Questions for thought - "Let's Get Married"
1) Given what we have read in the book by McLanahan and Sandefur, what do you think about the apparent growing emphasis on marriage as a means of improving the well-being of children?
2) The film focuses almost exclusively on low-income families. Based on the book by McLanahan and Sandefur, do you think this emphasis is appropriate?
3) The advocates of marriage as a solution to social problems use the same statistics presented by McLanahan and Sandefur in the book (e.g., high school dropout and teenage births are roughly two times more common in single parent families). Why is this presentation of these figures rather misleading?
4) Both the book by McLanahan and Sandefur and the film focus primarily on the relationship between family structure and children's well-being. how might the well-being of parents (esp. young parents) also be influenced by marriage?
5) Some of the advocates of marriage in the film speak of the importance of two-parent families for the moral structure of society in general and communities in particular. What do you make of this argument? What evidence is presented to support it? Does this have anything to do with the notion of social capital that we discussed earlier?