Labor's Love Lost: The Rise and Fall of the Working-Class Family in America

by Andrew J. Cherlin

Two generations ago, young men and women with only a high-school degree would have entered the plentiful industrial occupations which then sustained the middle-class ideal of a male-breadwinner family. Such jobs have all but vanished over the past forty years, and in their absence ever-growing numbers of young adults now hold precarious, low-paid jobs with few fringe benefits. Facing such insecure economic prospects, less-educated young adults are increasingly forgoing marriage and are having children within unstable cohabiting relationships. This has created a large marriage gap between them and their more affluent, college-educated peers. In Labor’s Love Lost, noted sociologist Andrew Cherlin offers a new historical assessment of the rise and fall of working-class families in America, demonstrating how momentous social and economic transformations have contributed to the collapse of this once-stable social class and what this seismic cultural shift means for the nation’s future.

Drawing from more than a hundred years of census data, Cherlin documents how today’s marriage gap mirrors that of the Gilded Age of the late-nineteenth century, a time of high inequality much like our own. Cherlin demonstrates that the widespread prosperity of working-class families in the mid-twentieth century, when both income inequality and the marriage gap were low, is the true outlier in the history of the American family. In fact, changes in the economy, culture, and family formation in recent decades have been so great that Cherlin suggests that the working-class family pattern has largely disappeared.

Labor's Love Lost shows that the primary problem of the fall of the working-class family from its mid-twentieth century peak is not that the male-breadwinner family has declined, but that nothing stable has replaced it. The breakdown of a stable family structure has serious consequences for low-income families, particularly for children, many of whom underperform in school, thereby reducing their future employment prospects and perpetuating an intergenerational cycle of economic disadvantage. To address this disparity, Cherlin recommends policies to foster educational opportunities for children and adolescents from disadvantaged families. He also stresses the need for labor market interventions, such as subsidizing low wages through tax credits and raising the minimum wage.

Labor's Love Lost provides a compelling analysis of the historical dynamics and ramifications of the growing number of young adults disconnected from steady, decent-paying jobs and from marriage. Cherlin’s investigation of today’s “would-be working class” shines a much-needed spotlight on the struggling middle of our society in today’s new Gilded Age.

Genres: Nonfiction, Politics, History, Research, Social Science, Read For School, Sociology

258 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 2014

Reviews

[Brynn · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is a book I had to read for a class and for a textbook, it was pretty interesting. However, if I had picked this up for myself, I definitely would have put it down. Reading a book full of dry facts and statistics is just not my thing.

[Cliff · Rating 4 out of 5]

Cherlin providers a very in depth overview of the changing structure of the working-class throughout modern history. While very dry at times, it provides an important counter argument to the work of individuals like Charles Murray, who blame working-class decline on individual failings and not neoliberal driven systemic changes.

[Landen · Rating 4 out of 5]

First soc elective book I read for undergrad.

[Travis · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars.

[Carol · Rating 5 out of 5]

In his book on the America middle class, Charles Murray demonstrated how the US has become a income-segmented society. Few people at the top have any personal contacts with those on the bottom or any true understanding of the difficulties they face. Love’s Labor Lost gives us a clearer picture how this happened.

This book is the story of working class America from the 1800s to the present. It’s an academic book, but it’s surprisingly very well written. The author takes us from American industrialization in the 1800s, through the heydays of the American worker from 1950s through the early 70s. Finally he talks about industry’s gradual move oversees in the 1980s and how an entire segment of the nation was left without adequate employment.

The golden days of manufacturing in the 1950s-1970s, we learn, were never the norm for the American worker. Still those are the days we long for. After WWII, America faced little foreign competition and wages doubled. The typical family was able to thrive with only a male breadwinner. Children were supported by their families through high school. Women were largely homemakers. Upon graduation, working class white male children were able to follow their fathers into the factories and earn a good living. They married young, started families, and purchased homes,cars and American-made products.

Beginning with the oil embargo in the 70s and the loss of manufacturing jobs in the 1980’s the American working class has never recovered and continues to languish. Cherlin refers to the present as the hourglass economy — the “haves” at the top and the “have-not’s” at the bottom. Those with a Bachelors’ Degree distinguish the working class from the middle class. In trying economies the middle class tread water (indeed, salaries for those with a BA have been stagnant since 2000) but the working class suffers.

Without the industrial jobs of the past to support them, those in the working class obtain stop-gap jobs without any security or potential for advancement. The cost of college education has risen sharply and those at the bottom of the hourglass are unable to afford higher education — a ticket to the middle class.

Cherlin, makes multiple references to Charles Murray’s book on the same subject: Coming Apart. Cherlin and Murray seem to be coming from different ideologies but draw remarkable similar conclusion. Murray demonstrates there is a lack of industrious or willingness to work hard among today’s working class. Murray, in part, blames the welfare state for making it easier and often more lucrative to take benefits then work at a low-wage dead-end job. However, Cherlin finds that people in all classes have new ideas on balancing work and leisure.

They both agree the breakdown of the traditional American family has had detrimental effects on children. With the loss of potential job opportunities, marriage rates declined and out-of wedlock births increased among those with a high school education or less. Americans with higher educations put off childbirth until marriage. A working class male having a child in wedlock is now an outlier.

Murray and Cherlin concur children born to unmarried parents are at a greater risk of a host of problems including poverty, drug use and and school problems. The Washington Post recently ran a piece about how the death rate for white, working class women is raising at an alarming rate. No doubt brought on by the stresses of the low employment and single parenthood.

The book provides a good explanation of how we got to where we are. The final chapter contained suggestions to remedy the situation. I felt this was the weakest part of the book. He offers policy suggestions like expanding the minimum wage, investing in education and boosting unions but he does not adequately explore the pros and cons of those policies. Some good, some bad in my opinion.

This book also helps explain our current political climate. Neither of the two political parties has done much to help the working class. Once thought of as the backbone of America, the working class has been left behind in an economy that can no longer provide for them.

[Kylie Kurtz · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book is absolutely awful. If you like reading just a bunch of facts with nothing else this is the book for you then.

[Joey · Rating 3 out of 5]

Both substantive and written with an engaging narrative flow, Labor's Love Lost is a rare page-turner that doubles as a sociological study. My only real beef with this volume, and it's a fairly hefty beef, is that I couldn't escape the sensation that Cherlin's conclusions were based on really thin evidence. He kept referring to decades-old (if not century-old) surveys and studies of single communities, or portions of single communities, and then extrapolating fairly sweeping judgments from those studies. Sociology is what it is, and it has its place, but in places Cherlin was -- in my opinion -- on thin evidentiary ice, even by sociological standards. Still, I enjoyed his book, and that's worth three stars.

[Philip · Rating 5 out of 5]

The history of the labor movement in the US and its economic rise and fall is the subject of this book. It is well written and tells the tale from a sociologists point of view. It is a supplement to the Piketty book which was by an economist. This year’s political election will be about this topic and I learned a great deal about it, including the decline of marriage due to the collapse of the labor market.

[Carl Nelson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Compelling and Carefully Reasoned

If you read only one book about the current state of the U.S. labor market this should be it. It contains a careful historical analysis that agrees with Piketty's argument that the post WWII dramas an ahistoric period unlikely to be repeated. And, unlike some other authors on this subject it places careful emphasis on the interaction of economic and cultural changes contributing to current outcomes.

[Mills College Library]

306.85086 C5215 2014