Summary Of Our Kids: The American Dream In Crisis

The second chapter of Our Kids: The American Dream In Crisis, written by Robert D. Putnam, talks about how families affect people’s future lives. Although family affects the outcomes of people’s lives, class is also greatly influences the family factor. Regarding the influence of family experiences on people’s future lives, it seemed that the enhanced close-knit families allow for a grander success in life. Andrew was raised in a very caring environment where his family ate dinner together at night, and they talked to each other in order to keep up to date on what goes on in each other’s lives. Andrew’s parents’, Earl and Patty, live their world revolving around their kids in hopes of giving their children the right amount of attention …show more content…
Kayla was brought into the world as an accident of her parents who were unsettled; they did not have the money to raise the many children that they had, they had unpredictable jobs, they were young, and on top of that, they became unhealthy. Notably, Kayla was brought up in a small house with too many children living in it; these children hardly ever had dinner together, hardly had supportive attention from an adult, and barely got along with each other because their parents did not nurture them decently enough. In Kayla’s case, Darlene and Joe were not ready to provide the necessities that Kayla would need, whether it be materially or emotionally. Darlene and Joe did not have a long-term plan to raise Kayla the way that Earl and Patty did for Andrew, and consequently, they were less qualified to raise Kayla due to the restricting resources they had to offer to Kayla. Kayla’s family demonstrates the helplessness of a household when it is initiated at an earlier time, and it would be oblivious of people to not take this into consideration when starting a family