SIU 2014 Teaser: Marriage & Caste in America

By Caitlin La Ruffa

A few years ago Kay Hymowitz observed some concerning trends about the increasing marriage divide between the “haves” and “have-nots” here in the U.S, which she chronicled in detail in her book Marriage and Caste in America. Kay writes:

“Most people assume that divorce, unmarried motherhood, fatherlessness, and custody battles are all equal-opportunity domestic misfortunes, affecting the denizens of West Virginia trailer parks or Bronx housing projects just as they do Malibu beach homes or Park Avenue co-ops…[this] assumption that all Americans are in the same boat when it comes to marriage collapse is dead wrong. There is a typical single mother, and she is not Murphy Brown or Angelina Jolie (editor’s note: Hymowitz was writing in 2006, long before Jolie’s preschool-drawing-covered wedding gown was unveiled. Pardon the outdated reference). She is poor, or near poor. She has no college degree. She has few of the essential skills for negotiating a tough new economy. On the other side of the tracks is her college-educated counterpart. She is skilled, of course. She is also married.”

Hymowitz goes on to explain that research shows repeatedly that children of single mothers don’t fare as well. And when you couple the trends of diminished prospects among children of single-parent homes and more marriage among the better educated, less among the less, you end up with, as she puts it, “double trouble” for the country’s most vulnerable.

In many ways, this is the same trend that Daniel Patrick Moynihan observed in his famed 1965 report. But even since Hymowitz published her work in 2006 much has changed, so we invited her to SIU 2014 to give us an insider’s update.

It is still (and increasingly) true that the “traditional” conception of the family is disappearing especially among those without a college education. Family life is increasingly characterized by out-of-wedlock births, single parenthood, cohabitation, divorce, instability, and poverty.

For the “haves,” however, things seem well enough on the surface: most college-educated women are waiting to have children until they are married and those marriages are relatively stable. In spite of a shinier surface, developments in the field of reproduction over the last half-century and a shifting understanding of the nature marriage have taken their own toll on family well-being. Women reported frustrations with feeling pressure to delay children and even freeze their eggs for the sake of careers; families struggle with infertility and turn to forms of third-party reproduction.

This growing divide – both in resources and in the very course that life takes – all but removes the possibility for any real social mobility or integration of these “castes,” as Hymowitz characterizes them. While they may have less and less in common in terms of the structure of daily life, both trends deprive children of a connection to their origins, a sense of belonging to the man and woman who brought them into the world, and a chance to grow up knowing and being loved by their mom and dad.

I’m looking forward to hearing Kay update us on marriage and family life in America and have a good feeling she will share some reasons to be hopeful for the next generation.

Caitlin La Ruffa is the Director of the Love and Fidelity Network.

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