Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis

In Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis (2015), author Robert D. Putnam describes how unattainable upward social mobility, or the American Dream, is for most young people. Putnam examines the factors that encourage or discourage upward mobility and how they have changed over time. The book was well-received by critics for its honest and timely commentary on important social issues. Putnam currently works as both a political scientist and a professor of public policy at the Harvard University John F. Kennedy School of Government. He is the author of controversial nonfiction books, including Bowling Alone, a damning account of the present-day United States. This study guide refers to the Kindle edition of the book, published by Simon & Schuster.

It is common for politicians and others to maintain that there are no classes in America, or that the American Dream is attainable by anyone with enough hard work and motivation. In this book, Putnam maintains that upward social mobility has become unattainable for many, especially when compared with previous generations. Throughout the book, Putnam compares individuals and families with different education and income levels who are living in the same cities—albeit in very different neighborhoods—to examine the opportunities available to them. He often contrasts their experiences with those of earlier generations in the same communities, showing how opportunities that were previously available are now rare or nonexistent.

The first half of the book primarily focuses internally on changes in the family unit and differences in parenting among those with higher or lower levels of education, using the level of education (high school or less, some college, or college degree) as a stand-in for lower, middle, and upper class. Whereas previous generations, including that of the author, tended to have several opportunities for upward mobility, the author shows with studies and anecdotal evidence that the level of upward mobility available to today’s youth varies greatly between the lower, middle, and upper classes. This variation is depicted throughout the book in “scissors charts,” showing an increasing divergence between trends in lower- and upper-class families, appearing like the individual blades of a pair of scissors opening wider. 

The second half of the book has an external focus, examining differences in schools and communities, particularly noting that neighborhoods—and therefore schools—are much more segregated along class lines than they were generations ago. The “social capital” that is important to future success is now less available to lower-income children, because they now tend to live in neighborhoods where their families have fewer connections to people in other areas and professions who can serve as mentors or offer support.

Putnam concludes that working-class children today have much less chance to achieve the American Dream than they did in previous generations. He offers a variety of proposed solutions, including increased availability of effective contraception, an economic revival that would help low-paid workers, providing money to poor families in early childhood years, programs to reduce incarceration, greater workplace flexibility and parental leave, increased access to mentors and high-quality day care, publicly subsidized mixed-income housing, investing in schools in poorer neighborhoods, offering more free extracurricular activities, creating charter schools, creating a more robust vocational education system, and increasing funding to community colleges. 

The opportunity gap has broad implications for the entire country, and Putnam argues that everyone has a responsibility to work to decrease that gap for the benefit of “our kids.”