Two Classes, Divided by "I Do": How Marriage Deepens Inequality

This is a retelling, in our own words, of the New York Times report by Jason DeParle (July 2012).

Jessica Schairer has so much in common with her boss, Chris Faulkner, that a visitor to the day care center they run might mistake them for peers in every way that matters.

Both are friendly white women from modest Midwestern backgrounds who left for college with conventional hopes of marriage, motherhood, and career. Both have children in elementary school. Their days look alike: juggling toddlers, coaching teachers, trading the small confidences of friendship — they even got tattoos together. Faulkner, as the boss, earns more, but the difference is a gap, not a chasm.

Yet a friendship that reads as parity by day becomes a study in inequality by night. Faulkner is married, living on two paychecks. Schairer is raising her children alone. That single difference gives the Faulkner family a profound advantage in income and in sheer nurturing time — and makes her children statistically more likely to finish college, find good jobs, and form stable marriages of their own.

The piece was part of a growing body of reporting on what researchers call the marriage gap: the divergence in family structure between America's college-educated and its less-educated. Among the affluent, marriage remains the norm and divorce rates have fallen; among the working class, marriage has receded and single parenthood has risen. The result is that family structure itself has become an engine of inequality — concentrating two incomes, two schedules, and two sets of hands in some households while others make do with one.

The uncomfortable implication, which the reporting did not shy away from, is that the class divide is now partly a marriage divide — and that the advantages compound across generations. The children of the married household start ahead, and the gap widens from there.

Based on New York Times reporting (July 2012).