David Brooks' Strange Preoccupation With Single Parents

[xchrom]

http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2012/07/david-brooks-strange-preoccupation-single-parents

David Brooks has returned from Aspen, where he heard a presentation from Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam. According to Putnam, there's a growing gap in the way the rich and poor raise their kids:

Over the past decades, college-educated parents have quadrupled the amount of time they spend reading “Goodnight Moon,” talking to their kids about their day and cheering them on from the sidelines.....A generation ago, working-class parents spent slightly more time with their kids than college-educated parents. Now college-educated parents spend an hour more every day. This attention gap is largest in the first three years of life when it is most important.

Over the last 40 years upper-income parents have increased the amount they spend on their kids’ enrichment activities, like tutoring and extra curriculars, by $5,300 a year....In 1972, kids from the bottom quartile of earners participated in roughly the same number of activities as kids from the top quartile. Today, it’s a chasm. Richer kids are roughly twice as likely to play after-school sports. They are more than twice as likely to be the captains of their sports teams. They are much more likely to do nonsporting activities, like theater, yearbook and scouting. They are much more likely to attend religious services.

It's not 100% clear from Brooks's column, but it sounds as if the problem here isn't that working class families are doing any less than before. The growing gap is caused by the fact that affluent families are doing much, much more. This is similar to the trend of growing income inequality in America: the problem isn't that the working class is making less money than they used to, the problem is that their incomes have been sluggish while incomes of the well-to-do have skyrocketed.

[ejpoeta]

1. i wonder if the gap doesn't have to do with the lower income non college educated

having to work long hours or two jobs just to keep a roof over their head. they have less time off and may even have to work weekends, or nights....

[coalition_unwilling]

3. Nah, please don't let material facts intrude into a discussion of what

is obviously purely a flaw in the working class' character.

(in case it's needed).

[ananda]

4. My thought exactly.

The poor and working class parents just don't have slack for their kids.
They're just trying to survive or make ends meet.

Also, more of their teens have to work or else become involved with
gangs or not so healthy group activities. I suspect that's because
social programs for poor kids have been closed down or don't receive
funding any more due to state and local budget cutbacks.

[CTyankee]

2. David Brooks is a moonbeam. Really. This guy isn't attached to reality.

He says stuff with that doofus look on his face, like he's on some weird drug, and just floats around simpering with his faintly bemused smile. I'm not a violent person but I sure would like to smack him silly when he starts in...

[Octafish]

6. He is a MOONIE, literally.

http://www.americanpolitics.com/20060508Scoobie.html

He's got that Right: "Convex and Concave." Brooks knows his True Parents.

[Brickbat]

5. When one full-time job is enough to support a family, it doesn't matter if the parent it single

or married. The deliberate wrecking of manufacturing jobs and false inflation by HR and business schools of hiring requirements for more full-time jobs has created this problem, not single/married parents.