The Future of the Family, edited by Daniel P. Moynihan, Timothy M. Smeeding, & Lee Rainwater

Abstract

The Future of the Family. Daniel P. Moynihan, Timothy M. Smeeding, and Lee Rainwater (Eds.). New York: Russell Sage Foundation. 2004. 296 pp. ISBN 0-87154-625-6. $39.95 (cloth). Changes in family life in the United States over the past 40 years pose serious challenges for American social policy and policymakers. Although the exact causes of family change are still debated, there is no denying the rise in unmarried cohabitation, decline in marital childbearing, and the increase in the number of children living with single or unmarried parents. The Future of the Family aims to provide a comprehensive assessment of recent trends in family life and a consideration of social policies to support families and their children. The book includes papers by renowned scholars on a range of topics including marriage and union formation, childbearing, and child well-being. The book provides excellent reviews of familiar demographic trends in family life and provocative recommendations for public policy related to families and child well-being. The book offers no consensus for the causes of family change but provides thoughtful and critical consideration of a range of explanations and policy considerations. The book begins with the central question: What happened to the family? Chapter 2 addresses the changing nature of single parenthood in the United States since the 1960s. David Ellwood and Christopher Jencks review evidence regarding the rise in single parenthood and consider alternative explanations for changes in marital and nonmarital fertility over the period. Their key insight is a descriptive one. Single parenthood is not confined to a particular sociodemographic group; yet, they do an excellent job showing how single parenthood is unevenly distributed across the population. In Chapter 3, Kathleen Kiernan summarizes cross-national variability in the incidence and implications of nonmarital cohabitation. High rates of cohabitation are typically associated with higher rates of unmarried parenthood. In contrast, low rates of nonmarital cohabitation are associated with low rates of fertility and may introduce a host of concerns associated with below-replacement fertility. Kiernan is careful to show that variation in the nature and duration of cohabitation results in different types of living arrangements for children of unmarried parents. In some countries, children of unmarried cohabiting parents continue to live much of their childhood with both parents, whereas in other countries, children are more likely to live with only one parent. The next two chapters begin to address a second question: What are the implications of changes in family life for the well-being of children? The chapter by Lee Rainwater and Timothy Smeeding documents how both low wages and low levels of social support result in relatively high rates of child poverty in the United States. Compared to their counterparts in other advanced industrialized nations, children of single mothers in the United States are not only more likely to be poor, they are also more likely to be extremely poor. Single mothers in the United States have particularly low incomes, but Rainwater and Smeeding make plain that a host of other countries use tax and transfer policies more effectively to lift children out of poverty. …