McLanahan Sara
Princeton University 265 Wallace Hall Princeton, NJ 08544 609-258-4875
Ann Am Acad Pol Soc Sci. 2009 Jan 1;621(1):111-131. doi: 10.1177/0002716208324862.
In 1965, Daniel Patrick Moynihan warned that non-marital childbearing and marital dissolution were undermining the progress of African Americans. I argue that what Moynihan identified as a race-specific problem in the 1960s has now become a class-based phenomena as well. Using data from a new birth cohort study, I show that unmarried parents come from much more disadvantaged populations than married parents. I further argue that non-marital childbearing reproduces class and racial disparities through its association with partnership instability and multi-partnered fertility. These processes increase in maternal stress and mental health problems, reduce the quality of mothers' parenting, reduce paternal investments, and ultimately lead to poor outcomes in children. Finally, by spreading fathers' contributions across multiple households, partnership instability and multi-partnered fertility undermine the importance of individual fathers' contributions of time and money which is likely to affect the future marriage expectations of both sons and daughters.
1965年，丹尼尔·帕特里克·莫伊尼汉警告称，非婚生育和婚姻解体正在破坏非裔美国人的进步。我认为，莫伊尼汉在20世纪60年代所认定的一个特定种族问题，如今也已成为一种基于阶层的现象。利用一项新的出生队列研究中的数据，我发现未婚父母比已婚父母来自更为弱势的群体。我进一步认为，非婚生育通过与伴侣关系不稳定和多伴侣生育的关联，重现了阶层和种族差异。这些过程会增加母亲的压力和心理健康问题，降低母亲的育儿质量，减少父亲的投入，并最终导致孩子出现不良后果。最后，通过将父亲的贡献分散到多个家庭，伴侣关系不稳定和多伴侣生育削弱了个别父亲在时间和金钱方面贡献的重要性，这可能会影响儿子和女儿未来的婚姻期望。
