Dissent: Winter 2016

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The last few decades have seen American families dissolve and transform. Americans are having a smaller number of children. Fewer people are getting married, and more couples are opting to live together before or instead of marriage. Last year the Supreme Court expanded access to this increasingly unpopular institution to same-sex couples.
These changes are not a sign of cultural decadence, as advocates for “family values” would have us believe . In many ways, these changes reflect decades of criticism by feminists and queer activists about the shortcomings of the nuclear family: that it restricts men and women to rigid models of how to be; that it places the burden of childrearing on women alone; that it is held up as the highest form of union but often offers little happiness.

But while families keep changing, not all Americans have equal power over their transformation. Sex, race, and class still influence the families people create. Wealthier women are more likely to get married before having children and are less likely to divorce. Black women in America are less likely to get married than white women, and if they do, they marry later. Those who blame single black mothers for being poor fail to recognize how high unemployment and incarceration rates disproportionately affect black families. Unmarried parents lose out on benefits, but their financial struggles are often blamed on their sex lives. Five million children in this country have had at least one parent in prison during their childhood, and unsurprisingly, the percentage for black kids is almost double that of white. And for the hundreds of thousands of queer youth who experience homelessness each year, the legalization of gay marriage has not meant a more accepting household. As all these examples suggest, to be married or to grow up in a two-parent household in the United States is less and less common—the old ideal is either undesirable or unattainable for most.

Political discussion often reduces the difficulties of parenting and relationships to questions of personal choice. Will you marry? Will you breastfeed? Public or private school? Will you go back to work or be a stay-at-home mom? But for most parents, there are hardly any choices at all. Compared to those in other wealthy countries, American parents receive little support from the state. The United States is one of only four countries in the world without any mandated paid leave for new parents . Childcare is expensive—in many U.S. states, the average cost of care is well over $10,000 a year. Needless to say, it’s inaccessible for many.
Many mourn the end of marriage and the nuclear family, but clinging to a mythical, outdated model of family life is pointless. If we want to fight inequality and improve life for parents, children, and the rest of us, we must look seriously at families as they exist today.

In this section, we attempt to do just that.