Marriage Markets by Carbone June; Cahn Naomi;

Author:Carbone, June; Cahn, Naomi; [Carbone, June; Cahn, Naomi;]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780199916580
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2014-01-15T07:00:00+00:00

11

Rebuilding from the Top Down: The Family, Inequality, and Employment

Those who study the family face a conundrum: the forces that shape family patterns, the norms underlying intimate relationships, and the possible relational terms between caretaking adults cannot be addressed in any meaningful way by examining the family in isolation. Instead, the story of the family fits within the context of an extensive literature about the importance of the middle class. American history since Thomas Jefferson and almost all of the literature on economic development emphasize the synergistic effects that come from a strong group in the center.6 This group—English and Brazilian shopkeepers, Jefferson’s yeoman farmers, and today’s French and Vermont artisan cheese makers, the middle managers of mid-twentieth-century America, and today’s nurses, engineers, pharmacists, and office managers—have a stake in strong public and private institutions and serve as a counter to otherwise unaccountable elites. They also supply the investment in the next generation that provides the well-educated workforce that companies increasingly demand.7

The inequality that exists in today’s society undermines the institutions that strengthen middle-class families and worsens the plight of the poor. We have documented the changing structure of employment that allocates an increasing percentage of societal wealth to a relatively small group at the top, producing fewer stable positions for the middle. Indeed, over the past decade college-graduate wages have stagnated in the same manner as blue-collar wages did in the eighties and nineties. And since the Great Recession, historically stable government jobs have become less reliable.8

Strengthening the family accordingly requires rebuilding the foundation of the middle class. Doing so involves addressing the forces that have increased inequality, developing strategies to produce more stable employment paying a living wage, and filling in the inevitable gaps in employment through policies that assist the most marginalized. With full inclusion in American society, most of the gender disparities that skew intimate bargains would disappear.

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