Marriage and Caste in America: Separate and Unequal Families in a Post-Marital Age

by Kay S. Hymowitz

Book Overview

A generation ago Americans undertook a revolutionary experiment to redefine marriage. The results of this experiment separating marriage from childrearing are in, and they are bad news for children... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1566637090
• Release Date: November 2006
• Publisher: Ivan R. Dee
• Length: 192 Pages
• Weight: 0.80 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.7" x 0.8" x 5.9"

Customer Reviews

Marriage is so much more than two people 'in love'

This is a very powerful book. There are couple of concepts that really jumped out at me. 1) The modern notion that the primary purpose of marriage is personal happiness and expression, as oppose to child rearing. She really made some good arguments about why child rearing has to be the primary focus of marriage in a free and democratic society. In a society where the citizens are the final authority government should not be `raising' our children. Yet, with single parenthood on the rise and the inevitable burdens it puts on our social structure government is taking an increasingly larger part in the rearing of the next generation of citizens. Marriage has a truly positive material effect on the lives of children. What material effect (if any) does marriage really have on people declaring love for each alone? 2) The fact that alternative family structures are the last thing the African American community needs. African Americans have had alternative family structures for the last 30 plus years. Has it helped the dynamics and effectiveness of the black family over that time? African Americans have to be careful when we take on certain attitudes of the mainstream culture. We can not dismiss the positive effects marriage has on children as easily as other cultures can. Truthfully, I do not think other cultures should either. But as Ms. Hymowitz shows, the aftermath of that dismissal is much more devastating to a community where over 70% of the children are born to unmarried parents. All in all, this is a powerful book that most American should read. There comes a point when we must become truly concerned about the generations coming behind us. Once we have had all our fun, what kind of society will we be leaving them? At what point do we sacrifice some personal desire for the good of our nation as a whole? The book may not be flawless, but it can ignite a great conversation that needs to take place in our current debates.

Marriage is good for the children

These essays make an argument about life and class in America. Kay Hymowitz points to a tremendous increase in births of illegitimate children over the past four decades. She suggests that the children of the non- married have poor chance of success in subsequent life. They do not have models and examples which teach them the meaning of discipline, work, delay of gratification for a long- term goal. She indicates that there is a growing multigenerational underclass in America. And she in effect makes a strong argument that married parents are the best thing for the children. While she does not provide a mass of statistical data to support her case she does write in a reasonable, clear and convincing way. This is an alarming book for all those who care about the future of America.

Impressive but troubling research

What are we going to do? That's the question Hymowitz asks as she surveys the wreckage of marriage in America. "In 1960 ...the percentage of high school dropouts who were never-married mothers barely hit 1 percent...Moreover, almost all women stayed married" (p 18). How things have changed. Now our illegitimacy rate hovers at 37% and the majority of children spend at least part of their childhood without both their natural parents. A huge number of young women have simply lost the life script that would lead them to marriage. And the result is tragic. Children of single mothers are at huge risk for emotional problems, drug abuse, suicide, sexual abuse, and school problems. There are only a tiny minority of prisoners in our prisons who grew up with both their natural parents. Worse, these problems do not go away after a few years. They are lifelong, rolling like waves through years of further troubled relationships and poverty. And even worse than that, none of the palliatives most people suggest have helped. Head Start is a failure. As research in Sweden shows, no matter how much money the government spends, children of single mothers tend never to do as well as the children of married parents. Nor can the presence of a father figure later on help much. In fact, statistics show that second marriages or later father figures tend to increase, not decrease, the amount of trouble for the child. It's apparent even among the elite. "Cornell professor Jennifer Gerner was baffled some years ago when she n noticed that only about 10% of her students came from divorced families' (p 24). So if our breezy modern attitude toward marriage is harming a huge number of children, what can be done? Anyone interested in this subject will want to read the best book on the subject, "The Abolition of Marriage" by Maggie Gallagher.

Inner City Black Children Could Use More Bill Cosby's and fewer Marian Wright Edelman's

In writing this easy-to-read, but hard-to-swallow little book, Kay Hymowitz has done more to show the route out of poverty and despair for inner city black children than all the nanny-state prescriptions of "child advocacy" organizations like the Childrens' Defense Fund (now there's a misnomer). She describes well the fundamental difference between middle class families--with both father and mother living in the same house--and single mothers with absentee fathers in the inner city. In middle-class families, the child's development--"emotional, social, and...cognitive--takes center stage. It is the family's raison d'etre, its state religion." It is a lack of understanding of what she labels the "mission" of the family for the child, that perpetuates the underclass. It hit me between the eyes when a nurse, working with poor, young, first-time mothers, is quoted as saying that when she encouraged such mothers to talk to their babies, they often reply, "Why would I talk to him? He can't answer me." Throwing more money at government programs like Head Start haven't been able and never will be able to overcome such a view of the role of the "family" in developing a self-reliant, productive and, yes, happy child and young adult. And unfortunately, for more and more central cities of the US, there are no longer any models of middle class behavior for young people to learn from. No one can show how a full-time father living in the home acts--because there are none. The good news from this book is that Gen X young people, having seen and felt the horrific effects of easy divorces by Baby Boomer parents, are becoming more and more committed to staying together in traditional marriages. The bad news, as Hymowitz demonstrates, is that American society is becoming more and more bifurcated. As the time and education required to succeed in a more information-intensive world increases, the gap between success (and yes, personal fulfillment) and failure (and despair) will continue to grow. And such success or failure will be determined more and more by that venerable, but elite-scorned institution--the marriage of one man and one woman. How did we ever come to think otherwise?

Hymowitz is a Treasure

If you don't already read Kay Hymowitz's essays in City Journal, you will after reading this book. She's that rare writer who manages to be bold without being bombastic. Her take on the crumbling institution of marriage is at once sobering and smart. Her thesis: marriage matters. In language that is simple without being simplistic, she reveals how marriage is the ultimate "anti-poverty program," and how so much that ails our nation's youth derives from absentee fathers. She delivers a heavy message with a hopeful conclusion: in the end, many of the challenges our nation's families face aren't all that hard to solve, they just take the moral courage and individual initiative to do so.