Do You Need Wealth To Build Stable Families?

David Brooks wrote an interesting article in the Atlantic on the breakdown of the nuclear family. He wrote as follows:


"Finally, over the past two generations, families have grown more unequal. America now has two entirely different family regimes. Among the highly educated, family patterns are almost as stable as they were in the 1950s; among the less fortunate, family life is often utter chaos. There’s a reason for that divide: Affluent people have the resources to effectively buy extended family, in order to shore themselves up. Think of all the child-rearing labor affluent parents now buy that used to be done by extended kin: babysitting, professional child care, tutoring, coaching, therapy, expensive after-school programs. (For that matter, think of how the affluent can hire therapists and life coaches for themselves, as replacement for kin or close friends.) These expensive tools and services not only support children’s development and help prepare them to compete in the meritocracy; by reducing stress and time commitments for parents, they preserve the amity of marriage. Affluent conservatives often pat themselves on the back for having stable nuclear families. They preach that everybody else should build stable families too. But then they ignore one of the main reasons their own families are stable: They can afford to purchase the support that extended family used to provide—and that the people they preach at, further down the income scale, cannot."


So affluent conservatives - STOP PREACHING. You are just a bunch of over-privileged white people רח"ל.


The most obvious way to debunk his theory is to take a look at places like Williamsburg or Lakewood where much of the population are anything but affluent yet build solid, stable families. The way to build a stable family is RESPONSIBILITY. Men have to understand that having a wife and children is a LIFETIME responsibility which may not be shirked under any circumstances.