Initially, Ms. Coontz builds a pretty impressive case for her point of view, backing it up with studies and statistics. Alas, about two thirds of the way through she begins to fall down: there is much more opinion and much less evidence. In most controversies, there is a large middle-of-the-road (MTR)contingent that forms the "swing vote" and sympathizes to a certain degree with both the extremes. Coontz seems to lose any understanding that she may have had of these people and her arguments accordingly become less likely to sway them. At this point I felt that she wasted all the good that she might have done.

Most people that I know see a difference between, for example, a family needing help because they have lost a bread-winner and one created by parents who not in a position to support their children from the beginning. The first family is seen as having played by the rules and suffered a misfortune and worthy of assistance. The latter parents are sometimes seen as cheats who did not make a reasonable effort to be self-sufficient and suffer the consequences of their actions. The MTRs may accept that it is wiser in long run, particularly given that children are involved, to assist these latter families, but balk at being asked to conceal their disapproval. I think that Ms. Coontz, and many of her colleagues in the social sciences, need to read up on evolutionary psychology and game theory. Even if one doesn't accept that human psychology is largely genetically determined, it does help explain the social uses of a lot of behavior. I can recommend Steven Pinker's The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature), which I happened to be reading when this thought hit me, especially "Part IV, Know Thyself", but there are plenty of other books. She doesn't seem to think that people respond to incentives and disincentives.

Certainly, we could decide, if we wanted to, that the government would give anyone who has a child an allowance sufficient to raise it, or, perhaps better, deliver services directly to the child, like public school. But is this to be offered only to certain families or to all families? It has been argued that, all things being equal, financial assistance to college punishes frugality and savings by giving assistance to people who have no money because they lived lavishly.

Coontz's logic seems to assume that the difference between Have and Have-Not is entirely a matter of luck whereas there are a lot of very unhappy wage-slaves, including me, who are working solely so that we can live a middle-class lifestyle. If that lifestyle is to be conferred gratis upon all comers, then why should we work? Then who will pay taxes to finance the programs Coontz wants? Further, I have read that the largest amount of welfare cheating is done by polygamists, i.e. men who have multiple wives and families that they cannot support. (See "The Secret Story of Polygamy" by Kathleen Tracy.) The wives make the fictitious claim that their children were fathered by someone who has deserted them and collect welfare. Does Coontz's respect for alternate family lifestyles include supporting polygamy?

The other major flaw, and I nearly threw the book across the room at this, is Coontz's argument that Social Security for childless people is a form of dole. (Let me say here that I don't pay Social Security, except for Medicare, and I'm not eligible to collect it.) She argues this because "the average person" get more out of Social Security than he/she puts into it. Well, I should hope so, considering that the government has everyone's money for decades! But even this "average" is questionable. I've seen this quoted several times, but not with any explanation of how it's calculated. I am told by someone who worked for the Social Security Administration, that the average is corrected to exclude benefits paid out to persons who may never pay in (such as the earliest beneficiaries and the disabled), but that it is not corrected for inflation, which can make an enormous difference over three or four decades. I finished feeling very disgusted with Coontz, because having read the better parts of her book, I find it difficult to believe that this was an "innocent mistake." ( )