Yes, finally, after having mentioned this book in several prior posts, I\u2019m finally writing about this more directly!<\/p>\n
And longtime readers will know that I generally don\u2019t write \u201cbook reviews\u201d in any conventional sense; what I do is more a sort of note-taking with commentary.<\/p>\n
The subtitle of the book is \u201cThe American Dream in Crisis,\u201d and the basic gist of it is that, in many ways, compared to the generation of the author\u2019s upbringing, in the 50s (he graduated high school in 1959, which puts him two years younger than my parents, whose background I described briefly earlier this week<\/a>). \u00a0He begins with stories from his generation, and from two families now living in his hometown, as a way of illustrating his central thesis, that despite different material circumstances, rich and poor* children growing up in this earlier generation had much more in common compared to the much difference experiences of children of similar social classes now, either as\u00a0a matter of poor children falling behind, or behaviors for both groups changing, and this affects the life chances of poor children and hinders their opportunity for social mobility.<\/p>\n (* Putnam early on introduces a simplification of treating rich\/middle-class and college-educated as equivalent, and poor and high-school only as equivalent, because, by and large, the simplification works well enough for his points, and data on parents by education level is more straightforward.)<\/p>\n Here are some of the areas of divergence (note the \u00a0\u201cabout\u201d and \u201caround\u201d statements below are because, as I write this, I\u2019m flipping through from graph to graph):<\/p>\n Wealth: \u00a0yes, of course, college-educated parents are wealthier than high-school-only, but this gap has grown substantially since 1989.<\/p>\n Mother\u2019s age at first birth: \u00a0pretty stable at maybe 19 or so for low-education mothers, increasing from 24 to 30 from 1970 to 2000 for high-education moms.<\/p>\n Births to unmarried mothers: \u00a0from maybe 3% in 1980 to 10% in 2008 for high-education moms; from 22% to 66% from 1978 to 2008 for low-ed moms; a roughly similar percentage divergence for children age 0 -7 living with a single parent..<\/p>\n Employment of mothers: \u00a0from 18% to 32% for low-ed moms; from 21% to 70% for high-ed moms, over the period 1960 \u2013 2010. \u00a0(Yeah, I was surprised at this, too.)<\/p>\n Family dinners: \u00a079% for low-ed, 82% for high-ed families in 1975; 63% for low ed and 75% for high ed families in 2005 \u2014 in other words, both groups decreased, but low-ed decreased more.<\/p>\n Time spent on \u201cdevelopmental child care\u201d (so called Goodnight Moon<\/em> time, purposefully interacting with the child vs. mere diaper changing): \u00a0from 30 minutes per day in 1975 for both groups to 90 minutes for the low-ed and 135 minutes for the high-ed in 2010 \u2014 with a major jump from 1995 to 2005 for the latter.<\/p>\n Participation in after-school activities: \u00a078%\/88% for the lowest and highest Socioeconomic Status (SES) quartile in 1980 to 65%\/86% in 2005. \u00a0Putnam attributes the drop for the poorer kids to the increasing tendency of schools to charge fees for participation in after-school activities, and says that poor kids are too embarrassed to apply for waivers.<\/p>\n Educated parents also know more people, both close friends and \u201cweak links\u201d which are nonetheless useful, e.g., in helping a kid find their way towards a scholarship or job.<\/p>\n Church attendance: \u00a0dropping for both groups, and the divergence isn\u2019t as striking here, but: \u00a030\/34 weeks per year for the lower third\/upper third of 12th graders, based on parental\u00a0education in 1975; 21 vs. 28 weeks\/year in 2010.<\/p>\n Why?<\/p>\n One of Putnam\u2019s key reasons is the geographical stratification: \u00a0what with suburbanization and the emptying out of cities, rich and poor are far more separated from each other than they were in the 50s.<\/p>\n What about the decline in marriage and increase in nonmarital births among the poor? \u00a0Putnam essentially claims to be agnostic here, for the most part, except that he says that the jump in the imprisonment rate from 1975 to 2000 or so is partly responsible. \u00a0He discards welfare availability because there seems to be no direct correlation with looser or tighter availability of benefits (e.g., welfare reform didn\u2019t have an impact), and says it\u2019s not just a loosening of moral standards because there isn\u2019t any difference between less or more religious areas of the country.<\/p>\n Putnam also spends quite a bit of time profiling families, both \u201cmiddle-class\u201d \u2014 in reality, quite well off \u2014 families which are able to navigate family crises or children\u2019s misbehavior by calling in experts, or, in once case, even buying a horse stable to redirect a troubled child, and poor families who struggle to find the resources and figure out a path forward, even to the degree that a high school girl, in a severely troubled school (where the teachers openly admitted they made no efforts to actual teach rather than babysit the kids), was placed in a Spanish class for native speakers solely due to her Hispanic last name and wasn\u2019t able to transfer out for the school year because of a school bureaucracy that cared not a whit about students and a family that didn\u2019t have the ability or willingness to push back.<\/p>\n What to do?<\/p>\n Here, in the final chapter, the book is weaker \u2014 I suppose quite simply the ability to analyze the data, to interview, to pull together trends, doesn\u2019t necessarily translate to having solutions. And, really, no one\u2019s got solutions. \u00a0That\u2019s the problem. \u00a0I don\u2019t have them, either.<\/p>\n Anyway:<\/p>\n He says it would be nice to revive marriage among the poor, but doubt there is any way to do this. \u00a0He wonders whether IUD-izing poor women would be effective, but doesn\u2019t go very far with this. \u00a0He suggests simply giving the poor more cash, via an expanded EITC and refundable child tax credit, to simply reduce the financial stress poor families face. \u00a0He proposes reductions in sentencing to reduce the frequency and length of incarceration, and boosting efforts at rehabilitation of ex-cons.<\/p>\n He proposes parental leave programs for a child\u2019s first year, as well as welfare benefits that don\u2019t require mothers of infants to work, and wants an infusion of funds so that poor families can afford day care centers rather than home day care, as well as universal preschool programs (citing, as always, the Perry and Abecedarian Project).<\/p>\n As far as residential segregation, he proposes the remedy of publicly-subsidized mixed income housing, as well as, of course, more money for poor schools, so that they can recruit better teachers, recognizing that, all other things being equal, they\u2019d rather be at a middle-class school. \u00a0Schools should also have expanded hours, with more extracurriculars, and social services at the school itself. \u00a0And community colleges should have more funding to better serve their populations.<\/p>\n Does any of this break any new ground? \u00a0No, not really. \u00a0The preschool for all bit is one of the Left\u2019s favorite causes, but there no firm evidence that this really makes a difference a decade later in these kids\u2019 lives \u2014 the oft-cited projects aren\u2019t really scale-able, and a while back even Brookings reported<\/a> that, in Tennessee, it didn\u2019t seem to help. \u00a0There have also been studies reporting that even attempts to throw massive amounts of money at inner-city schools haven\u2019t fixed the problem (see this old post<\/a>), either.<\/p>\n But there isn\u2019t really any way to un-do a lot of what\u2019s happened over the last several decades so diagnosing the problem doesn\u2019t in itself provide a solution.<\/p>\n And that\u2019s all I\u2019ve got. \u00a0Time to go talk to the in-laws.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Yes, finally, after having mentioned this book in several prior posts, I\u2019m finally writing about this more directly! And longtime readers will know that I generally don\u2019t write \u201cbook reviews\u201d in any conventional sense; what I do is more a sort of note-taking with commentary. The subtitle of the book is \u201cThe American Dream in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2209,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1872","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n