“The Data Present Some Uncomfortable Realities”

My wife and I recently found ourselves at a function where we were seated with a young couple from Zimbabwe. They had met in Canada where they both came to study. They had completed their studies and were now young professionals in a large Canadian city. My wife is relentlessly curious and a good asker of questions. And she asked plenty throughout the dinner. This young couple’s story was a fascinating one in many ways, not least because it was told with such evident joy.

One part of the conversation that really made everyone lean in was when they shared about how marriage worked in Zimbabwe. Needless to say, it bore little resemblance to the West. They spoke of extended families coming together, of shared labour, of paying something like a “dowry” (this produced visible discomfort in some at the table, but as the man explained, it is somewhat symbolic, and is often re-gifted as a wedding present), of traditions involving uncles and brothers and fathers and mothers, of elaborate feasts, and of the joy and the hope associated with the creation of a new family. This was about a million miles away from what marriage often is in the West: an expensive photography session that plays well on Instagram and that is mostly (exclusively?) about two people.

As it happened, that very morning I had read a piece in The New York Times by Nicholas Kristof called “The One Privilege Liberals Ignore.” It was a kind of awkward plea for the importance of two-parent families. I say “awkward” because two-parent families are not the sort of thing that respectable liberals should be arguing for. That’s conservative territory and, as always in our polarized culture war world, it is anathema to agree with anything the other team says. But the data doesn’t lie.

• Families headed by single mothers are five times as likely to live in poverty as married-couple families.
• Children in single-mother homes are less likely to graduate from high school or earn a college degree. They are more likely to become single parents themselves, perpetuating the cycle.
• Almost 30 percent of American children now live with a single parent or with no parent at all. One reason for the sensitivities is large racial disparities: Single parenting is less common in white and Asian households, but only 38 percent of Black children live with married parents.

I couldn’t help but chuckle grimly at the following quote:

“The data present some uncomfortable realities,” writes Melissa S. Kearney, an economist at the University of Maryland, in an important book on this topic to be published next week. “Two-parent families are beneficial for children,” she adds. “Places that have more two-parent families have higher rates of upward mobility. Not talking about these facts is counterproductive.”

What a world, I thought, where it’s “uncomfortable” to talk about the benefits of two parent families, and where we seemingly have to talk ourselves into acknowledging this.

(As an aside, it was interesting to me that in his article Kristof didn’t go near the issue of the sexual revolution and whether this has been a straightforward narrative of unqualified benefits for women or not. Some women — Christine Emba, Louise Perry, etc. — are beginning to quite publicly question this. At least to me, this would seem a relevant topic to consider in light of the stats above.)

I wish people who view “concessions” like the idea that two committed parents is ideal for the health of children (which should hardly be a concession) could sit with me in the jail sometimes. So many of the people I talk to there are the products of profoundly broken families. Yes, there are a number of factors — racial, economic, etc. — that tell important parts of the story. But very often, I simply hear stories of casual, disposable, highly dysfunctional relationships. I hear stories of revolving doors of men and women in and out of each other’s life, mostly treating each other as means to ends. I hear of absent fathers producing absent fathers.

Again, there are many reasons for this. But surely among them would be the devaluing of the idea that marriage is an institution that has a responsibility to nurture and sustain children. Surely, among them would be the normalized idea that sex has no necessary connection to a committed relationship and is mainly (exclusively?) about pleasure and consent. Surely, among them would be the disdain for tradition (at least those that don’t play well with our performative diversity ideals) that is so frequently exhibited in the West. Surely, among them would be the deep pessimism about the future internalized by so many today, to the point where I hear many Gen Zers saying they would never even consider bringing children into a world as bad as ours.

I don’t know what roads my new Zimbabwean friends will travel down in their marriage. They are making their way far from home and I suspect our culture will influence theirs (in good ways, perhaps, and almost certainly in bad ways). But I do know that if I had to place a bet on which kids would have a better chance at a healthy life — kids raised with their values and family traditions and culture or kids raised with Western norms of individualism, performative identity (not least when it comes to sex), pessimism about the future, etc. Well, let’s just say I wouldn’t have to think too hard.