Hymowitz: Marriage and Caste in America

Here's a very interesting article whose thesis I for one have never before
heard:

Today's (12/13/06, pg D16, col 4) Wall St Journal has a review by Charlotte
Hays of this Kay Hymowitz book that reads in part:

'..."Why would women working for a pittance at supermarket cash registers
decide to have children without getting married while women writing briefs
at Debevoise & Plimpton, who could easily afford to go it alone, insist on
finding husbands before they start families?"

' The answer, in Ms. Hymowitz's view, is that many among the urban poor have
lost the "life script" for future-oriented child-rearing. Policy makers may
assume that the problem is a shortage of employed, marriageable men. But
the problem is more existential, a loss of the sense that marriage and
children are connected.'
...

California Poppy...

This is what I have observed. Women brought up in single parent
households see no need for marriage or partnership with a man in order
to have children. Men brought up in these single parent households
are often part of the gangs in the inner city. They have no male role
models, they were spoiled by their mothers and the gang with its
instant gratifications seems attractive to them.

' According to Ms. Hymowitz - and this is the scariest part of the book -
most social analysts ignore the root of the problem and therefore end up
prescribing "solutions" that actually "smooth the way" for single
parenthood. "To listen to some policymakers," she writes, "one might think
that wanting to become a lawyer or anchorworman - and possessing the
requisite orderliness, discipline, foresight, and bourgeois willingness to
delay gratification - are natural instincts rather than traits developed
over time through adults' prodding and example." '

Florida...

Very interesting article. I'm glad is being given the attention it
deserves. I'll pass it along to my daughter, who is a guidance
counselor.
I agree that experiencing a functioning marriage and thoughtful
upbringing by adults is the real way to understand how they both work.
I do wonder (perhaps this is in the article, I've only skimmed the
first two pages so far) if the educated womens' delay in starting a
family yields a much smaller total number of children than the
no-marriage/no-wait strategy, so that we can count on a large, and
perhaps irreducible, percentage of all children being impulsive and
poorly socialized both by birth and by training.

Rita...

I think there may be underlying reasons poor women have children
outside of marriage. There seems to be a culture whereby a girl
believes motherhood somehow confers the status of adulthood and
independence from her own family. Doesn't work out that way, but
these girls seem to see their life chances as limited in other
respects. And indeed they are, though of course being saddled with
children to support does nothing to enhance them either. I believe
it is a complex issue and not explained just by one theory or another.

Powerful stuff.