David Brooks is one among many journalists to recently lament America’s divided future. Though the divide to which he refers to in his most recent New York Times article is an educational one, and not a political one.  In his article, “The Opportunity Gap”, Brooks reviews recent research completed by Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam.  Putnam attributes the discrepancy in opportunity to social factors that affect children at young ages.  He frames the opportunity gap in terms of two additional gaps: an attention gap and a behavior gap.

Affluent parents spend more time reading to their children when they are young, and have the money, time, and resources to be more involved in their children’s lives.  These days, college-educated parents spend an hour more a day with their kids than non-college educated parents (a gap that has grown over the past 40 years).  The attention gap may also be attributed to a shift in social norms.  More and more children are born in single-parent households.  With the current job market, many working-class parents are too stressed and have less time, money, and resources to dedicate to their children.  This fact puts working-class children at a sad disadvantage, as upper-income parents are spending increasingly more money on their kids’ extracurricular activities.  This last difference has contributed to the behavior gap in students.

Putnam notes that poorer children who are not are not involved in extracurricular activities are more pessimistic and detached than their affluent counterparts.  These attitudes are attributed to the fact that the majority of our social institutions – family, friends, school, and community – have failed working-class youths.  It is no surprise that failed children consequently lack a sense of purpose and responsibility, thus causing a behavior gap.

Brooks ends the article by writing: “Equal opportunity, once core to the nation’s identity, is now a tertiary concern.”  If Americans want to change that, then “…people are going to have to make some pretty uncomfortable decisions.”  Brooks mentions three such decisions to remedy the opportunity gap:

1. Liberals should prioritize marriage over childrearing in order to provide children with two parents and adequate attention in a home environment.
2. Conservatives need reconcile that tax increases and benefit cuts are necessary steps to provide funding for programs that benefit the working class.
3. Politicians need to spend their time trying to remedy class divides instead of exploiting them and making the divide even wider. 

Are such concessions necessary to close the attention and behavior gaps, and ultimately the opportunity gap?

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/10/opinion/brooks-the-opportunity-gap.html?ref=davidbrooks