The nuclear family is often thought of as a pillar of American achievement. Through both rhetoric and policy, growing up in two-parent family has been championed as a ticket to prosperity in the U.S. But a new book by a Milwaukee-native is challenging that idea.
Christina Cross is an assistant professor of sociology at Harvard University and the author of Inherited Inequality: Why Opportunity Gaps Persist between Black and White Youth Raised in Two-Parent Families.
In the book, Cross explores why the nuclear family hasn’t been as beneficial for Black Americans as it has been for white Americans.
“Children who live in two-parent families tend to outperform their peers who live in single-parent families,” she says. “However, the resources and outcomes of the two-parent family are drastically different between Black and white children who grew up in this arrangement.”
Cross joins Lake Effect’s Joy Powers to discuss these disparities and explore how U.S. policy has historically centered the nuclear family.
“Black children face a substantial educational and labor market disadvantage relative to their white peers who grew up in two-parent families,” she says. “And what this means is that — contrary to popular belief — the two-parent family is not this great equalizer that for decades we have been led to believe.”
_
