Slate ht Dreher

Putnam makes this point early in Our Kids: Of the values-versus-economics debate, he says simply that, “The most reasonable view is that both are important.” How come? For one, we can look back to the Great Depression as an historical counterpoint to the trends we’ve witnessed in recent decades. With mass unemployment, the marriage rate tumbled during the 1930s, “showing the perennial importance of economic stability in the marriage calculus.” At the same, however, the birth rate also fell, and unwed childbearing remained rare. “In that era, men and women postponed procreation as well as matrimony,” Putnam writes. “ ‘No marriage license, no kids’ was the cultural norm. Unlike today, desperately poor, jobless men in the 1930s did not have kids outside of marriage whom they then largely ignored.”