Customer Reviews

The Marriage Problem: How Our Culture Has Weakened Families

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A good balanced view of marriage in a modern social context and analysis of how the family unit has been affected over time.

Wilson covers a lot of ground here - and the only complaint I have is that it didn't feel very cohesive - lots of skipping around. But there is a lot of meat that will keep you thinking. Wilson is fascinated with marriage rates over time, across cultures, and among different races - but he's concerned with the plight of children. His argument of why children do much better in a marriage setting, like all of the book, is heavily documented and well written.

His analysis of the sex ratio (number of men per hundred women) I found totally interesting. The ratio has changed a lot over time because of wars that kill off men - immigration which usually means that more men than women will move to another country - prison populations which draw men out of society - etc. Wilson looks at how differing sex ratios effect family arrangements like polygyny as well as general sexual behavior between men and women and mating patterns.

The author examines the role shame & stigma played in the past in ensuring that marriages last and that families care for their children, and compares that with today's more open attitude towards personal decisions. "Our society has managed to stigmatize stigma so much so that we are reluctant to blame people for any act that does not appear to inflict an immediate and palpable harm on someone else. We wrongly suppose, I think, that shame is the enemy of personal emancipation when in fact an emancipated man or woman is one for whom inner control is sufficiently powerful to produce inner limits on actions that once were controlled by external forces. A truly free man or woman is a person whose actions are controlled by gyroscopes rather than opportunities."

He has a very even-handed section on the effects of day-care on children involving differing scientific studies.

Subchapters include "If marriage is good, why is it in trouble?", "Jealousy", "The Effects of Divorce Laws", "The Shotgun Marriage", Does Welfare Cause Dependency", and "The Victorian Interlude" among others.

Wilson's bent can be summed up in his words - "Family, though the smallest and seemingly most fragile of institutions is proving itself to be humankind's bedrock as well as its fault line."

"Two nations, between whom there is no intercourse and no sympathy." Benjamin Disraeli was speaking of the nations of the rich and the poor, but Wilson sees underlying causes. One nation is married, reasonably affluent, educated, and invests heavily in their children. The other nation is fatherless, poor, and does not invest in their children. On page 11 he quotes a study by William Galston, a former advisor to President Clinton. Galston shows that you only have to do three simple things to avoid being poor: finish high school, marry before having a child, and wait until age 20 to have a child. Only 8% of people who do these three things are poor, compared to 79% for those who do not.

The problems in the fatherless nation go beyond poverty. Children of single mothers are more likely to be delinquent; they are more likely drop out of school, become suspended and suffer from emotional problems. This is not from the lack of financial resources; the researchers Sara McLanahan and Gary Sandefur were able to show that the poverty that resulted from being a single mother only explained about half the difference in outcomes between children with single mothers and children with married parents. The results for cohabitation are not much better, particularly since cohabitating relationships typically end in less than two years, sometimes in marriage, but about as often in separation. Furthermore, the marriages that result from cohabitation are more likely to end in divorce.

Wilson develops the theory of sex ratios. When the ratio between men and women is high, men have to compete with each other for women, and women that bargaining power to secure monogamous relationships. But when the ratio is low, women have to compete for the limited supply. This results in women having to accept sex outside of marriage, polygamy (depending on the culture), and a general loosening of morals as women use their sexuality to increasingly "outbid" each other for the limited supply of men.

This explains a great deal of why single motherhood has devastated the black community in America; with many black men in jail the sex ratios are extremely low. But the research shows that sex ratios do not explain the full story. A whole host of research, from that of Guttantag and Secord, to Mark Fossett and Jill Keicolt, to James Wilson himself, show that the correlation between sex ratio and illegitimacy is stronger for blacks than it is for whites or Latinos. Wilson partly attributes this to slavery, and partly to the lingering effect of various African cultures, and makes a convincing case.

Wilson also takes on the "disappearing jobs" theory of the increase in black out of wedlock childbirths. It suffers from numerous flaws. Christopher Jencks looked at black men with steady jobs. 80% of them were married in 1960, but only 66% were in 1980. The difference is that men with jobs were less inclined to marry. Furthermore, Robert Lerman and others have shown that immigrants in the same urban neighborhoods have lower rates of illegitimacy despite living in the same neighborhoods. In some cases when there isn't work, they will take long bus rides to available work.

The conclusion is that the increase in out of wedlock childbirths is driven by two factors: welfare benefits and the loss of the social stigma for unwed mothers. Wilson defeats two main objections to the welfare theory. The first objection is that welfare benefits have been declining relative to inflation, but Robert Moffitt has shown that when you also account for other benefits besides welfare, such as Medicaid, food stamps and public housing, welfare benefits did keep up with inflation. Another objection to the welfare theory is that some states offer much higher welfare benefits despite having lower rates of out of wedlock childbirths. This objection fails because different states have different cultures. When you compare how people make decisions you find that welfare benefits do have an influence. On page 147 he cites many researchers making that point, ranging from Mark Rosenzweig, the economists Jeff Grogger and Stephen Bronars, and by the 1998 research of Robert Moffitt (not to be confused with his earlier 1992 research on the subject).

Finally, Wilson spends much of the book putting marriage in both a sociological and historical context. This review is already long so I'll just touch on it briefly. Wilson notes that critics of monogamous marriage are correct when they point out that our current "white dress, vows, big ceremony" notion of marriage is a fairly recent invention. But they miss the larger point; marriage is generally most strongly formalized in societies in which the ties between parents and their children are fragile. In more robust societies with strong senses of social obligation, cohabitation and common law marriage produce the same results as our formalized marriages: a tangible claim on the father for help with both raising the children and supporting the mother.

I would also recommend Civil Rights: Rhetoric or Reality by Thomas Sowell, who shows the importance of culture, for example, African Americans of West Indian descent made 94% as much as whites back in 1984, compared to 62% for African American's as a whole.

Wilson's work is a rather impressive synthesis of the current empirical social-science research on family, children, and the social forces affecting them. He rightly notes that children are being adversely affected by the decline in the strength of marriage, and attempts to fashion why this decline has occured in the first place. (To the above reviewers, who obviously read the book from a ideological and political perspective, nearly ALL rigorous social-science research has shown that children are better off in almost every way in two-parent families. This cannot be denied.) His analysis is cogent, coherent, and, moreover compelling enough to require some reflection on the matter.

In essence he sees the decline of marriage resulting from an interplay of three variables -- the sex ratio, economic development, and the steady liberalization of Western culture.

He does not, in any way, say that economic growth or liberal culture is bad, but, rather notes that the slow death of marriage in the west is a cost we've paid for the many benefits we've derived from our particular economic and cultural arrangements.

While his synthesis is impressive, what he lacks is a sophisticated method for testing his theory. At best, he uses a loose, journalistic, comparative case study method in examining his theory. This, unfortunately, does little to provide the reader with conclusive evidence that Wilson is right.

At best, Wilson's work is a great read for the interested layman, at worst, a half-finished social-science tome that needs more rigorous methodological tools to prove his thesis. It nonetheless is an intersting analysis of why marriage has declined in our society.

Marriage is a problem, argues Wilson. That is, it is in a problematic state. Marriage is good for societies, for individuals, and especially for children. But the Western world is quickly moving away from marriage. As a result a host of problems are arising.

Wilson begins with what are now well-known and depressing figures. Any other type of relationship but marriage is bad for the adults and especially bad for the kids. Take cohabitation, for example. People who cohabit before marriage short-change themselves and their children in numerous ways. First, the average duration of a cohabiting couple is 1.3 years. Cohabiting couples are far more likely to divorce when they do marry than couples who did not cohabit before marriage.

Moreover, children of cohabiting couples are likely to be as poor as children in single-parent families. And in England, children of cohabiting couples are twenty times more likely to suffer child abuse than kids from married couples.

Or consider step-families. The homicide rate for children in such families is seventy times higher than for those living with both biological parents. Child abuse is also much higher in these families. The evidence merely confirms what common sense has always told us: "people care for their own children more than for those of others".

Wilson then examines the social, cultural and biological/evolutionary evidence for why marriage and families exist. In addition, the historical development, and recent decline, of marriage and family are discussed. While a combination of nature and nurture, biology and culture, made marriage a civil necessity, the doctrines of the Enlightenment sowed the seeds of its demise.

Beginning with the Enlightenment, marriage began to be seen less as a sacrament and more as a contract. Today it is seen less as a contract and more as an arrangement. Individual rights and freedoms, the product of modernism, have undermined the rationale for and the basis of marriage. Thus it is surprising that people bother to get married at all in the modern, secular, individualistic West.

Wilson also examines how government policies, especially economic policies, impact on the family. He acknowledges that many policies have a negative impact on families, but questions to what extent government policies can in fact help families. While marriage is in the best interests of children, there are limits as to how much a government can do to encourage marriage. After examining a number of federal programs aimed at doing just that, Wilson concludes: "getting single mums to marry is harder than keeping married couples together".

Thus while financial incentives from the government can help to an extent, they are no panacea. Indeed, the cultural incentives, or disincentives, to marriage, may be more crucial. And these cultural trends may be harder to overcome. A concern for relationships has replaced a concern for marriage. This is the result of larger cultural shifts such as the Enlightenment, with its attendant rugged individualism, rampant secularism and often amoral utilitarianism. How these forces can be offset is no easy matter. Interestingly, Wilson sees a revival of religion as a major factor if we are to see cultural trends reversed.

While Wilson himself displays no deep religious convictions, he does acknowledge the role religion has played in the past both to curtail some of these forces, and to under-gird and affirm marriage and family. One way religion does this is by acknowledging the value of stigma and shame. Our society, says Wilson, "has managed to stigmatize stigma so much so that we are reluctant to blame people for any act". Thus our no-fault divorce laws, for example. No one wants to take responsibility for their actions anymore, and our laws are beginning to reflect that.

Wilson argues that we somehow need to recover the positive nature of stigma and shame. We need to recognize that not all behaviors are in society's best interests. Illegitimacy, for example, is one of them. Forty years ago a mother who brought a child into wedlock had a clear understanding that this was not something to boast about. Today no such moral compunction exists. But it should.

Perhaps part of the way to make for a better future is to recapture an accurate sense of the past. Marriage and family are not dead yet, but have taken a severe hammering. We need to redouble our efforts to affirm and protect these most vital of institutions. This book is an important component in such a defense.

James Q. Wilson's book is an enlightening look at the state of marriage in America (although he cites statistics from other countries as well.) The work is easy to read and is credible. The reader will gain a clearer understanding of what is happening to families in the U.S. The children, of course, are the victims in the breakdown of the family. As they grow up, the cycle of divorce and single parenting continues. Wilson gives adequate solutions to these grave social problems that we face.

Wilson's book goes beyond the surface of a lot of the talk about the state of the family today. Unlike some other publications geared toward the religous community, this is purely a secular work, even if it does confirm many of the problems pointed out by pro-family Catholic and evangelical groups.

The thesis is this: in the wake of society's overall material wealth and the advancement of individual rights, both good things in general, the state of marriage as a societal good has declined considerably. In too many cases, the cohesive unit that functioned as a means of protection, support, and guidance for children has lost its glue, and the government has come to step in and perform some of these functions in certain situations, which isn't necessarily a good thing.

The chapter-by-chapter layout takes a look at the problem from different angles (single motherhood, divorce, African-American slavery, etc.) and compares the trends not with a romanticized ideal, but with what other cultures have done historically, to determine whether this trend is an anomaly or something to be expected, and where it might lead.

Among the more interesting tidbits is the fact that for whatever problem no-fault divorce has had today, it was not the result of a nefarious plan by feminists or others whose goal is to take down the family structure. Rather it was the unintended consequences of a plan to make technical corrections to the law to comply with what had become practice. The drafters of the no-fault laws were working under the naive assumption that these changes to remove the threat of a judical order finding fault would be complemented with government incentives to enter therapy and reconcile before the order be given. When this didn't happen, the no-fault divorce provisions made it easier to dissolve the marriage without any restrictions.

This detail was to highlight that you're not getting a political or cultural polemnic in this book, but rather a systematic discourse on the problem with angles not normally seen in this debate.

Wilson's excellent book sumarizes the findings of virtually all of the factual studies of the consequences of divorce and illigitmacy for children and for American society done over the past decade and more.
Those reviewers who have traduced the author are precisely the kind of ultra feminist ideologues who for over a decade have been denying the facts, ignoring the consequences, touting the tired old 60's rhetoric of rights without responsibilities, continuing to insist against all the empirical evidence that divorce is good for the children, and, all in all, burying their heads in rhetorical sand because the reality of the world they have made doesn't square with the prognostications of their ideology.

This is an excellent work into the problems of our society. whether we agree as to the true causes or not, families are being torn apart, and the institution of family is changing in america. I agree with much of what Wilson states about the structure of the divorce system being a big part of the problem. it is far too easy to divorce. it also doesn't demand as much of a punishment/sacrifice as it used to. therefore, if one is unhappy with his or her spouse, there are plenty others out there to wed.

We must not allow the family unit to disintegrate. once that happens, we are a lost and fallen society.

I can't believe that this shortsighted anti-human rights rhetoric found its way into print. The author sees every single concept as a black and white issue, and eagerly places everybody into his self-devised stereotypical categories.

I am convinced that the author doesn't have the faintest clue about what's behind poverty in the U.S. or the complexity of women's issues. The book is full of self-congratulatory moralizing about the "rightness" of marriage, while ignoring the reality of low-wage jobs that make certain men not very good marital partners.

I couldn't believe when the author assumed that all his readers would agree with him in judging the 1960s as an embarrassingly evil and immoral decade. Human rights, women's rights, civil rights? The evil cause of social breakdown? Get a handle on reality.

Pass this book up. There are many other GOOD resources that address poverty, family, and relationships. This book is a shameful apology for a no-brainer conservative policy which makes marriage the ultimate solution for every social problem.

Wilson confuses the civil order problem of providing children with a caring and responsible up-bringing, with moral concerns about marriage and personal relationships. The first is the proper concern of government, and the second is properly left to our private consciences and sensibilities. Wilson is confused by enlightened freedom, and wants to impose an older repressive order which he sentimentally imagines was better. Anna Karenina and A Doll's House are searing; Lovers and Other Strangers is funny. The society in which he works is wealthier, stronger, healthier, more humane and prouder than any the world has seen, and it is more moral. Every child left out is a problem, of course. The solutions begin with recognizing what the government can do- provide incentives and supports for parents to provide a good 18-22 years of loving (relying on the natural bond of parents) care-- and what it should not-- bind husbands and wives together against their will. Wilson is hard for me to read because as a political scientist he subverts the genius of the Constitutional framers who took religion and the personal (i.e. sex, which is inseparately entangled with religion), out of government, leaving us free to find true salvation and true love. Political science is a very "American" profession, and Wilson should understand better how a limited government has steered our society away from the zero-sum dilemmas that have plagued the societies of the past, including the Islamic one Americans once escaped, and now find themselves confronting.