Coontz: Central Argument

Coontz “Self-Reliance and the American Family: We Always Stood on our own Two Feet” This excerpt focuses on ideas about individualism and self reliance, bootstraps mentality, being a myth. These ideas have great implications on the perceptions of class mobility that we have in our culture. Coontz argues that it is a myth that American families can achieve upward mobility solely by working hard and being self reliant. Rather, for centuries, there has been some sort of social safety net that Americans have utilized to achieve "success". By fault of traditions upheld in this country and nostalgia for the 1950's nuclear family representing economic success and achievement, Americans have been shielded from what it means to utilize federal programs such as grants for land, funding for education, where taxes go, etc.

If people recognized all the ways in which the federal and local governments aid us every day from sidewalks to public parks to housing, it would undermine the belief that true success is attainable if you simply work hard. By distracting Americans away from the reality of achievement and the role the government plays, the upper percentage of Americans who dominate at the top of the distribution of wealth and property benefit by putting a monopoly on the rest of the economy and leaving them to working class struggles that have become internalized and seen as normal, while things like federal aid are demonized. In this way, the emphasis on individualism is dangerous, and families who may not buy into it whether consciously or not are seen as lazy and abnormal. Coontz shows readers that public aid is about much more than welfare, but it actually is built into our economy in ways that Americans are not taught to see as federal forms of help.