James Q. Wilson has crafted a stunner of a book. "The Marriage Problem: How Our Culture Has Weakened Families" integrates many virtues often not found in the same book: a clearly focused topic, a knack for generating insights from deft combinations of two or three separate pieces of data, skillful and intelligent marshalling of references, clear writing that is a genuine pleasure to read, and passion for the subject that nevertheless leaves the reader free to disagree with the writer's conclusions.
Wilson carefully builds a case that the "traditional" family (married mother and father with one or more children) is the "foundation of public life" but for various reasons is potentially fragile and must be carefully, consciously nurtured by government and society in order to flourish. Some of the truths Wilson recites are not politically fashionable, and indeed the same might be said of his book's overall thesis.
Poverty only explains half of the differences in children's behavior between single-parent and two-parent families; the rest is explained by the absence of the second parent. It bears remembering that violent crime rates are much more closely correlated with family structure than with race; some studies have even suggested that race is irrelevant! Moreover, you need only do three things to virtually assure yourself of avoiding poverty--finish high school, marry before having your first child, and produce the child after the age of twenty.
I was utterly fascinated by the author's detailed explanation of sociological differences between places where marriage is in trouble (Western countries and the Caribbean) and everywhere else: In the countries where matrimony has fallen on hard times, two things happened that were absent elsewhere: slavery weakened families, and the Enlightenment made many people think families were unimportant. Such cultural factors also help explain why Latino male immigrants are simultaneously less often employed than black men and also much less likely to have children out of wedlock or to abandon children they have fathered.
Later Wilson contributes two chapters on what might be called two very different special situations bearing on marriage: matrimony for African-Americans under slavery, and single-mother families. It is fascinating to learn how past generations dealt with the problem of single motherhood and needy children. Wilson nicely debunks the myth that orphanages of past centuries were necessarily inhumane. The author then sets the stage to lay out the rise of welfare, the consequent reduction in the social stigma on illegitimate children and single mothers, and to discuss these developments' impacts on the family.
The depth of Wilson's analysis transcends political identity. He writes of the historical and geographical pervasiveness of the family. "By a family, I mean a lasting, socially enforced obligation between a man and a woman that authorizes sexual congress and the supervision of children... [N]owhere do we find a place where children are regularly raised by a mother who has no claims on the father."
So what's wrong with cohabitation? In the author's view, plenty. "Marriage is a way of restricting the freedom of people so that investing emotionally and financially in the union makes sense." One reason marriage is a problem because marriage is seemingly contrary to men's own biological and evolutionary interests in maximizing their genetic heritage. However, a number of factors mediated by culture favor "dads" over "cads." "Marriage is in part a way of reinforcing a desirable relationship against the tendency of men to depart from it." The author does not shy from adding that not only do families and society need men, but women also need men. "There never has been anything remotely approaching a matriarchal society governed exclusively by women."
Wilson is fascinating on the topic of jealousy, delving into detailed exploration of just why it is that for men sexual contact by their wives with another man is most upsetting, while for women loss of emotional attachment is most critical. Jealousy helps enforce an arrangement that is beyond the market's reach: love cannot be bought and sold.
Perhaps most valuably, Wilson easily debunks some persistent myths about the family. First, arranged marriages have never been common in the West; free consent has almost always been required. Secondly: "The extended family, one of several generations living under the same roof, has often been held up by modern writers as an ideal away from which contemporary society has drifted, but the reality is quite different. In America, England, and other English-speaking lands, we cannot find extended families no matter how far back we go." Thirdly, wives had much greater legal protection than some feminists would have us believe; what the courts of law may have placed in the hands of the husband were frequently given back to the wife by the courts of equity.
Today, "the triumph of the therapeutic" has led us to be less concerned with how a family is formed or how long it lasts but much more concerned with what goes on inside it. Spouses can now sue each other or detailed legal inquiries made where the abuse of a spouse or child is suspected. None of these developments is necessarily good or bad but they do reflect differing societal choices on what to emphasize and support.
Wilson's grasp of history and current developments is both broad and deep. He shows us why England became the natural place for capitalism to emerge, based in no small part on the combination of its system of individualistic landownership and its marriage system. The author also delineates the relationship between the appearance of the Magna Carta and the development of people's sense of marital rights.
As if we needed any reminding, Wilson recounts the evidence for the crucial role of fathers and the damage caused by even harmonious divorces. No fault law has taken its toll. He notes that the now blackballed Victorian era was an age of sharply declining crime rates and the inculcation of a stronger set of moral habits. Wilson rehabilitates the Victorian era as not "merely a stuffy and hypocritical effort to adopt the façade of a dubious middle-class life, but in fact a massive private effort to inculcate self-control in people who were confronting the vast temptations of big-city life."
My one significant criticism: Regrettably and repeatedly missing from Wilson's analysis is an awareness of the obvious downsides to marriage for men, such as draconian court decisions in the areas of custody and support. It is a surprising lapse; one cannot help but suspect that Wilson has some knowledge about these issues but chooses to omit them.
Currently we live in a society that in the author's memorable phrase, has "stigmatized stigma" to such an extent that we are reluctant to blame people for anything that does not immediately, concretely harm someone else. Out of the twenty leading college textbooks, only one relies on sound scholarship on marital issues and gives a balanced treatment to controversial subjects. And yet today as a culture, we are critical of those who emphasize their personal happiness over their children's well-being. Still, some 90 percent of the American people get married at some time in their life. "What is striking is not that there are so many divorces and so many cohabiting couples, but that there are any marriages at all."
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