Our kids
the American Dream in crisis
by Robert D. Putnam · first published 2015
63% recommend38% neutral
Why HN recommends it
Data-driven look at growing class divides in American childhood, mixing statistics with personal stories. Recommended for anyone interested in inequality; praised for its focus on pay-to-play extracurricular costs.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
"A groundbreaking examination of the growing inequality gap from the bestselling author of Bowling Alone: why fewer Americans today have the opportunity for upward mobility. It's the American dream: get a good education, work hard, buy a house, and achieve prosperity and success. This is the America we believe in--a nation of opportunity, constrained only by ability and effort. But during the last twenty-five years we have seen a disturbing "opportunity gap" emerge. Americans have always believed in equality of opportunity, the idea that all kids, regardless of their family background, should
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…talks with the author on YouTube. (He even has a debate with Charles Murray - as they are somewhat of friends) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bowling_Alone https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/22609334-our-kids https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/50124402-the-upswing One thing I want to mention here is that it seems that social effects come before economic effects. People go through social change and then…
on “No one expects young men to do anything and they are responding by doing nothing” ↗…http://www.tampabay.com/projects/2015/investigations/pinella... My concerns with this coverage is that they oversimplify the problems in their desire to find a solution (especially TAL). I'd also recommend the book 'Our Kids': http://www.amazon.com/Our-Kids-American-Dream-Crisis/dp/1476... Which is far more comprehensive but spectacularly depressing.
on “The Melting of Mark Zuckerberg’s $100MM Donation to Newark Schools” ↗This reads like a satirical version of Robert Putnam's book Our Kids. I highly recommend it to anyone who's interested in the topic and likes their data interwoven with personal stories to bring it to life.
on “The Three Bay Areas (2017)” ↗If you control for income, though, out-of-wedlock birth rates for black and white mothers are now very similar, though. “Our Kids” by Robert Putnam is a good summary.
on “Technology shock, fewer shotgun marriages, and the rise in unwed births (1996)” ↗This is true for core instruction but not sports and other extracurricular, which are Pay-fors in many parts of the US. Robert Putnam's "Our Kids" (great book!) is eloquent on the costs and consequences.
on “Dorothy Butler Gilliam: ‘I am not a maid, I am a reporter’” ↗The author provides laughably little justification for his claims for the causes of these phenomena. For a more meaty examination, I’d recommend Robert Putnam’s “Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis.”
on “No one expects young men to do anything and they are responding by doing nothing” ↗Not sure what evidence there is that the quality of leaders has changed, but there is evidence that both (a) we perceive strangers differently (compared to say the 1960s), see Robert Putnam's book Our Kids and (b) there are cognitive biases that push us to think things are getting worse (declinism, rosy retrospection, positivity effect).
on “Americans’ Distaste for Both Trump and Clinton Is Record-Breaking (2016)” ↗…their parents. > It may have been harder or they may have had to work hard, but there's no reason to make the argument the opportunity wasn't there, because it typically is. The evidence disagrees. Our Kids by Robert Putnam examines this exact issue. While there are many, here's a particularly sobering quote from the book: "high-scoring poor kids are now slightly less likely (29 percent) to get a college…
on “The Oppression of the Supermajority” ↗> In Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis, social scientist Robert D. > Putnam describes how, beginning in the 1980s, “the dominant ideas and > social norms about good parenting have shifted from Spock’s…
on “Parents Who Pay to Be Watched” ↗…money to spend on their children, but there is also a social fracture. Class is not only defined in dollars, but by education, attitude, and zip code, by its way of life. America, warns Robert Putnam in Our Kids, faces “an incipient class apartheid.” The typical child born and raised in the American upper middle class is raised in a stable home by well-educated, married parents, lives in a great neighborhood,…
on “The Dream Hoarders: How America's Top Percent Perpetuates Inequality” ↗…systematically develop a plan to get out of it. I live in St. Louis, and around the time of the This American Life episodes on the Ferguson schools, I spent a lot of time wondering how you end up sending your kids to the worst of the 550 public school districts in the state. The question in this case is: what are the characteristics of people who send their kids to bad schools, and to what extent can they help…
on “Request For Research: Basic Income” ↗