{"id":1556,"date":"2015-03-21T11:27:18","date_gmt":"2015-03-21T17:27:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/?p=1556"},"modified":"2015-03-22T22:15:47","modified_gmt":"2015-03-23T04:15:47","slug":"are-we-romanticizing-poor-families-in-history","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2015\/03\/are-we-romanticizing-poor-families-in-history.html","title":{"rendered":"Are we romanticizing poor families in history?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

The actuary in me insists on getting the math right; the historian in me insists on getting the history right.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s a follow up to my post a couple days ago<\/a> about \u201cunmarriageable\u201d poor men.<\/p>\n

The left tends to say the reason why marriage rates have dropped among the poor, and among poor blacks in particular, is that, in our postindustrial economy, men without education are\u00a0no longer able to get factory jobs that can support their families in the way they once were. \u00a0I would dispute that the majority of black men were ever routinely\u00a0able to get these sorts of respectable factory jobs; maybe, at best, this was true for a brief moment in time, between the migration northward and the decline in factory work. \u00a0So: \u00a0simplistic and wrong understanding of history => wrong conclusions (at best, \u201cwe need a massive government hiring program\u201d; at worst, \u201cpoor men are simply never going to marry, so the state\u2019s role in taking care of poor women is unchangeable and we\u2019d better accept it and adapt with the times\u201d).<\/p>\n

The right, on the other hand, says, people have been poor throughout history, and the poor now are really far better off materially than in the past. \u00a0Yet, in the past, marriage rates were much higher than today, so this is culture, not economics. \u00a0And this is probably true in a very limited way. \u00a0But when we take this further and say, \u201cpoor families in the past supported each other stuck with each other through thick and thin,\u201d I think we\u2019re missing the mark. \u00a0Yes, the lower class in the United States today has a greater living standard than the middle class* a century ago (*this is clear, at least, with respect to farm families, though I\u2019m not really sure about the urban middle class then, where I think there was far more of a gulf, but I\u2019m not sure), but there was still a lower class then, with its fair share of dysfunctionality: \u00a0after all, Prohibition didn\u2019t come out of nowhere, but because there was a real issue with poor men drinking away their wages, then coming home to beat their children, and, no, I don\u2019t believe this was just in middle-class women\u2019s imagination.<\/p>\n

I paid a visit to the basement books-in-exile shelves and found a book I had read many years ago, City of Women<\/em>, by Christine Stansell; it was published back in 1987, when \u201cwomen\u2019s history\u201d was emerging as a field of study. \u00a0She studied women in New York City from 1789 to 1860, and particularly their changing work experiences, from domestic work, to the world of the factory. \u00a0And she does indeed report that, among the poor\/working class women she studies, wife-beating was common, and drunkenness, and husbands abandoning their families \u2014 but, then, her major sources for this are criminal court records and the records of almshouses\/charities, so the work-a-day families, where husbands and wives live harmoniously and put food on the table more often than not, would be hidden from view, showing up neither in criminal cases nor charity pleas.<\/p>\n

But in any case, we make a mistake if we think that, prior to the 60s, every white family was the Ingalls, and every black family the Logans (that is, from Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry).<\/p>\n

Did changing cultural norms simply mean that the marriages that never happened would have been bad marriages anyway? \u00a0I don\u2019t know.<\/p>\n

But let\u2019s look again at the graphic from my prior post:<\/p>\n

\"pct<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

again, with apologies for the lack of detail as this is from a report and I couldn\u2019t find the original, historical data online (again, here\u2019s the link to the original source<\/a>) \u2014 I could find marriage rates going back to the 50s, at census.gov, but not the fuller series to 1880 that would really help with patterns before the decline.<\/p>\n

For what it\u2019s worth, from census.gov, among whites, marriage rates (that is, percent of people ages 15+ who are married) from 1950 to the present, peaked in 1960 at 70% of men, 67% of women (showing the impact of men\u2019s lower life expectancy), and dropped gradually but steadily to 57%\/55% in 2010.<\/p>\n

Here are the rates for blacks:<\/p>\n

Men \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0Women<\/p>\n

1950 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 64% \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 62%<\/p>\n

1960 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 61% \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a060%<\/p>\n

1970 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 57% \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a054%<\/p>\n

1980 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 49% \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a045%<\/p>\n

1990 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 45% \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a040%<\/p>\n

2000 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 43% \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a036%<\/p>\n

2010 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a039% \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 33%<\/p>\n

The footnotes at the site<\/a> (downloading the first table) specify that the 1950 and 1960 data is based on ages 14+, so it\u2019s a bit understated relative to the later years; in addition, these years count all non-whites as \u201cblack\u201d so, again, it\u2019s not apples-to-apples. \u00a0But look at the drop-off from 1970 to 1980, and the widening gap between men and women, which points to an intermarriage component as well as widows.<\/p>\n

What do you make of this? \u00a0In the first place, don\u2019t misread this: \u00a0this doesn\u2019t say that only 33% of black women will ever marry, but reflects some never marrying, others marrying at a later age, and still others marrying and divorcing. \u00a0You can also combine this with tables on age at first marriage. \u00a0And this data also doesn\u2019t fit with the table above, which shows a more rapid drop-off (perhaps due to this data set being all nonwhites for \u201950 and \u201960?) and lower ultimate rates as well.<\/p>\n

And that\u2019s about as much as I\u2019ve got for you for today. \u00a0Your thoughts welcomed in the comments.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The actuary in me insists on getting the math right; the historian in me insists on getting the history right. Here\u2019s a follow up to my post a couple days ago about \u201cunmarriageable\u201d poor men. The left tends to say the reason why marriage rates have dropped among the poor, and among poor blacks in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2209,"featured_media":1550,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[226,151],"class_list":["post-1556","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-families","tag-marriage"],"yoast_head":"\nAre we romanticizing poor families in history?<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The actuary in me insists on getting the math right; the historian in me insists on getting the history right. 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