(Elizabeth Warren’s 2003 coauthorship of “The Two-Income Trap,” with its defense of the single-breadwinner household, belongs decisively to this liberalism-of-nuance.) This new phase is incomplete and contested, and it includes elements — in #MeToo feminism, especially — whose ultimate valence could theoretically be congenial to cultural conservatives. But it does not feel like a coincidence that the new phase tracks with the recent decline in childbearing. Certainly the new phase of liberalism is increasing the political polarization of both marital practice and marital beliefs. As the sociologist Brad Wilcox of the University of Virginia pointed out in a response to Edsall’s column, for all the bright talk about the blue-state, upper-middle-class marriage model, in the aggregate Republicans marry more and divorce less than Democrats, ideological conservatives are much more likely to be married than ideological liberals, and conservatives are more than twice as likely to describe marriage as something “needed” for “strong families.”

Source: New York Times December 03, 2019 10:52 UTC