Paraphrasing The Band is what comes to mind as I scan the headlines:
The best advice anyone could give a dad preparing for a custody battle is to become as active as possible in the lives of your children and to document everything.
or
And it’s just another day.
Categories: Children of Divorce
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Samhita Mukhopadhyay at the American Prospect on “Marrying Yourself.”
Categories: Marriage
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The Australian Study of Child Health in Same-Sex Families aims to investigate the physical, mental and social wellbeing of 750 children belonging to about 500 parents. It will involve surveys and interviews to score the children on a large range of measures.
Lead researcher from Melbourne University, Dr Simon Crouch, said although there were likely to be thousands of children with same-sex attracted parents in Australia, very few local studies had ever looked at whether their family circumstances affected their wellbeing and when they had, they were small. Furthermore, he said most studies of such children had been done in northern European countries and the US and they tended to focus on children of lesbian mothers at the expense of those belonging to gay men, bisexuals and transgender people.
They’re asking people to volunteer for the study.
Categories: Childhood, Reproductive Technologies, The Future of Parenthood
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In New York Times today:
Sperm donors are no more likely to carry genetic diseases than anybody else, but they can father a far greater number of children: 50, 100 or even 150, each a potential inheritor of flawed genes, and each a vector for making those genes more pervasive in the general population.
Categories: Fatherhood, Reproductive Technologies
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HuffPost blogger Anne Vitiello talks to “kids of boomer divorces [who] have become 21st century parents.”
Categories: Children of Divorce, Motherhood
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Susan Gregory Thomas at the Wall Street Journal:
Even as men have made great strides as fathers, however, they can find themselves rudderless as spouses. “We’re getting a new cultural script for a ‘new dad’ but not for a ‘new husband,’ ” says W. Bradford Wilcox, director of the University of Virginia’s National Marriage Project. “That married people with children now often refer to themselves as a ‘stay-at-home mom’ or ‘stay-at-home dad’ instead of as ‘wife’ or ‘husband’ signals that we now prioritize parenthood over marriage itself.”
For more, see State of Our Unions 2011, When Baby Makes Three: How Parenthood Makes Life Meaningful and Marriage Makes Parenthood Bearable.
Categories: Fatherhood, Marriage, Motherhood, The Future of Parenthood
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by reporter Phil Izzo:
…In 2010 for the first time, married mothers were more likely to be employed than single mothers. That trend became more pronounced in 2011. Last year, 63.4% of mothers living alone had a job, compared to 64.6% of married mothers. That was largely because single moms are having a much harder time finding employment. Their unemployment rate was 15% in 2011, compared to 6% for their married counterparts living with a spouse.
…Part of that reason for the disparity is demographic differences. Single mothers are more likely to be minorities or have lower levels of education than their married counterparts. Women with just a high school diploma had an 8.7% unemployment rate in 2011, compared to 4.3% for college graduates. Meanwhile, black women had an 11.9% jobless rate, while white women’s rate was 6.5%.
Categories: General, Marriage and Money, Motherhood
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by Kay Hymowitz in the New York Daily News:
Today’s “stay at home mom” becomes next year’s “working mother” and vice versa. To put it a little differently, the mommy wars are over, but not because one side won. It’s because women keep moving between the mythical enemy camps.
Categories: Marriage and Money, Motherhood
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Good piece by Jessica Gavora in WaPo:
…Although polls show that married women favor Romney over Obama, unmarried women are the most reliably Democratic voting group outside African Americans. They constituted a whopping 71-to-29 percent majority for Obama in 2008, earning them a place in what Democrats call their “rising American electorate” — the people of color, the young and the unmarried women who helped deliver the presidency for Obama in 2008, and who Democrats desperately want back in 2012.
The problem is, the rising American electorate is a reliable Democratic vote only when it bothers to register and show up. And even though they show a current 44-point preference for Obama, unmarried women — especially those with children — register and vote at lower rates than married women.
The turnout of unmarried women is so unreliable that, until the 2000 presidential election, Democrats generally wrote off the single female vote as not worth the effort. But in that razor-thin contest, strategists noticed for the first time that 22 million members of their most reliable cohort of voters did not go to the polls. If single women had cast ballots in the same proportions as married women, Al Gore probably would have received the punched chads of an additional 6 million voters, more than enough to have won him the White House…
Categories: Marriage, Motherhood
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Our local newspaper’s “People and Faith” section today highlighted the career of Christian artist Jennifer Knapp who left her musical career in 2002 when she came out as a lesbian. She is currently returning to the Christian music scene.
“… the 38-year-old Kansas native is as shocked as anyone with her newfound role—as a gay Christian artist urging fellow Christians to affirm homosexuals. And she finds herself singing and making her case in the most unlikely venues: churches. Though she no longer fits neatly into the “Christian music” category, Knapp once again sings regularly for congregations and youth groups, the kind of audiences that made her a contemporary, Christian music sensation almost two decades ago. Those listeners who used to treat her like “a big rock star” now approach her after a concert for counsel about their sexual orientation, she said.” Read more…
Her journey as a Christian resonated with my own in terms of how to enact change within a faith community. I am liberal theologically and otherwise and believe that change happens most effectively through knowledge, engaged conversation (that includes prayerful conversation with God), and relationship. Holding those values closely allows for a level of diversity within community that affirms that we share unity in essentials and diversity in non-essentials. (a loose quote of Melanchton’s 15th Century dictum)
I have followed the conversations here about Christians and homosexuality and I will say that I am a Christian Pastor in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America who worked very hard in the years leading up to the our church’s national vote in 2009 that opened the ordained ministry to gay and lesbian pastors in committed relationships (pastors who are gay and lesbian were able to be ordained clergy prior to this vote but they were required to be chaste as all unmarried clergy in the ELCA are). Note that the resolution did not say “marriage” but as a pastor, I don’t really know how else we would ritually honor and recognize a committed relationship, so in my mind and in all the discussions leading up to that vote, marriage, sexuality, our bodies, etc. were always included. For two years prior to the vote I served on a Task Force on Human Sexuality for our very rural Midwestern synod that committed to leading and supporting conversations about human sexuality (both parts of the Journey Together Faithfully study can be downloaded for free). Fun, huh? For two years (!) I led a weekly Sunday School class (which was highly attended, I might add—a miracle in itself) that discussed a study published by the ELCA on sexuality in general, heterosexuality, homosexuality, transgendered individuals and human relationships in general. We met in the sanctuary, which I purposely chose to do in order to hold our discussions in a space we set aside as holy. Also, from the very beginning I made clear that in our discussions I would be gay. Now, when I say that, please know that I did not presume to know what is it like to be gay and I did not try to import any content to that identity. However, many folks in the class did not know that members of our church and of our class were gay. I was grateful that those individuals had they felt safe to share this information with me privately and I assured them that if and when they would want to be public they would have my support. However, at that point in time being publically gay in our community was not necessarily a safe thing to be. I announced every class the reminder that “I am gay,” so that when people said really hurtful and small-minded things, I could say, “OUCH. That hurts me.” Many folks did not even realize that some of things that they thought or said were hurtful. Let me first say, I love these people, but many of them said really hurtful, judgmental things out of fear, and there was a lot of fear. Growing up in a ballet company and in the theater, I never knew that fear because I never knew life without gay individuals, and I quickly learned that I was a minority.
Throughout that time I met with people in groups and I met with several people one on one, and we talked and talked and talked. And the goal of the time was not to strong arm anyone, but to remind ourselves that God creates and gifts all people, and that when we do not understand why something is or how something works or we disagree with our brothers and sisters, we stay in relationship; we are not allowed to close our hearts and minds to anyone. We never stop seeking to understand. I was proud and deeply thankful that despite several years of turmoil, we became a more open place that did not leave the ELCA when they voted to honor homosexuals in committed relationships when many, many congregations left.
As a heterosexual, Christian leader the role I think I can play is to step into the fray and say OUCH on behalf of my homosexual brothers and sisters, which often is a place that if I were homosexual is not a safe place to be. I would not ask anyone to step into a place where they would potentially be abused or hurt, but I can go there and hold on fiercely to those folks and know that only committed relationship and deep, abiding conversation and challenge can truly open minds and hearts.
That’s why I keep writing here because the abiding philosophy on marriage, family, thrift, aging, death and so on is simple: Keep talking.
Categories: Civil Society, Faith and Families
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Writes Professor Carlos A. Ball:
As we prepare to honor mothers on Sunday, we should keep in mind that the practice of mothering is not limited to women. There are many men in America today, married and single, gay and straight, who mother their children every day. I am one of them. My male partner and I nurture and care for our two sons in ways that are indistinguishable from what society has traditionally expected of mothers.
Sorry guys. This holiday is mine.
Categories: Motherhood, The Future of Parenthood
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HuffPo blogger Dara Pettinelli:
Any early aspirations I had about getting married and having babies were systematically diluted by listening to my mom’s conversations with her two best friends, Terri and Linda, for years, upon years, upon years. The three of them met in their early 20s and are inseparable to this day. The same cannot be said for the men in their lives. Though my parents are still married, my mom was married twice before she met my father (and even came close to divorcing him, but that’s another story). When I was little and could have been off playing during their get-togethers, I preferred to pull up a chair and sit with them at the table as they drank coffee (sometimes wine) and had “girl talk.” During those conversations, I absorbed their stories of first loves and wrong loves, separations and divorces, of failed attempts to change partners and tinges of regret for some of the things they sacrificed for the happiness of their families. It was 20 solid years of straight-up relationship repellant.
Categories: Children of Divorce, Marriage
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The program Divorce Ministry 4 Kids* has a new blog post up which includes helpful questions to pastors, to help them think through the current status of their ministry to children from divorced or unmarried families and how they can improve. Questions include this excellent one:
When you picture the kids in your ministry at home, what do you see? Do you imagine kids in homes similar to yours? Do you see them in traditional two-parent homes? Or, are you tuned in to the reality of today’s kids?
UPDATE: In my first version of this post I mistakenly referred to this group as Divorce Care 4 Kids, whose program I have encountered (and recommended) before. I have now learned and corrected on this post that Divorce Ministry 4 Kids is a separate, distinct organization. The more the merrier!
Categories: Children of Divorce, Faith and Families
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In HuffPo, Roland Warren of the National Fatherhood Initiative has an interesting piece suggesting that what we find repellant about “Octomom” is what she reflects back to us about our own cultural choices.
Categories: Fatherhood, Motherhood, Reproductive Technologies, The Future of Parenthood
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Marriage Media
Week of April 30, 2011
Courtesy of Bill Coffin
1. Population Association of America 2012 Annual Meeting Program, Princeton University
[Presentations include:]
| 56 | Non-Marital and Diverse Family Forms | Thu 3:30 |
| 61 | Public Policy and Families Around the World | Thu 3:30 |
| 74 | Families and Well-Being among Older Adults | Fri 8:30 |
| 79 | European Families and Well-Being | Fri 8:30 |
| 82 | Same-Sex Partnerships | Fri 8:30 |
| 87 | Non-Standard Work Schedules and Family | Fri 8:30 |
2. Marriage Breakdown a Scourge, Says High Court Judge, BBC News
“We all know, all of us who have been in relationships – whether married or unmarried – for a long time… that the only way that they are made to work and the only way that they become really qualitatively good is by absolutely grinding away at it. . . That’s when people find that, actually, if they get through the difficulties and do get the help, they will in fact end up with a product that is really worth having.”
3. Women Say ‘I do’ to Education, Then Marriage, Chicago Tribune
“They marry later, but they catch up,” said England. “By age 40, 75 percent of college-educated women are married, compared to 70 percent of those who attend high school or some college and 60 percent of those who did not complete high school.”
4. Strategies for Building Healthy Relationship Skills Among Couples Affected by Incarceration, ASPE Report
“Even for lengthy periods of incarceration, communication and conflict resolution skills could result in more supportive relationships, improved co-parenting, and increased familial contact — all of which could be beneficial upon the individual’s eventual release.”[Excerpt from Summary]
5. Two Happy Marriages Help Get San Francisco Giants Pitcher Barry Zito on Track, MercuryNews
Zito confesses that his two “marriages” might be having a profound impact on his turnaround. . . “I have to put as much attention and focus off the field now as I do on the field, and I think that’s good,” he said. “You just need something to bring you down from the intensity of the job, and if you don’t have that in your life, it’s just going to be a lot more difficult.”
6. Catholic Parishes and the Marriage Crisis, CatholicVote
An independent study by the Institute for Research and Evaluation (IRE) found the organization reduced divorce rates by an average of 17.5% over seven years in a city/county, with nearly a tenth cutting divorce rates 48% to 70% (e.g., Austin, TX, Kansas City, Mo., Modesto, Calif. and El Paso, Texas).
7. Author: Integrity Is Most Difficult Part of Being Good Father, The Christian Post
The “seven M’s” are: makeup, master, mission, message, motive, method, and model. Each of these essentials has a chapter devoted to not only explaining what they are, but also offering advice on them and examples of notable fathers who excel in these areas.
For more, see here.
Categories: Marriage
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We tend to think of romantic relationships as between two individuals. But when they fall apart, it becomes obvious that there is no such thing as two lone lovers. Families, children, friends are all implicated in the breakup.
Today on my way to the grocery store I talked on the phone with Megan, a 24 year old woman that I interviewed in Ohio and who has since become a friend. She and her fiancé, Troy, recently broke up. He told her—the day after they had just finished paying off her wedding dress—that he just wasn’t happy in the relationship anymore.
She’s since posted on Facebook a photo of her, him, and her newborn daughter (they started dating when she was eight months pregnant) at the hospital with this caption: “I’m missing this so much! I hope he comes back!”
Veronica, Megan’s one year old, hopes Troy comes back, too. Although he’s not her biological father, he was the first person to hold her after Megan’s c-section, and he spoke to her while she was in the womb. Megan tells me that Veronica, who is just starting to talk, has been saying “da-da” often and asking for him.
Veronica also has been asking for “pawpaw,” Troy’s dad. Troy’s parents tell Megan that they still want to be nana and pawpaw to Veronica—and Troy’s dad’s Facebook is still plastered with photos of his “granddaughter”—but one can imagine the complications, especially considering that Troy still lives with them. In fact, Troy’s mom is stopping by tomorrow to give Megan back the baby items that they kept for Veronica at their home.
On top of all this, Veronica is teething, and so she hasn’t been feeling well or sleeping well. Megan notes, sadly, that Veronica hasn’t been acting herself. She thinks that it’s more than just the teething—she thinks she’s been missing the man she knows as “da-da.”
Categories: Childhood, Fatherhood, General, Love & Marriage in Middle America
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I have to tell you that over the course of several years as I have talked to friends and family and neighbors when I think about members of my own staff who are in incredibly committed monogamous relationships, same-sex relationships, who are raising kids together, when I think about those soldiers or airmen or marines or sailors who are out there fighting on my behalf and yet feel constrained, even now that Don’t Ask Don’t Tell is gone, because they are not able to commit themselves in a marriage, at a certain point I’ve just concluded that for me personally it is important for me to go ahead and affirm that I think same sex couples should be able to get married.
And:
It’s interesting, some of this is also generational. You know when I go to college campuses, sometimes I talk to college Republicans who think that I have terrible policies on the economy, on foreign policy, but are very clear that when it comes to same sex equality or, you know, believe in equality. They are much more comfortable with it. You know, Malia and Sasha, they have friends whose parents are same-sex couples. There have been times where Michelle and I have been sitting around the dinner table and we’re talking about their friends and their parents and Malia and Sasha, it wouldn’t dawn on them that somehow their friends’ parents would be treated differently. It doesn’t make sense to them and frankly, that’s the kind of thing that prompts a change in perspective.
I admit, I’m a bit surprised to see him do this before the election (although perhaps he was cornered by Biden’s recent statement of support for SSM). Also, he’s still saying that this should be an issue decided by each individual state, not by the Federal government (a view I agree with, but only because I think it’s strategically the best approach for now).
Although the fight will continue mostly unchanged, this is still a landmark in the history of lgbt rights. Someone on my twitter feed (can’t find it now, so paraphrasing) wrote, “for the first time in my life, I have a President who thinks I should be fully equal.” That’s valuable. As David said in another context, we’re a bit more American today than we were yesterday.
Categories: Marriage
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(This is part of an email I recently wrote to a thoughtful Christian acquaintance, who I shall call “Linus.” Obviously, our discussion was set off by Dan Savages recent remarks. My thanks to Linus for his kind permission to include some quotes from his letter. The occasional links were added by me just now, not part of the original correspondence. –Amp]
I guess I am really taking exception to Savage’s characterization of the Bible as “pro-slavery” when a proper reading makes it clear that over the course of the narrative, the pro-slavery statements are turned on their ear and negated. By my understanding, Christians haven’t altered their views on slavery from what the Bible says; they are anti-slavery because the Bible is anti-slavery.
By labeling out-of-context statements about slavery as “bullshit”, putting forth an argument that the Bible is pro-slavery, and then equating them to different moral teachings that he disagrees with, Savage is not treating the Bible or its present-day adherents with any fairness. [...]
I think it is important to reflect that while Christians hold the entirety of scripture to be inspired by God – it is still written in a historical context by a human author. Paul, in situ, is writing as a pastor to a member of his flock, instructing him on how he is to receive a returned runaway slave. I suggest you read Philemon to get a sense of the exchange, it is only a few paragraphs long, but the tone is appropriate for a pastor’s instruction in the form of a letter. A full-on command to free the slave or an emancipation declaration might not have achieved Paul’s purpose, but his wording and tone make it clear where he stands on the issue. I cannot tell you why God would use subtle language and tone in this case, or the many other cases where he is mysterious – it is a question that has the potential to be an entire theological discussion by itself.
I think your interpretation is, while not unreasonable, EXTREMELY strained. It’s the interpretation of a good person who is strongly motivated to believe the Bible doesn’t condone slavery, and who has found a way to interpret the text to support that reading.
But it’s not a straightforward, obvious reading of the text. Philemon, which you’re putting great weight on, is ambiguous at best. Especially in light of other passages of the New Testament (e.g., in Titus when Paul says “tell slaves to be submissive to their masters and to give satisfaction in every respect; they are not to talk back, not to pilfer, but to show complete and perfect fidelity, so that in everything they may be an ornament to the doctrine of God our Savior”), a much more straightforward interpretation is that Paul expected Philemon to return as BOTH a slave and a brother in Christ, and would have seen nothing greatly wrong with that outcome.
This is Savage’s point (if I’ve understood it). When you genuinely want to, you subscribe to a “subtle” — I’d say generous — interpretation of the text to reconcile the NT’s condoning slavery with your own belief that condoning slavery is wrong.
If you genuinely wanted to, you could make a similar generous reconciliation for homosexuality. For instance, you argue that we should bear in mind that the scriptures were “written in a historical context by a human author.” But the human authors who wrote scripture simply didn’t have a concept of “gay and lesbian people” as we do. In Paul’s time, it’s very plausible that the homosexual acts he was condemning were between adult men and young boys, and he wasn’t familiar with the idea of two adult men or women living together in a consensual relationship.
Etc, etc. I’m sure you know the arguments; they do require you to interpret the text a bit, but not in a more extreme way than what you do to argue that the NT isn’t condoning slavery.
Please know that I don’t say that with any sense of satisfaction – it has very real implications for how I practice my personal faith – but I feel like it is the only consistent position I can take based on how I understand Christianity and the teachings of the Bible.
This is bothersome because you’re speaking as if you have no choice. You could decide that the Bible does not condemn consensual, loving same-sex relationships between adults; you have chosen not to. You could even more easily decide that the Bible doesn’t say anything about what civil law regarding same-sex marriage should be. Your understanding of the Bible, and your view of when it is and is not okay to interpret the text (as you do when considering slavery), and what that means for civil law, is not an objective fact. It is your own subjective judgment.
The Bible isn’t forcing you to treat lgbt people unequally. Nothing in the text of the Bible forces you to believe that Paul was intending to condemn two adult women living together and forming a loving family. At some level, perhaps unconsciously, you’re choosing to believe that. (And I say this without any sense of satisfaction, by the way! I would much prefer to welcome you as an ally than to disagree with you on this issue.)
[More from the letter in a later post.]
Categories: Religion
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