Chapter 1: The American Dream: Myths and Realities
income inequality has surged over the past half century, creating a rising generation of children split by a nearly caste-like economic divide
Race and gender are getting less bad, but class is worsening.
increasing class-based residential segregation has been translated into de facto class-based school segregation
poor families are damaged or disadvantaged compared to wealthy ones: instability, absent parents, individual isolation, little emotional support, no family dinners, little community support
absolute and relative social mobility plus equality of opportunity versus equality of outcomes
There is a balance that is establish in a place that signifies that one aspect of a society has an influence on the other. The absence of the factories in the 1970’s has caused the American Dream he lived through in the 1959 not to reflect the same positive outcomes a decade later. He worries for the future of our kids not having access to the same outcomes he once had.
Chapter 2: Families
Upper class women delay childbirth “until their late twenties or early thirties”
Lower and Middleclass women who don’t have access to proper health care do not recieve that luxury
Working mothers are acknowledged in a traditional family
Scissor charts show:
Lower educated people have children at a younger age
9% Fathers that have a HS education have kids they don’t live with a visit often
7% Father that have a HS education have kids they don’t visit nor live with
3% of Fathers with a BA or higher education level have kids they don’t live with or visit often
1% of Fathers with a BA or higher have kids they don’t live with or visit
The evocation of policy causes (war on drugs, imprisonment) which acknowledges actual actors that tends to be both economic and cultural contribution to the American Dream crisis. The differences in families in this chapters allows the reader to acknowledge the variations of the American dream poor and rich people tend to experience. Family structure has a huge impact on kids.
Chapter 3: Parenting
economic divisions have opened up within a racial minority, becoming deeper and more significant than racial divides.
“two class-based models of parenting in America society today”
Appropriations of money through investments, time set their kids up to do better in the world.
Increase of kids living in a single parent households has increase exponentially in households with no higher than a high school education
Trend line never reached below 19%
Decrease in family dinners in these same households
80% to 64% in 27 years
Trend line stays fairly the same and relatively below 10% for bachelor or higher obtaining families with single parent households
Decrease in family dinners in these same households by 7.5% in 27 years
Focuses on the dynamic and people in families and how it correlates to the data collected
The parents are direct influence on their products and their children circumstances. Time alotted for engagment between parents and children and the circumstances that surround them tend to be detrimental as their isn’t much time for essential interactions. Outcomes can also be determined by the poverty creating a cycle of poverty and stress. Upperclass have access and the means to invest more time in the children education, money and childcare. As the inequality line seems to continue to increase the amount of people able to change their social mobility and financial status becomes stagnate in certain places the idea of the American seems to see a negative turn
Chapter 4: Schooling
Education and finanical class has a strong correlation
Type of education
Quality of education
Economic diferences trump race
Races has a correlation with economic status in regards to history
Lower class families tend to have an older sibling that acts a caregiver that effects the invovlement they can have in school
Since low class families are having kids without achieving higher education they’re subjected to manual labor that enables less times with kids and kids to have more time with siblings who are also kids
Weird dynamic and cycle
Schools that have a high population of poor families lack extracurriculars, standard SAT scores, less hours and structures
Schools tend to have more violences, substance abuse and mediocre teachers
Access to Advance placement courses are found mainly in high-class school
Higher education access divide is worsening
The intensity of the achievement gap in poor and rich schools creates this dyanamic when looking at data that can project rich students have had more amount of schooling. The quality of the schools vary so greatly that Putnam says it can seem like they have 7 more years of schooling than the poor kids did. Residential segregation leads to school inequity that causes the products of that institution to function less effectively in society. Residential segregation causes a great influence on the quality of schools in low or high-income neighborhoods.
Chapter 5: Community
Support systems in low-income can have their own corruptions
The communities in low-income don’t promote sucess in their inhabitants
“Not going to end up being anything”
Marnie’s family was surrounded by people who promoted success aside from all of the luxuries and private school
Believing and wanting to see people do better in life does alot for the people who is told they have the ability to do something
High income communities have more opportunies to connect with people that can take you places and add benefits to your life
Low income families have family oriented networks that creates a cycle of poverty
Mobility socially and seconomically
Poor people aren’t attending church at the rate they once did
In Chapter 5, Putnam talks about how network factors vary among kids from lower-and privileged foundations. He associates the idea of informal organizations to kids by utilizing information to indicatechildren have acess to less mentors and live in regions with less neighborhood trust. The young ladies in Kensington, a poor internal city neighborhood, have lives affected by medications, wrongdoing, vagrancy, and youngster pregnancy. Putnam recognizes that even the well off family confronted difficulties, yet contends they could send an cushion of private assets to guarantee their youngsters' prosperity.
Chapter 6: What Is To Be Done?
Keeping things the way they are will only cost the American economy in the long run opportunity losses
Gaps will continue to increase and participation in society will decrease
In the same retrospect that poor people don’t go to church as much as they used too
Examples on what is to exactly to be done:
Cut back on incarceration to get poor adults back with families
Raising wages for the lowest-paid jobs
Rebuilding neighborhoods
Build bigger early childhood education services
Attracting the best teachers to the poorest K-12 schools
Growing community schools (Geoffrey Canada gets an approving nod) and Catholic schools
Expand extracurricular activities in K-12 schools
Backing away from trying to get everyone some college, in favor of rebuilding vocational tracks
Increasing funding for community colleges
Expand mentoring programs, including ones based in churches
This chapter Putnam creates suggestions for policies that can be constructed for amending the achievement gap and the decreasing hope that the American Dream used to instill in people. Sugesstions for housing options, educational facilities, support services like mentors etc. But why haven’t it been enforced yet? Putnam acknowledges these are not new ideas and America isn’t doing anything about its current place.