Clare Huntington
For the book symposium on Clare Huntington, Failure to Flourish: How Family Law Undermines Family Relationships (Oxford University Press, 2014)
McClain is also right that I am a bit of a traditionalist to
the extent that I am strongly in favor of stable environments that nurture the
relationships children need to thrive. I am more agnostic, however, about the kinds
of family forms that can provide these relationships than the typical
traditionalist. Above all, we need to pay close attention to whether any
particular family form is able to promote a commitment to childrearing by both
parents or by other adults in the child’s life such as a grandparent, aunt, or
uncle.
It is a closer call whether I am on board with Sawhill’s
argument for cultural change. In her recent book, Generation Unbound, Sawhill divides the world of parents into “drifters” and “planners,” (pp. 6-7)
with drifters becoming parents unintentionally and planners becoming parents by
design. Sawhill wants to change the drifters into planners. As McClain
explains, the centerpiece of Sawhill’s strategy is increasing the accessibility
and use of long-acting reversible forms of contraception (LARCs). These highly
effective methods of birth control would prevent almost all unwanted
pregnancies and would mean that a woman needs to take an affirmative step—going
to the doctor to have the IUD or implant removed—to become pregnant. For the
reasons I elaborate below, I agree, although warily, with Sawhill’s project to
inculcate a stronger norm of parenting by design.
I begin with William Julius Wilson’s framing in More Than Just Race. As he argues, it is important to identify and address
both the structural challenges facing low-income families, such as poor schools
and a lack of economic opportunities, and the cultural challenges, such as those
identified by Sawhill. In other words, no policy approach will be effective
without both strategies.
Cultural change is, however, a fraught endeavor, especially
when espoused by those (like me) not in the culture that supposedly needs
changing. I have three central concerns. First, I worry that focusing on
cultural change will distract us from the need to address the structural
challenges facing families. For all the concern about family form, it is
critical to remember that much of the disadvantage that comes from being raised
by unmarried parents can be traced to the demographic differences that tend to
accompany nonmarital childbearing, most notably low-incomes and lower levels of
parental education. Even if young women and men delayed childbearing, too many
men would have criminal records, the low-wage marketplace would not provide a
living wage, neighborhoods would not facilitate social interaction, and schools
would fail children. Sawhill calls for greater investments in education and
human capital, but she also acknowledges that these will be hard to achieve. I
want to emphasize that we cannot lose sight of the structural challenges facing
low-income families regardless of family form.
Second, returning to Robin Lenhardt’s post, I
worry that a focus on cultural change will inevitably mean the condemnation of
non-white, lower-income families. For too long, the answer to poverty has been
“If only those people would not have children, all would be well.” This is
decidedly not Sawhill’s argument, and she goes to great lengths to be sensitive
to the eugenics overtones of her proposal. Moreover, Sawhill’s argument is for
only a delay, not a denial, of childbearing. Instead, I am speaking more
broadly about a societal debate of these issues. It is true that African
Americans have higher rates of nonmarital childbearing, but it is also true
that the studies of nonmarital families have found that African American
parents have adjusted better to this new family form, with unmarried African
American parents maintaining stronger co-parental relationships than unmarried
white parents, and unmarried African American fathers remaining more involved
in the lives of their children than unmarried white fathers. (I discuss this
research in my forthcoming article.)
Finally, I want to ensure that we are attentive to the many
reasons why unmarried couples bear children. I agree that access to very
low-cost, effective birth control is vitally important, and the CHOICE Project provides compelling evidence that when women use LARCs, the
unwanted birth rate (and abortion rate) plummets. In Failure to Flourish,
I, too, endorse the increased use of these forms of birth control.
But there are other reasons why unmarried women become
pregnant, as Sawhill readily acknowledges. (p. 108) As I describe in my book,
the ethnographic work by Kathryn Edin and her two co-authors—Promises I Can Keep and Doing the Best I Can —adds important nuance to
the idea that unmarried couples become pregnant by accident. As they explain,
among the men and women they interviewed, much of the impetus to have a child
stemmed from the desire to create meaning and find something positive in their
lives—experiences and feelings that were hard to come by in other ways. The
pregnancies were not planned in the sense Sawhill uses the term, but neither were
they avoided. The couples typically stopped using birth control, and the young
women and men generally welcomed the news of the pregnancy. And even if the
women did not want to be pregnant at that moment, they did want to become
parents in the near future. For at least some unmarried parents, then, having
children outside of a committed relationship is not necessarily a failure to
plan, but rather a plan, loosely speaking, that responds to different
incentives.
Sawhill discusses this research but contends that the young
people that Edin and her co-authors interviewed are particularly disadvantaged
and are not representative of low-income families more broadly. (p. 75) Sawhill
recounts other research showing that the more typical low-income woman would
prefer not to have a child so early in life and yet cannot align her behavior
with her preferences. (pp. 73-75, 108-10)
This may be so, but it does not undercut the need to think
more broadly about cultural change. I agree with the need for greater access to
LARCs, but it is also essential to find ways to create and nurture personal
meaning and connection through means other than parenting. As I describe in
detail in the opening chapter of my book, positive psychology has documented
the tremendous need that we all have for positive relationships. If we can
think about how to help young people feel important and connected to other
adults, there may be less of an immediate need to have a child in the
near-term. This is not easy, and it is not the whole picture, but it is a necessary
component of any strategy aimed at delaying childbearing.
* * *
Before concluding, I want to reiterate my thanks to Linda
McClain for organizing this symposium and to Jack Balkin for hosting it. I am
deeply grateful to all the participants for their thoughtful and engaging
posts. It was a tremendous pleasure to discuss these important issues with such
an extraordinary group.
Clare Huntington is
Professor of Law at Fordham Law School and can be reached at
chuntingtonatlaw.fordham.edu.