[quotes] The Coontz article and the Currie article were both really interesting and both had some common themes. The Coontz article had to deal with the American Family. How we have this ancient view on how the American Family is and what it is based on. The article talks about how we think the American Family is based on "self reliance". It is evident throughout the article that this is not true. I feel like as Americans we have this idea that we should pride ourselves on the idea of the "American Dream". Meaning the notion that if you work hard you can gain success. This is an idea that essentially is a little far fetched. We think that if we rely only on ourselves we can be successful but this article shows that it is almost impossible not to rely on other things (aka government) to get us to where we are today. We have this idea that there are two kinds of families. The 'frontier family' or the '1950s suburban family'. These families are seen as hard working and self reliant. This is not the case at all. Both relied on assistance but it never seemed that way because it was not addressed. "The 1950s suburban family, however, was far more dependent on government handouts than any so-called "underclass" in recent U.S history." (p221). This family was given so much assistance by the government, basically getting them to their "American Dream" status. It talked about men getting Federal GI benefits which allowed them to get an education and improve upon their jobs while still being able to have a family and children. I cannot even imagine how anything would be possible without this. This alone made life so much easier. Also the wartime money went into creating many new jobs. I feel like this is one of the things making the lower class look bad. You have all these opportunities coming for the middle class, allowing education and better employment and yet it is essentially pushing the lower class deeper into poverty. They are not getting the same opportunities and have fewer and fewer job opportunities.
The Currie article deals with the drug crisis in America. Drug use in American worsened with, "one of the most radical shifts in economic opportunities in American History"(p353). As the economy worsened the drug crisis increased. I feel like it ties into the Coontz article talking about self reliance and the actual use of assistance for the American family because this article states that urban opportunities declined while suburban opportunities increased. Currie states, "Thus while New York City lost 95,000 jobs during the seventies, its suburbs gained almost 500,000." (p353). Meaning that the middle class is looking like it is thriving because the lower class is basically struggling. The jobs became less and less in urban places where most of the lower class society lived because it was all they could afford. These jobs were going to middle class suburban areas leaving the urban communities with nothing. Hence why the urban communities started the excessive drug use. They had to make their money somewhere and with the decline in jobs people were struggling to make ends meet. The article talked about how the jobs decreased for young men and increased for older men (typically older men meaning middle class suburban men) (p355). These young urban kids had nowhere to turn but selling drugs to make a profit. It also talked about the difference between the classes saying, "the bottom fifth of Americans lost about 12 percent in income between 1977 and 1990 while the top fifth gained over 30 percent-and the top 5 percent gained nearly 50 percent" (p361). So basically what we are seeing here is the idea that not only where the '1950s suburban family' not self reliant but because the middle class was helped so much it essentially harmed the lower class even more than normal. The middle class was thriving because the lower class was failing, sending many to a life of drugs just to make a living. What was seen was very different than what was actually going on. The Middle class was not self reliant, quite the opposite, they were actually dependent on aid from things that the government was doing for them. And what the government was doing to help the middle class was actually making things worse for the lower class and creating a drug crisis along the way.
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