The Legitimacy Paradox: The Adverse Impact of Non-Marital Children on the Family Structure

My mother and father never had a happy marriage. They shared little in common. My father was a blue-collar, working-class man from Brooklyn. My mother came from a blue-collar, working-class family, but she was raised in Queens. My parents frequently fought, sometimes viciously. Over time, my father grew detached, drank, and became abusive. At the same time, my mother grew spiteful, resentful, and bitter. They eventually divorced. 

One day, I asked my mother when she and my father married. It turns out that my mother gave birth to my elder sister four months after marrying my father. I assumed she got pregnant and was forced to marry. What I didn't know was my mother kept a secret.

My elder sister has a different father. Growing up in a dysfunctional family, I never understood the disparity of treatment, resentment, and tension in the household. My mother disliked me for being my father's daughter and took her anger and frustration out on me. My father also took his anger and frustration out on me because, unlike my sister, I was his daughter. 

The situation above is even more common today. Trends in childbirth rates show a significant increase in births outside of marriage over the last three decades.   These patterns are consistent across all racial groups, with delivery occurring to nonmarried White women rising 13 percent and Hispanic women by 18 percent.

Birth occurring outside of marriage increasing across all groups

These trends hold for women of all education levels. Indeed, births to unmarried women, who hold at least a college degree, increased by 50 percent. These patterns have both macroeconomic and micro-social consequences.

Nonmarried Women Births by Education

Much has been written about the impact of illegitimacy on a child; they tend to act out and are socially and emotionally unstable. However, these studies focus on single-parent households, usually unwed mothers and children. Such homes are less affluent, less educated, and more likely to be below poverty.  

Yet the effect of an illegitimate child on other family members, especially other children in the home, is rarely recognized. An unappreciated phenomenon takes place, what I call the Legitimacy Paradox.  

The legitimacy paradox occurs when the child born outside the marriage is preferred to those born to the married couple (the legitimate children). The non-biological parent recognizes the disinvestment in their child in favor of someone else's child and begins to resent their partner. If the imbalance persists, the syndrome ultimately leads to tension and alienation.  

In the end, the impact on the children is the opposite of what would be expected. The legitimate children are neglected and deprived of investment and resources, while the household over-invests in the illegitimate child. This perverse outcome or paradox is most acute in households where the mother brings the illegitimate child into the home, and the father is uninvolved in child-raising.   

More research needs to be done on the Legitimacy Paradox. The impact of illegitimacy is not just a macro-social phenomenon driving poverty and inequality. Illegitimacy also affects family dynamics at the micro household level. The increased complexity of domestic structures and the growing number of births to nonmarried women at all socio-economic levels highlights the need to quantify the impact of children born to nonmarried women accounting for the Legitimacy Paradox.

Winter Wonderland-- the Blizzards of 1978

 Winter comes to the Northeast...

In 1978, the Northeast suffered two blizzards back-to-back.  

On January 21, 1978, NYC was hit with 13 inches of snow over two days.  See NYT archives, which note that millions were stranded as the roads proved impassable.   

Two weeks later, a historic nor'easter bombarded  New York again, leading to 100 fatalities and damages assessing over $2 billion in (2020 dollars).  

Between February 5 to 7, 1978, approximately 20 inches of snow plummeted New York City and the surrounding areas. 

The picture above overlooking the Geroge Washington Bridge reveals backout conditions, much like today.

Even with all the technological advances in the last forty years, a good blizzard can grind everything to a halt, reminding us to appreciate the wonder of winter...

Happy snow day...

The Fictional World of Oryx & Crake is not so Fictional

Sometimes fiction is more accurate than life. The novel, Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood, is a futuristic work that seems like a history lesson. 

Oryx and Crake is an end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it story. The bad guys are narcissistic scientists disguised as the good guys, inventing genetic diversity to create new species to feed a strained world.  

The new dysphoric world is acutely unequal—the elite and educated work for large conglomerate companies. Employees live in company-owned housing and educate their children in company-owned schools.  

Those living outside the Corporate Compounds reside in the Pleeblands, filled with what Edmund Burke referred to as the "unwashed masses." The Corporations view the lower classes of the Pleeblands as consumers that keep the capitalist cycle afloat.  

The once virtuous cycle turns vicious. Crake, a brilliant geneticist, comprehends the system for what it is: corrupt, exploitative, and ultimately unsustainable. Crake uses his brilliance to create a new human-like, genetically-modified species, aptly named Crakers, resilient enough to live in a Hobbesian state of nature. Combining various traits from different species leads to stranger-than-life circumstances, such as a mating ritual resembling baboons.  

To bring about his utopian vision, Crake manufactures an apocalyptic virus, killing all except the Crakers within months. As Crake succumbs, he gives his best friend, Jimmy, the antidote to the virus and begs Jimmy to watch over his creation. What happens next seems ordained.  

With all social institutions gone, the Crakers reinvent civilization. The Crakers establish governance hierarchies and division of labor within the group. The Crakers begin to idolize their creator to understand the world around them. Their guardian, Jimmy, now called the Snowman, becomes Crake's prophet, the only one to speak directly to the creator. In short, Crakers begin to replicate primitive human society and religion. 

And so, the cycle starts again.

When a Pay Raise is Not...

The Wall Street Journal noted the increase in lower-wage workers' pay. The lowest wage earners, many between 16 and 24 and with only a high school degree, gained the most since the pandemic.  

 Hourly wage increases occurred for the lowest-paid segment of the workforce, which is less educated and younger than average.

Wage Growth by Age and Education

While wage increases are commendable, these above-average wages have not kept up with inflation, as noted in the gap between nominal hourly pay increases and inflation-adjusted wage increases.  

Real and Nominal Wage Gains

The growing gap between actual and nominal wages is exacerbated by the nature of job growth. Many of these positions are concentrated in services sectors and trades that can be highly cyclical.  

Moreover, outside of the service sector, the growth in jobs resides in manufacturing, mining, and wholesale. Many of these jobs require training or licenses to practice the trade. They also tend to be unionized.  

Unless the government and the private sector take seriously the obligation to train and apprentice the next generation, these jobs will remain unfilled, and real wage growth will remain a ghost of the past.

Sharyn O'Halloran 

January 22,2022

Meatloaf and Male Life Expectancy Trends --- January 21, 2022

Meatloaf, an enthusiastic and extravagant artist, passed away at 74.

This appears to be a sad trend...

CDC preliminary data show that life expectancy for males fell by 1.5 years, the most significant drop since WWII.

Sharyn O'Halloran

January 21, 2022

Time to Start

 I am starting a blog about things I do-- not related to my academic work.

I have been reading Nora Robert's recent series.

Awaken starts off with an average 20-something woman struggling to find their way. What seems like an average person, stuck in an average career, with an average chance to pay off their student loans in their lifetime, gets an exceptional boon of almost $4 million.  

Of course, the money is the catalyst that sets the main character on the path to find her true identity, a member of the fabled fae. Her birth land, of course, is a metaverse, connected to this universe through a portal, the living tree, in Western Ireland.  

Once you have decided to put what you know aside and accept Nora's facts to be accurate, it is a beautiful ride, rolling through the hills of Ireland and beyond.

-- Thursday, January 20, 2022

Sharyn O'Halloran