Case Study of a Reconstruction

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This case study of a reconstruction follows the process of formulating a reconstruction from start to finish. Read the article and follow the discussion:

“Marriage Aid That Misses the Point,” By Robert B. Reich, The Washington Post, Thursday, January 22, 2004; Page A25

President Bush is planning a major initiative to promote marriage, particularly among low-income couples. Reportedly, the plan would provide at least $1.5 billion for training to help couples develop the kind of interpersonal skills to sustain “healthy marriages.” The initiative is a key part of his return to “compassionate conservatism.” But it makes no sense. [1]

Americans are less likely to be married now than at any time since statistics on marriage began to be tallied almost a century ago. The decline started in the 1970s. A snapshot in 1970 would have shown 68 percent of adults married, 15 percent never married, and the rest divorced, separated or widowed. By 2000 only 56 percent of adults were married and 23 percent had never been married. The same trend away from marriage is occurring all over the Western world. [2]

There’s less stigma attached to not marrying. I’m old enough to remember when an unmarried woman was called a “spinster” or an “old maid” and was presumed to be sort of odd. Nowadays it’s perfectly acceptable for women – or men – to never marry. Some conservatives rail against the rising divorce rate and blame it on no-fault divorce laws pushed by liberals. But in fact the divorce rate is no longer rising. It rose rapidly in the 1960s and 1970s, peaked around 1980 at about 23 percent of all women who had been married and has since fallen back slightly. [3]

Why the decline in marriage? It’s not because couples are any more lacking today in interpersonal skills for healthy marriages than a generation ago. The big difference today is that a lot of men no longer represent particularly good economic deals. And women no longer have to marry to have economic security. Thirty years ago most men had stable jobs in a mass-production economy that earned them paychecks big enough to support families. And most women didn’t have paid jobs, so they had to get married to have food on their tables and a roof over their heads. [4]

Since then, stable mass-production jobs for men have dwindled, and their paychecks have shrunk. Meanwhile, women have streamed into the workforce. They’re making more money than ever (but, sadly, still not as much as men doing the same job). [5]

I’m not suggesting most unmarried women think about men and marriage in such a mercenary way. My point is only that in the new economy, such a calculation is entirely rational, and, consciously or unconsciously, a growing number of women seem to be making it. [6 ]

It’s not being single that causes women to be poor. It’s being poor that makes it less likely they’ll marry. Poor women generally don’t have a bumper crop of marriage-worthy men to choose from. Most men available to them are either unemployed or employed part time, and they earn little when they do work. It’s entirely rational for a poor woman to hedge her bets and tell a male companion he’s welcome to stay only so long as he pulls in enough money and behaves well. [7 ]

Poor unmarried women who have babies often have men living with them. In nearly half of all births out of wedlock, the biological father is living in. But the woman has no reason to marry him unless he’s a good breadwinner. Studies show that mothers are far more likely to marry the fathers of their children when the father is employed. [8]

There’s no doubt that single-parent poverty is a major problem. But lack of marriage isn’t the main culprit. The reason mothers are poor has to do with their lack of education and the lousy jobs they have to settle for. Jobs at the bottom of the income ladder don’t pay enough to support a working woman and her children. They don’t pay enough to support a working man and his family either. So even if the mother is living and sharing expenses with a working man who’s also at the bottom of the income ladder, they’re still likely to be poor. If she’s married to him and he doesn’t have a job, they’re often worse off financially than if the mother is living alone. [9 ]

The best way to stabilize the American family and improve the odds that children won’t be impoverished is to help women and men ~ get better-paying jobs. That means, at the least, access to good schools and job training. Yet school budgets all over America are being slashed, funds for job training have been cut and community colleges are turning away many poor students. Government programs to promote marriage are beside the point. [10]

A good place to begin with a reconstruction is to identify the rhetorical point of different passages of the writing. It seems as though Paragraph 1 introduces the topic and probably – though you never know for certain at the beginning – includes the conclusion, roughly, “Bush’s initiative to promote marriage makes no sense.” We will want to come back to this if it turns out to be the conclusion, because the phrase “makes no sense” needs to be clarified in light of what the article says.

Paragraphs 2 and 3 seem to offer background information about marriage. Paragraph 4 begins an explanation for the claim “Marriage has declined” and that explanation continues through paragraph 8. Paragraph 9 presents what Reich considers the “real problem,” so we will want to be sure we are clear about what the false problem is. Paragraph 10 offers a solution.

The most important things to focus on early in a reconstruction are the large structures ~ the main rationales. After we get those identified, we can start to build in detail. So far what we’ve got does not look very promising:

Premise 1: Marriage has declined.

Premise 2: The real problem is lack of education and lousy jobs.

Conclusion: Bush’s initiative to promote marriage doesn’t make sense.

If you started trying to write your reconstruction at this point, it would not turn out well. We have correctly identified some of the larger ideas in the editorial, but we do not yet have the connection or rationale stated along with its structure. You can tell this because if you ask, “Why doesn’t Bush’s initiative make sense?” the answer “Because marriage has declined” does not really make sense. At this crucial state of a reconstruction, you have to be able to say why the author’s reasoning provides a rationale for his or her conclusion. What is it about the explanation Reich offers for the decline of marriage that makes him think Bush’s initiative is wrong?

If you go back through the article you’ll see that Reich’s argument is really framed in terms of competing explanations for the decline of marriage. If you accept Reich’s explanation, then the Bush approach looks unjustified, but if you accept the explanation for the decline of marriage implicit in the Bush proposals, then they look like a good remedy. This article gives us another example, then of how explanations and arguments interact.

While it is not explicitly stated, Bush’s initiative presumes that marriage is declining because people lack the interpersonal skills and values to sustain healthy relationships. That is what his initiative appears to address. Reich, perhaps because he’s a labor economist, thinks marriage declined (and then stabilized) because “a lot of men no longer represent particularly good economic deals.” Now let’s revise our reconstruction map:

Premise 1: Marriage hasn’t declined because people lack relationship skills, but because of economic realities.

Premise 2: Bush’s initiative doesn’t address those problems.

Premise 3: (unstated) Good solutions address the causes of problems.

Conclusion: Bush’s initiative to promote marriage by improving relationship skills won’t succeed.

Now that we have expressed this basic rationale, we can start to build in detail. Again “Why questions” are your friend here. Why does Reich think that economic realities (and decision making) are behind the decline in marriage? Why does he think education and jobs are more important problems in determining whether someone will marry? After working with the details a while you might come up with something like this:

In “Marriage Aid That Misses the Point”, Robert Reich argues that President Bush’s initiative to promote marriage will not succeed. His main reason for this conclusion is that he thinks Bush has the wrong explanation for the decline in marriage. The President thinks marriage is declining because couples lack interpersonal skills for having healthy relationships. Reich claims that the real explanation for the decline in marriage has more to do with economic thinking on the part of men and women. The decline of marriage coincides with the entrance of women into the workforce and has occurred in every country which has experienced this change. Because mass-production jobs no longer pay enough to support a family, men are less attractive marriage partners than they used to be. Reich thinks women are making a rational calculation, consciously or not, to postpone or condition marriage on the personal and economic behavior of men in ways that they formerly could not. Additional support for this explanation comes from data that show that in ½ of all births out of wedlock, the father is living with the mother and child. Reich implies that this percentage would be lower if the problem involved relationship skills.

Reich also thinks Bush’s proposal will fail because it does not address the real problem facing poor unmarried mothers – the lack of educational and employment opportunities that would support a family. Married low income men and women are worse off financially than single men and women sharing the same residence.

There are still plenty of ways to improve upon this reconstruction. For example, the phrase “decline of marriage” could be clarified. But if you were preparing to think about, question, and write about this argument, producing a reconstruction such as this would focus your thinking in a way that passive reading or hastening will not. In our next section, we’ll return to this reconstruction to apply some critical reflection strategies to it.