There was a time when the phrase "American family" conjured up a single,
specific image: a breadwinner dad, a homemaker mom, and their 2.5 kids
living comfortable lives in a middle-class suburb. Today, that image has
been shattered, due in part to skyrocketing divorce rates, single
parenthood, and increased out-of-wedlock births. But whether it is
conservatives bewailing the wages of moral decline and women's
liberation, or progressives celebrating the result of women's greater
freedom and changing sexual mores, most Americans fail to identify the
root factor driving the changes: economic inequality that is remaking
the American family along class lines. In Marriage Markets, June
Carbone and Naomi Cahn examine how macroeconomic forces are transforming
our most intimate and important spheres, and how working class and lower
income families have paid the highest price. Just like health,
education, and seemingly every other advantage in life, a stable
two-parent home has become a luxury that only the well-off can afford.
The best educated and most prosperous have the most stable families,
while working class families have seen the greatest increase in
relationship instability. Why? The book provides the answer: greater
economic inequality has profoundly changed marriage markets, the way men
and women match up when they search for a life partner. It has produced
a larger group of high-income men than women; written off the men at the
bottom because of chronic unemployment, incarceration, and substance
abuse; and left a larger group of women with a smaller group of
comparable men in the middle. The failure to see marriage as a market
affected by supply and demand has obscured any meaningful analysis of
the way that societal changes influence culture. Marriage Markets cuts
through the ideological and moralistic rhetoric that drives our current
debate. It offers critically needed solutions for a problem that will
haunt America for generations to come.
The accompanying reference guide is included as a PDF on this disc.
