Archives: December 2011

The Hope of Possibility and the Fear of Dogs

12.31.2011 5:19 PM

“Stuart went out into the world full of the joy of possibility and the fear of dogs…” Stuart Little

Our family is on a road trip so we’ve been listening to books on CD.  When I heard this part of Stuart Little, a mouse born into a human family, I thought how wise little Stuart is to the face the world with an active eye to possibility tempered with life’s inevitable limitations.

As the New Year fast approaches, countless folks will be utilizing the commitment device known as the “New Year’s Resolution” to weigh their limitations in the light of hope for the benefit of their future selves.  In Daniel Goldstein’s recent TED talk, he defines a commitment device as, “a decision you make with a cool head so that you don’t do something regrettable when you have a hot head.”  He uses ancient Odysseus, sailing past the island of siren song roped to the ship’s mast in rapturous torture with his crew’s ears safely deafened with wax rowing beside him, as the first example of a commitment device.  And although commitment devices can often be effective, they also often fail, as many of us can attest in February as we visit our failed resolutions in the cemetery of discipline and self-control. Read More


Categories: Aging, Disability, Death, Dying
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The M.Guy Tweet

12.30.2011 9:25 AM

Marriage Media
Week of December 19, 2011
Courtesy of Bill Coffin

 

1. Divorce Fears Widespread Among Young Couples, Research & Development

Researchers found widespread apprehension about divorce — even in those with no personal experience of divorce. More than two-thirds of respondents worried about their ability to form enduring marriages and feared facing the potential social, legal, emotional and economic consequences of a failed marriage, reports a new study published in the December issue of the journal Family Relations (60:5).

For more, see Divorce Fear Stops Young Couples Marrying, The Telegraph

2. Why Marriage is An ‘Absolute Yes’, CNN

My daughter Liliana, who was 8 when we were playing the board game, tossed off this remark as she stuck the tiny blue husband pin into her car: “When I grow up, I don’t think I’ll get married. I think I’ll just get some sperm.” How we reap what we sow! . . .

So there I was — the former single mother by choice, the typical Massachusetts type who deeply believes that there are a hundred great ways to make a family and that life can also be wonderful without one — and I found myself responding to my daughter: “That would be fine if you just get some sperm, sweetheart, but you know, being married is actually really nice, too.” . . .

Day in and out, through lunch-packing and play date-making and bath-running, I am struck by a surprising truth: Though the raising of our children constitutes the central activity of our family, it is the love between Sprax and me that constitutes its ineffable core.

3. Carolyn Hax: Fiancee Wonders When’s the Time to Move in Together, Washington Post

It’s a good idea to live together when you both think it’s a good idea to live together, and no sooner.

When people are open to it at any point, I advise them to wait till they’ve made a mutual life commitment; in your case, engagement would qualify. Because of that, I do wonder why you think it’s a good idea to “keep status quo.” Not that there’s anything wrong with that on its face, it’s just that some reasons for wanting the status quo are great ones and some are warning signs. . .

4. Why Your Romantic Partner Annoys You, Scientific American

In brief:

  • The trait that initially attracts you to a person often later becomes your partner’s most irksome feature.
  • Repeated exposure, disillusionment and the inescapability of a long-term partnership tend to make a spouse’s traits more grating than the quirks of others.
  • Learning to reclassify annoying behaviors, increasing awareness of one’s own flaws and sharing new experiences can help turn those peccadilloes back into perks.

5. Are Millennials Balking at Marriage?, CBS Springfield

“Many Millennials have grown up in divorced or single parent households, so they have little experience of what good marriages look like. The media has a lot of focus on celebrities whose relationships are dysfunctional, and reality TV thrives on bad relationships featuring emotionally immature and dysfunctional people,” said Dr. Tina B. Tessina, psychotherapist and author of Money, Sex and Kids: Stop Fighting about the Three Things That Can Ruin Your Marriage.

“It’s no surprise, then, that Millennials are gun-shy. Where will they get their images of what functional relationships and healthy marriages look like?”

6. Healthy Marriage Project Makes Headway in Indian Country, Political Mosaic

As part of their relationship session, they’ll use a “love map” to highlight each other’s likes and dislikes. Kiki and Daniel were one of eight Native couples out on a “date,” sponsored by the Keiki O Ka ‘Aina Family Learning Center’s Healthy Marriages Program. Kauwe and Cummings are using a relationship how-to guide fashioned by a Native Wellness Institute curriculum to help spawn healthier relationships in Indian Country. . . “Children learn how to have healthy relationships by watching their parents have a healthy relationship or ohana (family) sustainability,” [Umiamaka said].

7. NARME’s 2012 “Champions for Children” Conference, National Council on Family Relations

The National Association for Relationship and Marriage Education (NARME) is currently seeking qualified, professional speakers – experts in their field – to present at the 2nd annual conference. This conference will offer an array of topics around the goal of promoting “Champions for Children.” . . . For more information about NARME, click here: https://www.narme.org/portal2/. Submit one proposal for each workshop that you desire to present. Proposals must be received no later than 5:00 pm on Monday, January 9th, 2012.

 

For more, see this site.


Categories: Marriage
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FamilyScholars Facebook page

12.29.2011 6:37 PM

Curious? Check it out and consider liking it – and thanks!


Categories: General
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Addressing the Marriage Gap

12.29.2011 2:42 PM

Today’s Charleston Gazette (West Virginia) editorial, noting the growing marriage gap between college-educated and the non-college-educated, concludes thus:

A social transformation is altering mainstream America. Part of it is caused by the evolving culture. Part is caused by economic decline. The change is least-noticed among successful, educated people — but it’s painful to the two-thirds majority. It’s disturbing to watch marriage erode among those with fewer opportunities. As long as Republicans in Washington serve only the elite 1 percent, and Democratic efforts to help the middle class are thwarted, this sad trend probably will continue.

Indeed, until self-described “conservatives” realize how the ideology of the unfettered ”free market” — and the concomitant concentration of economic power in fewer and fewer big corporations — contributes to and exacerbates the decline of the family, the trend toward marriage dissolution in the working classes will likely continue.

By the same token, until self-described liberals realize how the cultural redefinition of marriage – from ”to love and cherish until death do us part” to “to love and cherish as long as love shall last” – contributes to and exacerbates the decline of the family, the trend toward marriage dissolution in the working classes will likely continue.

Somewhere in the middle there is a place for conservatives and liberals to work together.


Categories: Love & Marriage in Middle America, Marriage
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New Child Trends Brief on Unwed Childbearing

12.29.2011 1:01 PM

Having children outside of marriage–nonmarital childbearing–is increasingly common in the United States. A new Research Brief, Childbearing Outside of Marriage: Estimates and Trends in the United States, describes how the population of women bearing children outside of marriage has changed, often in ways that challenge public perceptions. Nonmarital childbearing remains a significant public concern as it is linked to negative outcomes for women and their children across a range of measures, as well as with a reliance on public assistance.


Categories: Childbearing, Marriage
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Ruth Marcus at WaPo: ‘The marriage gap presents a real cost’

12.29.2011 12:37 PM

If current trends hold, within a few years, less than half the U.S. adult population will be married. This precipitous decline isn’t just a social problem. It’s also an economic problem. Specifically, it’s an income-inequality and economic-mobility problem. The steadily dropping marriage rate both contributes to income inequality and further entrenches it.

and

“Family structure is a new dividing line in American society,” Isabel Sawhill of the Brookings Institution told me. As marriage increasingly becomes a phenomenon of the better-off and better-educated, the incomes of two-earner married couples diverge more and more from those of struggling single adults. There is a chicken-and-egg conundrum at work here: Did lack of financial stability contribute to the decision not to marry, or did the decision not to marry contribute to financial instability? Either way, the phenomenon is self-reinforcing. Of even more concern is the generational impact of this increased inequality. Being raised in a stable, two-parent household is a strong determinant of educational achievement. In turn, educational achievement is a strong — and growing stronger — determinant of lifetime income. As a result, the marriage gap becomes a grimly self-perpetuating process. more

And see State of Our Unions 2010, “When Marriage Disappears,” to learn more.


Categories: Marriage and Money
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Kathryn Joyce at the Atlantic: ‘How Ethiopia’s Adoption Industry Dupes Families and Bullies Activists’

12.29.2011 12:18 PM

…That increase has also brought stories of corruption, child trafficking, and fraud. Parents began to publicize the stories their adopted children told them when they learned English: that they had parents and families at home, who sometimes thought they were going to the U.S. to receive an education and then return. Media investigations have found evidence that adoption agencies had recruited children from intact families. Ethiopia’s government found that some children’s paperwork had been doctored to list children who had been relinquished by living parents as orphans instead, which allowed the agencies to avoid lengthy court vetting procedures…


Categories: General
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David Brooks on debt, divorce then and now

12.29.2011 12:13 PM

…The progressive era still had a Victorian culture, with its rectitude and restrictions. Back then, there was a moral horror at the thought of debt. No matter how bad the economic problems became, progressive-era politicians did not impose huge debt burdens on their children. That ethos is clearly gone.

In the progressive era, there was an understanding that men who impregnated women should marry them. It didn’t always work in practice, but that was the strong social norm. Today, that norm has dissolved. Forty percent of American children are born out of wedlock. This sentences the U.S. to another generation of widening inequality and slower human capital development…


Categories: Childbearing, Children of Divorce, Marriage and Money
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Virtual Doesn’t Cut It

12.29.2011 12:09 PM

I wonder if this guy gets to pay less child support because of these regular video chat “visits”?

…A mother in Vancouver (her name is not appearing here to protect her toddler’s privacy), complained that her ex-husband, who video chats three times a week with their 23-month-old daughter, seemed to believe that such interactions were an adequate form of being a parent. It has “given him an excuse to be an absent father.”

“He can say, ‘Oh yeah, I saw her, she’s doing this and that,’ ” the mother said. “But she has no sense of him. She can’t touch him, she can’t feel him. There’s none of that other sensory experience. He hasn’t seen her in person since she was 3 weeks old…”


Categories: Children of Divorce, Fatherhood, The Future of Parenthood
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Middle Childhood

12.29.2011 12:02 PM

All of you who, like me, have children in “middle childhood” might be as fascinated as I was by Natalie Angier’s piece this week in the NYT summarizing recent research on this distinctive period of life:

…Said to begin around 5 or 6, when toddlerhood has ended and even the most protractedly breast-fed children have been weaned, and to end when the teen years commence, middle childhood certainly lacks the physical flamboyance of the epochs fore and aft: no gotcha cuteness of babydom, no secondary sexual billboards of pubescence.

Yet as new findings from neuroscience, evolutionary biology, paleontology and anthropology make clear, middle childhood is anything but a bland placeholder. To the contrary, it is a time of great cognitive creativity and ambition, when the brain has pretty much reached its adult size and can focus on threading together its private intranet service — on forging, organizing, amplifying and annotating the tens of billions of synaptic connections that allow brain cells and brain domains to communicate…


Categories: Childhood
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Listening to Young People

12.29.2011 11:58 AM

A FamilyScholars reader writes to me about the NYT front page article this week about young adults with Asperger’s syndrom dating:

As the parent of a teenager who has been diagnosed with Asperger’s, I found this to be a sensitive, well-written article. Be sure to click on the videos that are embedded in the article.

In thinking about why I like those embedded videos, my mind wandered to what you’ve written about the need to listen to kids — to make sure that their voices are heard on issues such as ART, divorce, and adoption. I like that the NYT is giving Jack and Kirsten a chance to speak directly.


Categories: General
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‘If This Is Tuesday, It Must Be Dee…Confessions of a Closet Polyamorist’

12.26.2011 4:19 PM

A paper in the Journal of Lesbian Studies by Nanette Gartrell, lead author of the famed 2010 Pediatrics paper on outcomes for offspring of lesbian moms.

The abstract for the paper, which is based on her own experience:

The author discusses the evolution of non-monogamy in a 24-year lesbian relationship. The couple’s initial agreement stipulated that outside liasions be concealed as much as possible. More recently, the couple has established a complex system for incorporating other paramours into their lives.


Categories: Marriage, The Future of Parenthood
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Class, Cohabitation, and Fears of Divorce

12.26.2011 4:11 PM

HuffPo Divorce interviews Sharon Sassler of Cornell, on a recent paper she published in the Journal of Family Relations.

…For those who were children of divorce themselves, how did that affect their views on marriage?

They often referenced their families and their parents’ marriages as cautionary tales, but that doesn’t stop them from being in relationships, it’s just an added layer of anxiety. The working classes are more likely to have experienced their parents’ divorce, and they move in together more quickly, but there is an economic element to this — they’re more likely to move in more rapidly because of the financial need.

For the middle class respondents, they’re much more likely to have dated for over a year or longer and that’s not often the case with the working class. The college-educated respondents had held on to their apartments longer before moving in together, even though they might have been spending as much time together as the cohabiters. They still had that escape hatch. If you’re working two minimum-wage jobs, it’s harder to maintain that second apartment. more


Categories: Children of Divorce, Love & Marriage in Middle America, Marriage
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Douthat: ‘The Cratchit Tax Credit’

12.26.2011 4:05 PM

…the darker possibilities the Christmas stories hint at — divorce, abandonment, childhood suffering — are realities they have to live with every day. But that unhappy knowledge isn’t evenly distributed. In 21st-century America, the well-off and well-educated have the best odds of enjoying the domestic stability that the Yuletide stories celebrate, while the very people who most need resilient families — the Cratchits and Baileys, the working poor and the hard-pressed middle class — are less and less likely to have them.

This domestic dissolution plays a role in a host of socioeconomic ills: stagnating blue-collar wages, weakening upward mobility, stalling high school graduation rates, even the increase in juvenile obesity and diabetes. But it isn’t an issue that politicians of either party are particularly comfortable addressing. Liberals worry about seeming paternalistic and judgmental; conservatives recoil from the idea of increasing the government’s role in the most intimate of spheres. Thus America has a crisis of family life, but no family policy to speak of.  more

And see the State of Our Unions 2011 for more.


Categories: Marriage, Marriage and Money
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Battling Christmas Crankiness

12.24.2011 2:14 PM

Cookies to make, early school pick-up to remember, church programs to attend, presents for teachers to make, caroling to come, gumbo to roux, new shirts to iron, presents to wrap, letters to mail…As my to-do list increases and my tolerance for sugar plums decreases, I understand each year where and when Christmas crankiness sets in.

Many years ago, three co-workers and I coined this phrase, “Christmas Crankiness” to define what we often feel in the dark weeks of December.  To combat this emotion and dread we committed to meeting weekly for Advent devotionals.  To read scripture, poetry and prayers, to light candles, and to sit in quiet thoughtfulness together in order to ponder how God is truly with us in the midst of our crankiness.

Choosing the path of devotions meant we were ready to battle our crankiness, which I think may be another word for the ancient demon of acedia.  This year, I read Kathleen Norris’ thoughtful and honest book, Acedia and Me.  She deftly shows how though often confused with depression, a disease that can be diagnosed and treated through therapy or medication, acedia can afflict us all.  Acedia is the spirit of not caring.  She writes on page 233 of how “acedia contains within itself so many concepts: weariness, despair, ennui, boredom, restlessness, impasse, futility.” She quotes Aquinas who wrote that “for despair, participation in the divine nature though grace is perceived as appealing, but impossible; for acedia, the prospect is possible, but unappealing.” She concludes that the worst that acedia can do to us is not only make us unable to care, but also take away our ability to feel bad about that.  Ah, Christmas crankiness. Read More


Categories: Aging, Disability, Death, Dying
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The M.Guy Tweet

12.23.2011 10:29 AM

Marriage Media
Week of December 12, 2011
Courtesy of Bill Coffin

 

1. Barely Half of U.S. Adults Are Married – A Record Low, Pew Research Center

Barely half of all adults in the United States — a record low — are currently married, and the median age at first marriage has never been higher for brides (26.5 years) and grooms (28.7), according to a new Pew Research Center analysis of U.S. Census data.

For more, see #2, #3, #4 below and

2. Is Falling US Marriage Rate a Bad Thing? Some Find Positives in the Data, The Christian Science Monitor

The decline in the proportion of currently married adults is most dramatic for the young. Only 9 percent of adults ages 18-24 were married in 2010, compared with 45 percent in 1960. . .

Galena Rhodes, senior researcher at the Center for Marital and Family Studies at the University of Denver, sees a very positive trend in young people waiting to get their act together before making the crucial decision to get married. . . She says the young people have looked at the growing number of divorces and don’t want to go down that road. “The fact that kids do best when they grow up with both married parents is one of the strongest findings of psychology,” she says.

3. Marriage Rate in America Drops Drastically, The Huffington Post

I’m also struck by the fact that a large percentage of people who say that marriage is obsolete still want to get married. I think they may be having two ideas in their head at once: one about the institution of marriage and what its status is in society today, which is to say that it’s a lot less dominant, central or important in society, [and another about] their own wishes for their future, in which they personally would very much like to be married.

4. The Marriage Gap Presents a Real Cost, The Washington Post

Rhapsodizing about the benefits of marriage may have a conservative air — promoting marriage among welfare recipients was a big deal during the George W. Bush administration — but you don’t have to be a conservative to bemoan these statistics.

It’s not only that those at higher education levels are far more likely to marry — they’re far more likely to marry each other. “Men used to marry their secretaries,” Sawhill observed. “Now they marry the woman they met in med school.”

5. New Mathematica Projects Strengthen Focus on Fatherhood and Family Support Programs, Mathematica

In projects for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS), Mathematica’s family support experts are evaluating programs aimed at strengthening fatherhood and families and preventing teen pregnancy. These studies will provide objective analysis of the programs and assess their effectiveness in giving low-income couples and teens the tools they need to nurture and sustain healthy relationships that benefit themselves, their families, and the greater community.

6. Military Divorce Rate at Highest Level Since 1999, USA Today

The military divorce rate reached its highest level since 1999, as nearly 30,000 marriages ended in fiscal 2011, raising the prospect that troop withdrawals may lead to more divorce, according to interviews and Pentagon data released Tuesday.

For resources, see here and here.

7. Good Description of Empathy [Image],TwitPic

 

For more, see this site.


Categories: Marriage
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Father’s Presence (not Presents) Matters Most

12.22.2011 9:53 AM

I read this thoughtful blog post yesterday from Pastor Michael Karunas at U Matters.  Some excerpts:

“In an article entitled “Parental Divorce and Religious Involvement among Yong Adults,” it is shown that an influencing factor in whether or not a child of divorced parents participates in a religious community in adulthood is a father who modeled a life of faith as they grew.  Moreover, adult children of divorced parents report being less involved religiously than adult children of intact families (mother and father who were not divorced).  In part, this may be due to the fact that fathers were less involved in their lives in general.
All of this shows us that fathers matter!  As a husband for 12 years and father of three myself, it is very important to me that we fathers understand that we make a difference in our children’s lives, not just by what we actively do, but simply by being present to them.  As a man of faith, it is also compelling to me that we fathers matter when it comes to the faith of our children.  Too often we allow the stereotype to be fulfilled that women (mothers, grandmothers, etc.) are the transmitters of faith to the next generation.  But this simply is not true.  Our children are watching us too.  They are persuaded by the choices we make as well…
If we fathers want children who are expert marksmen when they are 30, we should model for them good hunting habits now.  If we want them to grow to be excellent athletes, we should hit the gym every time the doors open.  And if we want them to be believers when they are adults – committed to a faith community and enjoying all of the incredible gifts that come from it – we need to set the example of being active in a religious community with them now.
True power, as Joseph shows us, is choosing not to do something, even though we may be fully capable and justified in doing it, because it’s not what’s called for at the moment.  When Jesus was arrested the night before his death, he said to the arresting soldiers, “Do you think that I cannot appeal to my Father and he will at once send me more than twelve legions of angels?” (Matthew 16:53)  He could have saved himself.  He didn’t “deserve” to die.  He would have been justified in retaliating.  But it wasn’t called for at the moment.  And because Jesus didn’t do what he could have done, he exercised a power so great that it offered salvation to the whole world.  Who knows?  Maybe he learned this from Joseph, who set a similar example as his father years earlier.”

Categories: Faith and Families, Fatherhood
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The Ghost of Christmas 2030 Comes to Town

12.21.2011 6:15 PM

In the holiday classic, A Christmas Carol, the miserly and heartless Scrooge receives a dreamy wake-up call the night before Christmas.  Although the Ghost of Christmas Past embarrasses and grieves him and the Ghost of Christmas Present humbles and challenges him, it is the Ghost of Christmas Future that truly scares the bajeebies out of him thus stirring him to life transformation.

This year, I feel like the Ghost of Christmas Future, Christmas 2030 to be exact , is visiting me and scaring the requisite bajeebies out of me.  2030: the year when according to the Census Bureau the senior-to-kid ratio (yes, David, they use “kid”) will be 3 to 1.  In 2010 the Senior-to-Kid ratio was 2 to 1.

I just finished the alarming book The Coming Generational Storm by Boston University Professor of Economics, Laurence J. Kotlikoff, and reporter, Scott Burns. Written in 2004, they draw heavily on the data from Inquiries in the Economics of Aging, a study of over 5000 elderly conducted by the National Bureau of Economic Research in 1989. Although the data seems a bit dated, even then researchers found that:

“22.4 percent of elderly have no children

Another 19.8 percent had only one child

That 40.5 percent have no daughters

Most single elderly live by themselves

10 percent of those with children had no children within an hour’s distance

Over 40 percent of the “vulnerable” elderly live alone

Less than 20 percent of the elderly live with their children

Institutionalized elderly have less contact with children, not more

Transfers of money from child to parent (or vice versa) were rare, regardless of income”

These numbers are staggering and this is old data. Read More


Categories: Aging, Disability, Death, Dying
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Death is NOT a Speed Walker

12.21.2011 1:47 PM

If you’ve ever wondered if you can beat death in a foot race, well, here you are from this week’s Geripal blog:

“A group of Australian researchers in this study were very concerned about determining the speed at which the Grim Reaper (aka Death) walks.  Using data from a population based prospective study of 1705 older community dwelling men living in Sydney, Australia, the authors compared walking speed and mortality.  They further used receiver operating characteristics curve analysis to determine the optimal walking speed to avoid contact with the Grim Reaper.

Long story made short, older men who walked faster than 0.82 m/s were 1.23 times less likely to die than those who walked slower. No one walking at least 1.36 m/s (3 miles or 5 km per hour) died. The authors thereby concluded:

“The Grim Reaper’s preferred walking speed is 0.82 m/s (2 miles (about 3 km) per hour) under working conditions. As none of the men in the study with walking speeds of 1.36 m/s (3 miles (about 5 km) per hour) or greater had contact with Death, this seems to be the Grim Reaper’s most likely maximum speed; for those wishing to avoid their allotted fate, this would be the advised walking speed.”


Categories: Aging, Disability, Death, Dying
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The Gift of Family for the Holidays

12.20.2011 7:56 PM

Holiday time is here again. Time at the end of the year for families and friends to join together, gifts given, pictures taken to mark the year just past and to make memories for the years to come.

Cities and towns, big and small, have there own symbols of the season.  In Washington, D.C. the tree on the White House lawn can be seen for miles. Rockefeller Center’s tree in New York City is the place where locals and tourists alike confirm the season has officially arrived.  Even my small town of Beverly Hills has its traditional Santa and sleigh stretched high above Wilshire Blvd, only a block from brightly decorated Rodeo Drive.

Turning on the radio fills your home and car with the songs of Christmas and those family favorites from my childhood, “Miracle on 34th Street”; “White Christmas” and “It’s a Wonderful Life” still play over and over on TV. Young families still start Christmas morning with an early morning wake up as their excited children run in to see what Santa left.  For some families it is the celebration of Hanukah, the faces of the family’s children reflected in the glow of the menorah as an additional candle is added for eight nights.

Each family has their own special traditions during the holiday season that is repeated each year and passed on to the younger generation. It is the memories of these traditions we wish our children to have to pass on to children of their own, but the truth is we have to accept that the face of family has changed. Read More


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Categories: Children of Divorce, General, Marriage
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