Kirjahaku

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.

Every year, large numbers of American young people who are not terribly interested in attending a four-year college reluctantly enroll anyway, effectively pressured by combinations of parents, peers, teachers, guidance counselors, and the normative air they breathe. More than occasionally, they wind up confirming that collegiate life is not for them and, sooner or later, drop out. From there, again more than occasionally, they find themselves unemployed or underemployed, in big-time student debt, and quite possibly feeling like a failure. Cratered paths like these routinely stunt entries to middle-class jobs and careers. These are often needless delays and losses, because other education and career routes are primed to better serve millions of young men and women, especially those who enjoy working with their hands. Taking advantage of these routes also simultaneously enriches our economy. Digging deeply into issues like these is the book’s main aim. Helping teenagers think through what they want to do with their lives occupationally is its main educational mission. Recognizing the economic and other dangers posed by severe skill gaps, made worse by the retirement of skilled baby boomers, adds urgency to the mix.

Every year, large numbers of American young people who are not terribly interested in attending a four-year college reluctantly enroll anyway, effectively pressured by combinations of parents, peers, teachers, guidance counselors, and the normative air they breathe. More than occasionally, they wind up confirming that collegiate life is not for them and, sooner or later, drop out. From there, again more than occasionally, they find themselves unemployed or underemployed, in big-time student debt, and quite possibly feeling like a failure. Cratered paths like these routinely stunt entries to middle-class jobs and careers. These are often needless delays and losses, because other education and career routes are primed to better serve millions of young men and women, especially those who enjoy working with their hands. Taking advantage of these routes also simultaneously enriches our economy. Digging deeply into issues like these is the book’s main aim. Helping teenagers think through what they want to do with their lives occupationally is its main educational mission. Recognizing the economic and other dangers posed by severe skill gaps, made worse by the retirement of skilled baby boomers, adds urgency to the mix.

Very high rates of family fragmentation in the United States are subtracting from what very large numbers of students are learning in school and forever holding them back in many other ways. This in turn is damaging the country economically by making us less primed for innovation while also making millions of Americans less competitive in an increasingly demanding worldwide marketplace. All of which is leading – and can only lead – to deepening class divisions in a nation which has never viewed itself or operated in such splintered ways. What can be done to reverse these severely destructive trends, starting with reducing the enormous number of children forced to grow up with only one parent living under the same roof? What educational reforms are most likely to help under such demanding circumstances? And as dangerous as the situation is, why do leaders in education and other fields persist, for both understandable and less-worthy reasons, in dancing around profoundly important questions of family breakdown to the point of contortion and ultimately failure?