A New Focus on Family Values

Creating an emphasison family values.

By Hara Estroff Marano, published on November 01, 1997

It's not just the nature of the workplace that can wreak havoc on families. It's also whether there's a workplace to go to at all. And for African-Americans, especially, job uncertainty not only has an impact on families, but may determine whether marriages occur at all.

Contrary to conventional wisdom, moral values or individual inclinations are not the main factors that influence African-Americans' decisions to marry, reports M. Belinda Tucker, Ph.D., professor of psychiatry and biobehavioral sciences at UCLA. The single most crucial factor is the climate of economic uncertainty in their particular community.

Tucker is in the midst of a 21-city survey of factors that influence family formation. So far, results show that African-Americans still value marriage and raising kids in marriage. In fact, she has found that in general, African-Americans hold more traditional values than whites. African-American women hold particularly traditional expectations for male roles. Simply put, they expect husbands to work. And when men don't work, women don't marry. Like many women, African-American women say they don't want to take on a mate with lower economic prospects than their own. The trouble is that the economic prospects of the available men often do not come close to meeting their expectations.

Furthermore, unemployment creates enormous instability within the marriages that do occur. In those cities where unemployment rates are lowest, relationship satisfaction is greatest and marriages are most stable.

In Tucker's view, a rational family policy must address economic insecurity. To be pro-family, then, is to be projob, especially for African-Americans. Indeed, other panelists suggested, one way government policy can be family friendly is to open up the economic prospects for low-income men, perhaps by giving them priority in job training and welfare-to-work programs.

THE SHADOW OF DIVORCE

The law also influences the actions of couples. No-fault divorce, for example, unwittingly enforces gender inequality, because men typically have less to lose than women in leaving a relationship, according to Amy Wax, M.D.,J.D., an associate professor at the University of Virginia School of Law. For example, women over the age of 40 face a much lower remarriage rate than their ex-husbands, in part because of their limited reproductive lives. And women are generally worth far less on the labor market, especially if they stopped working full-time to have kids. These advantages increase men's bargaining power within marriages. In short, the "threat factor is higher for men," Wax says.

That's why toughening divorce laws doesn't help women: it leaves untouched men's disproportionate power within marriage. And since marriages, even successful ones, "are always conducted in the shadow of divorce," Wax insists that "any discussion of the methods, costs, and benefits of keeping marriages together must take into account the gender asymmetries--in remarriage prospects, roles, and earning power--that strengthen men's bargaining power."

Participants at the Washington round table agreed that efforts at the beginning of marriage, such as marital education programs that change the way people negotiate, can give women more power. In fact, because marital education increases the benefits of staying together for both parties, it was called "the most promising reform." Also singled out was the creation of tax policies that favor married couples. And state governments should consider restructuring welfare programs that penalize married couples by providing higher benefits to single women with children.

A GROUP EFFORT

The burden of making marriage work, Ooms concludes, can't be left just for couples to shoulder by themselves. It's something policy-makers, communities, and public officials have a hand in. What binds flesh-and-blood couples is not love alone, or sheer determination, or morality. Real family values must take into account the fact that programs and policies are always making and remaking the marital bed.