Groups
Groups: “Let’s Get Married”
 Why aren’t more of the women in our text
getting married, back in the years when
they are having babies and raising kids?
 Should the government be in the business
of promoting marriage. Why or why not?
 What’s the trend with marriage in the other
affluent democracies—and why?

Conflict Theory
Competition between groups over material
goods, opportunities, values, and meaning
the normal condition of society
 Sociology the study of the ways in which
inequalities generate group conflict and
are resolved
 Inequalities of age, gender, and sexuality
particularly central to families
 Families are also the typical units of race
and class conflicts.

Low income budget: mother and
2 preschool children--expenses
Rent
650 (360—Section 8)
 Phone
40 Electric
40
 Garbage
25 Cable tv 30
 Food/etc
455 ( a couple of meals out)
 Bus/cab
58 Clothing 40
 Minn Care 60
Daycare 783
 Total Expenses: 2181/mo
 With section 8, Total expenses: 1890


Income
Monthly = 40 x7 x 4.35 x .938 = $1143
+$137 EITC = 1280
 What if she makes $8/hr? 1306 + 156 =
$1462
 What if she makes $9/hr? $1469 +178 =
 1647
 What if she borrows the other 2650 from
EITC in January or February?

Low Income Budget

Suggestions from groups last year
Night and weekend jobs
 More education… apply for TANF and go to
school?
 Childcare assistance… yes but what about
the deficit?
 Food stamps
 Find a husband (a better one this time)
 What else could she do?

Groups
Discussion questions from chapter 6 and
the conclusion
 National Center for Child Poverty, 2011:
21% of children live in families below the
poverty line ($22,050 for a family of 4)
 25% of children under age 6

Who are these poor families
and what can be done?
They’re the families you’ve been reading
about in Promises I Can Keep , along with
a substantial group from rural areas and
inner ring suburbs… more likely minorities
and/or recent immigrants,
 What can we change as a society that
would make a difference, especially for the
children?

What can we do at the state level?:
the MFIP Demonstration Project
14,000 welfare recipients and applicants,
randomly assigned to either MFIP or
AFDC in 1994… followed closely for three
years.
 “Turning Welfare into a Work Support: Sixyear impacts on Parents and Children
from the Minnesota Family Investment
Program” July 2005

Would encouraging marriage help?

William Doherty, Department of Family Social
Sciences, University of Minnesota
 Minnesota
Healthy Marriage and Responsible
Fatherhood Initiative
 $5 surcharge on marriage licenses
 30% of children in Twin Cities born outside
marriage; more than half of parents express
interest in marriage (but only about 13% do marry)
 Mentoring program
 Screen for violence, severe substance abuse
What do we as a society see as
our obligation to children?
Where are we as a society on the path to
ensuring every child a “Healthy Start, a
Head Start, a Fair Start, a Safe Start and a
Moral Start,” as the Children’s Defense
Fund motto puts it? Which of these would
you endorse?
 Or is it our priority to insure these things
primarily for our own kids and for “people
like us?”

What about our top policy
priorities at the national level?
The War on Crime?
 The War on Drugs?
 The War on Terror?
 No Child Left Behind?
 Health care reform?

How are we doing?
New York Times, Feb 9, 2012
“Education Gap Grows Between Rich and
Poor, Studies Say”
 Stanford sociologist Sean Reardon: “The
gap in standardized test scores between
affluent and low-income students has
grown by 40% since the 1960s

U of Michigan Study

“The imbalance between rich and poor
children in college completion has grown
by about 50% since the late 1980s.”
More Bad News
New York Times, “Money and Morals,”
Paul Krugman, Feb 9, 2012
 “Among white Americans with a high
school education or less, marriage rates
and male labor force participation are
down, while births outside wedlock are
up.”

White male high school grads
“Entry level wages have fallen 23% since
1973.”
 “In 1980, 65% of recent high school
graduates working in the private sector
had health benefits, but by 2009, that was
down to 29%.”
 Summing it up: last three paragraphs of
Krugman

“Concerted Cultivation?” Back
to the February 9 article

“One reason for the growing gap in
achievement, researchers say, could be
that wealthy parents invest more time and
money than ever in their children (in
weekend sports, ballet, music lessons,
math tutors and overall involvement in
their children’s schools.”
Monday’s Exam
Bring number two pencil
 Sit in every other seat beginning from the
far right as you face the front.
 Bring movie worksheets for “Legacy” and
“Let’s Get Married”
