“JULIA” CHOSE POORLY: Two Classes, Divided by ‘I Do.’ “Striking changes in family structure have also broadened income gaps and posed new barriers to upward mobility. College-educated Americans like the Faulkners are increasingly likely to marry one another, compounding their growing advantages in pay. Less-educated women like Ms. Schairer, who left college without finishing her degree, are growing less likely to marry at all, raising children on pinched paychecks that come in ones, not twos. Estimates vary widely, but scholars have said that changes in marriage patterns — as opposed to changes in individual earnings — may account for as much as 40 percent of the growth in certain measures of inequality. Long a nation of economic extremes, the United States is also becoming a society of family haves and family have-nots, with marriage and its rewards evermore confined to the fortunate classes.”
The only big news here is that the New York Times is catching up to things that Kay Hymowitz, et al., have been saying for years. And it’s a bracing change to read in the Times about the glories of “1950s style” parenting and the value of the Boy Scouts. Hey, the ending even suggests that it’s important to have a dad around the house. Who knew?
UPDATE: NYT link was wrong before. Fixed now. Sorry!