Marriage and Values in Public Policy: Conflicts in the Uk, the Us and Australia by Elizabeth van Acker

Author:Elizabeth van Acker [Acker, Elizabeth van]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Public Policy, Social Policy, Political Science, American Government, General
ISBN: 9781317604891
Google: fNHzDQAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 34022573
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2016-06-01T00:00:00+00:00

Overall, this chapter will demonstrate that the marriage divide persists because of conflicts in values, economic factors and neoliberal policies when setting policy agendas. Some stakeholders may be concerned about the decline of marriage, but policy makers have no clear solutions to address the class divisions within a framework of minimal government interference and free market forces.

The ‘Marriage Divide’ in the US

Marriage plays a crucial role in the US and has constructed a boundary in welfare politics dividing along the lines of class, race and gender. The US has higher rates of marriage, divorce and unintended pregnancies and a weaker social safety net than the UK or Australia. The consequences of this sharply cleave apart the ‘haves’ and the ‘have-nots’ so that ‘more affluent Americans are now doubly privileged in comparison to their moderately educated fellow citizens—by their superior economic resources and by their stable family lives’ (Wilcox 2010:16). This growing inequality becomes another form of class privilege with repercussions for values and marriage (Cahn and Carbone 2010). Marriage is fracturing, splitting into two, separate and unequal Americas. In upscale America, marriage is thriving. But the state of marriage among the 60 per cent of citizens who only graduated from high school is increasingly similar to the state of marriage for the poorest and most vulnerable (Sawhill 2014; Wilcox 2010). Cahn and Carbone (2010) perceive a significant irony in the American ‘family values’ debate, arguing that there is a major divide concerning marriage and how to achieve healthy stable families. Those proclaiming the importance of family values are experiencing greater economic inequality, less social mobility and poorer life chances for millions of children. Marriage is the primary issue for conservative ‘red’ states, where marriage is perceived as the religious foundation for procreation, childrearing and community life. Many couples oppose sex before marriage, but there are higher rates of teen births and divorces (Cahn and Carbone 2010).

Demographic changes and economic struggles prevent couples from marrying and explain the retreat from marriage, suggesting that this abandonment is not an ultimate cause of poverty but a symptom of a situation where marriage is not possible or risky (Lee 2015: 26). White people are experiencing similar trends to black Americans in terms of a marriage divide. Conservative scholars such as Murray (2012) blame changing values for the problems and perceive welfare as a major corrupting force for poor women. He acknowledges relationship divisions along class lines but argues that due to a growing chasm in values and behaviour, a new white lower working class and expanding dependency on welfare has resulted in America ‘coming apart at the seams’ (2012: 12). In 2010, 83 per cent of whites aged between 30 and 49 years in the upper middle class were married, but only 48 per cent of working class white people in the same age group were married. The moral character of the lower classes has deteriorated so much, Murray argues, that they have become alienated from the ‘founding virtues’. He draws on racial stereotypes

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