Good synopsis, and I of course agree with the premise. But:
>This seems to be because of changed social attitudes that make the choice not to marry sticky even when economic conditions change in the short term.
I heard a left-of-center person push back somewhat on this book and on Wilcox's book, arguing, perhaps somewhat rightly, that while marriage before children is all well and good, it seems odd to all be complaining about the collapse of marriage now when it really happened in the 1980s and 1990s. THAT was the time that there was a surge of illegitimate births to women whose parents had been married (even if later divorced amidst the divorce surge of the 1970s).
Nowadays, my understanding is the women having kids out of wedlock were mostly born out of wedlock themselves, while those whose parents were married are now mostly having kids after getting married. That poses a much sticker problem: asking people to get married who have no frame of reference of what marriage is supposed to look like and don't really even understand the purpose of marriage or how one moves towards it.
I don't really know how you fix this problem, other than, perhaps, on a micro level, trying to teach and model for the people around you.
Good synopsis, and I of course agree with the premise. But:
>This seems to be because of changed social attitudes that make the choice not to marry sticky even when economic conditions change in the short term.
I heard a left-of-center person push back somewhat on this book and on Wilcox's book, arguing, perhaps somewhat rightly, that while marriage before children is all well and good, it seems odd to all be complaining about the collapse of marriage now when it really happened in the 1980s and 1990s. THAT was the time that there was a surge of illegitimate births to women whose parents had been married (even if later divorced amidst the divorce surge of the 1970s).
Nowadays, my understanding is the women having kids out of wedlock were mostly born out of wedlock themselves, while those whose parents were married are now mostly having kids after getting married. That poses a much sticker problem: asking people to get married who have no frame of reference of what marriage is supposed to look like and don't really even understand the purpose of marriage or how one moves towards it.
I don't really know how you fix this problem, other than, perhaps, on a micro level, trying to teach and model for the people around you.