Gary Lee’s The Limits of Marriage is highly logical, wonderfully informative, and enviably written. But is his functionalist view of the decline of marriage true? Superficially, yes. Fundamentally, no.
He correctly argues that most single moms would not be better off if they simply married the fathers of their children. Why not? To put it a little more harshly than Lee: Because the fathers of the children of single moms are rarely “father material.” On average, they have low attachment to legal employment. On average, they have little commitment to monogamy. And on average, they commit a lot of crime and serve a lot of time. Marrying such men is the height of folly.
Still, do you know what else is the height of folly?
1. Dating such men.
2. Falling in love with such men.
3. Having unprotected sex with such men.
Since most single moms have done all three, Lee’s view that they’re “acting rationally, doing the best they can under difficult circumstances” is highly implausible.
This is especially clear in view of the youth of most single moms. If you’re 45 years old, with one last chance to have a baby, perhaps you should take whatever guy you can get. Even if he abandons you, you’ll still have a baby.
Contrarily, if you’re 20 years old and have yet to find a responsible man with whom to have children, the prudent course is to spurn irresponsible suitors and wait. You’re young; maybe someone better will come along! Biologically, you’ve can afford to delay at least a decade. During that decade, moreover, you have many practical ways to raise your social status. Get extra education. Acquire more skills. Search for a better job. Relocate. These don’t just provide greater financial security; by the power of homophily, they improve your pool of suitors.
Lee is admittedly skeptical of such self-help:
The declining marriage rate is just one of the problems afflicting poor, less-educated women that may adversely affect their children. In McLanahan’s (2004) analysis, these women continue to have children because there are few “opportunity costs” for them – having children may limit their opportunities for further education, good jobs, higher incomes, economic security, and possibly marriage, but they are unlikely to attain these goals even if they don’t have children out of wedlock. Having children isn’t a barrier to achieving things that can’t be achieved without children.
On reflection, though, it’s hard to understand his skepticism. “Further education” and “higher incomes” are low bars. Does Lee really think that single moms couldn’t plausibly get an AA degree if they had delayed motherhood? Couldn’t plausibly have found a job that pays 25% more? Sure, if “good job”=”investment banker” and “economic security”=”tenured professor,” then delaying motherhood rarely leads to “good jobs” or “economic security.” Yet by normal standards, delaying motherhood remains an excellent catalyst for self-help. Indeed, even if motherhood-delayers were unable to get better jobs, at least they could work full-time for ten years and build up a nest egg using whatever money they would have spent on their kids.
Lee could object that I’m ignoring his demographic evidence: While one poor woman can improve her situation by delaying motherhood, poor women in general cannot. Demographics are especially unfavorable for poor black women:
[I]f every unmarried black man in the age range appropriate for marriage for a 25-year-old black woman were to get married, 32 percent of these women would still be without husbands. (Yes, they could theoretically marry white men, of whom there is a slight numerical surplus, but interracial marriages are far more likely to involve black men and white women than the reverse. See Wang [2012].)
On inspection, however, these results heavily depend on Lee’s stipulation that women must marry men close to their age. All else equal, this is an understandable mate preference. But all else is not equal. If men your own age are too immature to be good fathers – or simply too unproven to evaluate – common sense tells you to give moderately older men a chance.
Not only are men who are five or ten years older more mature on average; they have a long track record you can use to predict their long-run behavior. A 30-year-old man who has been consistently legally employed for ten years straight is highly unlikely to suddenly become a violent criminal. Unlike Lee’s interracial marriage scenario, moreover, many single employed older men are already interested in marrying a moderately younger woman. Of course, if the woman is lower-class, the older man she marries is also likely to be lower-class. Still, there’s more than a marginal difference between marrying a mature man who consistently works in low-skilled jobs, and marrying a teenager who spends half his time in jail.
The last big problem with Lee’s story is that he hastily accepts the mainstream view that real wages have sharply fallen for low-skilled Americans. Once you take CPI bias seriously, however, this is highly debatable. The best data says that even poor Americans who work full-time are markedly richer than they were in the 60s, when single motherhood was rare indeed.
I suspect that Lee would reply, “How then would you explain the large increase in single motherhood?” He might even quote himself:
Both non-marriage and single parenthood have increased much more rapidly among poorer people. Any explanation of the “retreat from marriage” in America over the past half-century must focus on the categories of the population whose marital behavior has actually changed. We know who is not marrying today: poor, less-educated people, particularly but not exclusively if they are members of minority groups. What is it that is keeping them from marrying? Are they, as Waite and Gallagher (2000) assume in their concluding chapter, unaware of the benefits that marriage would confer? Do they devalue attachments to others, and value a more hedonistic lifestyle that can best be achieved without the encumbrance of a spouse? Are they avoiding responsibility? Or are they perhaps acting rationally, doing the best they can under difficult circumstances?
Here is a rough sketch of my preferred story:
1. All humans are somewhat impulsive, but the degree of impulsiveness varies.
2. On average, impulsiveness causes poverty. The greater the impulsiveness, the greater the poverty. So the very poor tend to be highly impulsive.
3. In traditional societies, however, social pressure and stigma against impulsive behavior sharply reduce their incidence. Teens like unprotected sex, but fear social suicide.
4. In the 1960s, social pressure and stigma against single motherhood started to deteriorate for largely cultural – not economic – reasons. (While the expansion of the welfare state was one notable economic factor, it wasn’t decisive).
5. The decline in social pressure and stigma have gradually snowballed ever since. (Welfare reform probably turned back the clock, but only marginally).
6. People with low impulsiveness continued to avoid single motherhood despite declining traditionalism, hence their continued rarity among the middle and upper classes.
7. People with high impulsiveness, however, have increasingly acted on their impulses ever since.
I say my story explains everything that Lee’s story explains – and more. Like Lee, I can explain why single motherhood rose so much for the poor, and so little for the rest of society. Like Lee, I can explain why single moms rarely escape poverty by marrying the fathers of their children. Unlike Lee, however, I can accept the obvious fact that having unprotected sex with irresponsible young men is a great way to mess up your life. Unlike Lee, I can acknowledge the many ways that even poor women in the First World can improve their lives with planning and hard work. Unlike Lee, I can explain why absent fathers usually move on to new women, instead of doing their best to provide for the kids they already have. And unlike Lee, I don’t have to claim that the American poor were materially better off in the 60s.
Still, shouldn’t Lee get credit for not appealing to exogenous “cultural shifts”? I think not. Yes, economists like the idea that economic forces determine everything. Frankly, though, only severe hindsight bias allows economists to believe such extraordinary claims. Example: Religion has declined as wealth has increased. Yet this was hardly a foreseeable result of economic growth. Why couldn’t we have a rich society where traditional religion remains culturally focal – where we consume our wealth with opulent cathedrals, pilgrimage vacations, and hundreds of channels of religious programming? The same goes, I say, for the decline of traditionalism more generally. The world of The Jetsons – which combined futuristic technology with the ethos of the 1950s – didn’t happen. Yet economically speaking, it totally could have.
READER COMMENTS
Joseph E Munson
Oct 2 2019 at 11:59am
Another factor:
A lot of men are essentially con artists, signaling that they’d be good father material, that they’re responsible, that they’d make good husbands when in fact they arn’t. In a lot of circles, it was super socially acceptable in a lot of circles, to just make whatever lies possible in order to have sex with a girl. Even when its not socially acceptable it’s still done quite often. Many people are Like the archetypal used car salesmen, except selling themselves instead of a car.
It doesn’t really explain #3, but it certainly goes a long way in explaining #1 and #2.
Heck, there’s a whole industry developed to help those who are not so naturally manipulative to acquire said manipulative skills (pick up artists, they generally call themselves).
Floccina
Oct 2 2019 at 12:25pm
Bryan you have documents a large marriage premium is their motherhood premium for poor single women?
renato
Oct 2 2019 at 1:27pm
You argue that these three, marrying the father, and having the children are all rooted in the impulsiveness, but the impact of the first three is much lower on the outcome of the mother than the last two, specially becoming a single mom and having to support the child.
This makes Lee’s recommendation acceptable and an abortion as a even more helpful decision to avoid the future problems in those cases.
I also don’t buy the connection that they are relating having sex with having children, and it seems that we are in a transitory phase where the sacredness of sex has been abolished, but it is still related to having a suitable partner to make a family.
I don’t think it will be possible to return to the same old norms and the only way to have a social pressure to avoid single motherhood would require better anti-conceptionals or even more abortions.
Jonathan S
Oct 10 2019 at 1:37pm
Abortion is usually an anti-natalist position.
Natalism correlates with prosperity while smaller populations (i.e., anti-natalism) correlates with higher rates of absolute poverty (see Julian Simon’s The Ultimate Resource).
High rates of abortion, even amongst the poor, would lead to higher rates overall absolute poverty than if people carried through with their pregnancies in most situations.
nobody.really
Oct 2 2019 at 1:28pm
1: I don’t find it remarkable that women would date men they have no intention of marrying—especially when men then would like to marry are scarce. Lee cites evidence supporting the idea that a lack of marriagable men is especially common among the working class.
2: Occasionally such dates will result in pregnancies, whether or not birth control is used. We might expect people with lower impulse control (and lower opportunity costs) to be less rigorous about using birth control. Caplan cites reasons why we might expect low impulse control to correlate with poverty; Lee cites reasons to believe that low opportunity cost might correlate with poverty.
3: Why would poor women be less likely to have an abortion than affluent women? Abortion services require time and money, which poorer people may lack. Moreover, abortion services are more restricted in poorer states, and in poorer regions of states.
But here’s one more variable: People crave a social role. Social roles include things such as child, student, entrepreneur, employee—and mother. People who are deprived of the opportunity to achieve their preferred role may opt for a role that is easier to achieve.
In some environments, young men regard young women as prey. This can be burdensome for young women. But a woman pushing a stroller may receive different treatment, in accordance with her new social role. Thus, a young woman may choose to have babies not merely due to low opportunity costs, but out of a positive desire to escape one social role and enter another role that is more respected among her peers.
In short, I don’t see a lot of conflict between Caplan’s thesis and Lee’s. Yes, contra Lee, unmarried women do face some opportunity costs for having kids—but lower opportunity costs, and perhaps higher benefits due to the need for a social role. Thus, even accepting every aspect of Caplan’s argument as true, I would expect to see MORE single moms among the poor and uneducated than among the rich and educated. And behold, I do.
Relocation is a challenging strategy. Someone discussing the merits of open borders (Caplan?) noted that the US need not fear a great influx of unskilled immigrants seeking better economic opportunities, as evidenced by the fact that we don’t observe our DOMESTIC supply of unskilled labor migrating very much. Why do we suppose that is? And, if we suppose that, why do we imagine that relocation would provide a strategy for low-skilled people to improve their circumstances?
I will again mention the insights of Talley’s Corner, wherein the sociologist noted that poor people use social networks as a kind of insurance, providing resources in the event of calamity. Move away, and you lose your insurance. Also, everyone develops place-based knowledge that would prove irrelevant to a new location. Finally, initiating social services in a new location is often difficult and entails delay–delay that poor people may ill afford. Weigh all that in your assessment of relocation as an economic strategy.
For what it’s worth, *I* could not advise a person with low education where to move to improve her circumstances. Perhaps it’s patronizing of me to doubt that poor people would have a better handle on this matter; perhaps not.
Yes, a young woman who improves her status will perhaps attract the attention of higher-status suitors. But by the power of homophily, she may also reduce their number. The romantic woes of educated black women are no joke. But then Caplan argues,
Isn’t this just a kind of deficit spending—plausible in the short run, but not a sustainable long-term strategy? If today’s crop of black women cannot find suitable black mates in their age cohort, what basis is there to believe that there is a surplus of these men in some different cohort? And what are the women in THAT cohort supposed to do—marry even OLDER men? How long can we go on borrowing to refinance our debt plus interest?
I tend to embrace Caplan’s view about real wages. But I understood Lee’s argument colloquially—that is, AVERAGE INCOME among the working class has fallen relative to the cost of raising a family. This is driven by increasing costs for housing, health care, and education, but more by the fact that there are simply fewer high-paying jobs for people with low education. Caplan is happy to cite statistics about people who work full time—but neglects to note the declining labor force participation rate (in part driven by the increasing arrest and incarceration rates since the ‘60s). Full-time employment has become scarcer in this demographic. Even a high “real wage” doesn’t help a lot if you earn it for only 8 hrs/week.
I’d like to hear more about that.
(Amusing to see the economist emphasizing sociology while the sociologist emphasizes economics.)
DeservingPorcupine
Oct 2 2019 at 8:11pm
This response seems question-begging. Previously, single motherhood is not a social role that many would desire because it was scorned. Now it isn’t.
nobody.really
Oct 2 2019 at 2:22pm
One point to note: Contrary to what we might imagine from this discussion, <a href=”https://ifstudies.org/blog/baby-bust-fertility-is-declining-the-most-among-minority-women”>US FERTILITY RATES ARE DECLINING—and they are declining especially fast among TEENAGERS, NEVER-MARRIED WOMEN, and ETHNIC MINORITIES</a>. This matches patterns observed throughout the developed world.
You may have heard that the percentage of black kids born out of wedlock has grown. And it has. But not because unmarried black women are more prone than ever to have kids out of wedlock; to the contrary, their fertility rate has declined, too. But since 1969, <a href=”https://www.theatlantic.com/sexes/archive/2013/06/understanding-out-of-wedlock-births-in-black-america/277084/”>the fertility rate of MARRIED black women has declined even faster that the rate for UNMARRIED black women</a>—thus leading to the increasing ratio. The number of people who would have cause to care about such a ratio seems vanishingly small (and, I fear, swamped by the number of people who take pleasure in pathologizing black families).
The US fertility rate is well below replacement level. But not to worry: We have a large labor supply knocking on our southern border. This is just one more example of the US exporting our need for labor.
nobody.really
Oct 2 2019 at 2:25pm
One point to note: Contrary to what we might imagine from this discussion, US FERTILITY RATES ARE DECLINING—and they are declining especially fast among TEENAGERS, NEVER-MARRIED WOMEN, and ETHNIC MINORITIES. This matches patterns observed throughout the developed world.
You may have heard that the percentage of black kids born out of wedlock has grown. And it has. But not because unmarried black women are more prone than ever to have kids out of wedlock; to the contrary, their fertility rate has declined, too. But since 1969, the fertility rate of MARRIED black women has declined even faster that the rate for UNMARRIED black women—thus leading to the increasing ratio. The number of people who would have cause to care about such a ratio seems vanishingly small (and, I fear, swamped by the number of people who take pleasure in pathologizing black families).
The US fertility rate is well below replacement level. But not to worry: We have a large labor supply knocking on our southern border. This is just one more example of the US exporting our need for labor.
Mark Z
Oct 2 2019 at 4:06pm
This is interesting. The ratio isn’t interesting it’s own right; it’s interesting because of the cost it imposes on others.
If you think that poverty is a pathology, and demand others pay to rectify it, then they have every reason to treat its etiology as a pathology as well. ‘Lifestyle pluralism’ is a fine thing. But when you insist that a common consequence of one lifestyle (such as relative poverty) is a bad thing to be corrected somehow (usually mainly at the expense of people following more successful lifestyles) , you’ve already abandoned lifestyle pluralism, whether you acknowledge it or not. It’s not very convincing to argue that smoking is just a personal choice and none of my business but lung cancer is everyone’s problem and demand a tithe to deal with it.
nobody.really
Oct 2 2019 at 10:42pm
What cost does it impose on others?
Let’s assume that, on average, each kid born in the US out of wedlock results in increased social service costs relative to each kid born in wedlock. In that case, you might care about the total number of kids born out of wedlock. But the ratio tells you nothing about that number.
To illustrate: Imagine in the next generation, only one kid is born in the US; the rest immigrate. If that one kid were born out of wedlock, the ratio would be 100%. If not, the ratio would be 0%. You couldn’t ask for a bigger range in the ratio than that. Yet the difference in aggregate social service costs would be negligible.
Add to this observation the fact that we’ve been discussing the ratio of in- and out-of-wedlock births only for black mothers–and black people represent less than 13% of the US population–the relevance of the ratio to aggregate social service costs diminishes to the vanishing point. Or so it seems to me.
Floccina
Oct 2 2019 at 2:34pm
Occam’s razor would say that women today think the remaining single/divorcing looks better that the marriage options that see. And that is partly due to the welfare system and partly due to work being less physically demanding and partly due to less stigma, and maybe more.
Robert EV
Oct 3 2019 at 11:40am
I wonder what percentage of the time the woman makes the final choice as to whether or not a marriage occurs. Specifically what percentage of the time in which marriage seems like a viable option to at least one of the parties involved.
Mark Z
Oct 2 2019 at 3:55pm
I’d actually argue something like the opposite of Lee’s claim that declining economic wages among the poor has caused a decline in marriage rates; as Bryan suggests, even among the poor, real wages (or standard of living at least) have almost certainly increased in the past few decades. I would think that as incomes increase, interest in marriage in general declines; there’s less of an economic necessity to marry, and the demographic pressure for everyone to marry to sustain the population declines. More people consciously choose not to marry or have higher standards and thus never meet someone that meets those standards even if they think they want to get married in general.
This also makes it harder for people who do want to get married to find matches, since even though there’s less competition, there are also fewer interactions with other people interested in marrying (and fewer still with people who both meet one’s standards and whose standards one meets). This in turn reduces the marginal returns (in terms of increasing your probability of finding a mate) to improving one’s own marriagability, either by increasing your income or getting in better shape or whatever, so more people aren’t willing to bother and instead just work the bare minimum, play videogames, and eat lots of junk food, etc.
To those near the bottom of the economic hierarchy, the marginal returns to self-improvement have gotten even smaller still. The human sex drive, however, does not proportionally diminish as we become better off the way the drive to marry does, and poorer people tend to be more sexually impulsive on average, so a disproportionate increase in the fraction of children born out of wedlock near the bottom of the economic spectrum may just be a natural consequence of a society becoming *more* prosperous.
john hare
Oct 2 2019 at 5:05pm
The incentives for some women t have children to “get a check” is not getting enough play here. I come from a low class background and suspect that most here have had very little direct contact with low class women. It wasn’t until I had moved on personally that I realized the mentally toxic environment that I had been in. I did the impulsive thing and got on the 18 year payment plan. Her reaction, “this is great, I can get WIC, food stamps, AFDC”,and some other things I have forgotten. No intention of working with me to make it on our own. Many first hand stories of young girls that couldn’t wait to have a kid so they could get a check. One teacher mentioned that a student criticized her as stupid because she didn’t get a check.
I could go on. The point is that as long as they think there is reward for that behavior, it will continue, even if it is actually detrimental to them. Otherwise they wouldn’t play games with people like an ex-employee that had 10 kids by 9 different women. And would quit a job rather than pay child support.
Jim Birch
Oct 2 2019 at 9:15pm
Biologically, for the individual woman maybe. Evolutionarily, it’s madness. They may not be around in a decade. People are wired to have sex and it takes a lot of reprogramming to stop them. Poor people may be more impulsive, but stress demonstrably makes people more impulsive too.
Phil H
Oct 3 2019 at 12:38am
I think there are two things to be said about this.
1) It’s an illustration of why people who aren’t sociologists shouldn’t do sociology. Caplan seems to fall into a rather standard, unpleasant, woman-blaming trope. According to a graph found here https://www.russellsage.org/sites/all/files/Furstenberg_chap1_1.pdf teenage pregnancy in the U.S.A. has been falling steadily since 1955. So the bad phenomenon that Caplan notes is *single motherhood*, which is at first pass a function of whether or not the fathers leave their young families. But Caplan chooses instead to focus on whether or not women have sex. This is (1) an analytical error; (2) a pernicious bias – a technical fault that is also a moral fault.
2) I never quite get what the point of arguments like this is supposed to be. Let’s stipulate everything that Caplan claims. So far as I can tell, the ultimate goal of this argument is to *reduce sympathy* for young single mothers. What’s the point in that? I mean, I know Caplan wants the government to direct less public funds toward them. But given that his own argument is that this is a *cultural* problem, that economic solution won’t work… so what does he want?
If I’m right, the only goal of this kind of argument is to *justify one’s personal lack of sympathy for a particular group* by *encouraging others to have less sympathy for them.* That’s a rubbish goal. It’s not seeking truth, and it’s not making the world a better place.
KevinDC
Oct 3 2019 at 12:27pm
Hi Phil! I have a few thoughts in response to your two points.
1) You point out that teen motherhood has been falling overall, and that therefore the issue Bryan is worried about is single motherhood rather than teenage pregnancy per se. Well, yes, but I’m not sure why you think you’re contradicting him there? His post is explicitly about single motherhood, after all. He only mentions teens a couple of times in passing, as stylized points about how the long run impact of single motherhood is much heavier on younger women than older women. Also, I’m not sure what point you’re trying to prove with the graph you linked to? It shows data on birthrates for women over the last several decades. It doesn’t say anything at all about the rate of single motherhood, which is the topic under discussion. Nor does it mean much to point out that overall birthrates for women in their teens and early twenties has fallen. This is perfectly consistent with Caplan’s point. The discussion here is about why the rates of single motherhood among young women have gone up in a particular economic demographic. Data showing overall rates of childbirth aren’t at all relevant for *that* discussion.
2) You questions Bryan’s goals and motives, and suggest “is to *reduce sympathy* for young single mothers. What’s the point in that?” Well, I think the point was pretty clearly made when Bryan laid out his explanation. He suggests that “social pressure and stigma against impulsive behavior sharply reduce their incidence,” but in “the 1960s, social pressure and stigma against single motherhood started to deteriorate for largely cultural – not economic – reasons” and that the “decline in social pressure and stigma have gradually snowballed ever since,” which leads the most impulsive (and therefore most economically vulnerable) people into single motherhood at a young age, which severely limits their future opportunities. I mean, I re-read your comment a few times and I was really confused by this part, especially when you said “given that his own argument is that this is a *cultural* problem, that economic solution won’t work… so what does he want?” I mean, isn’t it obvious? He wants a cultural solution! You correctly point out he thinks it’s a cultural problem, specifically caused by a decline in social pressure around impulsive behavior, but you seem confused about why he would want to employ a cultural solution by using increased social pressure and stigma towards impulsive behavior? I can see ways you might disagree with his analysis – maybe you think the decline in social pressure and stigma around impulsive behavior didn’t increase their incidence, or maybe you think that increasing such stigma wouldn’t cause the incidence to decrease going forward, for example. But while I can see how you might disagree with his point, I don’t see how you were confused about what his point was.
Phil H
Oct 3 2019 at 1:08pm
Hi, Kevin. Thanks for the comments.
Relevance of teen motherhood rates: There are two ways you could end up with more teen single mothers: (1) more teen mothers; (2) fewer teen fathers (by which I mean men who stick around to raise the child). In fact, there are fewer teen mothers. So the key factor that’s changing here is the behaviour of the men who father children with young women. That’s why I mentioned teen motherhood rates – to force this distinction. Having done the analysis, we can see clearly where the focus of any policy proposals should be: on men, because it’s men’s behaviour that has changed for the worse. Teen women’s behaviour is actually getting better – they are having fewer children! But Caplan doesn’t focus his attention where it belongs, on the men. He chooses the age-old trope of “blame the woman who had sex.” That’s a failure to follow through on what the data actually say.
On what Caplan wants – OK, I take your point. My point is that I have virtually no interest in reading Caplan on social issues. He’s no more competent on these issues than he is on snowboarding or needlecraft or cellular biology. If this is really Caplan declaring what he wants for society, then fine. I will treat this post like those interviews with actors in the newspaper: turn right past them, because I don’t care about actors’ views on… anything at all.
What I was hoping was that Caplan had some economic angle on this issue – about which I would be interested in hearing, because that’s his specialty. Perhaps I was imagining links to economic solutions/issues that just aren’t there.
KevinDC
Oct 3 2019 at 2:19pm
Hello again Phil –
I think I may have done a poor job explaining why I said the graph you showed wasn’t relevant to the discussion at hand. Let me try again. From your graph – the overall birthrates of teens and women in their early 20s has fallen. Check. With you so far. So overall, there are fewer total mothers in their teens and early 20s. Also check. But again, the discussion at hand is not the total number of mothers per age group, it’s the rate of single mothers in a particular economic demographic. You can have the over all number of young single mothers decreasing across society as a whole, but still have the rate of occurrence steady (or rising) among a particular segment of society. So your data showing “fewer young mothers overall” does not mean a lower rate of young and single mothers in the specific demographic under discussion. That’s just an instance of the ecological fallacy – concluding that because something is true of a group, it is therefore also true of a subgroup. That doesn’t follow.
Also, regarding your statement that “Caplan doesn’t focus his attention where it belongs, on the men. He chooses the age-old trope of ‘blame the woman who had sex.'”…well, that’s one possible explanation. Another one is that Gary Lee wrote a book specifically about the decision making processes of young single mothers, and Caplan is writing a response to that arguments in that book, and therefore his response is focused specifically on the decision making processes of young single mothers, because that’s literally the topic of the discussion. Call me crazy, but it seems to me like the second explanation is more likely. This seems especially likely given that on other occasions, when Caplan is reviewing sociology books where the topic is deadbeat dads (i.e., Doing the Best I Can), he heaps scorn on deadbeat dads. And my explanation seems even more likely given that he’s also written multiple defenses of single moms.
https://www.econlib.org/archives/2008/03/jamielynn_spear.html
https://www.econlib.org/archives/2008/11/the_lorelai_par.html
I say this with all the love in the world, and I generally find your comments interesting and well thought out, but sometimes I can’t help but get the impression you bend over backwards to attribute the worst possible motivations on to people.
Phil H
Oct 4 2019 at 9:14am
Hi, Kevin.
Thanks, sure, I take the criticism in the constructive spirit in which it is intended. It’s certainly possible that I haven’t read enough of Caplan, and so I am taking him out of context. I wasn’t reading Econlog in 2008.
I’m not convinced by the claim that the discussion is about single mothers in a particular demographic. It doesn’t say that at the top of the post. The book under discussion is about “marriage”. The quotes from the book in Caplan’s previous post range far beyond the decision-making of single mothers. And fathers/husbands are mentioned right at the beginning of this post. So… It’s just not clear to me that you’re right that this post is so tightly focused on poor single mothers. Rather, as I say, it seems like this is a post about some of the issues around marriage and motherhood, and Caplan himself narrowed it down to women’s choices around sex, not because that’s where the data pointed, but because it’s a sexist trope that is still too easy to fall into.
You suggest that the lower overall trend for young motherhood may be bucked for a “particular economic demographic”. I assume you mean poor young women. If that’s true, OK, that would be a thing worth discussing; but Caplan doesn’t give a figure to suggest that it is – another reason that I don’t think this post is all and only about the actions of poor young women.
Finally, I want to address the issue of the “worst possible motivations”. Caplan posted something which is, on my interpretation, a conservative viewpoint at odds with the better readings that feminists have offered to us. I pointed that out, saying he’d made an “error” and had a “rubbish goal”. I’m not attributing to him the “worst possible motivations”. I may be calling him an unreconstructed chauvinist, but that’s not the worst possible thing. It’s OK for me to have this notably different viewpoint; my expressing it is not making out that Caplan is evil.
Personal experience always colours our judgment, so I’d like to offer a little bit of personal background, that I think helps to explain my position. I’m middle class, so’s my wife; our marriage was because of an unplanned pregnancy. I would say at least half of the middle class women around us have had unplanned pregnancies, often within marriage. Having the resources and supportive families that we do, we were able to cope with ours, and to keep our rocky marriage afloat. Financial stress always makes marital discored worse. So I’m far from convinced by the story that the middle classes are the continent ones, and that our financial success is explained by our sexual forebearance. Rather, it seems to me that our relative wealth enables us to cope better with the fallout of our incontinence. This is part of the reason why I particularly dislike these stories about how having children is what keeps poor women poor. I don’t think they’re true. If they’re not true, why do they exist? Because they are the next evolution in the ongoing saga of stories about why women shouldn’t have sex – a nasty sexist business that has been going on since the very dawn of history.
KevinDC
Oct 4 2019 at 12:21pm
Hey Phil –
A few quick points. You seem unsure that the discussion in this blog post is focused on a particular demographic, and suggest that “The book under discussion is about ‘marriage'” and “this is a post about some of the issues around marriage and motherhood” in general, particularly since “Caplan doesn’t give a figure to suggest that” the “lower overall trend for young motherhood may be bucked for a ‘particular economic demographic.'” All I can do is say that it seems really clear to me that’s what the discussion is focused on. I mean, this is what Gary Lee, the author of the book under discussion, outright says in one of the quoted sections:
I mean, if that doesn’t scream out “this discussion is being focused on a particular economic demographic, and among this specific demographic the rate of single parenthood is rising” then I don’t know what would. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Caplan lays out the story he thinks explains things, and he focuses on people with high impulsiveness, which he thinks contributes to both poverty and single parenthood. Gary Lee’s book offered arguments for why delaying single motherhood or attempting to find more reliable men to marry wouldn’t substantially improve the lives of the women in these demographics, so Caplan counters that by arguing that realistic options are available that would help them improve their lives. So it just seems really obvious to me that the discussion is indeed focused on a particular demographic – poor people – and the decision making processes used by the women in that demographic and whether or not making different choices can reliably change their circumstances for the better. Gary Lee says they can’t improve their lives by making different choices, Caplan counters this and says they can. If it doesn’t seem like that to you, I’m not sure what else I can say – I only report how things seem to me.
Regarding “worst possible motivations” – okay, maybe “worst possible” is and overstatement 😛 I think a fairer phrasing would be “unrealistically uncharitable and unsupported by a straightforward reading of what the author actually said.” That just takes a long time to write out. And for the record, I wasn’t reading Econlog in 2008 either, but when I find a blog or bloggers I find interesting, I always go back to the beginning and read their full archives specifically to make sure I’m understanding their ideas in the context of their full body of work. (What? Me, a nerd? Noooo, never!) And Caplan is most assuredly not among the people motivated by a belief that “women shouldn’t have sex.” Which is why on this very blog he’s also written things like:
And I think you give another example of such uncharitable interpretation in your final comment. Specifically, when you say:
…really? You personally don’t think these explanations are true, therefore the reason they exist is because of sexism? You can’t think of any more charitable reasons than that? I mean – children are expensive and make maintaining a regular work schedule difficult, especially for low skilled workers. Having a child while poor therefore makes it harder to get out of poverty than it otherwise would be, especially if you’re raising the child alone. These all seems really plausible to me, and you’ll just have to trust me when I tell you that a world full of sexually abstinent women has never, ever been on my list of desires. Even if you think all of those statements are false, are you really convinced the only, or main, reason anyone else would find them plausible is sheer sexism and thinking women shouldn’t have sex? Really??? Maybe that’s not literally the “worst possible motive” a person could have, but it strikes me as so wildly implausible that you have to be really, really be bending over backwards to find the most uncharitable possible reason a person could think that. As Scott Alexander once said, “It is probably a bad sign when, in order to criticize a concept, you have to make your hypothetical target example say and think things totally unrelated to that concept and much worse than it.” If you want to criticize the belief that having children when young and poor makes it more difficult to escape poverty, you do your case no favors by just declaring that people believe it because they’re being sexist and want women to be abstinent.
Okay, maybe that wasn’t so quick 😛
Phil H
Oct 4 2019 at 2:57pm
No worries. I mean… yeah. I mean, you’re right. That’s all very plausible. And surely I should be more “charitable”. But on this issue, I ain’t gonna. There is never any need to be charitable to ideas; only to people. And Caplan is big and tough enough that he can stand up to a bit of anonymous online criticism. The other reason for charity is for my own edification: If I entertain Caplan’s arguments charitably, I am more likely to learn from them. Well, I have; and I will continue to read him. I’m not dismissing him.
But on this post, all your contextualising just hasn’t convinced me. When you have to dig back deep into Caplan’s writing to justify why it’s OK that this post focused so relentlessly on women’s dating and sex choices, I just think… well, why didn’t he just write a more balanced post this time? If he’s made lots of non-sexist arguments in the past, that’s great! Why not make one today, too, and discuss the choices of the men? 50% of the “poor, less educated people” that Lee mentioned?
Finally, consider what kind of mental contortions you are suggesting I put myself through. When I see an argument that looks (to me) prima facie sexist, your suggestion is that in the interest of charity, I must first of all absolutely refuse to consider the possibility of sexism. Only when I have absolutely exhausted every other avenue should I allow myself to raise the possibility that sexism might have influenced the argument… I don’t think this is a normal or reasonable way of carrying on an intellectual debate. Sexism is a thing; I see something that looks like it here. I may be wrong; you’re welcome to make the argument. But no, I’m not going to deliberately avoid ever raising the possibility just in case it hurts Caplan’s feelings.
KevinDC
Oct 4 2019 at 3:45pm
Hello again Phil! I will be quick this time, I promise!
One – you ask “why didn’t he just write a more balanced post this time? If he’s made lots of non-sexist arguments in the past, that’s great! Why not make one today, too, and discuss the choices of the men? 50% of the ‘poor, less educated people’ that Lee mentioned?” Because, as I said before, he was responding to the argument in Lee’s book where Lee says these women wouldn’t be able to improve their situation if they had made different choices and that their choices are the best they can do in their circumstances. This particular post by Caplan is addressing that specific claim by Lee in his book. If to you it seems like this means Caplan is “focused so relentlessly on women’s dating and sex choices,” then, well, okay, but to me it looks like he’s just responding to a specific argument.
Also, your attempt to restate my explanation of charitable interpretation is way off from what I actually said. I said that the idea that having a child while poor makes it harder to get out of poverty than it otherwise would be, especially if you’re raising the child alone, seems like a really plausible claim, so given that it’s really plausible on the face of it, there’s no need to assume that it’s being secretly motivated by some unstated sexist desire to keep women abstinent. From that, you’re saying I’m suggesting you go through “mental contortions” and that you “must first of all absolutely refuse to consider the possibility of sexism” and only when you’ve “absolutely exhausted every other avenue” would it be okay to “allow myself to raise the possibility.” Seriously, Phil, do you really think that’s actually what I was saying? I have to say, that’s a pretty uncharitable interpretation of what I said 😛 It’s okay though. I can take it 😀
Phil H
Oct 4 2019 at 5:17pm
Haha, indeed! I know you can handle it.
Here’s how Caplan himself summarizes Lee’s argument: “Because the fathers of the children of single moms are rarely “father material.”” This argument looks to me like it’s all about fathers. Honestly, no, it’s not a natural leap for me to think – if the main argument is all about the quality of the men, I should respond by talking about how silly those women are to have sex. You keep saying that Lee is only talking about mothers, but he’s not. Lee is very clearly talking about both sides – as Caplan clearly shows in his own summary.
Why I’m not charitable to you: because it’s a meta argument. You’re right! Everything you’ve said is plausible. It just so happens to be a kind of plausible argument that very closely follows old sexist tropes. Modern critical thinking has taught me to look at arguments like that and go, hold on a minute! Isn’t it just possible that something has gone wrong in the set-up of the argument? You’re focused on your own argument within its own terms – and yes, within those terms, it works. I’m saying, step back. Consider the terms of the argument. If the problem is “single mothers”, why are we not examining the agency of fathers? If the problem is poor women having unplanned pregnancies, can we just do a reality check whether poor people do have unplanned pregnancies more often than anyone else? Me accepting your “plausible claim” simply doesn’t conflict with me also seeing a “secret motivation” – not necessarily your motivation, just a long tradition of only ever examining the problem of single motherhood through the lens of what women did wrong.
What if we had a 20 year tradition of newspapers demonising welfare kings, rather than welfare queens? Of habitually noting how many different women a man has had children with, rather than sneering “three children, all by different fathers” about women? And a “serious” range of sociology books examining deadbeat dads to go with it? It feels to me like the go-to set of arguments would look rather different.
MIchael Pettengill
Oct 3 2019 at 6:57am
Clearly written by a wealthy man living in a leftist big government urban area.
Rural areas have no community college, and the towns/cities that do charge tuition, fees, book prices that are very high compared to wages in GOP states where cutting taxes has cut the subsidy rather drastically since circa 1980.
Jobs open to women at the low end often lack the stable schedules to sustain attending classes.
I actually spent several years with adults taking classes while working to support themselves. Student aid is limited for part time students.
High schools serving poor communities lack the funding to get students through the process of applying and getting financial aid for even a local community college, if one exists. The kids have no context, and have been embarrassed by asking questions wealthier kids know so much they can’t answer at a low enough level; they can’t imagine anyone not knowing certain “obvious” things.
KevinDC
Oct 3 2019 at 12:55pm
Well, for what it’s worth, I grew up in a low income household in a poor rural area, and pretty much everything Caplan is saying in this post still rings true to me ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Thaomas
Oct 5 2019 at 6:50am
Since it’s hard to see the policy implications of Lee’s argument, it’s hard to see the implication of Caplan’s dissent.
Gary Lee
Oct 9 2019 at 7:59pm
Sorry to be tuning in on this so late; wish I had been here from the beginning. I do appreciate Bryan’s many kind words about my work, and I’m particularly glad to see he thinks I’m a good writer. So I’m gonna write some more. You shouldn’t encourage me.
I understand Bryan’s argument about impulsivity. There are many ways in which it makes sense. I fully agree with him that we’d be better off if we were less impulsive and learned the benefits of delayed gratification. And I can even see a connection between impulsiveness and poverty, certainly on the individual level. But impulsivity causes poverty? Don’t buy it at all.
Is there research on this? I’ve never seen it, but there could certainly be a vast literature I haven’t seen, since I’ve never looked for it. If it exists, it hasn’t been cited here. However, I have read vast literatures on the causes of poverty that point to multiple causes, with attendant supporting data. And I’m talking here about poverty, not about any individual’s economic status. Poverty emanates from the scarcity and skewed distribution of critical resources, for which there are many systemic causes. It makes some of us feel better to argue that poverty is a simple consequence of the character deficiencies of poor people, leading to the conclusion that if only these folks didn’t have those character deficiencies they wouldn’t be poor. But we’ve always had poor people, many of them with quite admirable characters. Poverty is about much more than poor people making bad choices.
I’m particularly intrigued by Bryan’s argument that poor women could improve their situations by marrying older men with proven track records. This was addressed nicely by “nobody.really,” who pointed out the demographic impossibility of this solution. And if those older guys were such good catches, somebody woulda caught ’em already. And Bryan appears to have missed the entire point that, in the last several decades, men are increasingly looking for economic potential in their spouses too. Both men and women are looking to marriage as a means of improving their standards of living, which doesn’t happen if they marry others with poor economic prospects. What’s different now is that this is true for both sexes.
I think Bryan has a good, or at least arguable, point about the relative “prosperity” of full-time workers now versus the 1950s and ’60s. The index of inflation one uses matters a lot, and there are problems with the standard indices. But none is perfect. And the point remains that we have many fewer full-time workers now (at least among men) than we did back then. We also have Arne Kalleberg’s carefully reasoned and documented thesis that jobs are much more insecure now than they used to be, which makes marriages among the truly poor very risky. Cohabitation is a hedge against that risk.
Duty calls. I’ll be back with more thoughts shortly.
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