but not forward thinking enough). Here they are:

Four things to do:

Quote

1: Work to restore and foster a norm of two-parent homes for children
2: Work to improve the economic position of men without a college level of education so they are more reliable marriage partners and fathers
3: Scale up government and community programs that show promise in strengthening families and improving outcomes for parents and children from disadvantaged backgrounds
4: Have a stronger safety net for families, regardless of family structure

Personally, I don't think that (1) is particularly useful as a goal. It is an important point, but I think that we should emphasize the importance of marriage with or without children. This is especially true in our current circumstances with the recent changes to Roe v. Wade (an issue which is to recent for this author to incorporate into the book). With (2), this is really a problematic issue. Economic data finds that wages themselves (current economic position) isn't as tightly connected to marriage likelihood as fringe benefits are (health insurance, retirement). If we focus too narrowly on this idea of men without a college degree, I think that there are going to be real limits in terms of effectiveness. We need to separate some of these other related issues that are directly connected to employment to make this work better. Just raising minimum wage, for example, won't have a big of an impact. The author's recommendation is providing more federal dollars to education - especially in the post K-12 context. I would argue that since our current strongest group of married people come from those that have completed a college education, we should simply invest in the infrastructure to make college free for all Americans. Further stability comes from making sure that we have adequate retirement coverage, and in making universal health care available. These more comprehensive steps won't simply work to remove barriers - they will help recenter marriage as a part of becoming adults. With (3), it's clear that most of our government efforts (which are generally politically motivated) to strengthen marriage have been complete failures. I am not sure that continuing to try in our current political environment is very pragmatic. (4) is a good idea in any case in my opinion.

On the other side is a list of five things we shouldn't do (a couple of these mirror the first list):

Quote

1: Accept a new reality where the two-parent family is a thing of the past for less educated, lower-income Americans
2: Bemoan the economic independence of women
3: Stigmatize single mothers or encourage unhealthy marriages
4: Run unsuccessful government marriage programs
5: Keep government assistance programs meager under the mistaken assumption that doing well will incentivize more marriages and two-parent families

A couple of further comments. This book didn't address at all the demographic transition - which is fairly widely recognized. This is a real failing of the book. While the focus seemed more about marriage than about birth rates, there is lot in the book about birthrates - and unless we tackle the factors outlined in the demographic transition, we aren't going to make much progress to turn it around. We will still continue to see declining populations - and the resulting reliance on immigrant populations that this necessitates - unless we change our approach towards having children and accommodating the raising of children.

Our society does not value child-rearing enough. And this absence of value affects the way that we approach fertility in a lot of negative ways - this is not an easy thing to change. It also doesn't directly impact the issue of marriage other than the fact that women with college degrees (and the financial security that comes with it) are better places in the marriage market place.

The current trends expanding the allowance of child labor is a bad thing. It will only contribute to the issues we see discussed in the book (again, it isn't mentioned - it is a recent trend).

There is almost certainly a problem with the high minority rates of single parent families in connection with higher levels of incarceration in minority populations. This is a problem that needs to find some sort of resolution or mitigation. The book points out that these problems exist, but it doesn't really offer much in the way of offering a solution to the problem.

There was a fair amount of discussion about benefits for poor families (earned income tax credits for example). There was virtually nothing about the tax penalties that are often incurred when getting married. Current US tax policy favors families with a single income or where there is a large gap between the two incomes. This becomes a penalty when both parents are in similar income brackets. When we are dealing with lower income couples, getting married almost always increases the financial burden for the significant future. This is something that needs to change.

Anyway, my two cents.

[Damien the Leper]

1 minute ago, Nofear said:

I think there is some room for you to answer that question in a serious manner with a bit of research -- both from a pragmatic what-happens-in-practice and a theoretical perspective. The amount of actual data on the topic is quite substantive.

I don't really have a problem with the data. I'm not even arguing that people shouldn't have kids. How about we let marriage and kids be a personal decision without grooming? 

[Nofear]

11 minutes ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

Personally, I don't think that (1) is particularly useful as a goal. It is an important point, but I think that we should emphasize the importance of marriage with or without children.

I agree that not stigmatizing outliers to normative behavior is a good thing, nonetheless, fostering the social mores that encourage two-parent is something I quite favor.

13 minutes ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

I would argue that since our current strongest group of married people come from those that have completed a college education, we should simply invest in the infrastructure to make college free for all Americans.

I like college education. I think it should be much more common than it is. Nonetheless, we regularly undervalue professional labor (labor where men far outweigh women in the workforce). It is not something that need be. Economics is a messy, messy topic. Despite being in favor of college education, I also believe in appropriately valuing everybody's labor (e.g. much as living the law of consecration I believe would do).

Other things I agree with it. I some I disagree with--though mostly to degree and not outright rejection of.

 

[Nofear]

18 minutes ago, Damien the Leper said:

I don't really have a problem with the data. I'm not even arguing that people shouldn't have kids. How about we let marriage and kids be a personal decision without grooming? 

Teaching kids social mores and values--I've heard the term brain washing used before. Grooming. That's a new one for me. Evokes the echos of sexual predation and the like as it's often used in that context. +1 troll points for creative use of language. Thanks for the example/tip!

[Rain]

3 hours ago, The Nehor said:

The use of the word privilege. It comes across as tongue-in-cheek in this context.

I get why some people view the word negatively and not as a recognition of my own blessings like I do. I also get why some might assume that in context it might come across that way (just assuming the 2 parent family idea is a conservative thing), but the more I look at the context by reading the article I just don't see that the context makes it snide.

[Benjamin McGuire]

13 minutes ago, Rain said:

I get why some people view the word negatively and not as a recognition of my own blessings like I do. I also get why some might assume that in context it might come across that way (just assuming the 2 parent family idea is a conservative thing), but the more I look at the context by reading the article I just don't see that the context makes it snide.

It is actually a reference to the debate over marriage as a capstone or cornerstone achievement. You can google it - there is a lot out there. The issue is the question of whether we want to view marriage as an important part of becoming an adult or something you get into once you have achieved success and are capable of managing the relationship. Or, 20 versus 30, pre-college or post-college, and so on. The challenge that this book is pointing out is that when we view marriage as a capstone achievement as opposed to a cornerstone achievement, it tends (under our current policies and societal expectations) to prevent upward mobility, increase greater economic gaps, has worse outcomes for children, and so on. The idea that marriage is a sign of privilege (a sign of wealth) is what the book is point to in a possible future where we don't make changes. On the other hand, what the book suggests doesn't being to touch on the size of the problem or the long period and conditions that have created it. We tend to be a bit short sighted because we don't really live that long.

Whether this word in the title makes it snide or not, I think that the book itself isn't going to make much difference to anyone. It will get its moment of fame, and sell a bunch of copies - but it is really, really light on the policy side. And from my perspective, it doesn't go back far enough to make its trending all that helpful in terms of the bigger picture. Just once issue. In my last sociology class on marriage and family relations (which was pretty standard), the point was made that the economic factors which lead to smaller families and even to single parent families began with certain minority groups. The causes for these shifts were largely misunderstood. The book recognizes that these minority groups are statistically at the bottom for these issues. What the book doesn't recognize (but which is widely understood) is that White America today is sitting where these minority groups were two or three decades ago - and white Americans are following similar trends. Where we see these minority groups today will be the place that the rest of Americans are in a couple of decades. These problems are complicated. And you aren't going to fix them with little things like changing the marriage classes that the government funds (even if you use data to follow the best performers). We will not be able to rely on the market place to correct all of this - the market place is driven by a completely different set of motivations. Where the book is right is in pointing out that using a stick to try to motivate change is never going to work. Even in the article that was linked, we see how the problem and its solutions are construed differently across the political spectrum. So, a book like this, which doesn't want to engage in hard policy discussions is simply allowing everyone to pick and choose what they want to get from it ... and it will just end with talking points and no change.

On the bright side, the collapse of marriage has led to even greater collapse of divorce. Divorce rates are currently in a relative free fall.

[Danzo]

5 hours ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

There was a fair amount of discussion about benefits for poor families (earned income tax credits for example). There was virtually nothing about the tax penalties that are often incurred when getting married. Current US tax policy favors families with a single income or where there is a large gap between the two incomes. This becomes a penalty when both parents are in similar income brackets. When we are dealing with lower income couples, getting married almost always increases the financial burden for the significant future. This is something that needs to change.

 

This is something that needs to be talked about much more.  The Marriage penalty is extremely burdensome on poor people.  We have to constantly tell people at our office that although we think marriage is a good thing the Federal Government will make you pay for it. Thousands of dollars from people who can't really afford it.

Its not just in the tax world, most public assistance has a heavy marriage penalty.

Also US immigration law severely punishes people who get married. 

Social Security benefits can also be jeopardized 

Its almost as if those who designed the US safety net systems got together and asked themselves how they could design a system that could provide the most reward for shacking up and the most punishment for getting married. 

 

[Calm]

8 hours ago, Rain said:

But earlier generations dealt with 2 world wars. Is the difference that Columbine and 9/11 were on American soil and if so is this just an American thing?

I do think gun mass shootings, especially at schools have created a greater sense of doom in youth and young adults, but there was always doom lurking somewhere in the background.  

I vaguely remember drills hiding under desks waiting for a nuclear bomb…or they could have been tornado drills and my brother bragged about him having to do the duck and cover ones as well (he is four years older than me, I am closer to the borderline of when they would stopped practicing duck and cover so don’t trust that I am not getting duck and cover mixed up with tornado…but I am pretty sure the tornado ones had us file out into the hall away from windows and lined us up along a certain interior wall and we crouched down, so the under the desk drill I remember seems most likely duck and cover).

The whole nuclear winter and overpopulation was a constant background to my elementary years.  There was still fear of polio and other disease outbreaks.  One of my church friends was deaf due to one of the last major outbreaks.  The year of my birth was record breaking for measles.

My older brother turned 18 in 1972, there was real fear growing up he would be drafted and headed to a war.  The draft was an obsession back then. Vietnam and protests against it were constantly in the news.  I had several friends wearing POW bracelets, a reminder the war continued for many families.

The Vietnam war ended officially in my junior high school year.  

Acid rain and the destruction of our world by pollution, including being buried in our own garbage was more the theme of my high school and college years…overpopulation was still going strong though.  Backyard bomb shelters were jokes by then.

The Late, Great Planet Earth was everywhere in the 70s.

What is most different these days, imo, is kids have immediate, visual access to disaster and rumors of disaster online all the time and therefore it’s much more immediate and ‘real’ to them.  But I remember talk shows Mom watched as she ironed and I believe some dealt with separation anxiety of kids due to fears of the world coming to an end, especially if Dad was in the military (since few women were back then).  And I remember friends saying they would never have kids as the world was not a safe place.

Not among church members though.

[The Nehor]

6 hours ago, bluebell said:

How so?  

It is becoming a buzzword. It had a solid meaning and then got overused and its use usually signals a position on certain issues or is outright virtue signaling.

[Rain]

1 hour ago, Calm said:

I do think gun mass shootings, especially at schools have created a greater sense of doom in youth and young adults, but there was always doom lurking somewhere in the background.  

I vaguely remember drills hiding under desks waiting for a nuclear bomb…or they could have been tornado drills and my brother bragged about him having to do the duck and cover ones as well (he is four years older than me, I am closer to the borderline of when they would stopped practicing duck and cover so don’t trust that I am not getting duck and cover mixed up with tornado…but I am pretty sure the tornado ones had us file out into the hall away from windows and lined us up along a certain interior wall and we crouched down, so the under the desk drill I remember seems most likely duck and cover).

The whole nuclear winter and overpopulation was a constant background to my elementary years.  There was still fear of polio and other disease outbreaks.  One of my church friends was deaf due to one of the last major outbreaks.  The year of my birth was record breaking for measles.

My older brother turned 18 in 1972, there was real fear growing up he would be drafted and headed to a war.  The draft was an obsession back then. Vietnam and protests against it were constantly in the news.  I had several friends wearing POW bracelets, a reminder the war continued for many families.

The Vietnam war ended officially in my junior high school year.  

Acid rain and the destruction of our world by pollution, including being buried in our own garbage was more the theme of my high school and college years…overpopulation was still going strong though.  Backyard bomb shelters were jokes by then.

The Late, Great Planet Earth was everywhere in the 70s.

What is most different these days, imo, is kids have immediate, visual access to disaster and rumors of disaster online all the time and therefore it’s much more immediate and ‘real’ to them.  But I remember talk shows Mom watched as she ironed and I believe some dealt with separation anxiety of kids due to fears of the world coming to an end, especially if Dad was in the military (since few women were back then).  And I remember friends saying they would never have kids as the world was not a safe place.

Not among church members though.

I thought of mentioning Vietnam, but my dad was there when I was young so it might have affected me more than others.

We did earthquake drills under our desks. I remember talking about the cold war a lot. 

I do agree that kids have more access to what is going on now. And while some may feel not alone because of access to others like them around the world I also think that being with others in the gloom has increased the gloom.  In some spots on the internet I see that happening a LOT.

[sunstoned]

On 10/22/2023 at 8:28 PM, Buckeye said:

I’ve seen this too. I think many of our young men feel no urgency to move into married life because their single life is good and there’s an endless pool of amazing young women. 

It’s not fair to the young women, but I don’t have an easy solution. One course I do recommend to them is to take initiative. Ask YM on dates. Pay your share. Encourage them to ask you out and, when the time is right, you can propose too. That may seem aggressive and off-putting to some YM but those YM would either have already asked you out or never would, so there’s not a real loss. 

The men have been from cultured early childhood to suppress their natural desires.  They are forbidden to date until they are 16, and then after that, the dates are encouraged to be be group dates.  Men (boys) repeatedly get reinforcement through lessons and Bishop's interviews to remain pure, and are discouraged from developing close relationships with the opposite sex.  A mission further drives this point home. Then as soon as the elder returns, a switch is flipped and they are suppose to drop the group date stuff and get serious with dating. This is a complete 180 that is not well thought out.   Perhaps a possible solution could be to have lesson manuals and policies written by people who did not come of age in the 1930's and 1940's.   The last man standing ascension tradition needs to change.  Allow Q15 members to have an emeritus option so that we could get some newer and hopefully more in touch leadership in place.

Edited October 24, 2023 by sunstoned

[rodheadlee]

6 hours ago, Rain said:

I thought of mentioning Vietnam, but my dad was there when I was young so it might have affected me more than others.

We did earthquake drills under our desks. I remember talking about the cold war a lot. 

I do agree that kids have more access to what is going on now. And while some may feel not alone because of access to others like them around the world I also think that being with others in the gloom has increased the gloom.  In some spots on the internet I see that happening a LOT.

Did you grow up in California? When I was in 2nd grade (1962) we had a swarm of earthquakes while in school. They were loud bangers. We all had to go out to the field and wait.  A lot of the girls were crying... Boys were not allowed to in those days.

[Calm]

7 hours ago, Rain said:

so it might have affected me more than others

No doubt it did, but it still played a big part in my life and my friends from what I saw though few had family members who were in the military.  But I am guessing it was different in more than just being more personal for you as while church members were generally very supportive of the military in my experience and publicly patriotic, that certainly wasn’t true for all of my social circle or what I saw in the news. There was always the threat of it getting worse because someone made a stupid move plus the news reports made the horrors quite present so to speak.  The My Lai massacre, racial conflicts, and other incidents made many of us ashamed of our country at times and less trusting in it.

Edited October 24, 2023 by Calm

[Rain]

1 hour ago, rodheadlee said:

Did you grow up in California? When I was in 2nd grade (1962) we had a swarm of earthquakes while in school. They were loud bangers. We all had to go out to the field and wait.  A lot of the girls were crying... Boys were not allowed to in those days.

No, for the most part in Utah. Never felt an earthquake till my early 20s, but they often talked about the Big One they predicted coming. 

[Calm]

4 hours ago, rodheadlee said:

Did you grow up in California? When I was in 2nd grade (1962) we had a swarm of earthquakes while in school. They were loud bangers. We all had to go out to the field and wait.  A lot of the girls were crying... Boys were not allowed to in those days.

Were you Southern California?  I would still be at home at the big front window watching my siblings trudge across the street to school in 1962 and I don’t remember any earthquakes until after we moved back to San Francisco in 1971 (left in 65).  Doesn’t mean we didn’t have any, but I think I would have remembered being that scared.  I remember some exciting bits from 4 and 5 years of age, even a few from 3 years (a particularly scary nightmare…still freaks me out, dancing in my birthday dress in the park, getting in a bit of trouble for forgetting to wear underwear to church…had to borrow my sister’s tights).

If you were in the North, I will have to ask my brother if he remembers them.

Edited October 24, 2023 by Calm

[bluebell]

9 hours ago, sunstoned said:

The men have been from cultured early childhood to suppress their natural desires.  They are forbidden to date until they are 16, and then after that, the dates are encouraged to be be group dates.  Men (boys) repeatedly get reinforcement through lessons and Bishop's interviews to remain pure, and are discouraged from developing close relationships with the opposite sex.  A mission further drives this point home. Then as soon as the elder returns, a switch is flipped and they are suppose to drop the group date stuff and get serious with dating. This is a complete 180 that is not well thought out.   Perhaps a possible solution could be to have lesson manuals and policies written by people who did not come of age in the 1930's and 1940's.   The last man standing ascension tradition needs to change.  Allow Q15 members to have an emeritus option so that we could get some newer and hopefully more in touch leadership in place.

But wasn’t all of that true a few decades ago too? And yet the returning missionaries of those eras seemed more able to find spouses than we see with the YSA today.

[Nofear]

10 hours ago, sunstoned said:

The men have been from cultured early childhood to suppress their natural desires.  They are forbidden to date until they are 16, and then after that, the dates are encouraged to be be group dates.  Men (boys) repeatedly get reinforcement through lessons and Bishop's interviews to remain pure, and are discouraged from developing close relationships with the opposite sex.  A mission further drives this point home. Then as soon as the elder returns, a switch is flipped and they are suppose to drop the group date stuff and get serious with dating. This is a complete 180 that is not well thought out.   Perhaps a possible solution could be to have lesson manuals and policies written by people who did not come of age in the 1930's and 1940's.   The last man standing ascension tradition needs to change.  Allow Q15 members to have an emeritus option so that we could get some newer and hopefully more in touch leadership in place.

One of the reasons I would encourage church dance attendance for the ym was to get across the idea that it is okay to actually touch a female!

[Calm]

28 minutes ago, Nofear said:

One of the reasons I would encourage church dance attendance for the ym was to get across the idea that it is okay to actually touch a female!

They should have combined YW and YM dance classes (partners chosen by lot and rotated).

[rodheadlee]

2 hours ago, Calm said:

Were you Southern California?  I would still be at home at the big front window watching my siblings trudge across the street to school in 1962 and I don’t remember any earthquakes until after we moved back to San Francisco in 1971 (left in 65).  Doesn’t mean we didn’t have any, but I think I would have remembered being that scared.  I remember some exciting bits from 4 and 5 years of age, even a few from 3 years (a particularly scary nightmare…still freaks me out, dancing in my birthday dress in the park, getting in a bit of trouble for forgetting to wear underwear to church…had to borrow my sister’s tights).

If you were in the North, I will have to ask my brother if he remembers them.

Yes, down in Orange County. I could have the year wrong. It could have been 1960 or 61. 2nd grade was 61 not 62. I was born in 1954. We lived on Westminster for all of my school life. 

[mfbukowski]

On 10/22/2023 at 4:48 PM, Calm said:

A bit snide today.   

He just wants to be me, of course, as does everyone. 🙃

[mfbukowski]

Deleted, error.

Edited October 24, 2023 by mfbukowski