Socioeconomic inequality has been ballooning around the world, particularly among industrialized countries. Much concern has been voiced about the consequences of this trend for increases in poverty and risks to political stability, but the books reviewed here teach us that the costs to families are great as well. Instability coming from socioeconomic inequality undermines couple unions, particularly in an era of changing gender roles, and children’s well-being is put at risk. Although these two books could not be more different, they share this theme, and adduce a wealth of evidence to support it, much of it very painful. We suffer with these suffering families.
Philip Cohen’s book, Enduring Bonds, is essentially a compilation of the essays he has written over the past decade for his blog. As such, the material is somewhat scatter-shot, addressing issues of the day, based primarily on the analysis of census and survey data.
Edin and Nelson’s book, Doing the Best I Can, goes far to substantiate Cohen’s argument. While their methods could not be more different (Edin and Nelson carry out in-depth interviews with poor fathers obtained by the authors going to live in the poor neighborhoods being studied), their portrait of how the economic forces unleashed by inequality undermine committed relationships makes clear that just telling people to get married (even if they listened) would do little to stabilize the lives of the families that they observed. Each book, though, brings important insights to the overall challenge of stabilizing incomes (and, incidentally, reducing endemic work-family conflict).
Both books are a delight to read and study. Cohen takes on the widest range of topics. His use of evidence is often fascinating. Historians of the family and interested social scientists have noted that parenthood has recently been transformed, with children becoming valued less for their ability to be useful little workers and more for their uniqueness (cf. Viviana Zelizer’s study of children’s insurance policies, Pricing the Priceless Child). To indicate the continuing power of sexism, Cohen documents the proportions of females among New York Times bylines, showing that men have an easier time getting their stories published, while women are still too often relegated to stories on style and families.
Both books solidly address the problem of racism in the United States (which while not such a prominent problem in European countries, nevertheless appears in many guises). Edin and Nelson’s sample of poor fathers is approximately evenly balanced between white and black men, often living in nearby neighborhoods (despite the fact that the neighborhoods themselves are normally quite racially segregated). Race clearly makes a difference: young impoverished white fathers normally have access to a stronger network of stably employed relatives who can provide more opportunities for jobs, housing, and the like than otherwise comparable black fathers, whose relatives are often even more impoverished, addicted, and imprisoned than they are (if they haven’t already been killed).
As a likely result, the white fathers cling more closely to a traditional view of fatherhood (founded on male incomes) and more distant father-child relationships. In contrast, the young black fathers in the study have collectively created a new vision of fatherhood, given their repeated failures at being ‘good providers’, that essentially entails maintaining close social and emotional bonds with their children, what traditionalists might even call a ‘mother-child’ type of bond. This is apparent in their prominently displayed joy at impending fatherhood and in their far stronger efforts at maintaining visitation rights than white fathers in the same situation, when the children’s mothers have given up on them as useful partners.
Race is also a major theme of Cohen’s. He delights in showing whites’ fear of blacks, which has the unfortunate result that black men are all too often killed by police in the United States. More centrally, he reviews concerns about the black family, which has led whites in the growth of births outside marital unions and created the problem of fatherhood that Edin and Nelson’s poor black fathers confront.