Up host Chris Hayes and his guests - joined by The Nation contributor Katha Pollitt - debate the notion that unwed mothers are causing rising inequality.
Are unwed mothers causing rising inequality?
Sat Jul 21, 2012 2:49 PM EDT
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Chris Hayes' new book
Over the past decade, Americans watched in bafflement and rage as one institution after another – from Wall Street to Congress, the Catholic Church to corporate America, even Major League Baseball – imploded under the weight of corruption and incompetence. In the wake of the Fail Decade, Americans have historically low levels of trust in their institutions; the social contract between ordinary citizens and elites lies in tatters.
How did we get here? With "Twilight of the Elites," Christopher Hayes offers a radically novel answer. Since the 1960s, as the meritocracy elevated a more diverse group of men and women into power, they learned to embrace the accelerating inequality that had placed them near the very top. Their ascension heightened social distance and spawned a new American elite--one more prone to failure and corruption than any that came before it.
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Thank you for bringing this segment to us. This is just one more example of the kind of inequality that exists in our country today. All the guests were wonderful and even Mr. Carney seemed to want to join in to the discussion, but I am not sure what world he is in or comes from but the idea of building a community where your neighbor could watch your child was beyond infantile, way beyond. I commend your other guests for not bursting out in laughter. Maybe we could have a show on what really goes on with day care. That would be fascinating and informative.
I have written several research articles about single motherhood and I am currently working on my dissertation research about single mother students. We (I am a single mom) tend to be a silenced group; vilified by politicians while also exploited for political traction (I've seen Romney do both), but rarely supported with anything other than lip-service. Reagan tried to shame us, Bush 1 sent his henchman Quayle to scold us, Clinton tried to make us exercise "personal responsibility", Bush 2 tried to get us married off, and Obama has tried to normalize us. We are still poor (because we are women and women get paid less than men) and we are still stretched to the limits (because employers don't respect the family work balance and demand the same professional dedication to the job regardless of your status as the sole provider of EVERYTHING for people who can't provide for themselves). The problem is with society, and the politicians are too squeamish to challenge the economic work culture of our nation so the inequality continues. Nobody seems to want to address this issue.
Office holders should not shame you. You should be ashamed of your own actions. To expect others to support you and your child is so selfish. What is the responsibility of the father of the child? You are poor because of your decisions, not the government's decisions. I imagine that you are getting Pell grants to support your graduate programs. Why should I support you because you are a single mom? My daughters are not single moms and what support do they get from the government. The attitude that being a single mom entitles you to free stuff is so bad. I imagine the main reason that you did not marry the father of your child was purely economical. You would make more money off the life of the poor child as a single mom that you would if you had married the scumbag.
RStuart, your vision of single motherhood is truly skewed. Are you satirizing yourself?
In the chance that you are not, please ask me what a mother ought to do if she's married and gets abused by her husband. Should she NOT divorce, because she'll then become a single mother? Should she stick with the scumbag?
Quit "imagining" things about other people.
RStuart - my condolences to your daughters that they have you for a father. If they became pregnant out of wedlock, that would be your opinion of them? You would make them feel shame? May I remind you your name is RStuart NOT God. Only God can judge us and you really need to remember the original teachings of God - love, tolerance and forgiveness. Today you so called Christians have redefined God with the worst of human Characteristics: Hate, Bigotry, Fear, In ability to Forgive how can anyone find comfort in that religion.
Romney's speech is part of the GOP meme that women, blacks and the other dispossessed should be blaming Obama, because he is the one who has caused their lower standard of living. Oddly, he is making the appeal that what women need to do is to take a little advice from a successful family man: eat the blue pill, vote GOP and return to Romney world.
What is this wonderful white picket fence world that Mitt Romney is alluding to? It's "Father Knows Best", "Leave it to Beaver", My Three Sons*, Patty Duke show, The Rifleman*, The Andy Griffith show*, the Beverly Hillbillies*, Courtship of Eddies Father*, Danny Thomas Show*, Donna Reed show, Flipper*, Dick van Dyke show, Dennis the Menace..... you get the picture. Just take a look at Ward Cleaver the presidential candidate with his perfect children and his perfect wife and their perfectly happy wretching dog on the car roof.
In those family narratives, all of them had a single income family then- it was just a man. Oftentimes there was no wife, but that was ok, because the patriarch was all that was truly essential. The reality today is that single income families are no longer practical due to the need for two incomes simply to keep up. It is surprising this point did not come out on the show. Since the 1970s, median wages adjusted for inflation have fallen for people with little or no college: between -19% to -10% depending on experience (this is from table 1 of this MIT study, and only includes date up to 2005- the number will likely be far worse factoring in the post 2008 shocks).
But but you say- the statistics show that middle class income in real dollars is not declining- it is just stagnating. Yeah, but note that this is household income not individual wages, and during that same time we have all shifted over to households where 2 parents familes with 2 incomes. So middle class families with 2 parents are now peddlling twice as hard and are only succeeding in staying in the same place.
Those families with one parent fall behind. Worse, half these single parent families have child support agreements, but only 61% of them are paid what they are owed. So not only do the men find the women with children unattractive, they don't want to pay them an equivalent wage, nor do they want to pay them what they are owed in Child support.
But in RomneyWorld, Father knows Best. So ladies, hear your calling as sermonized by moralists of the 1% : Quit whining, bend over and take it like a man.
Because really, Ward Cleaver has been bending over too. Since the 70s, middle class families have been sacrificing family life in order in order to gain more income simply to keep from losing what they gained. Of course, from the economic data this makes no sense- there was no need for the sacrifice because the US GDP went up during that period at a healthy clip.
The truth? Ward Cleaver, Fred Flintstone, and Darren Stevens were saps, making Wilma, June and Samantha take jobs while the Mr. Slades, Larry Tates, and Willard Romneys could benefit from lower payroll to the saps and higher profit margins for them. So what if the blue pill folks have a lower quality of family life. If only they were as brilliant as the 1%, they would know what fools they are being played for. Every Up, TRMS, LastWord or Ed show viewer has heard the data. All the new GDP growth has been flowing to the 1%.
The coup de grace of this obscene tale of subjugation is that the saps are made to feel moral failures as they make sacrifices while the 1% make out like bandits. June Cleaver nowadays needs to be at work and unable to help the beaver, Alice Mitchell will not be at home to stop Dennis from torching the home or succumbing the Mr. Wilson's over friendly overtures.
Some shows in my list had stars beside some. These had a father, but no wife. So there was nothing "wrong" or commercially unappealing about a single parent family so long as it was headed by a man. What about today's Romneyworld: Can Opie have a single mom instead of a dad? If she is a state worker, is she respected like Andy Taylor? He lived with an older woman. Could a single mother of Opie live with an older man she claims is an Uncle, or would it be suspected the man is her sugar daddy? Or how about My 3 Sons- Would a single mother with a live at home maid/ "grandmother" be accorded respect? Or in Romneyworld is she suspected of being a Lesbian, perverting her sons with aberrant morals?
In Romneyworld, there are no heroic female Lucas McCains or Steven Douglas's- people of high character trying to impart high moral standards to their children- just trying to raise their children as best they can without a coparent. No- in Romneyworld it is the opposite: the degradation of family life is due to loose women unable to hold an aspirin between their knees, and the entitlement system encourages this moral breakdown by "helping" them to become dependent on the state. In Romneyworld, single mothers are less than moral welfare mothers. Shame! Shame! Roll up the limo windows- those hussies may have something catching.
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For conservatives in audience, I'd like to point out your guesses about where I am coming from are probably quite wrong. I am a happily married straight Christian- go to church every Sunday, six happy children, raised in a fairly strict and loving household. I simply see the hypocrisy of Romneyworld for what it is. We should be seeing that parents get fair wages and child support is paid. Women should not be forced into poverty or abusive relationships or forced to have a child because of some antiquarian images of what ideal families look like.
You must not read the same Bible I read. How can you support Obama'sWorld-a world that supports same sex marriage and abortion on demand paid for with government funds. II Thes. 3:10b states "If any would not work, neither should he eat". Our society is becoming one wanting everything provided by the government and not having to work for one's survival. Hussies that have babies for the child support should be ridiculed. Did you read about the "woman at the well" and what Jesus admonished her to do?
Yes yes. And the Muslims killing each other in the mid East say the same thing- that the other sect must not be reading the same Koran as they, or how the Protestants and Catholics have been killing each other over their righteous certainty over their interpretation of the Holy Scriptures. Just out of curiosity, what do you think of the Anglican church, who accept gays in the ministry? Do you believe their faith is in doubt?
I understand what many are saying about the entitlement society, but go out and do some service work for the poor as our Lord commanded. You will see a much different world than that painted by some news outlets. My view is that there are good and bad people everywhere but all other things being equal the poor have a stronger a work ethic a stronger moral fiber than the moralizing privileged classes. It was the same during the time of our Lord. That is why he constantly spoke of love and the spirit rather than the letter of the law, and surrounded himself with the dispossessed, including that "hussie" Mary Magdalene.
I neglected to include the source for this statement:
"...half these single parent families have child support agreements, but only 61% of them are paid what they are owed."
Source is Census report "Custodial Mothers and Fathers and Their Child Support: 2009" (link)
I also neglected to express my sentiment that a fair percentage of GDP growth to the middle class would return us to the world were families had the option of being single income or each half time, so one or both parents could share in spending the time with children they need. And if the Family is June Cleaver married to Samantha Stevens, or Andy Taylor married to Ward Cleaver, so what. If they love each other, isn't that what we are for? The triumph of settling down with the one you truly love, living happily ever after, growing old together with your soul mate, raising your children in stable loving environments, trust and respect from your neighbors and community. That's what counts in life isn't it? That's what all those corny endings were about in the white picket fence stories from the 50s and early 60s.
Romneyworld is a cruel imposter of those ideals.
I still think the acceptance of divorce in our society was the driving force behind change in marriage traditions in this country. Perhaps we need to decide if we want to raise able participants in social progress, or not. Assuring conditions for raising healthy and secure children might be more productive for society in the long run than endlessly critiquing parenting skills and life choices (See Sweden).
After all, if we can happily and unquestioningly spend the same (or more) money on wars, subsidizing already thriving businesses, political campaigns, prisons, and rigging laws (as well as the "free market") than schools and family support services, it would appear we are simply funding the wrong institutions. Either way, we're spending the money.
It's like nationalized health care- we spend more than it would cost to cover everybody. Why are we fighting over spending too much for the wrong things? Shouldn't we be agreeing to spend an appropriate amount well? Math!
Good one, John. Why are real people in America being compared to 1950s tv show characters? It's the weirdest thing. Even real people in America in the 1950s didn't live like the tv shows of that era for the most part.
Marriage has always been associated with transferring property in general without a property-specific contract. Perhaps the diminishing of wealth in the 99% is also a factor in the lack of necessity to have a legal marriage .
That's an interesting thought. Some grad student should grab it for their thesis. I think I read that the divorce rate has decreased in the last couple of years, possibly due to the diminishing wealth- people can't afford to pay for the divorce nor support two households.
I'm thinking that the reduction of forced economic dependence and social subjugation is a more likely cause of decreasing marriage rates.
@John Messerly - Thanks for the thoughtful, well-reasoned, thorough, and referenced input. Puts the rest of us to shame. I'm an atheist, but it's good to see a Christian like yourself able and willing to use Richard Dawkins' natural-selection language of the "meme." The GOP is a meme-generating (sometimes co-opting) machine. Very successful, especially in the "values" environment. I recommend Michael Sandel's writing for an account of how and why liberals relinquished/had wrested from them the values ground.
Oh, in answer to the discussion question "Are unwed mothers causing rising inequality? The answer is NO.
They just make such easy targets for bullies, the ludicrously greedy, and the morbidly self-righteous.