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The Marriage Problem: How Our Culture Has Weakened Families (Hardcover)

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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In this study of the implications of broken marriages, conservative social scientist Wilson (The Moral Sense) posits that there is a direct connection between Americans' tolerance for no-fault divorce and unmarried cohabitation, and the country's rising rates of childhood delinquency, teenage births, abuse and single-parent families. As such, Wilson's work is poised to attract fans of Judith Wallerstein.'s important The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce: A 25 Year Landmark Study (2000), which suggests that divorce has a much harsher effect on children than previously believed. But many of Wilson's points assume that divorce is de facto a bad thing ("As one popular movie made clear, there is no such thing as a happy divorce"); he refuses to acknowledge that society's attitudes may have shifted precisely because many people now believe that divorce often represents a promising solution rather than a bitter failure. Many readers will take issue with Wilson's claim that the demographics of African-American families (high instances of single motherhood; absent fathers) can be traced to the cultural practices of people in Africa and the West Indies. And in fact, the teen birth rate has fallen significantly in the past 10 years. Wilson's polemic will likely be embraced by readers who already share his traditional views on public policy and shunned by those who don't.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.


From Library Journal

While Maushart looks at what happens between husband and wife, Wilson (management, UCLA; government, Harvard) delves into the effect of "the marriage problem" on society. Wilson argues that the weakening of the family unit has been disastrous for our country and cites two reasons for this development: the individualism that arose following the Enlightenment and the consequences of slavery, which led to the emasculation of fathers and hence to single-parent households. Wilson makes his case with well-reasoned arguments and solid documentation, drawing on research that is both historical and international in scope to reinforce the important role family plays in child care. Wilson's cure: to restore the authority of marriage, for parents who are committed to each other and to their children can build a community and hence a nation that will flourish. Despite their contrasting themes, both books make a valuable contribution to the understanding of marriage in today's society and should find audience in public libraries. Deborah Bigelow, Leonia P.L., NJ
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

  • Hardcover: 288 pages
  • Publisher: HarperCollins (March 19, 2002)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0066209838
  • ISBN-13: 978-0066209838
  • Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.1 x 1 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
  • Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.com Sales Rank: #133,599 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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    #75 in  Books > Nonfiction > Government > Social Policy
    #100 in  Books > Health, Mind & Body > Relationships > Divorce

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James Q. Wilson
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Customer Reviews

11 Reviews
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27 of 32 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars Worth your time - no matter your feelings about marriage, July 31, 2002
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."

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19 of 24 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars Interesting work, but needs more rigor, May 24, 2002
By University Book Source "university_book_source" (University of Illinois, Dept. of Political Science) - See all my reviews
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.

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9 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Marriage in a sociological and historical context, August 23, 2006
By Hagios (Rhode Island) - See all my reviews
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: The Marriage Problem: How Our Culture Has Weakened Families (Paperback)
"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.



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 		 Most Recent Customer Reviews

4.0 out of 5 stars A very level-headed, fact intensive examination of an emotional issue
There are alot of books on this subject. Most of them are highly emotional, which is understandable given the subject. Read more
Published on February 14, 2007 by Richard Gibson

5.0 out of 5 stars Children Suffer
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. Read more
Published on December 4, 2006 by R. Feenstra

5.0 out of 5 stars Why marriage matters
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. Read more
Published on March 14, 2006 by William Muehlenberg

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent background information on the topic
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... Read more
Published on April 16, 2005 by grapabo

5.0 out of 5 stars An Excellent Book!
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... Read more
Published on May 27, 2002

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent
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... Read more
Published on May 23, 2002 by D. Dubei

1.0 out of 5 stars author doesn't understand simple social concepts
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... Read more
Published on May 5, 2002

1.0 out of 5 stars 1st Problem: Quoting Disraeli to describe the US today
Wilson confuses the civil order problem of providing children with a caring and responsible up-bringing, with moral concerns about marriage and personal relationships. Read more
Published on April 1, 2002

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