Julianne Malveaux's Commentary
BY JULIANNE MALVEAUX
The American family ain't what it used to be. The "Leave It To Beaver", "Father Knows Best" model of family life was more the exception than the rule back in the 1950s, and such families are even rarer now. According to the Census just 23.5 percent of all families can be described as "traditional", or comprised of a married couple and minor children. While the proportion of those families is falling, the proportion of those who are headed by single mothers or fathers, the proportion of people living alone, and the proportion of unmarried couples, heterosexual and homosexual, is rising. Patterns of family formation are changing, but public policy has yet to catch up to this reality.
For example, Congress has been obsessed with correcting the so-called marriage penalty through tax policy. But the penalty only affects those married couples where incomes are very similar. In the more typical case, where one spouse out-earns the other by a significant amount of money, couples pay fewer taxes if they are married than if they are single. Marriage penalty talk gets lots of attention, though, because "family values" proponents say that people shouldn't be penalized for marrying. Fixing the marriage penalty, though, shifts the burdens to other families. Our nation has always had problems grasping issues of family diversity. Back in the 1950s, the norm was that men worked and women stayed home, but this was only the case in white families where men earned a "family wage", an amount economists define as sufficient to support a stay-home spouse and children. African American men rarely had the opportunity to earn a family wage, and African American women's high labor force participation rates reflected their need to work. Today most families, regardless of race, count on two incomes to make ends meet, especially since working-class men's wages have grown very slowly in the past two decades. But society is still organized as if there is someone who can do family errands during regular work hours.
The growing number of single mothers and single fathers is of special concern. These families need institutional support. They need a larger child tax credit, affordable child care, and better schools. But the Senate just voted down a bill that would have hired more teachers and reduced classroom size. And many municipalities have curtailed the hours of public institutions, such as libraries and parks, to save money. We say that we believe that children are our future, but we skimp on the dollars we spend on children, preferring "family friendly" rhetoric to child-focused reality. This situation is likely to get worse over time. Just a third of all households contain children under 18, and the average household size is just 2.59, an all time low. Politically, as children become a minority, it may be difficult to generate public support for children's issues. When politicians say they are "family friendly", one has to ask what kind of family they are talking about, since the "traditional" family is about to become a thing of the past. Conservatives will say that new family formation is a bad thing, that children do better in traditional homes where both parents are present. Perhaps they do, but the spouses don't come with warranties, and single parents head 9.7 million families, almost 10 percent of all families. Instead of focusing on "the ideal", it makes sense for public policy to deal with the reality of the 21st century family, and provide support to children, regardless of the kind of family formation decisions their parents make. It also makes sense for us to begin to deal with the growing number of people, especially elderly people, who live alone. If we say we value families, we ought to value all kinds of families. All too often, though, in our effort to say that marriage is the most desired form of family organization, we ignore those who have family responsibilities but no partners to help them shoulder those responsibilities. Frankly, we ha ve also ignored gay and lesbian families who do not have the benefit of marriage because of restrictive laws. Yet these families often also have responsibility for children, and should not be overlooked when we talk about family friendly public policy.
The latest Census
numbers tell us quite a bit about family diversity. If we
learn from the data, we'll alter our definition of "family friendly".