Very high rates of family fragmentation in the United States are subtracting from what very large numbers of students are learning in school and forever holding them back in many other ways. This in turn is damaging the country economically by making us less primed for innovation while also making millions of Americans less competitive in an increasingly demanding worldwide marketplace. All of which is leading – and can only lead – to deepening class divisions in a nation which has never viewed itself or operated in such splintered ways. What can be done to reverse these severely destructive trends, starting with reducing the enormous number of children forced to grow up with only one parent living under the same roof? What educational reforms are most likely to help under such demanding circumstances? And as dangerous as the situation is, why do leaders in education and other fields persist, for both understandable and less-worthy reasons, in dancing around profoundly important questions of family breakdown to the point of contortion and ultimately failure?

"The American economy remains sluggish and, from all over the political spectrum, particularly the left, people have turned their attention to inequality. The Occupy Wall Street movement, though without actual plans for reform, emphasizes the growing inequality between the top one percent and the 99 percent of Americans below them, with the implication that income growth among top earners means less for everybody else....Mitch Pearlstein, who worked in the Department of Education under Reagan and Bush I, and then founded the Center of the American Experiment in Minneapolis, sees this as a growing problem. His new book, From Family Fragmentation to America's Decline, laments this inability of many to climb their way up from the bottom rungs of society." - Acton Institute

"To conclude, the value of Pearlstein's book is that it couples tomes of empirical studies from a diverse range of sources with candid and honest discussion of what America's marriage problem is doing to our country, and what we can actually do about it from a policy perspective and from a cultural perspective....Pealstein's [book is a wake up call to the problem our country faces] and a tool book for anyone serious about actually mending our country's wounds and working toward a brighter future." - The Daily Beast Book Reviews

"I'm glad Mitch Pearlstein wrote this book....Surely, no change will come without him and lots of others recognizing the terrible folly of anti-family policies." - The Family in America: A Journal of Public Policy