Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis

by Robert D. Putnam

Overview

A New York Times bestseller and “a passionate, urgent” (The New Yorker) examination of the growing inequality gap from the bestselling author of Bowling Alone: why fewer Americans today have the opportunity for upward mobility.

Central to the very idea of America is the principle that we are a nation of opportunity. But over the last quarter century we have seen a disturbing “opportunity gap” emerge. We Americans have always believed that those who have talent and try hard will succeed, but this central tenet of the American Dream seems no longer true or at the least, much less true than it was.

In Our Kids, Robert Putnam offers a personal and authoritative look at this new American crisis, beginning with the example of his high school class of 1959 in Port Clinton, Ohio. The vast majority of those students went on to lives better than those of their parents. But their children and grandchildren have faced diminishing prospects. Putnam tells the tale of lessening opportunity through poignant life stories of rich, middle class, and poor kids from cities and suburbs across the country, brilliantly blended with the latest social-science research.

“A truly masterful volume” (Financial Times), Our Kids provides a disturbing account of the American dream that is “thoughtful and persuasive” (The Economist). Our Kids offers a rare combination of individual testimony and rigorous evidence: “No one can finish this book and feel complacent about equal opportunity” (The New York Times Book Review).

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781476769912
Publisher:	Simon & Schuster
Publication date:	03/10/2015
Sold by:	SIMON & SCHUSTER
Format:	eBook
Pages:	400
Sales rank:	364,459
File size:	9 MB

About the Author

Robert D. Putnam is the Malkin Research Professor of Public Policy at Harvard University and a former Dean of the John F. Kennedy School of Government. Nationally honored as a leading humanist and a renowned scientist, he has written fourteen books, including the bestselling Our Kids and Bowling Alone, and has consulted for the last four US Presidents. In 2012, President Obama awarded him the National Humanities Medal, the nation’s highest honor for contributions to the humanities. His research program, the Saguaro Seminar, is dedicated to fostering civic engagement in America. Visit RobertDPutnam.com.

Read an Excerpt

Our Kids

Figure 1.1: Child poverty in Port Clinton, Ohio (1990)



Source: Census 1990 data as compiled by Social Explorer, accessed through Harvard University Library.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1 The American Dream: Myths and Realities 1

Chapter 2 Families 46

Chapter 3 Parenting 80

Chapter 4 Schooling 135

Chapter 5 Community 191

Chapter 6 What is to be Done? 227

The Stories of Our Kids Jennifer M. Silva Robert D. Putnam 263

Acknowledgments 279

Notes 285

Index 369

Editorial Reviews

[Putnam] combines an energetic synthesis of academic studies with contrasting portraits of high- and low-income families. His research is prodigious. His spirit is generous. His judgments are thoughtful and fair. Our Kids belongs on the bookshelf of anyone concerned about equal opportunity.

The New York Times Book Review - Jason DeParle

03/16/2015
In this ambitious study, Putnam expands his analysis of America's social breakdown from 2001's Bowling Alone to 21st-century upward mobility, though his interpretation seems somewhat muddled by nostalgia for the idea that the 1950s were a paradise of class parity. He states that, though 95% of Americans still endorse "equal opportunity" in principle, increasing ghettoization of neighborhoods by class has yielded a two-tier social system and widening opportunity gap for children that's largely independent of cultural ideology. The gap begins at birth, and may be insurmountable by school age. Extended interviews with people who grew up rich and poor in the author's hometown of Port Clinton, Ohio, both in the 1950s and more recently, provide perspective but feel as much positioned to pull at the heartstrings as to serve as data. Though Putnam gives solutions less attention than problems, he recommends expanding the EITC and child tax credit, protecting anti-poverty programs to reduce financial and emotional stress for families, reducing sentencing for non-violent crime to keep two-parent households intact, investing extra money in schools in poor neighborhoods, and killing "pay to play" extracurriculars. Putnam's points about the changes in American society in the last few generations are strong, but his utter dismissal of the independent effects of race and educational level may infuriate more intersectional scholars. (Mar.)

Publishers Weekly

Robert D. Putnam is technically a Harvard social scientist, but a better description might be poet laureate of civil society. In Our Kids, Putnam brings his talent for launching a high-level discussion to a timely topic. . . . No one can finish Our Kids and feel complacent about equal opportunity.

The New York Times Book Review - Jason DeParle

Robert D. Putnam vividly captures a dynamic change in American society—the widening class-based opportunity gap among young people. The diminishing life chances of lower-class families and the expanding resources of the upper-class are contrasted in sharp relief in Our Kids, which also includes compelling suggestions of what we as a nation should do about this trend. Putnam’s new book is a must-read for all Americans concerned about the future of our children.

William Julius Wilson

"A thoughtful and persuasive book."

The Economist

Putman’s new book is an eye-opener. When serious political candidates maintain that there are no classes in America, Putnam shows us the reality — and it is anything but reassuring."

Alan Wolfe Book World

Robert Putnam weaves together scholarship and storytelling to paint a truly troubling picture of our country and its future. Our Kids makes it absolutely clear that we need to put aside our political bickering and fix how this country provides opportunity for its millions of poor children. This book should be required reading for every policymaker in America, if not every American.

Geoffrey Canada

The book’s chief and authoritative contribution is its careful presentation for a popular audience of important work on the erosion, in the past half century, of so many forms of social, economic, and political support for families, schools, and communities. . . . Our Kids is a passionate, urgent book.

The New Yorker - Jill Lepore

With clarity and compassion, Robert Putnam tells the story of the great social issue of our time: the growing gap between the lives of rich and poor children, and the diminishing prospects of children born into disadvantage. A profoundly important book and a powerful reminder that we can and must do better.

Paul Tough

There are just a few essential reads if you want to understand the American social and political landscape today. Robert Putnam’s Our Kids . . . deserve[s] to be on that list.

The New York Times - David Brooks

Much of the current debate about inequality has a strangely abstract quality, focusing on the excesses of the 1 per cent without really coming to terms with what has happened to the American middle class over the past two generations. Into this void steps the political scientist Robert Putnam, with a truly masterful volume that should shock Americans into confronting what has happened to their society.

The Financial Times - Francis Fukuyama

In yet another path-breaking book about America’s changing social landscape, Robert Putnam investigates how growing income gaps have shaped our children so differently. His conclusion is chilling: social mobility ‘seems poised to plunge in the years ahead, shattering the American dream.’ Must reading from the White House to your house.

David Gergen

Putman’s new book is an eye-opener. When serious political candidates maintain that there are no classes in America, Putnam shows us the reality — and it is anything but reassuring."

Washington Post Book World - Alan Wolfe

Charles Dickens used his literary genius to compel his contemporaries to face up to the poverty and violence which afflicted the poor in Victorian England, and Robert Putnam does the same in his newest book, which analyzes ‘The American Dream in Crisis’ not in social science lingo, but through the direct experience of a group of young Americans also struggling with poverty and violence. Our Kids shows that we are living in a two-tier social and economic world where the affluent succeed through education and economic opportunity, and the poor struggle unavailingly to rise out of their poverty. The compelling results of Putnam’s research are inescapable. Read this book and discover a new America.

Jill Ker Conway

Putnam writes clear, impassioned, accessible prose. . . . [He] has made a real contribution in calling our attention to a situation of profoundly divergent experiences for different classes that Americans ought to find morally unacceptable, as he obviously does.

The New York Review of Books - Nicholas Lemann

The irony of the book is contained in its title: The love for ‘our kids’ is driving the destruction of the collective possibilities of other people’s kids. . . . Incredibly useful, essential reading.

Esquire - Stephen Marche

03/15/2015
Putnam, a renowned scientist, leading humanist, and author of numerous books on public policy issues, such as Bowling Alone, makes the case that fewer Americans today have the opportunity for upward mobility compared to those who grew up in the 1950s. Beginning with his own experience in Port Clinton, OH, in the Fifties, the author uses data from publicly available research and interviews. The interviews feature a cross-section of rich and poor young adults and their parents from various communities, urban and suburban; although one wonders about the challenges of rural America. The author makes the point that "All trends reported…are based on nationally represented samples, including all races." Putnam reminds us of our moral obligation to address the opportunity gap and suggests some public policy initiatives to address the problem—steps such as instituting nationwide early childhood education and restoring working-class wages. Jennifer M. Silva, a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University and author of Coming Up Short, is credited in the methodology section as having provided the interviews. VERDICT The title and subtitle speak to the author's passion and belief that today's family and community support are less readily available to kids from such modest backgrounds than in the past and that Americans need to address this problem for the benefit of all children. Recommended for academic and public library collections. [See Prepub Alert, 9/8/14.]—Karen Venturella, Union Cty. Coll. Libs, Cranford, NJ

Library Journal

It’s quite a feat that Arthur Morey can narrate this somber overview of the declining American dream with the gravitas it demands without overdoing it. Along with sensitivity to the book’s tone and accessible phrasing, his performance also embodies the measured perspective necessary for listeners to hear this book as a wake-up call instead of a death knell. Though it focuses on what’s wrong, the book balances rigorous research and gripping life stories to show how today’s young people lack the social and career opportunities their parents had. Women and minorities have made gains, but being in a lower social class, with all that comes with it, limits educational opportunities, traps kids in their social groups, and locks them into lifeless jobs with no potential. T.W. © AudioFile 2015, Portland, Maine

JUNE 2015 - AudioFile

It’s quite a feat that Arthur Morey can narrate this somber overview of the declining American dream with the gravitas it demands without overdoing it. Along with sensitivity to the book’s tone and accessible phrasing, his performance also embodies the measured perspective necessary for listeners to hear this book as a wake-up call instead of a death knell. Though it focuses on what’s wrong, the book balances rigorous research and gripping life stories to show how today’s young people lack the social and career opportunities their parents had. Women and minorities have made gains, but being in a lower social class, with all that comes with it, limits educational opportunities, traps kids in their social groups, and locks them into lifeless jobs with no potential. T.W. © AudioFile 2015, Portland, Maine

JUNE 2015 - AudioFile

★ 2015-02-03
A political scientist calls attention to the widening class-based opportunity gap among young people in the United States.Putnam (Public Policy/Harvard Univ.; co-author: American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites Us, 2010, etc.) author of the best-selling Bowling Alone (2000), argues that the American dream has faded for poor children in the past five decades. Beginning with the stories of individuals, he compares the opportunities for upward mobility in his hometown of Port Clinton, Ohio, when he was in high school (he graduated in 1959) with the situation today, and he finds tremendous differences. For getting ahead in the world, social class mattered relatively little then, but now it is paramount, and the institutions, both public and private, that helped young people of all backgrounds are no longer serving the disadvantaged well. Putnam expands his view from his hometown to a number of towns across the U.S., looking at how young people in different social classes fare. Using personal stories, statistics and studies, and focusing in turn on families, parenting, schooling and community, the author demonstrates that the class gap in America has been growing. Although there is a fair amount of repetition, occasional sociological jargon and perhaps too much use of illustrative personal stories, Putnam's prose is highly readable, and the figures and tables that dot the text are generally simple and clear. In the final chapter, Putnam discusses what this disparity in opportunity means for the future of our country economically and politically, as well as what it says about our ideals and values. He then tackles the question of what to do about it, offering a number of specific ideas and citing approaches that have had positive results. The best hope is a strong economy that benefits less-educated, low-paid workers. An insightful book that paints a disturbing picture of the collapse of the working class and the growth of an upper class that seems to be largely unaware of the other's precarious existence.

Kirkus Reviews