Labor's love lost: the rise and fall of the working-class family in America

Description

La 4e de couverture indique: Labor's Love Lost offers a new historical assessment of the rise and fall of working-class families in America, demonstrating how momentous social and economic transformations have contributed to the collapse of this one-stable social class and what this seismic cultural shift means for the nation's future. Drawing from more than a hundred years of census data, noted sociologist Andrew Cherlin shows that the primary problem of the fall of the working-class family from its mid-twentieth century peak is not that the male-breadwinner family has declined, but that nothing stable has replaced it. The breakdown of a stable family structure has serious consequences for low-income families, particularly for children, many of whom underperform in school, thereby reducing their future employment prospects and perpetuating an intergenerational cycle of economic disadvantage. Cherlin's investigation of today's "would-be working class" shines a much-needed spotlight on the struggling middle of our society.