War Over Family

285 Pages·2005·13.674 MB·English

by  David Popenoe

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Family Studies
Sociology
Social History
WAR OVER THE
FAMILY
David Popenoe
One of the most surprising and
controversial social debates of the past
two decades has been about the
meaning and importance of marriage
and the family in contemporary
American life. Referred to by some as
a culture “war over the family,” the
debate has pitted those concerned
about the weakening of the traditional
married-parent nuclear family,
especially in its impact on children,
against those arguing that nothing has
gone wrong with families—that they
are merely “diversifying.” David
Popenoe has been one of the most
influential figures in laying out for a
wide audience the importance of
“family decline,” and what it means for
our children, our society, and our
future.
Two fundamental issues have been
brought into national consciousness
by this controversy. One is the very
survival of marriage as the basic
procreative model of a civilized society,
including the importance of fatherhood
and parental stability. Is the age-old
institution of marriage to become a
vestigial remnant, relegated to a small
minority of traditionalists, rather than
the bedrock of society as we have
known it since the dawn of history?
The second issue is the centrality given
by our nation to the interests of
children. Have we reached a time in
history when the needs and desires of
adults increasingly override and
conflict with the hard-won battles for
optimal child well being?
Drawing on his most seminal
thinking, this book presents Popenoe’s
observations and interpretations of the
great family debate. The book includes
his widely cited, now classic article
“American Family Decline, 1960-1990:
A Review and Appraisal” as well as his
path-breaking “The Evolution of
Marriage and the problem of
Stepfamilies” and the influential “Can
(Continued on back flap)
DAVID POPENOE
WAR
OVER
™
FAMILY
0
TRANSACTION PUBLISHERS
NEW BRUNSWICK (U.S.A.) AND LONDON (U.K)
Copyright © 2005 by Transaction Publishers, New Brunswick, New Jersey.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conven¬
tions. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by
any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any
information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing
from the publisher. All inquiries should be addressed to Transaction Publishers,
Rutgers—The State University, 35 Berrue Circle, Piscataway, New Jersey 08854-
8042.
This book is printed on acid-free paper that meets the American National Stan¬
dard for Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials.
Library of Congress Catalog Number: 2004046055
ISBN: 0-7658-0259-7
Printed in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Popenoe, David, 1932-
War over the family / David Popenoe.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-7658-0259-7 (cloth : alk. paper)
1. Family—United States. 2. Marriage—United States. 3. United
States—Social conditions—1960-1980. 4. United States—Social
conditions—1980- I. Title.
HQ536.P65 2005
306.85'0973—dc22
2004046055
Contents
Acknowledgments vii
Introduction ix
Part 1: Family Decline
1. Family Decline in America 3
2. American Family Decline, 1960-1990: 17
A Review and Appraisal
Part 2: Marriage and the Family Today
3. The Family Condition of America: 45
Cultural Change and Public Policy
4. Family Values: A Communitarian Position 71
5. The Evolution of Marriage and the Problem 91
of Stepfamilies: A Biosocial Perspective
6. A World Without Fathers 117
Part 3: Rebuilding the Nest
7. Fostering the New Familism: A Goal for America 135
8. The Roots of Declining Social Virtue: 143
Family, Community, and the Need for a
“Natural Communities Policy”
9. Modern Marriage: Revising the Cultural Script 169
10. Challenging the Culture of Fatherlessness 191
11. The Marriage Movement 199
12. Can the Nuclear Family be Revived? 207
13. A Marriage Research Agenda for the 213
Twenty-First Century: Ten Critical Questions
Part 4: Looking Back
14. Remembering My Father: An Intellectual Portrait of 227
“The Man Who Saved Marriages”
15. The War Over the Family: America’s Debate Over the 245
Decline of the Two-Parent Family
Index 259
Acknowledgments
Chapter 1, “Family Decline in America,” originally appeared in David
Blankenhom, Steven Bayme, and Jean Bethke Elshtain (editors), Rebuilding
the Nest (Family Service America, 1990). Reprinted with permission of the
Institute for American Values.
Chapter 2, “American Family Decline, 1960-1990: A Review and Appraisal,”
originally appeared in the Journal of Marriage and the Family 55-3 (August
1993). Reprinted with permission of National Council on Family Relations.
Chapter 3, “The Family Condition of America: Cultural Change and Public
Policy,” originally appeared in H. J. Aaron, T. E. Mann, and T. Taylor (editors),
Values and Public Policy (Brookings Institution, 1994). Reprinted with per¬
mission of the Brookings Institution.
Chapter 4, “Family Values: A Communitarian Position,” originally appeared
in David Sciulli (editor), Macro Socio-Economics: From Theory to Activism
(M. E. Sharpe, 1995). Reprinted with permission of M. E. Sharpe, Inc.
Chapter 5, “The Evolution of Marriage and the Problem of Stepfamilies: A
Biosocial Perspective,” originally appeared in A. Booth and J. Dunn (editors),
Stepfamilies: Who Benefits? Who Does Not? (Lawrence Erlbaum, 1994). Re¬
printed with permission of Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Chapter 6, “A World Without Fathers,” originally appeared in The Wilson
Quarterly, Spring, 1996. It is adapted from my book Life Without Father (Free
Press, 1996).
Chapter 7, “Fostering the New Familism: A Goal for America,” originally
appeared in The Responsive Community 2-4 (Fall, 1992).
Chapter 8, “The Roots of Declining Social Virtue: Family, Community, and
the Need for a ‘Natural Communities Policy,’” originally appeared in M. A.
Glendon and D. Blankenhorn (editors), Seedbeds of Virtue: Sources of Compe¬
tence, Character and Citizenship in American Society (Madison Books, 1996).
Reprinted with permission of Rowman and Littlefield Publishing Group.
Chapter 9, “Modern Marriage: Revising the Cultural Script,” originally
appeared in D. Popenoe, J. B. Elshtain, and D. Blankenhorn (editors). Promises
to Keep: Decline and Renewal of Marriage in America (Rowman and
Littlefield, 1996). Reprinted with permission of Rowman and Littlefield Pub¬
lishing Group.
Vll
viii War Over the Family
Chapter 10, “Challenging the Culture of Fatherlessness,” originally ap¬
peared in W. F. Horn, D. Blankenhorn, and M. B. Pearlstein (editors), The
Fatherhood Movement: A Call to Action (Lexington Books, 1999). Reprinted
with permission of Rowman and Littlefield Publishing Group.
Chapter 11, “The Marriage Movement,” originally appeared as “Marriage”
in Don Eberly (editor), Building a Healthy Culture: Strategies for An Ameri¬
can Renaissance (William B. Eerdmans, 2001). Reprinted with permission of
William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.
Chapter 12, “Can the Nuclear Family Be Revived?” originally appeared in
Society 36-5 (July/August, 1999).
Chapter 13, "A Marriage Research Agenda for the Twenty-First Century:
Ten Critical Questions,” originally appeared in A. J. Hawkins, L. D. Wardle,
and D. O. Coolidge (editors), Revitalizing the Institution of Marriage in the
21s' Century (Praeger Publishers, 2002). Reprinted with permission of the Green¬
wood Publishing Group.
Chapter 14, “Remembering My Father: An Intellectual Portrait of ‘The Man
Who Saved Marriages,’” was presented in an earlier version at the Symposium
on Fatherhood in America, Institute for America Values, New York City, De¬
cember 1991. It is published here for the first time.
Chapter 15, “The War Over the Family,” was presented at the Tenth Annual
Internationa] Meeting in Political Studies, Universidada Catolica Portuguesa,
Lisbon, Portugal, November 2002. It is published here for the first time.
Introduction
The articles in this book come from a career in which I have been a major
warrior in what has been called “the war over the family,” that is, a heated
national debate over the meaning and importance of marriage and the family
in contemporary American life. The debate, essentially, is between those who
believe that the weakening of the married-parent nuclear family should be a
major focus of societal concern, especially in its effects on children, and those
who do not.
The cultural war over the family is said to have begun in the 1960s when
Daniel Patrick Moynihan, then a minor cabinet official in the administration
of President Lyndon Johnson, wrote a report claiming the Negro family to be
“in the deepest trouble” and involved in “a tangle of pathology.” At that time
25 percent of black births were out of wedlock and close to 30 percent of black
children lived with a single parent. President Johnson drew on Moynihan’s
views in his 1965 “war on poverty” speech, and the reaction from the cultural
left was outrage. Moynihan was called, very simply, a racist, and was sent into
intellectual exile—along with any official discussion of family weakening—
for years.
It was not just the black issue that triggered the family war, however. Radi¬
cal feminists saw the nuclear family as patriarchal and oppressive, gays and
lesbians saw it as discriminatory, and the growing number of divorced people
and unwed mothers feared stigma and isolation. The ideology that nothing
was going wrong with families, they were only “diversifying,” made its way
strongly into the dominant culture of the intellectual elite in America. This
was despite the fact that the rates of out-of-wedlock births and single parent
households for whites soon climbed to the levels seen among blacks in the
1960s, and the national divorce rate skyrocketed to around 50 percent.
By the end of this book the reader will know in great detail where I stand in
this debate. What she or he will not know from reading the articles in the book,
however, is how I came to have the ideas and opinions that I now hold. That is
the purpose of this introduction, a brief intellectual autobiography of how I
came to be involved in one of the most contentious chapters in recent Ameri¬
can social and cultural history. I will present two versions of how I started
researching and writing about family issues and went on to become a national
pro-marriage and family advocate. The first is the more objective and resume-
based; the second is the more personal—the story behind the story.
IX
x War Over the Family
I didn’t start out as a family scholar. In the late 1950s and early 1960s I
pursued graduate work in city planning and the then-new interdisciplinary
field of urban studies at the University of Pennsylvania, receiving a Ph.D.
there in 1963. Sociology was my minor field. This was a stimulating intellec¬
tual experience led by some well-known professors, including the distinguished
sociologist Herbert Gans, with whom I disagreed often but learned much;
social historian and critic Lewis Mumford, at one time America’s leading hu¬
manist but now all but forgotten; ecologist Ian McCarg, the most influential
environmental planner of his era and also one of the most colorful people I
have ever known; and political scientist Martin Meyerson, who later became
president of the University. The field of planning at this time was in a halcyon
stage, joyful and carefree with the idea strongly entrenched that through gov¬
ernment action massive and beneficial social change could be achieved.
My first jobs were in city planning and urban development in Philadelphia
and Newark, New Jersey, but I soon shifted into academia, taking a job as
research specialist in the new Ford Foundation-sponsored Urban Studies Cen¬
ter at Rutgers University. This was a period of growing urban strife and the idea
there was to develop an “urban extension specialist,” an equivalent of the
highly successful agricultural extension specialist that had played a major
role in making American agriculture one of the world’s leading industries.
Could we achieve the same success for cities?
My colleagues at the Urban Studies Center were mostly sociologists. We
never were able to figure out how to create university-based urban extension
specialists, much less save the city, but we had a lot of fun trying and, mostly
through osmosis, I gradually drifted into sociology and took a Rutgers teach¬
ing position in that field in 1969. In 1972, with the help of a senior Fulbright
research scholarship, I traveled to Sweden with my family to live for a year and
study the planners' (and also the social workers’) best extant version of utopia.
Sweden at that time, and still, has the most perfectly planned cities in the
world. My special interest was suburbs, and my Swedish research led to my
first major book—The Suburban Environment: Sweden and the United States
(1977)—which compared the lives of residents in a prominent Stockholm
suburb with Levittown, Pennsylvania, both built in the 1950s. I was particu¬
larly interested in family life as it was lived in these two communities, and the
Swedish suburb in many respects won top honors.
1 made many return trips to Sweden (and the rest of Europe) over the years,
writing mostly about housing and urban development issues. At the same
time, I moved up the ranks at Rutgers, eventually becoming chair and graduate
director of the sociology department and later social and behavioral sciences
dean. I was considered highly pro-Swedish, so much so that one of my col¬
leagues labeled me a “Swedish Zionist.” But beginning in the late 1970s I
became increasingly aware of what I came to think of as a “dark side of the
welfare state.” While most of the welfare-state measures, along with the urban