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The end of middle America? Working class white families are unraveling before our eyes
NY Daily News ^ | December 19th 2010 | Kay Hymowitz

Posted on 12/27/2010 2:33:51 PM PST by neverdem

Foreclosures, plant closings, offshored jobs, underwater mortgages, miserable rates of unemployment, stagnating incomes: Is there any end to the woes of the struggling American middle? Apparently not, because now comes news of a trend guaranteeing trouble ahead for the more than half of the nation that make up the moderately educated and moderately earning middle — even if the economy improves.

That seismic shift, outlined in a new report from the National Marriage Project and the Institute for American Values, is towards more divorce, more out of wedlock births and, ipso facto, fewer kids with a hopeful future.

Family breakdown, to put it simply, has hit white middle America big time.

Researchers have known for a while now that there is a significant "marriage gap" between affluent couples and low-income, largely minority, ones. The children of well-to-do college educated couples are considerably more likely to be growing up in a home with both their mother and father present than the children of the poor — who are more often than not living without their fathers. It surprises most people to hear it, but rates of divorce among college-educated women have actually been declining since 1980...

(Excerpt) Read more at nydailynews.com ...


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Constitution/Conservatism; Culture/Society; Editorial
KEYWORDS: affluent; closings; economy; families; jobs; lowincome; marriage; middleclass; minority; mortgages; offshored; opportunities; plants; trends; unemployment; white; whites; whiteworkingclass; work; working; workingclass; workingclasswhites
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To: neverdem
All these trends, they're purely accidental, and inevitable....
nothing can be done except throw more government $$$ at the problem.
21 posted on 12/27/2010 4:00:58 PM PST by YankeeReb
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To: johniegrad

Also folks looking at marriage as just another gubberment contract that can be broken and resumed as long the state says so. Now lots of folks have been conditioned to think that marriage is defined by and originates from the state, so they accept any “marriage” the gubberment tells them to.

Freegards


22 posted on 12/27/2010 4:01:59 PM PST by Ransomed
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To: neverdem

23 posted on 12/27/2010 4:02:50 PM PST by oh8eleven (RVN '67-'68)
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To: neverdem

Wasn’t that his (THIER) plan


24 posted on 12/27/2010 4:05:53 PM PST by ronnie raygun (V)
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To: Ransomed

Yep.


25 posted on 12/27/2010 4:06:20 PM PST by johniegrad
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To: Red6
Good analysis, the only thing I might disagree with is...
Divorce by the way is very easy and near consequence free……..

It's consequence free unless you're the father of kids, and you want to do the right thing and stay involved in their lives but your ex chooses to move them away. As my divorce lawyer said to me, "Face it, you have a bullseye on your back." Usually she gets all the rights and you get all the responsibilities, that's the American divorce system.

26 posted on 12/27/2010 4:08:07 PM PST by YankeeReb
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To: TheBlueMax

So very true. Priests nowadays are eager to embrace every leftist cause and completely silent when it comes to Christianity. It’s all a disgusting form of vanity where the priests are more worried about whether the leftists say they are good or bad then actually doing good. -Or even defining what is good and evil based on Christian morality.

It’s the very reason I don’t go to church.


27 posted on 12/27/2010 4:13:31 PM PST by LastNorwegian
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To: neverdem
***The children of well-to-do college educated couples are considerably more likely to be growing up in a home with both their mother and father..***

How about some credit for those high school educated parents who worked like dogs for the same thing AND SUCCEEDED!

28 posted on 12/27/2010 4:13:38 PM PST by Ruy Dias de Bivar (I visited GEN TOMMY FRANKS Military Museum in HOBART, OKLAHOMA! Well worth it!)
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To: Jewbacca; rlmorel
I always laugh at the “grow up without their fathers” data.

Me too. FReeper rlmorel pretty much did as well as well as millions of other good men over time. Many times it is not just the court system that has fathers away from their children. Many times it is duty as well. Check it out.

rlmorel

Hats off to rlmorel AND his Mom and Dad!

29 posted on 12/27/2010 4:39:47 PM PST by houeto (Government derives its just powers from the consent of the governed.)
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To: donna

“Who designed and put into law the family court system? Men.”

Sure, at least until the last 20 years. But so what?

It is designed to alienate fathers and use them as cash machines.


30 posted on 12/27/2010 4:52:59 PM PST by Jewbacca (The residents of Iroquois territory may not determine whether Jews may live in Jerusalem.)
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To: neverdem

leftist hell
the psychologist’s dream world


31 posted on 12/27/2010 5:14:05 PM PST by yldstrk (My heroes have always been cowboys)
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To: Jewbacca

the stupid dads want to sow their seeds, find themselves and see how many baby mamas they can have


32 posted on 12/27/2010 5:15:28 PM PST by yldstrk (My heroes have always been cowboys)
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To: houeto

Thank you for noticing, houeto...

I will say this about my dad: he spent the first 18 years of his career away at sea (basically between 1946 and 1964 (his last ship, USS Bristol out of Newport, RI, on which he was the XO, was one of the vessels that stayed longest on quarantine duty in Cuba 1962-63)

In 1963, when his orders came up, he requested shore duty. He knew that would be the end of his promotion path, for the most part. At that time, he had six kids ranging from one to seven years old, he was 38 years old, and had spent very little time with us.

He chose his family over his career.

He started out as a reservist in 1945 and was recommended for transfer to the regular navy, which in postwar 1946-1950 may have been a compliment, as I have been told by at least one source that many officers were trying to make that jump. I have all of his papers and service records now, and his fitness reports all included the coveted “recommend this officer for promotion and command” statement. There was a copy of a report of his performance when his ship was first on the scene in Belize in 1961 when Hurricane Hattie basically destroyed the main port and much of the country, hitting it square. His ship could not enter the harbor due to damage and the channels being destroyed, so they anchored a good ways offshore and sent my dad in with a team of sailors on a launch to survey the damage and find out what could be done. My dad advised his CO that they needed water and generators first, then began helping the shocked people there get things organized, begin dealing with bodies and so on.

In any case, he wanted to be with us, and so he was. For the next ten years, we traveled together around the world as a family. He never once expressed regret for not pursuing a command, and the fact that he never rose above Commander.

It is often said of men of his generation that they didn’t know how to express their love to their families. Well, I never heard my dad say the words “I love you” until he was in his seventies.

But he sure as hell said it loud and clear with his actions as a family man. My mom told me this aspect of his career after he passed away, something that had occurred to me, but he never discussed it and I never asked. I guess there were probably a lot of conversations between my mom and dad back in 1963 as his orders were coming up.

So my mom did that amazing balancing act that military spouses often do. They run everything, do everything, pay all the bills, and when the husband returns, they hand control back over to them until they leave again. Now, I suppose that doesn’t happen (or happens less often) since most people can see the inherent issues with transferring control back and forth like that, and probably choose to let the same person handle stuff.

Back then, the man did it, usually with no questions asked. And I now know that generated a HUGE amount of friction in not only their relationship, but the relationships of many people they knew.

On the subject, though...I DO believe with all my heart that a man is vital in a child’s life. For those early years of my life, even though my dad wasn’t there, the threat of having to answer to him when he came back in eight months was very real indeed, and it kept me from straying to far, even though I was a kid who could push the confines of common sense to dangerous and unsafe limits. I wasn’t evil or bad (my parents often said I was the quietest and least trouble of all) but I simply had no commonsense whatsoever. So I got in trouble a lot by getting hurt or ending up in compromising situations (like the time in Japan where I set a field on fire by firing smoke bombs into it from my house across the street with a slingshot. It didn’t occur to me that the red, blue or yellow smoke coming out also had sparks too, that could light dry grass on fire...)

So even though my dad wasn’t around, he was ALWAYS on my mind!


33 posted on 12/27/2010 5:44:27 PM PST by rlmorel ("If this doesn't light your fire, Men, the pilot light's out!"...Coach Ed Bolin)
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To: Ruy Dias de Bivar

AMEN!!


34 posted on 12/27/2010 5:44:43 PM PST by annelizly
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To: Jewbacca

The last 20-years men have been in majority as well. I have no idea why men did this to themselves.


35 posted on 12/27/2010 6:05:54 PM PST by donna (Imagine...women who honor men enough not to tempt them.)
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To: donna

They are liberals before they are men.


36 posted on 12/27/2010 6:23:01 PM PST by rlmorel ("If this doesn't light your fire, Men, the pilot light's out!"...Coach Ed Bolin)
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To: rlmorel; donna; Jewbacca

Yes!!

They were anti-Christian,anti-family commie loving liberals.
The destruction of Western Civilization was MORE important, to them, than ANYTHING else. It IS their religion. Destroying families is their delight. Destroying this country is the goal.

Delenda est liberals!!!!


37 posted on 12/27/2010 6:50:30 PM PST by TruthConquers (Delendae sunt publicae scholae)
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To: neverdem

Started back in the ‘50s with all the feeling sorry for the poor misunderstood criminals.

Add in the government as daddy for children of the unwed.

Ever since then it’s been a downhill slalom from one wasteful program after another.

Feed the weeds enough and they will choke out the garden.


38 posted on 12/27/2010 6:54:30 PM PST by P.O.E. (A squid eating dough in a polyethylene bag is fast and bulbous. Got me?)
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To: neverdem

The only time popular culture praises marriage is when it’s between two gay people. Marriage between a man and a woman is usually portrayed as a joke by liberal cultural elites.


39 posted on 12/27/2010 7:01:40 PM PST by GOPJ
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To: neverdem

The diminishing job opportunities for the middle class plus the government as sugar daddy to unwed mothers is now having a predictable result with a growing number of whites. The government is more dependable support than the job prospects of all too many.


40 posted on 12/27/2010 7:03:44 PM PST by Will88
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