Privileged liberals ignore a major driver of inequality.
Privileged liberals ignore a major driver of inequality — a breakdown in family structure.
M ost babies born in England and Wales in 2021 were born out of wedlock, for the first time since records began. Nobody is surprised. Few are troubled. Most Western countries have been trending this way for decades. Still, apparently to some people, the idea that anyone might be troubled is itself troubling.
Writing for the Guardian, Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett complains that the term “wedlock” evokes in her the same “strong feeling of queasiness” she feels while “reading about the rollback of abortion rights in the US.” (Last year England and Wales also saw the highest number of abortions since records began.) “Wedlock” gives Cosslett the sense “that the past is not so distant” as she, “an autonomous woman in the 21st century, once thought.” She hates being reminded that there are “still people in the world” who think that children being raised by their biological, married parents is important.
Of course, the objection to babies being born out of wedlock is not motivated by interest in the lifestyle choices of privileged liberals but rather out of concern for children — especially those from underprivileged backgrounds.
Since the 1990s, the out-of-wedlock birthrate in the United States has increased from 28 percent to 40 percent. Research from the American Community Survey showed that, between 2006 and 2008, the poverty rate for a single mother with only a high-school degree was 31.7 percent, while the poverty rate for a married couple headed by an individual with only a high-school degree was only 5.6 percent. Furthermore, researchers found that, “on average, high school dropouts who are married have a far lower poverty rate than do single parents with one or two years of college.”
One form of persistent inequality is the socioeconomic divide across racial groups. According to the March 2020 Current Population Survey (CPS), 37 percent of black children were living in a home headed by their own two biological parents, compared with 67 percent of white children; 48 percent of black kids were living in a home headed by a single parent, compared with 21 percent of white kids.
Researchers at the Institute for Family Studies have looked at outcomes for these children. Using three outcomes — child poverty, education, and incarceration — they found that young black adults who grew up in a single-parent home were about 1.8 times more likely to be incarcerated by their late 20s, compared to their peers from a home headed by two biological parents. Meanwhile, they found that young black adults in non-intact homes had about two times the odds of incarceration compared to peers from intact homes. The researchers concluded that, “for both black and white children, growing up in a home with your two parents seems to reduce your risk of poverty and prison in about the same way.”
In recent years, the Democrats’ disproportionate focus as an explanation for racial inequality has been discrimination. And yet they obstinately neglect the relevance of family structure.
What’s strange is that privileged liberals will talk the talk about how unimportant marriage is, yet still choose to get married themselves. Cosslett admits that she is married and “still coming to terms with how conventional that is.” She explains that “marriage offered a stability that was lacking elsewhere in my life.” Nevertheless, she says she can see why “the decision to get married can seem a bit ridiculous.” Most of the “social pressure” surrounding marriage has disappeared. (Thanks to people like Cosslett.) And the extent to which it does exist, it affects only “posh people. . . who have the funds required for the string quartet, marquee hire and overpoached salmon.”
As for those religious people Cosslett would like to dump on — those who still believe that children deserve to be born to their mother and father, committed to one another for life — I noted recently, in “Marital Clash,” that they are the very people who, regardless of socioeconomic status, have the highest rates of marital success and satisfaction. Might they be onto something?