vincentML
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. . . . have tripled in number since 1960 because women are intentionally opting to go it alone without a male partner. Why?
In a nation of extreme economic inequality non-college educated men are disproportionately affected by job loss. Women in that marriage market prefer to invest in themselves rather than in relationships according to the linked article.
Yet, the rising number of single mothers in the United States also reflects an economy that limits their choices. As income inequality in this country has shot up over the past 30 years, it has affected men even more than women. Between 1979 and 2007, every group of men except for college graduates saw its incomes fall, while every group of women except for high school dropouts enjoyed an increase in income, according to the Pew Research Center. This means that there are more men at the top and bottom of the income ladder, and a larger group of women in the middle with fewer acceptable partners. Moreover, the men at the bottom have lost ground not only in terms of income, but in rising rates of unemployment, job instability, lack of community involvement and a corresponding loss of status. In these circumstances, marrying and staying married can be more burden than boon. As one divorced mother we interviewed told us, “I can take care of myself. I can take care of myself and the kid. I just can’t take care of myself, the kid and him.”
Much as we should celebrate economic advances for women, the rise of single-parent families, then, reflects women’s lack of better choices and the realities of modern economic conditions more than a concerted social movement ratifying female empowerment. The percentage of female-headed households with children living in poverty has gone up, from 33 percent in 2000 to 41 percent in 2011. All told, more than half of all children living in poverty in this country are part of single-mother households.
SNIP
Later sociologists, such as Bill Wilson at Harvard University, explained why: The real problem is not that women simply won’t stay with lower-earning men, though that sometimes happens. To a greater degree, the problem is that the men who lose out in a more unequal society—by losing their jobs, taking lower paying ones, possibly even becoming depressed—behave badly. Laid-off men help out less at home than those working full time, and they are more likely to drink or abuse their intimate partners, giving women even more reason to raise their children on their own. As inequality increases, so do substance abuse, arrests and imprisonment.
Collectively, job instability, chronic unemployment, violence, mass incarceration and substance abuse cause women to write off high percentages of men in poorer communities as unattractive long-term partners. An overwhelming share of never-married American women— 78 percent—say it is “very important” to them to have a spouse with a steady job; that factor is even more important than shared values about having and raising children. But only 46 percent of men rate a steady job as “very important.” Sociologists Marcia Guttentag and Paul Secord observed in a number of cross-cultural studies that when marriageable women outnumber the comparable men in a given marriage market, the acceptable men—the ones who still have jobs— find that they can play the field, and do. But women burned in their initial relationships, whether by the seemingly responsible partner they found cheating on the side or the charming slacker dude busted for meth, become jaded. They invest in themselves, not their relationships.
Thoughts???
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vML
Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter. ~ MLK Jr.
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