I think this may be the first comment to a blog post on great new DSA web-site. So hope this is in the proper fraternal and sororal tone that posts should follow. — Joseph M. Schwartz, Philadelphia DSA, DSA National Political Committee

I agree with much of Bill Barclay’s blog post on gender and The Other America; but I think it’s important to put Harrington’s “gender blind spot” in historical perspective. In 1960, a male industrial worker brought home a family wage (and benefits) that took a two-parent, two-child family into the near-middle class. Thus, female labor market participation rates were only 30% of adult females versus nearly 70% today (and that held for upper-working class women as well. But Harrington certainly overlooks the huge number of women – mostly African-American at that time – doing low-paid domestic care work.

We should remember that when Harrington wrote the book in 1962, it was a decade before forty years of steady deindustrialization would lead to the of literally millions of good jobs for many African-American and Latino men who had just gained access to unionized industrial jobs in the post-WWIII era (and, less so, women)

This trend is the major cause of the radical drop in two-parent families among all of the working class and poor (particularly, but less-and-less exclusively) among Blacks and Latinos. .

In fact, in 1962, the percentage of female headed-households among African-Americans was less than 25% versus over 65% today! In 1962, marriage rates among Blacks were just a tad below those of whites in 1962 (whereas they are 50% lower today!)

Why the radical shift in nature of Black family since 1960?

Because of the radical drop in employment rates for younger African-American non-colleege graduates from 1970 through today. As William Julius Wilson’s work shows, once unemployment and incarceration rates soar among lower-income marriageable-age men of color (particularly as compared to lower income women of color) it made less and less rational sense for lower income women to marry. In fact, over the past ten years, the percentage of white lower income women raising children on their own has skyrocketed for the same reason – the loss of steady, decently-paid employment among younger non-college educated men of all races.

But in 1960, it paid for lower income women to get married, as even just one employed worker in the household did get you out of poverty, whereas today half of poor families have a full-time worker in the household. That’s because the real wage of non-college educated workers has declined precipitiously over the past 40 years (dropping in real terms by 10% or more since 1979, even as the GDP doubled in real terms!).

So Harrington’s patriarchal assumptions had a real material basis…if a family had a head-of-household who was fully employed, they would escape poverty (even without second parent working, even part-time).

So even a large number of “upper working class” women with employed male partners worked full-time in family care, but did not enter the paid labor market until their children were at least of school age, and even often out of the house.

What Harrington failed to discuss was the large number of women from “lower working class” families who did work full time in the labor market, often as exploited domestic workers. And what he certainly didn’t see was the future transformation of the labor market.

But by the late 1970s and onwards (and in his later work on poverty) he recognized “the feminization” of low-income families of the 1970s and onwards.

Understanding the material basis for Harrington’s “blind spot” on gender doesn’t excuse it, but it does put it into historical context.

What we do know about the social realities of today is that major form of reproduction of middle-class (and college educated children) is whether or not there are 2 wage earning parents in household.

That’s the status that defines whether your family is a mmber of an (increasingly less secure) middle class and crucially influences the chances of your kids going to college and reproducing that middle class social status.

Not that I’m into patriarchal, heterosexual family structure…but having two income earning parents (whether of same or opposite sex) does make the life opportunities for one’s children more favorable.

So a particular contemporary tragedy is that there aren’t many lower income men with stable jobs out there (and women and those men who do have them are terribly exploited). Thus, the future of a decent society in the US heavily depends on lower income workers organizing for power – a daunting challenge for the entire left given how repressive the state is in regards to labor rights and rights for the undocumented.

In fact, ethnographic work shows that non-college educated men are much more likely to have stable lives (e.g., avoid alchoholism, drug use, long-term unemployment) if they marry and stick with a female partner who is better educated than them and makes more money.

That is, proto-feminist working class men of all races fare better than macho working class and lower income men! That’s something that no one writing in the early 1960s would have imagined, certainly not Mike Harrington.