Publication date:
07 August 2014Length of book:
184 pagesPublisher
Rowman & Littlefield PublishersISBN-13: 9781442236639
The United States has the highest family fragmentation rates in the industrial world. Nonmarital birth rates for the nation as a whole are 40%, with proportions dramatically higher in many communities as defined by race, ethnicity, or geography. Divorce rates, while moderating in recent decades, are still estimated at about 40% for first marriages and 50% for second ones. Together, this fragmentation impacts millions of children as well as adults, leading to educational, economic, and other losses that in turn lead to lower social mobility and deepening class divisions.
In Broken Bonds, Mitch Pearlstein explores the declining state of the American family and what its disintegration means for our future. Based on candid interviews with forty leading family experts across the political spectrum - from Stephanie Coontz, to Heather Mac Donald - Pearlstein ruminates on the political, social, and spiritual fallout of this trend. In honest and frank conversations, Pearlstein and his interviewees fearlessly diagnose the problems that many have been too timid to explore and suggest ways to reverse these trends that threaten our social fabric.
In Broken Bonds, Mitch Pearlstein explores the declining state of the American family and what its disintegration means for our future. Based on candid interviews with forty leading family experts across the political spectrum - from Stephanie Coontz, to Heather Mac Donald - Pearlstein ruminates on the political, social, and spiritual fallout of this trend. In honest and frank conversations, Pearlstein and his interviewees fearlessly diagnose the problems that many have been too timid to explore and suggest ways to reverse these trends that threaten our social fabric.
Divorce, single-parenthood, and the diminished stature of the institution of marriage are primary drivers of widening income inequality according to conservative scholar Pearlstein’s follow-up to his 2011 book, From Family Collapse to America’s Decline. . . . Pearlstein is a genial and generous enough researcher to provide space for opposing and non-committal writers, who challenge his conclusions here. . . . The writers, academics, and policy wonks, have no problem pushing back. The more liberal Stephanie Coontz provides point-by-point rebuttals to his argument, while the right-wing Hoover Institute’s Terry Moe, who should be Pearlstein’s natural ally, bluntly asks, “Why focus on family fragmentation?” Conservative scholar Lawrence Mead agrees that unstable families have an impact on opportunity, but points to lack of jobs as a bigger factor. Pearlstein is to be commended for allowing this level of dissent, since it engages the reader more profitably than many pro-family polemics.