♪ [up-tempo opening music] ♪
>>[KEVIN DEYOUNG, HOST] Greetings and salutations.
Welcome back to “Life & Books & Everything.”
I'm Kevin DeYoung, Senior Pastor
at Christ Covenant Church in Matthews, North Carolina.
And I am joined today by my special guest, Melissa Kearney.
And we're going to talk about her new book called “The Two-Parent Privilege.”
Melissa has a very august resume here.
She's Professor of Economics at the University of Maryland;
director of a number of different research groups;
and a nonresident, senior fellow at Brookings;
and a scholar in a number of different labs and affiliations and journals
and lots of good academic work that she's done.
She did her undergraduate at Princeton, PhD in Economics at MIT.
Melissa, thank you for coming on here to talk about your new book.
>>[MELISSA KEARNEY, GUEST] Happy to be here.
Thanks so much for having me.
>>[DEYOUNG] So this is a book about parents,
and it's a book where you're using your expertise as a trained academic economist.
But you also write personally.
You say at the beginning and at the end, in particular,
that you're a mom and an economist, and that's in the correct order.
That's what's most important.
And you have three kids. So tell us about your family.
>>[KEARNEY] Okay. It's exactly right. I'm a trained economist,
but I think the greatest thing I do is be a mom to my three kids,
a boy and two girls, and I'm raising them with my husband in suburban Maryland.
>>[DEYOUNG] And how did you get to the University of Maryland?
And are you a big “Terps” [Terrapins] sports fan?
>>[KEARNEY, chuckling] I mean, I admit that I spend most of my time
over in the economics department,
but I do cheer for the Terps every now and then,
and I'm delighted when they do well.
I have been at the University of Maryland for 17 years now;
moved down to DC from the Boston area probably 19 years ago;
went to Brookings on a two-year fellowship, did some dedicated research there
on topics that I've been working on for over two decades
(U.S. inequality, poverty, child and family well-being);
and then took a tenure track job at Maryland where I've been ever since,
and I enjoy teaching the undergrads there and training PhD students there
and working as part of a really intellectually vibrant economics department.
>>[DEYOUNG] And how did you get interested in this topic,
which I know is part of broader interest.
You just mentioned inequality and other things,
but this area having to do with families and parents?
>>[KEARNEY] Since I was an undergrad,
I've really been interested in the economic and social lives of women and children.
I really have sort of always had an interest
in questions about how society works or doesn't work well for certain groups of people
with a particular interest in less economically advantaged groups.
And so those are the questions that brought me to economics, actually.
Let me just say, because a lot of people, I think,
think about economics as finance or stock picking and that kind of thing,
which is nothing to do with the kind of economics I do.
You know, as an undergrad, I was interested in questions of society and public policy,
took a bunch of those classes,
but loved the sort of rigor and theory and empirical work of economics.
And so I used those tools of economics to ask these questions.
How did I become interested in questions about women and families?
I suppose it has to do with, you know,
like many of us being interested in the world around us the way we grew up.
And so it was, you know, I grew up in New Jersey in the ‘80s,
very cognizant of the fact that I had educational opportunities,
economic opportunities that my mom and my grandma and their sisters didn't have.
And so were my grandma's sisters didn't have.
And so those kinds of questions really were at the forefront of my mind.
And then I spent a summer in college —
this was really a very salient experience for me —
I spent a summer in college
working at a welfare-to-work center in Bridgeport, Connecticut.
And you know, got to know and work with women who were my age at the time,
probably between 17 and 22, and they were all moms receiving welfare,
and they had to go to this training program in order to keep their benefits.
But that summer just, you know, really sort of cemented my interest
in thinking about how policies and economic conditions
affect the decisions and well-being of women and families.
And so that's been a common thread of my research
throughout my time as an academic economist.
>>[DEYOUNG] So I'm not an expert in these things. I'm a pastor.
My PhD is in history, but I like reading these things.
And so I was interested to read not only you citing Sarah McLanahan a number of times,
but you had her at Princeton.
So tell us about her influence,
and anyone who's read in this area of marriage and family
knows that she's done lots of really important empirical research.
What role did she play in your intellectual formation or interest in this?
>>[KEARNEY] Sarah McClanahan really was a pioneer in this field.
She created or launched what was called “The Fragile Family Survey”
that you know, interviewed and collected data
on unmarried parents at the time of their child's birth and tracked them over time.
And so it's really a credit to Sarah McClanahan
that we have as much information as we do
on these particularly vulnerable families: unmarried parents, mostly low-income.
And so she really trained a lot of students in this field.
I am actually not— I don't consider myself a direct trainee of Sarah.
She was a sociologist,
but I did have the great fortune of taking her Sociology of Poverty class
when I was an undergrad, even though I was an economics major.
And it was in her class that I was really introduced to this topic of family structure
as it relates to poverty and child well-being.
I think that was really formative
because economists sort of pose questions in different ways.
And so my work as an economist over the past 20 plus years,
looking at inequality and poverty
has tended to focus on issues other than family structure.
>>[DEYOUNG] Mm-hm.
[KEARNEY] But I was, like, teed up to recognize the importance of that early on,
having been exposed to Sarah McLanahan as a professor and her work from early on.
And so, actually, that's sort of the confluence of those events,
me being an economist, bringing an economist lens to the topic.
But knowing Sarah McClanahan's work really well, I think has just kept me noticing.
Every time there's a study on inequality, social mobility, kids outcomes,
you just see how important family structure is in the data.
And so, I think, you know, it was she—
knowing her work, having her teach me early on in my studies of these topics
has just sort of heightened my awareness
of the role of family structure in driving these kinds of economic outcomes.
>>[DEYOUNG] Give you the lens to see what maybe other people haven't seen
or didn't want to see.
We'll get to that in a moment. But let's jump into your book.
So I'm talking to Melissa Kearney, “The Two-Parent Privilege:
How Americans Stopped Getting Married and Started Falling Behind.”
It just came out this fall, published by University of Chicago Press.
So big-picture question, What is the “two-parent privilege”?
[KEARNEY] The two-parent privilege, as I'm using the term, refers to the fact
that having two parents in one's home confers a lot of advantages to children.
This is VERY well established in the data and in empirical research.
The reason I call it a privilege is because not only is this a very advantageous situation,
but increasingly in this country,
this has become an advantageous situation
enjoyed disproportionately by an already advantaged class.
And so it's really now college-educated parents
who continue to raise their kids in two-parent homes at very high rates.
Meanwhile, over the past 40 years,
the share of children being raised in two-parent households,
among those who were born to parents WITHOUT a four-year college degree
has decreased by a really sizable amount and has just been a steady downward trend.
And so now, having a two-parent family is yet another privilege
of the already most privileged economic class in American society.
>>[DEYOUNG] So this is how you put it.
You have some great summaries at the end and at the beginning,
but here's one in the preface.
You say, I've studied U.S. poverty, inequality, family structure
for almost a quarter of a century.
I approached these issues as a hard-headed, albeit soft-hearted MIT-trained economist.
Based on the overwhelming evidence at hand, I can say with the utmost confidence
that the decline in marriage and the corresponding rise in the share
of children being raised in one-parent homes
has contributed to the economic insecurity of American families;
has widened gap in opportunities and outcomes
for children from different backgrounds;
and today poses economic and social challenges
that we cannot afford to ignore, but may not be able to reverse.”
I found a quotation just again, Sarah McClanahan and Isabel Sawhill say
(this is the 2015 journal “Future of Children”)
quote “Most scholars now agree
that children raised by two biological parents in a stable marriage
do better than children and other family forms across a wide range of outcomes.”
I want to dive into the data that you give in just a moment,
but back up a little bit and talk about Why is this so hard to talk about?
because it's very clear in reading your book
that you're trying very hard to stick with the data
and not to make moral value judgments.
I'm a pastor, so I can't avoid, you know, when I'm speaking from the Bible,
making some value judgments that I think the Bible teaches.
But that's obviously not what you're doing, and you're studiously trying to avoid that.
And yet, you talk at the beginning
about how these conversations at academic conferences,
“I'm an economist, much more comfortable talking about earned income tax credit
and other kind of policy.”
And when you talk about, well, what about marriage?
It's the proverbial lead balloon.
What has your experience been?
Why is even talking about this so difficult,
probably, especially for someone like you in academic atmosphere?
[KEARNEY, chuckling] That's right.
So I have had plenty of people comment on my book.
This isn't hard for ME to talk about.
I talk about it with my church friends all the time.
>>[DEYOUNG] Uh-huh. Right.
[KEARNEY But in academic settings,
it's difficult, and there's a lot of reasons here.
I'm going to say most of them are very, very well intentioned,
which is that most of us don't want to sound like
we're blaming single mothers for their difficult circumstances…
>>[DEYOUNG] Right.
[KEARNEY] …and the relative disadvantage that their children suffers.
And I mean, I certainly don't want to sound like I'm blaming mothers.
But also very sincerely, I mean this. I'm NOT blaming the single mothers.
I'm recognizing that this is a challenging situation.
Any of us who are parents would, I think, readily recognize that parenting is difficult.
Doing it by oneself is, you know, that much more difficult.
So there's a genuine empathy there.
But I think people get nervous about calling attention to the relative disadvantage
that kids from single mother homes face
because it sounds like we're blaming people who are in a very tough spot.
>>[DEYOUNG] Right.
[KEARNEY] Right? And I think we should be very capable of recognizing
that single parents — the majority of whom are still single moms —
single parents are in a very difficult spot, and that puts their kids in a difficult spot.
And so we should be able to recognize that and have an honest conversation about it.
The other reason I think as academics, as economists interested in policy,
it becomes difficult for us to talk about
is because we don't have a very good answer
to the critical question of: “Well, what do we do about it?”
>>[DEYOUNG] Yes.
>>[KEARNEY] Right? So if we talk instead
about the fact that our tax code is not progressive enough
or we're not raising enough revenue
to cover expenses of things we feel like we might need to pay for,
like more early childhood education or more public subsidies of childcare,
it's pretty easy for us to sit in a room
and come up with ways to make the tax code more progressive
or design transfer programs to reach more people.
It becomes a lot harder for us, and it takes us out of our real comfort zone
when it comes to things like:
How do we affect very personal decisions people are making
about how to form their families and raise their children?
>>[DEYOUNG] Right. Yeah.
It's very personal, and it's almost impossible
for any of us to talk about this or hear it without thinking of how I grew up,
how I'm raising my kids.
Do I have kids, all these personal things? I think that's why it's so difficult.
There was a survey. I found these a couple years ago.
It's an online survey, whatever they're worth.
I don't know the scientific methodology here,
but it said, more than 70% of participants believed
that a single parent can do just as good a job as two parents.
60% of women (quote) “agreed that children do best with multiple adults invested,
but two married parents are not necessary.”
Christina Cross, a few years ago, in The New York Times,” had an article, “The Myth of the Two-Parent Home.”
And even as I say those, I feel myself wanting to say,
“Uh, yeah, we're not just all the things you just said, Melissa.”
We’re not saying that, you know,
the single mom is to blame for all these problems,
You know, where's the dad?
The dad is, you know, for any number of reasons —
and we're going to get to talking about boys and dads and just a bit —
But I think that just underscores those surveys for whatever they're worth.
I imagine people getting that phone call or online, being asked that question
and thinking, “Well, I don't want to say
that married couples are better than anyone else.
Of course. Any number of people.
And one of the myths — and I'd love for you to expound on this here —
one of the myths you talk about several times in the book,
is that people have the idea,
“Well, sure, people aren't married
and kids aren't being raised as much in married families.
But it's just kind of European style, laissez-faire relationships.
And it's the same thing.
It's just people haven't gone through the formal structures of getting married.”
Is that true?
>>[KEARNEY] Let me answer that
and then come back to address the earlier points that you made,
specifically about some of the reactions.
So that is completely NOT true, which is really important
because, again, since I'm taking an economist lens to this issue,
what really matters in the way I describe, frame, model,
and then empirically study marriage is the resources coming into a household.
TIME 16:09
So if you had two parents who were together the whole time
committed to sharing their resources, which is their income, their time,
their energy to raising kids together throughout a kid's childhood,
In my version (economic version) of this story, it shouldn't matter,
but at a very practical level,
that's NOT what unmarried parents are doing.
40% of kids in this country are now born to unmarried parents.
52% of kids born to moms without a four-year college degree
are born to unmarried parents.
70% of children born to Black moms in this country, unmarried parents.
These parents aren't married at the time of the child's birth.
And as a practical matter,
very few of them will be together cohabiting, raising their kids together
by the time this child is 5 years old, let alone 14 years old.
This is one of the things we see in the data
that Sarah McClanahan collected with her colleagues.
And so, at a practical level, marriage --
and then, you know, there's a whole bunch of theories as to why this is true --
but marriage just provides an institutional framework, essentially,
that keeps parents together in this arrangement raising their kids together.
And so we can't be blasé about these really high number of kids
being raised in an unmarried-parent home, being born to unmarried parents,
because, again, just very what does that mean, practically?
It means that most of them will grow up in a one-parent home.
Okay, let me talk specifically
just to respond to the reactions or critics that you raise.
You know, 70% of adults say it's fine for kids to be raised in a single-mother home.
Well, that could mean very many things.
First, of course, there are lots of children
who are raised by single moms who do phenomenally well.
And there are plenty of single moms who have enough income
or, you know, a village around them such that they can raise their kids
in ways that are enriching home environments,
and the kids can do very well.
I'm focused on averages and large trends.
And so we can all recognize the heroic efforts
that some single moms go to
to make sure their kids are just as successful as anyone else's children.
But that doesn't mean that on average,
two parents in a home don't have an easier time than one parent.
And again, what we see in the data very clearly
is that in a typical situation, two-parent homes deliver more benefits to kids
and kids are more likely to stay out of poverty,
graduate high school, graduate college,
achieve these markers of, you know, just sort of basic markers of success,
setting aside personal, you know, qualities that we want in our children.
The Christina Cross New York Times, you know, piece
that said the myth of the two-parent family, what she was arguing really is that—
and she and I come to different conclusions—
what she was arguing is that if you look at Black families,
the benefit of marriage wouldn't be as great as for White families,
and so she's like, “marriage doesn't solve our problems.”
And here's how I think about this.
And I've done extensive research on this
and I've written academic paper, and I described this in the book.
The way we should think about the benefits of marriage to a child
depends on what the second parent would bring into the home.
So if the second parent is not stably employed or has low income
or isn't committed to the child, or in extreme situations,
would be a harmful presence or an abusive presence,
then there wouldn't be a benefit of marriage.
But this doesn't mean that the decline in the two-parent home isn't a crisis
for children and families in this country.
It means that it's not as easy as just saying “more people should get married.”
It means we have to actually grapple with:
What is it that's keeping millions of parents or millions of adults who have kids together
from getting married.
What is it that's keeping millions of dads from being committed to their families.
It just it makes us look at root causes of the problem,
it doesn't mean there's not a problem or that two-parent homes aren't beneficial.
TIME 20:27
>>[DEYOUNG] Right, and I remember looking at Cross's argument,
and you look at yes, there are differences between Black families and White families;
and yet the data show that just again, averages, it is better in America to be
(I mean, if you were to predict adult outcomes)
to be a Black child raised by two parents,
than to be a White child raised in a one-parent home.
So, yes, there's still differences, but—
and marriage, of course, doesn't solve all problems.
I don't know who would argue that marriage is going to solve all those problems.
But on the whole, all other things, it's an advantage.
Melissa, you write about this in the book,
and you go through different options and theories,
and, you know, like a good economist,
you have to say, “Well, it could be this, and it could be that.
We can't finally determine.”
But where do you think, in particular, this class divide goes?
So, you know, ten years ago in Charles Murray's book, “Coming Apart,”
where he has, you know, fictional Fishtown in Belmont,
and sort of, you know, in Belmont,
the upper middle class are living one way, and in Fishtown, another way.
And one of the ironies he says is,
the people in this Belmont are giving their stated views of one thing.
Like, it doesn't matter, and yet the way they're living
shows a different kind of value system:
that “graduate school, get married, then have your children,”
which you know, lots of studies show, you do those things in that order.
And the chances of you being in poverty in this country are very small.
So how, where did the very stark division—
Because it wasn't like this you show.
I mean, it wasn't like this in 1960 that there was such a division
between, you know, “the Haves” and “the Have Nots”
getting even wider apart on their very marital formation.
How did we get here?
>>[KEARNEY] Yeah, so this has really-- this class gap in family structure
and the share of kids being raised in two-parent homes
has emerged over the past 40 years.
And frankly, this is why anybody who professes to be
concerned about income inequality or the erosion of social mobility
needs to contend with this
because two-parent homes are very protective of children,
and they really increase, you know,
kids’ likelihood of hitting all of these markers of success.
And so, what happened?
Well, here's the broad stroke of the story I tell
based on my reading of all the data and relevant evidence,
which is, we had a social cultural revolution in the ‘60s and ‘70s,
changed our expectations for marriage, social norms around gender roles.
It eroded, a bit, the social convention
of needing to be married to have kids together, okay?
And what we saw in the ‘60s and ‘70s
was a reduction in marriage sort of across the board,
even proportion across adults of different education levels.
In the ‘80s and ‘90s, things diverged quite starkly
such that the decline in marriage stalled, stopped declining among adults,
went men and women with a four-year college degree.
So their rates of marriage have barely declined in 40 years,
and we see that the share of kids being raised in a married-parent home,
if they're born to a mom with a four-year college degree,
that's decreased over this 40-year period by only six percentage points, from 90% to 84%.
It's a very small decrease
when you realize how much bigger and more diverse that group is.
So now about 30% of moms have a four-year college degree
as compared to only about 11%,
and yet still, raising your kids in a married-parent home
is holding steady among that class.
But in the ‘80s and ‘90s,
we saw that the share of kids being raised in a married parent home,
not just for the most educationally disadvantaged adults
without a high school degree,
but really interestingly, and I think underappreciated in the middle.
So moms with a high school degree or some college,
we might have considered them sort of the middle class, right?
The likelihood that their kids are being raised in a married-parent home
fell from 83% to 60%.
That is a massive drop in 40 years.
So now, where are we in 2020?
You know, we've got this really large, very obvious class divergence.
I think part of this is driven
by the economic challenges facing non–college-educated men in particular,
over the ‘80s, ‘90s and early 2000s.
We have a lot of research from economics
showing that secular global changes
think, you know, increased import competition from abroad;
think, the adoption of technologies and industrial robots
that pushed-- sort of both of those trends
pushed non–college-educated men out of well-paying middle-class jobs,
either out of the workforce or into lower paying jobs;
think, the erosion of unions and other sort of wage-supporting institutions.
Basically, all of these trends were unkind to non–college-educated workers,
which, in an economic sense,
made them less attractive or necessary as marriage partners to the extent
that one of the things husbands do is bring financial resources to a home.
And so that's, I think, part of the story.
But then you've got this, you know, cyclical effect
where the economics make the institution of marriage less attractive or necessary
because women outside the college-educated class
are doing better compared to men, right?
So they're more likely to be able to do it on their own,
and he's less likely to be a stable provider.
So you've got this confluence events, and that changes the social norm
because now, more and more people in your community,
having and raising their kids outside a two-parent home,
and then these things amplify each other.
So you've got economics and social changes amplifying each other.
And that's why this is a cycle that really needs to be broken.
TIME 26:43
>>[DEYOUNG] So I want to come back to those numbers in just a second.
I need to just mention our irst sponsor, Crossway Books.
Thank you for sponsoring Life & Books & Everything.
And today, I want to mention their New Testament theology series.
Here's one of the volumes [singsong as he shows the book]
on 2nd Corinthians by Dane Ortlund.
So thank you to Crossway for sponsoring LBE
and check out their good books and that new series.
Uh, Melissa, I want to just underscore,
you have this nice chart, these numbers you just gave here on the book.
So just to say, because this is really important, and you just said this.
So four-year college. This is in 1980.
So 90% of children living with married parents,
high school or college in 1980: 83%; less than high school: 80%.
So that's a really tight— Back in 1980, you know, 80-90%.
So whether you had high school, some high school, college,
you're roughly the same.
In statistical terms, it's pretty close.
And then, I mean, you just show how four-year college declines a little bit.
But these other 83[%] to 60[%],
from 80% to 57% is a major decline among those less educated.
And you've talked about some of the reasons why that may be
and about the “marriageable man” thesis.
And so you hit on that there.
I want to ask the question. So maybe it's twofold.
The women -- because almost all of these single-parent households
are headed by women -- Is it in the case
that they're looking to get married and they just can't find the right guy?
Or is it the case that the norms are such
that marriage just isn't something that they think of.
And then, you know, follow up is, is there anything we can do about that?
I'm reminded of a quip…
I wrote an article last year for "First Things,"
which is a Catholic journal about declining fertility rates,
and I looked at all of the things they've tried to do in Japan and other places
which have had almost no effect on increasing fertility,
and somebody had this line, you know,
“Government programs can help you maybe encourage you to have the kids you want,
but they won't convince you to have the kids you don't want.”
And it’s maybe sort of the same with marriage.
There are some policy things.
If you want to get married, they can help it.
But if you're not looking for that, what can we do?
>>[KEARNEY] This is a really important point,
which is that there does not seem to be evidence
that people in the U.S. have whole-scale rejected the institution of marriage.
I know there are some groups
that essentially say marriage is a patriarchal institution,
and it's not compatible with modern day feminism.
And so, of course, you're going to have a reduction in marriage.
And let me just say before I go further on this
that let's keep coming back to the fact that college-educated women,
the most economically successful women perhaps in the history of, like, the world.
We're still getting married and raising our kids in married- parent homes.
So I reject the proposition that marriage is inherently at odds
with any feminist view of women's economic participation or success.
So then it's the question of:
“Well, why has marriage fallen out of favor outside the college-educated class?”
And when you look at the ethnographic evidence
and the qualitative surveys of low-income couples,
unmarried couples who avail themselves
of some of the government programs
or government-funded programs, their community-offered programs
that work with unmarried parents trying to strengthen families,
what you see in those interviews and those qualitative studies
is that a lot of these couples say they want to be together.
And we saw this in the “Fragile Family” survey, too, right?
They say they want to be together, they plan to be together.
And then for a whole variety of reasons, they can't make that work.
This too should really affect our willingness to grapple with this as an equity issue.
If you've got high income couples, highly educated couples
who are managing to achieve
and make this very advantageous structure work for them,
shouldn't we want more people
who say they WANT to be able to have a two-parent home
and a happy, healthy marriage,
shouldn't we help them achieve it,
even if they can't pay for high-priced marriage counseling or whatever.
What do you see? There are real barriers?
There's economic instability
that makes someone either less willing to commit to taking care of a family
or makes, you know, the mother of his children
less likely to accept him as a resident dad.
>>[DEYOUNG] Right.
>>[KEARNEY] You see substance abuse, you see mental health challenges.
You see a lot of these adults grew up in homes
that weren't characterized by stable, healthy marriages,
growing up in communities where their friends and cousins and other role models
are not raising their kids in this way.
So here's an opportunity for community groups and for public funding
and philanthropic groups and for church groups to say:
“What can we do to help strengthen families
to meet them where they are and help make them stronger?”
At the same time, creating a social convention and expectation
among children being raised and teenagers now
that this is something to strive for.
This will make your household more economically viable.
It will confer benefits to your children.
So it's both meeting families where they are now.
But I think, setting our sights on:
“What do we want to accomplish going forward and how do we get there?
>>[DEYOUNG] That's great. And really helpful.
You have a great chapter on boys and dads, and I'm going to ask you a question,
not so much as an economist (so you know, if you want to answer it or not)
but as a teacher and as a professor, and maybe the sort of students that are coming to University of Maryland
are so self-selecting of such a high elite caliber that you wouldn't see this.
But I just wonder in your years of teaching,
there's lots of social science research on the ways that boys are falling behind.
And we can even say anecdotally, young men are drawn to online influencers,
some of whom you are sort of helpful, some of whom are really unhelpful.
I just wonder, have you sensed something?
I mean, you work with young people of different ages.
Have you sensed in, you know, the last generation
that there are more challenges or more anxiety, despondency?
What are you, sort of on the ground, sense? And in particular, about boys and men?
TIME 33:53
>>[KEARNEY] I think the single biggest thing that gets me down as a professor,
and, you know, I've been working with the young adults now for almost 20 years.
There really is, you just see it, just a widespread anxiety among them
(men and women alike)
that I just I don't I don't think-- I certainly didn't notice it 20 years ago.
Now, I'm very aware of the fact that I've been a parent.
And so now I see these 20-year-olds.
Is like closer and closer to my own children.
>>[DEYOUNG] Right. Uh-huh.
>>[KEARNEY] But the amount of kids, I mean, KIDS, right? They're young adults.
They’re like 18 to 22 who come to my office.
Often--Like you know, young men, too, I'll call them in, and I'll say,
“What happened? happened on the test,” right?
“Like, what happened? Do you come to class? Like, what?”
And they're big guys, and they have their hoodie up,
and they look like they don't care.
>>[DEYOUNG] Uh-huh.
>>[KEARNEY] And then they'll start crying.
And they'll be like-- You know, I'm not I'm not making this up, right?
And all of these anecdotes are part of the reason
why I felt so like I had to write this book,
even though I don't tell these anecdotes in the book.
They'll be like, you know, “My parents just announced they're getting divorced.
I think they thought it was okay because we're at college now,
but I'm having a tough semester.”
Or you know, “My grandma raised me, and it was just me and my grandma
and my grandma died, and I'm having a tough semester.”
Or “I can't figure out what I'm going to do with the rest of my life,
and I'm really stressed
and I'm supposed to be interviewing for jobs, and I just don't know.”
And just the amount of sadness and anxiety among young people
who have their whole lives ahead of them.
>>[DEYOUNG] Yeah.
>>[KEARNEY] Right? I think just should be filled with energy.
And I don't want to overtell this story
because there is something that's also really energizing among young people.
But I just, I worry about them. I do.
I worry about them, and I wish as adults, we could do more to make them feel
comfortable and confident and safe and secure, and, like, it's okay.
>>[DEYOUNG] Yeah. Do you think boys in particular are wondering--
Well, I suppose, men and women,
but you know, you talk about the incredible importance of dads.
And, you know, that wonderful story about the dad (was it in Louisiana?)
who showed up at school, and gang participation plummeted.
And even some of the metrics you give with— It even seems that boys in the home
are more affected by the lack of a father than girls are.
>>[KEARNEY] Yeah, I mean, again, this comes out of really rigorous econometric studies.
We see that the gender gap favoring girls
(meaning girls are now less likely to get in trouble at school;
they've always been, but that gap has widened).
They're more likely to graduate high school. They're more likely to go to college.
Again, girls are more likely to hit all these markers of success.
This has been happening over the same decade that we've had a tremendous rise
in the share of kids growing up without dads in their home.
And researchers, economists have worked very hard
to establish a causal link here showing that that gender gap that favors girls
is wider among kids coming from mother- only homes than two-parent homes.
And then economists have gone further and looked at the mechanisms
and shown that the absence of additional parental inputs,
meaning time nurturing parenting that kids from single-parent homes get.
Again, not because single moms aren't great parents.
It's because they don't have a second parent in the house to help, right?
>>[DEYOUNG] My wife is always saying, “I don't know how I would do this.”
I certainly don't know how I would do it.
>>[KEARNEY] So this isn't to impugn single moms.
Again, it's to say that there are more parenting resources in two-parent homes,
and we see that lower level of parenting inputs and nurturing parenthood
has a large, larger effect on the behaviors and outcomes of boys.
I want to be careful because I don't think we should erroneously conclude from that
that girls aren't necessarily struggling.
But girls might be struggling in different ways.
Whereas boys, again, we know on average are more likely to express their struggles
by acting out in ways that are going to get them suspended, in trouble with the law,
all sorts of things that could really impede their educational and economic—
>>[DEYOUNG] They have outward aggressive, noticeable, public
>>[KEARNEY] Again, on average, right?
>>[DEYOUNG] Uh huh.
>>[KEARNEY] And so that's bad for them.
This, too, is why this is SO important to intervene.
Like, from all angles and break this
because let's get back to why we think there's a reduction
in marriage outside the college-educated class.
Men are either viewing themselves
as less likely to be stable, good providers for family.
Women are less likely to view them that way.
Then you have millions of boys being raised without dads in their house.
That actually makes them less likely
to be in a position to be, you know,
stably employed, emotionally stable, supportive husbands and fathers.
And this gets back to something else you brought up with.
Well, the elite class is raising their kids in this way.
And frankly, it's I mean, not only does it reject the overwhelming evidence and data
showing that kids benefit from having dads in their homes,
but it's extraordinarily elitist and obnoxious, quite frankly, to say:
“No, my kid benefits from having me in the home because I'm a great guy
and I can read to them and really equip them.”
But do we really expect the, you know, 40% of kids who are born to less-educated dads
to benefit from their fathers?
Like, “Let's give up on those guys
and just assume a government program is going to make up for them”?
And I just I refuse to resign ourselves to that view of society.
>>[DEYOUNG] Yeah. Oh, I hadn't thought of it that way,
but there is a level of self-aggrandizement.
“Of course, I'm valuable.
I wouldn't want my kids to be without, because I'm a very special parent.”
Well, we're all probably all probably capable of being better parents than we think,
and we're probably less special than we think at the same time.
>>[KEARNEY] Kevin, this is analogous to the conversation about college.
And we know that people with a college degree do better in the labor market.
And there's a push to try and get more people through college, right?
We have lots of policy interventions aimed at doing that.
But there's a group of people that says, “Well, not everybody needs college.”
And the critics of that view always say, “But ask them if they're sending THEIR kid to college.”
Right?
>>[DEYOUNG] Right. Yes.
>>[KEARNEY] It’s a similar thing.
Like, “Well, YOU don't need two parents, and your kid doesn't go to college.
But by the way, I'm going to shower two parents’ worth of resources on my kid
and make sure they go to a four-year college.”
>>[DEYOUNG] Yeah, I wonder-- I would love to-- I mean, if you're willing,
how does this affect how you are as a mom?
If your kids are anything like my kids, they are not going to read your book.
>>[KEARNEY laughs]
>>[DEYOUNG] Maybe your kids are really high over achievers,
But I've written some stuff, and I try to gift it.
“No, I'm not interested in it.”
But this is informing and is shaped by and probably downstream in some ways
from your own parenting.
What sort of messages,
given the expertise you have in this area, are you trying to give to your own kids?
>>[KEARNEY] To be overt, I am very aware of the fact that my kids are growing up,
not only in a two-parent household themselves,
but surrounded by people who are being raised in two-parent household--
>>[DEYOUNG] Which is huge.
>>KEARNEY] because that's what it looks like in, you know, sort of well-off community,
which is where we live.
I mean, I'm very open about the fact
that I recognize my kids are being raised in a very privileged setting.
And so it's you know, kids absorb what they see around them.
And again, we know this from evidence, even though it also is incredibly intuitive
that kids’ world view is shaped by what they experience.
And so I mean, I probably should talk about it more explicitly, let's say, with my kids,
but I don't really worry that my daughters are thinking
that maybe they would become young unmarried mothers.
That's-- I mean, I'm not foolish to think that things don't happen.
>>[DEYOUNG] Right, for sure.
>[KEARNEY] But that's not really something
they observe very often in the people around them that they're being raised with, right?
And so they just sort of, by default, expect that they're going to go to college.
And also, you know, interesting for me as a mom,
they see me and my sisters all working and having careers.
And I assume that that affects the way they think of it.
Now, my daughters also think I work too much, and they don't want to work as much…
>>[DEYOUNG chuckles]
>[KEARNEY] …which is also fair, right? Like they’re definitely--
But that was something actually, I grew up in a different generation than my mom,
where I assumed I was going to work and have a career,
but then, thinking of my own mom,
but I also assumed I was going to have kids and be a really involved mom
and there was some conflict there.
So I think about that a lot, you know,
how our kids see us and our communities affect what the aspirations…
>>[DEYOUNG] Yeah. Absolutely.
>>[KEARNEY] …you know, they have for themselves.
>>[DEYOUNG] So, maybe that's a good transition
to sort of a last line of questioning.
I do want to— Let's see. I’ll mention one other sponsor, Desiring God, new book:
“Foundations for Lifelong Learning, Education, and Serious Joy” by John Piper,
available next week when this is recorded.
So check that out. Always great to see what John is writing there
about education and serious joy.
Thank you to Desiring God.
That's a great transition because you used a phrase a number of times in the book,
and this is really what you're talking about,
“social norms” because there are lots of things as an economist,
you think about different policies, and those things do matter.
They're not irrelevant. They can nudge people.
They can make certain decisions more or less likely or palatable.
But then you have this big bucket Of, well, social norms.
One of the things I underlined throughout the book
that you would often mention as a kind of aside, you'd say,
“Well, Asian families are the exception to this.”
And I couldn't help but say,
“Well, there are some very strong social norms,
that's not just a stereotype.”
I mean, there's data to support that.
Very strong social norms about marriage, about education, about all these things.
So is there a possibility to affect social norms? How do we go about it?
Because it seems like the biggest thing—
We can do lots of things around the edges to try to help push people
in the right direction for the well-being of society and their families and kids.
And yet, social norms are very—
There's no program to change a community’s social norms.
>>[KEARNEY] This is why this is a hard issue for like economists and policy wonks
Because, like you said, we could do all sorts of tinkering around the edges.
I can propose (and I have proposed) changes to the tax code
that would be less punishing, frankly, of marriage.
There are definitely tinkering policy things—
>>[DEYOUNG] If you get more tax breaks for having kids.
I have nine kids, so I welcome as many as you can get. [chuckles]
>>[KEARNEY] Yeah, I'm all for an expanded child tax credit.
I'm all for a child allowance.
I'm certainly for what I've referred to as a secondary earner tax deduction
so that we don't penalize married couples or two workers when they get married.
We have all sorts of ways we could tinker around the edges,
and I think those will, you know, l
ike you said, nudge some people and have incremental effects.
But really turning this around is going to require a change in social conventions,
and now you're moving further and further away from the economist policy tool kit.
But again, you know, some critics are like:
“Oh, she tells us this big problem and then there's no real solutions.”
But in some sense, one of the things I'm trying to accomplish with this book is,
“Here, I know there's a problem…
>>[DEYOUNG] Right.
>>[KEARNEY] …Now, all of you who do things more than just tinker with the tax code,
let's address this together.” This is--
>>[DEYOUNG] This is pastors and communities and other, yeah--
>>[KEARNEY] There are things we could do.
Now, that's on the one hand.
On the other hand, (because I am an economist,
that's how we do things: “on the one hand, on the other hand”),
Social norms are surprisingly malleable, and they can also change very quickly.
And we have, again, good social science evidence
showing that things like role models matters (we were just discussing);
things like media messaging matters.
Let me give you a couple examples.
Eliana La Ferrara and her colleagues
have shown that in Brazil, when soap operas came on TV—
this is sort of amazing--
using variation in where they were viewed at different timing,
they document a causal link, exposure to the smaller families and divorce on—
you know, like in those communities that saw those media images,
that led to a change in family formation, an increase in divorce, fewer kids.
Like people responded by emulating what they saw on TV.
In a very different setting, my colleague Phil Levin and I looked at what happened
when the “16 and Pregnant” and “Teen Mom” franchise came on MTV
>>[DEYOUNG] Yeah, talk about that.
That was a really interesting point of the book.
>>[KEARNEY] This is crazy.
All of a sudden, one year, teen childbearing in the U.S.
went down by way more than it had been falling.
So teen childbearing had been falling in the U.S.
And then one year, there was a really large drop.
And we had studied this issue
enough to know [that] it wasn't the unemployment rate.
It wasn't sex ed.
What could this be?
It turns out that when this show came on TV, which millions of teenagers watched,
it was a pretty realistic depiction of how unglamorous it was to be pregnant at 16,
>>[DEYOUNG] “16 and Pregnant” is the MTV show.
>>[KEARNEY] “16 and Pregnant.”
And so we had an R.A. [research assistant?]
watch all the shows and code up what happens.
Well, what happens? Most of the boyfriends don't stick around.
Most of these young girls are stuck with a crying baby in the middle of the night.
Like, you might have thought that people would know being a teen mom was hard,
but apparently, this was really salient.
And in those communities
where more people were watching MTV before this show even came on
(so MTV just had more market penetration in certain areas).
When this show came on the air,
you saw a larger reduction in teen childbearing in those places.
And so the idea here is: Gosh, this show really changed hearts and minds
in ways that affected behaviors that affected birth rates.
And so we got access to Google and Twitter data,
and you see that when these episodes aired,
there would be a spike in Google searching for how to get birth control.
There would be a spike in tweets mentioning this show and birth control.
So there was this idea that people saw this show
and decided they didn't want to become pregnant as a teenager.
Which again, it's just really amazing because it validates this idea
that exposure to content and ideas affects people's attitudes
in ways that affects their behaviors,
even in the really complicated domains of marriage, family formation, and having kids.
>>[DEYOUNG] It was really fascinating.
I've heard of the show.
I can't say I've watched it before or that we have a lot of MTV on.
But yeah, I mean, you did the homework
to show there's probably some connection there.
You say at the end of the book:
“Here are things we should do to address the challenges I've laid out,
and then some things I do not think we should do.”
And these are good.
But I want to highlight two because I just wonder:
How do we do both of these things?
So here's what you say we should do:
“Work to restore and foster a norm of two-parent homes for children.”
Good.
“Here's one thing we should not do:
Stigmatize single mothers or encourage unhealthy marriages.”
So I agree with both of those things.
Here's what I wrestle with a lot, and I wrestle with it as a pastor
and it’s stigma.
So we think of stigma as universally a bad thing,
and yet we want to stigmatize racism or all sorts of things.
There are bad behaviors that our culture and our communities do a lot to say:
“That's a bad thing to do.”
So I think as a pastor-- and I don't know what your views are on this.
I'm not presuming that you share these personal views.
But, I believe the Bible says that sex before marriage is wrong,
but also the Bible says you can be forgiven for that.
And it's not the end of your life.
And so, on the one hand, I think about our church community,
which has a pretty thick culture
and what you described, you know, your neighborhood,
there are certain norms.
There are certain things that it just looks normal to have a mom and a dad.
It looks normal to work hard at school. It looks normal to not do drugs.
[It looks normal] to pursue education.
All of these things are good.
And so there would be if somebody in our church, you know, was 16 and pregnant,
it would raise eyebrows and there'd be something of a stigma.
So on the one hand, I wanna say—
>>[KEARNEY] But also hope you guys would love her and embrace her
and pay for her diapers and--
>>[DEYOUNG] Yes, absolutely.
So what I'm getting to is:
How do we do it so that the behavior, like in our case, would be stigmatized,
but the person is not cast off.
And in fact, somebody said, this really just helped open my eyes.
Of course, I should-- You know, it's not even out-of-wedlock births.
I mean, we should, from my perspective, applaud the mom who is going through
and having the child and working to, you know, sacrifice so much.
We want to applaud that decision, I do.
So it's always this push and pull of how to establish norms,
because norms say something is normal.
But then when something is outside of that normal, as you were right to interject,
yeah, I want our community to love that mom and sign up for meals,
which I know they would and buy diapers and do all of that.
How do you think about that as an economist
or even just as a mom or as—
>>[KEARNEY] As a person? [chuckles]
>>[DEYOUNG] Yeah.
I mean, I think you completely put your finger
on probably the hardest needle I'm trying to thread
by saying those two things.
And somebody said directly to me, like, “We DO need to bring back shame.”
But there's, you know, there's a role for it. So here's what I mean when I say that.
I'll give you examples of things on those two points--
>>[DEYOUNG] Mm-hmm.
>>[KEARNEY] that I would and wouldn’t do.
So the stigma of single moms and their kids that basically in the past,
made them outcast from society,
let's all agree we should never go back to that, right?
We do not want women feeling like they're trapped in abusive marriages, right?
And we do not want children and their single parents
to be even more deprived of resources
by punishing them for where they are.
>>[DEYOUNG] You're 18, and you get a second-class life for the rest of it.
>>[KEARNEY] Yeah. And here you are.
So those are terribly counterproductive approaches that we should never go back to.
At the same time, I mean,
I'm not going to totally point my finger at like Disney Plus or Netflix or Hollywood.
But you know, the television portrayal of families has gone so far to say:
“Hey, it's totally fine.”
You know, this one's being raised with her mom and her new boyfriend,
but her old boyfriend is still they're all good friends and it's awesome.
But that's, like, such a farce. That's not really what it looks like.
So let's be honest that, you know,
we could accept and love all sorts of family arrangements,
while still being honest about what is best for kids in particular.
And by the way, it's not great for single parents who tend to be under-resourced
to be doing this by themselves.
So, the kinds of things about fostering norms,
for instance, a lot of the social service agencies or programs
for, you know, single moms and their kids, the dads will tell you this:
You go into those buildings, and the picture,
like, the logo is basically a mom and her daughter, or a mom and her child.
>>[DEYOUNG] Yeah.
>>[KEARNEY] There's not even a dad in the picture, right?
>>[DEYOUNG] Right, that’s a norm.
>>[KEARNEY] And so these responsible fatherhood programs walk in,
and they're like, the dad isn't even in the picture.
In an effort to being sort of welcoming of the reality
that a lot of these programs serve single moms and their kids,
there's not even an expectation of a dad being around.
And that kind of subtlety, I think matters, right?
So, I was even talking to a woman
who runs a program for lifting up single moms, and I said to her:
“Well, you're part of the solution. You're working to strengthen families.”
And she stopped, and very thoughtfully, she said, “But I've never thought to ask, where's the dad? Why isn't he around?”
And that's a bit of a mind shift, right?
To say, let's think about strengthening families.
Let's talk about the importance of dads, how they can contribute
without stigmatizing the one parent and their child so strongly
that they feel like they're not enveloped in support.
>>[DEYOUNG] Right, yeah, and I think you said earlier,
this is going to happen at a personal level and community level.
I mean, I think of a number of women in our church who volunteer
with a Christian Young Lives program that reaches out
and my younger daughters have volunteered to do some of the babysitting
so these single moms can get training,
and, you know, in our context, it’s Bible studies and other things.
And there's lots of people who do care about these things.
And anybody listening who does,
there are things and good programs that can make a difference and help with these.
So my last question for you.
Thank you so much for writing this book, Melissa.
If any of my kids go to the University of Maryland,
it's not on their list, but if they do, I'll tell them to take a class.
>>[KEARNEY, laughing] Great!
>>[DEYOUNG] You're doing undergrads.
What do you have coming up next?
What are you working on? Academic books, popular books?
What are you doing?
Hopefully, you know, some of the negative feedback you're probably getting on this book
doesn't keep you away from it because it's really helpful.
>>[KEARNEY] I appreciate that.
I will say, because I wrapped up this manuscript, you know, some time ago
before it actually shows up in print.
>>[DEYOUNG] In COVID, I think.
>>[KEARNEY] Yeah. Over the past two years,
I've been working a lot trying to understand the decline in fertility,
which is another, you know, not uncontroversial topic.
>>[DEYOUNG] Uh-huh.
>>[KEARNEY] But again, there's a lot of economic causes and consequences
to the decline in fertility, and so that's another one
where setting aside all sorts of moral or value judgments
about how we think somebody should live their lives.
The fact that in high income countries, we are now below replacement level,
fertility is going to pose a lot of challenges on our economic and social structures.
>>[DEYOUNG] Good.
>>[KEARNEY] Studying that is, you know, what I've been thinking about.
>>[DEYOUNG] Well, I will read that.
>>[KEARNEY, laughing] Okay, great.
>>[DEYOUNG] Glad for you to write that.
It's really important.
Again, talking to Melissa, “The Two-Parent Privilege:
How Americans Stopped Getting Married and Started Falling Behind.”
Thank you so much for taking time
and working before we started this to get all the mics and headsets.
And thank you to your husband.
>>[KEARNEY] It was a pleasure. Thanks for having me.
>>[DEYOUNG] Yeah, thank you.
So thank you for listening to Life & Books & Everything,
a ministry of Clearly Reformed.
You can get episodes like this and other resources at clearlyreformed.org
Until next time glorify God, enjoy him forever, read a good book.
♪ [up-tempo closing music] ♪
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