"What About the Responsibility of the Institutions and the Society"?

"In a paper called 'Patriarchy, Power, and Pay: The Transformation of American Families, 1800–2015,' Ruggles wrote that out-of-wedlock births and the decline of marriage didn't just happen because hippies preached free love or because scientists invented the birth-control pill. 'There must be a source of exogenous pressure for people to reject the values with which they were raised,' he wrote. 'Between 1800 and 2000, that pressure was exerted by an economic revolution.'
"The revolution he refers to is actually several: the rise of wage labor in the 19th century, the post-World War II economic boom and union wages that often allowed one parent to stay home, the subsequent decline in men's wages that accelerated during Ronald Reagan's presidency and continues, the corresponding entry of more women into the workplace, and other macro shifts that produced the inequalities of today. 'I think it is kind of ridiculous to say the reason for social problems is that people do not have good enough morals,' Ruggles says."

Brian Alexander at Slate talks to critics of the "success sequence."