> I read it right away - I despise Dan Quayle and revile positive appeals to
> his legacy. My reading of it was that all the points were disposed of
> rather than dealt with… for example, the unmarried cohabiting persons thing
> is disposed of by claiming that it's inherently a weaker commitment.
>> The empirical claim is that unmarried cohabiters break up sooner than
married ones. So if that's true it is reasonable to say it's a weaker
commitment in practice, on the average.
To do so fundamentally/implicitly disparages those who cohabit with kids
> without marriage as having only accidentally had kids (or at least having
> accidentally done so in a different accidental manner than married people).
>> That's reading more into it than I saw.
> Since a large large percentage of divorces occur during the high stress
> period around young kids, I'd love to see them consider/compare only
> married and unmarried cohabiting couples with children rather than
> unmarried couples with children and all those who are married in toto.
They did that: "cohabiting parents split up before their fifth anniversary at about twice the rate of married parents."
> The divorce rate is important because researchers like these have a
> long-held and empirically-verifiable history of clearly (though implicitly
> - and I know its not their topic) assuming the divorce rates are higher
> among those selfish people who marry without intending to have kids than
> among those with… it's all part of the BS romanticism about the 1950s.
>
"researchers like these" -- come on!
>
> The two-incomes-is-better-than-one thing only works if two income
> households - across income strata - have a clear history of raising
> "healthier" or "more successful" kids on the basis of those dual incomes…
That's what they found.
> and, until the fairly recent present, among higher income folks, dual
> incomes is exactly what's been correlated with divorce since women who
> could make their own money are no longer tied to dependency on a
> jackass-but-breadwinning man.
Probably true, but irrelevant, if other things equal more money is better than less. (duh)
> Until the late-70s - when it became clear that higher income dual income
> marriages were the most stable variety, dual incomes tended to be
> associated with lower income strata where the wives' income was necessary
> to the family but insufficient to provide for a household with children on
> their own and therefore largely furthered earlier eras of gender dependency
> and thus skewing divorce statistics.
>
> What's FAR more important than Sawhill's point is that dual earner
> middle-and-above-middle income men and women are delaying marriage and
> childbearing often into their thirties and the evidence there is clear that
> later first marriages between relatively more equal partners are those
> which both provide the most money for kids and the most family stability.
So better that than single motherhood? Which side are you on?
> Last, we know from the last twenty years of educational research that
> girls' and women's educational (and, increasingly, professional) attainment
> - most especially among the lower 50% of families by income - has
> outstripped boys' and men's attainment and that this has produced a
> situation where the reasons for childbearing outside of marriage are often
> wholly different than the racist/masculinist idiocy of Dan Quayle… a
> racist/masculinist idiocy clearly embedded in Sawhill's
> editorial/commentary. Add to this the decline in manual, service and
> industrial men's hourly wages and I don't see how marriage has the power to
> do what Sawhill implies because - as we all agree - of Doug's point.
>
> A (apologies for top-posting)
>
>
On one level, that two parents are better than one is self-evident, but so
what. If somebody wants to take on a challenging endeavor, it's easy to
point out alternatives that would be easier, less risky, more financially
wise. People can make unwise choices, especially kids old enough to have
babies, and nobody disagrees with that. But in the case of somebody who is
older, responsible, and solvent, I'd say it's their business, not mine. A
decent society would support families with children in any event. That we
don't says more about social provision than about individual choices.