The editors of the Dallas Morning News write today about the Call to a New Marriage Conversation:
By now, the culture wars probably have worn out many Americans. Abortion rights. Gay marriage. Family planning. Women as clergy. Even the liberal ’60s vs. the conservative ’80s.
Raging debates have roared around issues like these, dividing Americans from one another, even within their own families and circle of friends. Only those on the extremes, or with a political stake in perpetuating the wars, relish the combat. The rest of us are looking to move past the divisions, hoping to find common ground, however tenuous.
Even some of the warriors get tired. David Blankenhorn is an example, yet the social conservative is showing the nation a way beyond the cultural battlefield…
Read the Call, sign on, support the conversation, and join us!
Categories: Civil Society, Marriage
“He wants conservatives to get out of their comfort zones and work with same-sex [marriage?] proponents, and he wants liberals to get real about the perils of unwed parenting.”
Is this an accurate assessment of what you want, David B?
How are liberals “unreal” about the perils of unwed parenting? Are liberals encouraging people not to get married? Huh?
Hi Kevin,
Can you name some self-identified liberals who are vocally concerned about the rise in out of wedlock births and high rates of divorce? There are some, but not many, and there need to be more.
It’s rather difficult to move past the divisions on abortion rights and women clergy, when the cultural liberal side has shown *absolutely no willingness* to compromise on either of those issues.
The liberal side *has* what they want on abortion rights, and is doing their best to achieve what they want in the field of women clergy as well. Exactly what would my side gain by abandoning the last grounds of defence we have, and conceding these issues to our opponents?
I do think the abortion wars probably have no political solution at the moment, but that’s all the more reason for cultural conservatives to try to move their fight to the cultural sphere, and try to convince more people that the Christian position on abortion is correct.
Incidentally, the whole ‘women clergy’ issue is an indicator that for many cultural liberals, the culture wars are *not* just a matter of legal rights and political structures: what many of them apparently want is to change religious institutions and people’s personal lifestyle choices to conform to cultural-liberal ideas.
“The liberal side *has* what they want on abortion rights….”
What is it that you think the liberal side wants? A conservative Supreme Court ruled 7-2 in Roe v. Wade that a woman has a constitutional right to privacy, including control over her body, which includes her reproductive system. In 1992, another SCOTUS decision issued an even stronger ruling about a woman’s fundamental control over her own body (Planned Parenthood of Southeastern PA v. Casey). If there’s a constitutional right to something, it’s hard to curtail it, unless there’s a strong public purpose in doing so.
What would you like to see? A lifetime limit on the number of abortions a woman is allowed? Not constitutionally possible.
Kevin,
I mean, ideally I’d like to see a nationwide ban on abortions at any stage of pregnancy, except for serious health reasons, and possibly in cases of rape as well. I don’t think that’s in the cards anytime soon, but in the medium term it might be.
Not debating culture war topics on this thread. Stick to responding to main argument of the piece that was posted.
If protecting innocent unborn children isn’t a strong public purpose, then what is?
“Can you name some self-identified liberals who are vocally concerned about the rise in out of wedlock births and high rates of divorce? There are some, but not many, and there need to be more.”
I can’t name a one. And I can’t name any self-identified conservatives, either, although I can name several, such as Rush Limbaugh and Newt Gingrich, who have been divorced at least twice.
Ronald Reagan was divorced, and his second wife, Nancy, was pregnant when they married. Conservatives LOVE Ronnie.
These are highly prominent conservatives and if actions speak louder than words, then I’d say the conservative side ain’t doing too good on this issue. I can compile a lengthy list of conservative public figures who have violated their marriage vows, while crowing about the importance of the family (headed by a different-sex couple, of course!) and saying all the conservative talking points about families.
A similar list of highly prominent liberals would be much shorter. Liberals live their values; conservatives just talk about them.
“If protecting innocent unborn children isn’t a strong public purpose, then what is?”
It’s more important to protect the living, than the potentially living. The unborn exist as a function of their mothers. That’s not functional independence, a requirement of being a person. I don’t consider potential personhood more important actual personhood. So yes, there are more important things that protecting the unborn: the born.
And a woman’s right to control her own body is more important than whatever rights you perceive an unborn child has.
Re: And a woman’s right to control her own body is more important than whatever rights you perceive an unborn child has.
This seems such an odd and self-evidently silly thing to say, that personally I have a hard time taking it seriously. Any ‘right to control her own body’ that a woman may have is surely not absolute. And compared to the life of the unborn child it’s surely trivial, and should hardly be the issue of primary concern to any serious or thoughtful person. There’s only one key issue here, the obligation not to kill an innocent person. That’s more important than any so-called liberty of the mother.
And it’s an actual person, not a ‘potential’ person, and is no less deserving of protection than you, I, or anyone on this blog.
Honestly, the whole abortion debate, to me, is symptomatic of what’s wrong with America: we are a society that prefers thinking about individual rights to thinking about duties, obligations and the common good.
Hi Kevin–
You are citing Ronald Reagan’s marriages. You are decades out of date. I invite you to spend more time here at FamilyScholars and learn who–across the ideological spectrum–are engaging the marriage and family debate now.
And I invite you, Elizabeth, to retire the tired, and also quite old, fiction, that liberals are somehow anti-family or anti-marriage, and conservatives are pro-family and pro-marriage.
Conservatives just say they support families, or marriage, or children. Their personal actions and public policy positions, though, indicate they don’t.
Hector, I’m not ignoring you but Elizabeth asked that we not discuss issues not related to this thread. Seems like a reasonable request, so I’m going to honor it.
I think that for many (not all) liberals, it feels like “the well has been poisoned” – that’s it’s hard to argue that the government has a major role in increasing marriage rates, because that issue has been so closely wrapped up in the public discourse with anti-lgbt and anti-single-mother discourse.
And even for those of us who do think that more marriages is a good goal for public policy, we tend to think that marriages will come if we can improve the economy, rather than vice-versa.
I don’t “move past,” in this context, means giving up on your views or giving up on fighting for your views. I think it means recognizing areas of common purpose and being willing to collaborate in those areas, even while disagreeing in other areas.
In other words, there’s no reason both a pro-choicer and a pro-lifer can’t sit together and work productively on a group dedicated to providing practical policy proposals to reduce the single parenthood rate. As long as the pro-choicer is willing, while working on this commission, to put “more access to abortion” aside as the be-all and end-all of reducing single parenthood, and the pro-lifer is likewise willing to put “end access to abortion” aside as the be-all and end-all, then maybe they’ll be able to find some policies that both sides can support.
None of this means that, at 5pm when the commission ajourns for the night, the pro-choicer can’t head right over to Planned Parenthood and volunteer while the pro-lifer heads right over to the same place to picket.
It’s not about giving up our views. It’s about being willing to compartmentalize. (IMO).
Well Kevin, there are several things happening here. For one thing, when a liberal expresses concern over divorce or unwed childbearing, they get called a conservative.
Which is one of many reasons why these labels are not helpful, but sometimes when one has only 6-800 words one has to use these terms as a kind of short hand.
I don’t think that’s always true, Elizabeth. Few people would call Kathryn Edin a conservative, for instance.
I don’t actually know what Edin’s politics are, but I suspect she’s not right-wing. There’s a real difference, imo, between how liberals and conservatives talk about these issues. (If you haven’t already done so, may I suggest that you invite Edin to participate in one of your symposiums?)
I agree that it’s hard to make nuanced distinctions in 800 words.
(You are citing Ronald Reagan’s marriages. You are decades out of date.)
Modern conservatives don’t divorce and remarry more often than anyone else or have abortions less frequently but they are far more likely to have been spouting family values pieties before doing so. Ten minutes with Google could find you all the current examples you can stomach.
{I invite you to spend more time here at FamilyScholars and learn who–across the ideological spectrum–are engaging the marriage and family debate now.}
This, if I might say, is kind of insulting. Most Liberals are fully engaged with this issue, including on this board. We just disagree with many of your framings, definitions and solutions. Unsurprisingly this is also directly related to conservative family values pieties. Apparently if anyone questions your basic premises on the cause of the problem or points out flaws in the solutions you champion are per-force dismissed as disengaged.
Re: I can compile a lengthy list of conservative public figures who have violated their marriage vows,
While that may be true, the fact is that self-identified extreme liberals are around twice as likely to cheat on their partners as extreme conservatives. (There isn’t actually a Democratic vs. Republican gap, because many Democrats self-identify as moderate or conservative).
Re: Modern conservatives don’t divorce and remarry more often than anyone else or have abortions less frequently but they are far more likely to have been spouting family values pieties before doing so.
I’ll have to get back to you on that after I look for some data. Conservative *states* certainly have lower abortion rates, corrected for race, though what that means is sort of dubious (it could be people are simply leaving the state for abortions, though I doubt it).
I think Elizabeth raises a good point, that it’s silly to try to place people at two points along an ideological spectrum, and box them in as ‘liberal’ or ‘conservative’. The political spectrum is much more multifarious than that. I do identify as culturally (somewhat) conservative, but I don’t identify as conservative on economic or other political issues (neither do I identify as ‘liberal’). I’ve voted Democratic, Green and communist before, but not Republican.
Re: In other words, there’s no reason both a pro-choicer and a pro-lifer can’t sit together and work productively on a group dedicated to providing practical policy proposals to reduce the single parenthood rate.
I think that’s true, yes. But part of the problem here is that, *because* I’m pro-life, I don’t see single parenthood as such a big problem as many cultural liberals do. I’d rather see people keep their baby than get rid of it, and adoption is not a good option for many women, which means that I think it’s important not to stigmatize single parents. While it might be ideal for parents to be married or at least cohabiting (I’m not sure that marriage in itself makes much difference), I think the government should be more supportive of people who end up raising a child alone. That’s part and parcel of the fact I am strongly opposed to abortion.
I didn’t know that bit about Ronald Reagan’s wife being pregnant when they married but who could possibly complain about that? A child being born in wedlock- where is there an opening for controversy?
“I don’t see single parenthood as such a big problem as many cultural liberals do.”
Hector, are you saying that it’s primarily “cultural liberals” who see single parenthood as a big problem?
What part do you think “cultural conservatives,” since we’re speaking generally here, play with respect to the stigmatization?
Cite?
La Lubu,
It’s from the General Social Survey.
More intelligent people, hunters, less religious people, and self identified extreme liberals are disproportionately likely to cheat
(self-identified extreme liberals are around twice as likely to cheat on their partners as extreme conservatives.)
This is irrelevant to my argument, which involves family dissolution and not infidelity. If incidence of divorce in liberal and conservative populations are equal, but liberals cheat more, then liberal marriages are in fact stronger than conservative marriages. And the family values pieties spouted by conservatives are even less meaningful.
Plus they call Dr. Satoshi Kanazawa the Fenimore Cooper of sociobiology for a reason.
(Conservative *states* certainly have lower abortion rates, corrected for race)
This is such a strange statement I can’t even begin to understand it’s relevance. Are you saying that states with more abortions per 1000 women will have more minorities? Because that’s not the case. Why would a correction for race be meaningful?
Hector, “cite” means “provide the link to the data”.
In Elizabeth’s defense, I think this is true. I think people who lean left and people who lean right have different framing—form vs. function. People who lean right appear (in my eyes) to believe that if the proper form exists, the function will automatically follow. People who lean left (again, in my eyes) are more likely to believe that form and function operate independently; that form can often serve as a mask for dysfunction. Moreover, I think people arrive at whichever conclusion they have because of their own lived and observed experiences, not via theory.
So, while I share an interest in healthy families, I don’t share the belief that marriage itself is going to provide that healthy framework. I believe that if most of the couples who are currently breaking up from cohabitation married, that all we would see is an increase in the divorce rate—even if laws were changed to make divorce more inaccessible. I know that sounds cynical, so here’s Unpopular Opinion Number 1:
The nuclear family is inherently unstable. In order for nuclear families to endure, they require the bedrock of the following supporting conditions: extended families; close friends; neighbors; religious communities (if applicable*); schools/educational communities; civic organizations; the “commons”; access to/a voice in political institutions, elected office, and the agencies created to carry out the democratically-decided laws and policies of the people; a stable economy and the ability to earn a living; professional organizations (like labor unions) that protect and uphold the condition of one’s employment/line of work; media that provide accurate information on all of the above; public safety; public health (including healthy food, fresh unpolluted air and water); free time; artistic/cultural resources; even access to nature (don’t laugh about that last one).
And that’s why there are more marriages breaking up or not happening to begin with amongst people of my demographic. We don’t have the frameworks that provide the support for our marriages (or would-be marriages). Not every college-educated couple has all of the above, but they have a critical mass of the above, and the resources for “work-arounds” for the ones they don’t have (say: paid vacation to go visit relatives).
Sorry folks, but the nuclear family is not the bedrock of human community. The extended family and community are. Marriage is falling apart in precisely the places where community itself has been destroyed. That’s why the economy is so important—it’s not just individual people making individual choices based on individual circumstances. It’s structural. When the structures that make marriage beneficial are missing, and especially to the extent that marriage becomes more risky than beneficial, fewer marriages will take place (or remain in place). Which means (Unpopular Opinion Number 2):
Capitalism is a problem. All that community devastation? Thank capitalism.
Unpopular Opinion Number 3: Patriarchy is also a problem.
Mont D Law,
I’m responding to, uh, Kevin’s remark about ‘breaking their marriage vows’. That’s why I brought up that extreme liberals are twice as likely to cheat.
Correcting for race is important because Black women have more abortions, correcting for income, so if you want a demographically similar comparison between states it helps to correct for race.
La Lubu,
I agree with your opinions #1 and #2, though not with your third one.
Yeah, I know. You’re the pro-patriarchy guy. (*smile*) It doesn’t matter; women are rejecting patriarchy. There is a dynamic of girlfriends getting more respect than wives, in the form of wives being culturally expected to tolerate all kinds of dysfunctional behavior that girlfriends are not, and in the form of some men immediately reverting to patriarchal assumptions/behaviors upon marriage when previously the conditions were egalitarian. An overwhelming number of women reject patriarchal relationships, but there is still strong cultural support for patriarchy from many social institutions (especially churches). Women in some demographics are really fighting an uphill battle in trying to maintain an egalitarian life if they get married; staying single helps.
La Lubu,
Re: Yeah, I know. You’re the pro-patriarchy guy. (*smile*)
I wouldn’t self-identify that way, but you can call me that if you want. There are cultures in the world I think are *genuinely* patriarchal, in the bad sense (i.e. much of Asia and Africa), and I think those cultures are barbaric and backward, and should change to be more similar to ours. But if you’re talking about what I’ve seen referred to on this blog as ‘protective paternalism’ or ‘benevolent sexism’, then sure, I’d identify myself with that school of thought. In general, I would definie myself as an opponent of *feminism* as it’s generally understood today (though I think feminists do have perfectly valid critiques of some aspects of society, e.g. rape culture).
Re: An overwhelming number of women reject patriarchal relationships,
I’m not sure about that, though it depends what you mean by patriarchal. This German study finds that women tend to prefer ‘benevolent sexism’ to either hostile sexism or egalitarianism.
http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/klu/sers/2010/00000062/f0020007/00009665
It also seems to me that it’s *men*, as much as women, who are rejecting the idea that they are expected to be providers and protectors, and that’s primarily because it’s so much easier for them to do so. We no longer have the sense, for example, that a man has a duty to stay with a woman if she happens to get pregnant, and people like George Akerlof point to that as a cause of single parenthood.
As for the GSS data, I didn’t run the analysis myself, but I’ll see if I can get that for you.
Going back to the beginning of the discussion, I absolutely believe that liberals need to get real about the perils of single parenting. I consider myself left of Obama in many areas (granted most progressives think Obama is a centrist, but still).
In this area, I think liberals and progressives are in denial. It reminds me of the climate change debate and denial of science, only flipped.
So, here’s an example of why I think that:
Last summer the NYT ran a very thoughtful piece on how raising children with a husband is 100x easier than raising them without one. It talks about class and economics. It never condemns the woman who ended up a single mother. It portrays her as a strong, incredibly hard-working and loving parent.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/15/us/two-classes-in-america-divided-by-i-do.html?_r=0
Kate Roiphe at Slate responded by calling the NYT puritanical and accused them of “outrageous moralism.” She suggests that the papers should stop moralizing about single mothers and launches into a defense of single moms.
The gist of her argument is that a) kids don’t really need all the after-school enrichment the wealthier family provides (part of which was attention from the father) and b) money isn’t everything. She presents no evidence on the matter and does not discuss any of the evidence (which the NYT article did present in the context of the article).
Roiphe ends by saying the NYT should “run a story about the resourcefulness, energy, and intensity of these homes, a fair, open-minded exploration of these new family structures.” Roiphe ignores the fact that the NYT article does stress the resourcefulness and hard-work of the single mother. She doesn’t seem to be able to believe that an open-minded exploration of this family structure might lead you to the conclusion that it is hard on the mom and her kids.
http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/roiphe/2012/07/single_mothers_always_falling_apart_.html
W. Bradford Wilcox – responds with an article outlining the research and why being raised by a single parent isn’t as good for kids.
http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/doublex/2012/07/single_motherhood_worse_for_children_.html
The Slate responds with a passionate piece by a divorced woman who talks about how her children are becoming better people through their hardships. There is no evidence offered on this and again she doesn’t refute any of Wilcox’s evidence, she just complains that he has said what he said. In addition, she seems to be an upper-class woman whose children are having less than before, but are not anywhere near poor. They seem to have gone from spoiled to middle class.
The most disturbing thing, though, is the header to click on: Single moms are better: kids raised by single moms are sturdier and the title: It’s better to be raised by a single mom, The kids get that magical quality: grit. Now, once again, there is no evidence presented of any kind of study finding that children of single moms are sturdier or have grit. Just that her kids are good people.
http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/doublex/2013/01/single_moms_are_better_kids_raised_by_single_mothers_are_sturdier.html
The Slate’s most recent article on single moms is more balanced, but in the header is once again “the upsides of single parenting.” The Slate asked readers to write in to them about how it was better to be a single mom. The responses they get are about single parents working hard and doing a good job.
But again, at the end of the day, there is no effort to deal with any research on family structure and no research presented from the other side.
http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/doublex/2013/01/is_it_better_to_be_raised_by_a_single_mom_slate_readers_write_in_on_the.html
The tendency to talk about good single moms and children from single-parent families who turn out well reminds me of the debate over climate change. It’s like someone saying that the weather last year was cold, so climate change must not be real.
So anyhow, yes, Kevin, I actually think this kind of denial is one of the flaws of the left. The unwillingness to talk about it is not the cause of the problem, but if we want to move forward, we’re going to need to start talking about how it’s a problem.
Then we need to move onto the questions of why are more children than ever ending up without two committed parents to raise them? And what is the best way to prevent that?
@Barry Deutsch – I think you are right, a big part of the problem is that liberals and progressives don’t trust the people saying single motherhood is a problem for some good reasons. Romney bringing it up in the middle of a debate on gun violence and gun control did not help!
I think you’re right that people on the left tend to see the issue as coming from economic problems and want to focus on fixing them.
I think there’s also some resistance to saying that it might have something to do our culture or that there could be anything wrong with it.
What I find telling about the interview with Kathryn Edin is that she says when she went back to her academic supervisors and told them the women wanted to get married, they would say, oh they can’t really mean it. She says that in some ways she didn’t want to believe that the desire to be married was really there – because saying that might make it hard for her to get a job.
I find this interesting:
“it’s fundamentally important for policy makers to understand the meaning of marriage to low-income couples, if they want to have any kind of impact. I’m kind of neutral on whether they should or they shouldn’t have an impact. But I think there’s really a total lack of understanding of how poor couples think about marriage and childbearing. Without that information, we could really spend a lot of money, and not see a lot happen.”
Despite everything, she’s kind of neutral on whether or not policy makers should have an impact on the issue.
To me this shows a huge resistance on the part of liberals in academia to the idea that we should say one type of family works better than another.
So I think there is something going on beyond just distrust of people who have said bad things in the past.
I don’t think it is a common attitude that it isn’t easier to raise children with two parents; in my demographic the most common attitude is that it is easier, especially because of the two incomes.
What I’m resistant to is the idea that single mothers in general made the wrong decision by either not marrying the man to begin with or by getting divorced. In my experience and observation, this simply isn’t true. We made the decision we made based on actual, on-the-ground conditions—not theoretical conditions. In theory, the woman in the NYT article is better off with a husband. In reality, she was not better off with the father of her children, there is no evidence that had she married him he would have been a responsible parent and husband, and as an economically struggling single parent she is statistically unlikely to be able to meet and marry a man of quality until after her children are grown.
Furthermore, this constant refrain of “single mothers need a man in the house; they are unable to be effective parents without one” is amplifying their problems, as they scramble to tolerate intolerable behavior from the father of their children and/or scramble to find a replacement.
Also: to ignore the fact that the “perils” are all income-related is disingenuous. Children from single mothers with the median household income do not have the risks or statistics as those who grow up in poverty. They don’t. We know there are effective single mothers out there; I am one of them. So, why not find out what we are doing that works; what conditions we have that work? Because we aren’t going away. It ought to tell you something that single motherhood is increasing amongst women in their mid-twenties and older who attended community college.
What is number one with a bullet in terms of reason for breakup in my demographic? Substance abuse. But no one is talking about a large-scale public health program to build and staff in-house treatment programs for drug and alcohol abuse. No one is talking about changing the culture of masculinity so that it isn’t seen as “weak” to ask for help, or to find other ways of expressing pain than violence and/or self-destructiveness. Well, I’ve seen/heard conversations from working-class women about the need for it, but the middle-class is too busy wanting to give us a lecture.
That’s a shame. And it mystifies me….why wouldn’t we want to get married? Why do they think that? I have a good life, really, I do. And if I met a great man to be my partner, someone I could really build a life with, someone who shares my values, someone who is a good communicator, no major “issues”……I’d have the perfect life. But in the meantime, yes, I resent the smugness of married conservatives who haven’t walked in my shoes. If they had—if their spouse had taken up with drugs, or booze, or violence….
….they would be in the exact same situation as myself. Making the best of it, and getting nothing but scorn from the set they were previously in (married, middle-class). No matter how they did their job.
@LaLubu – but where in the articles on marriage do you see someone saying that the problem is that single mothers created the problem by making the wrong decision to not marry or get divorced?
In the NYT article in particular, they really never said anything like that, but the response was to call them puritanical and moralistic. From the story, it was pretty clear that marrying the guy would have been a bad idea. If anything, she would have been better off if she had broken up with him after baby #1.
Saying that we have a problem due to a rising rate of children born without two committed parents or losing one parent doesn’t have to mean pointing a finger at the mother.
In fact, if the Slate had responded to the NYT article with you’re right, and the problem is a lack of decent jobs, let’s make more jobs with living wages, I would think that was a very reasonable argument.
What bothers me is that Slate didn’t respond with a defense of individual mothers or a suggestion that the problem was fathers or the economy, but with a) anger at anyone who suggested that single parenthood might put the kids at a disadvantage and b) the assertion from nowhere that single parenthood might actually be better for kids.
@LaLubu – I think the people Edin was talking to who were surprised that the moms really wanted to get married were probably not conservatives. And I don’t know why they thought that women wouldn’t want to get married.
I believe that there are people who are scornful or say insulting things. Also some who are probably inadvertently insulting.
What I’m seeing in the Slate articles, though, is a reaction to an article that wasn’t scornful. It didn’t blame single women or this woman.
What I see here, on this blog, and what I hear on talk radio when some yo-yo at work turns it on (and no, I’m not talking about NPR), and what I see in the editorial page of my newspaper (in print and especially online), and what I heard in the presidential debates, and what I hear in any television show that discusses the topic, and certainly what I see in pop culture dramas/comedies, and what I overhear at times in middle-class (which I differentiate from working-class) conversations when out in public, and geez…Lori Gottlieb wrote a book on it (that’s in the bargain bin at my local bookstore), the Atlantic features pieces on it on a regular rotating basis, and I see it on parenting/education blogs run by middle-class people….and yes, the conversation centers on Why Didn’t This Woman Do More To Not Be A Single Mother (which is quite similar to the Why Didn’t This Woman Do More To Not Be Abused, or Not Be Raped, conversations that are also ubiquitous….but perhaps easily ignored if you’re not the subject).
How exactly do you think we all became single mothers? Not “how did Lori Gottlieb become a single mother?” Why did the rest of us come to that conclusion? Our decision to become single or stay single is a conscious, deliberate, considered position.
I see a lot of messages, including here at this blog, that contribute to the problem. Myth Number 1: that marriage makes men grow up. Myth Number 2: that marriage builds community—provides a couple with more outside community or familial support than they would otherwise have as an unmarried couple. Myth Number 3: that “thrift” can make up for the lack of job skills and/or education that are valued in our economy. Myth Number 4: that continuing to stay married while mired in dysfunction (and just “sucking it up”) is preferable to divorce, and that it is possible to raise happy, healthy children under those conditions. Do I need to go on?
“So anyhow, yes, Kevin, I actually think this kind of denial is one of the flaws of the left. The unwillingness to talk about it is not the cause of the problem, but if we want to move forward, we’re going to need to start talking about how it’s a problem.”
I don’t necessarily feel the need to defend “the Left” but I still don’t see that progressives and liberals are unmindful of the importance of families and marriage.
La Lubu gets it exactly right when pointing out that single parents are responding to their particular circumstances, and choosing single parenting when co-parenting is the worse option. I have to assume, lacking information to the contrary, that a person is making rational decision about their parenting circumstances.
I’ll repeat what I said earlier, because I hate hypocrisy created by the enormous gap between the rhetoric of conservatives, and their actions: conservatives don’t walk the talk. They say they abhor any manifestation of family life that doesn’t reflect what might have been the norm 50 years ago (sex only within marriage, lifetime marriages, strong gender roles in marriage, e al.), yet their actions conform quite closely to anybody else’s modern-day interpretations of marriage.
It can’t be overemphasized the damage that gets done when the rhetoric doesn’t match the actions. When preachers get caught with prostitutes (Ted Haggard) or conservative leaders, moralizing about unwed mothers and evil gay people get arrested by police in airport bathrooms for soliciting about sex, it makes people extremely cynical.
Marriage and family life has been politicized, and that’s a shame. If an institution becomes associated with a political persuasion, then people not of that persuasion might reflexively oppose it.
Bill Clinton committed adultery while in the White House. Yet he and his wife decided to remain married. The conservative response: that Hillary’s political career required it. Not, “isn’t that great, their marriage was strong enough to withstand adultery” but pure cynicism, as if Hillary’s political ambitions came first, and that Americans drawn to her leadership in the first place would punish her at the polls for divorcing a man who cheated on her.
Well, I’m opposed to hypocrisy and have no arguments in favor of Newt Gingrich someone I have no respect for.
I’m afraid I am cynical about the Clinton’s marriage and, coming from a liberal perspective, it is one reason I preferred Obama, although not just because she stayed with him. I would have to say I think her reaction to her husband’s harassment of women earlier on was hypocritical.
“Marriage and family life has been politicized, and that’s a shame.” I agree and would like to figure out how to change that.
“I have to assume, lacking information to the contrary, that a person is making rational decision about their parenting circumstances.”
I think humans are always rational. I also think that people may believe things that aren’t true and that this might affect their decisions. When I was growing up, the conventional wisdom was if parents were unhappy, it was better for the children if their parents divorced. Children were resilient and it would all work out. This does not seem to be the case.
So I see a role for talking about realities. Divorce can be bad for children. The excitement of affairs can wear off and step-parenting is hard and most second marriages end in divorce. Getting a divorce when you’re over 50 may mean you end up poor and ill. People who say they are in bad marriages but don’t get divorced are happier five years later than the ones who got divorced (not including cases of abuse, addiction, or adultery). People who are living together don’t have as good a chance of staying together as people who are married.
However, what if everyone is making the rational best choice they can when they become a single parent? What if every divorce is needed and every child born outside of marriage is born to a couple that shouldn’t get married?
Divorce is on the increase for middle class families. So is children being born outside of marriage. Assuming that all the people in the past who stayed together were making rational choices, something has sure as hell changed.
So what is causing the change? What can be done about it?
If the problem is economics or drug abuse or whatever, how can you address it?
Ok, that should read humans are not always rational.
what are you saying, bill offends but hilary gets blamed?
Hector_St._Clare:
“… we are a society that prefers thinking about individual rights to thinking about duties, obligations and the common good.”
“But part of the problem here is that, *because* I’m pro-life, I don’t see single parenthood as such a big problem as many cultural liberals do. I’d rather see people keep their baby than get rid of it, and adoption is not a good option for many women, which means that I think it’s important not to stigmatize single parents.”
Hector, these are totally incompatible statements, in my opinion. I think social shunning, social stigmatization play an important role in social cohesion. We need to be a peoples that is intolerant on some social issues; else, we simply devolve into anarchy … which is quite where we’re at, today.
Hector:
“I think the government should be more supportive of people who end up raising a child alone.”
Why, Hector, should the government be supportive of bad behavior? What interest does it have in so doing? Why should a mother who has conceived a child out-of-wedlock be entitled to anyone else’s purse strings? Why should she be entitled to keep a child and not give it up for adoption, if she has no social support system of her own? Where are the consequences to socially destructive behavior? Why to all of this.
I’m a big proponent of subsidiarity, driving the governance down to its smallest, lowest level. I am, also, a Russell Kirk Conservative in social matters. The lowest level for Family Scholars is the ‘family’, not the individual. Families depend upon government to meet needs that they are unable to do themselves.
The following is going to sound like an extremely harsh, intolerant statement: so be it. I do not think the government should be supportive of people who end up raising a child alone; if rank individualism of pre-marital sex is the cause of single parenthood. The support systems in these instances should be the Churches or whatever family is available … not the State.
No-fault divorce, abortion, all forms of ART/3PR, single parenthood caused by pre-marital, extra-marital sex; same sex sexual behavior/marriage are inimical to a sound, lasting, fruitful, fecund society … family being the building block of society. The government of a society has every right, and indeed duty, to protect its very constituent form. Government and family are partners in maintaining their raison d’etre. Any outlier should be, and must be, stigmatized, not supported in any way … illegal, if need be.
In my opinion, only, if we have no proscriptions for ideologies that are ‘enemies of the state’, which indeed any behavior that undermines family is, we have exactly what we’re living today. There is truth in the adage: tough love. Is Family Scholars up to being an organization of ‘tough love’.
Only my thoughts and opinions, as always.
Diane M:
“Assuming that all the people in the past who stayed together were making rational choices, something has sure as hell changed.”
Yes, to this and much of your comment of: 02.03.2013 at 11:11 AM
Your comments, Diane, are always well-spoken, thought provoking, and charitable.
To put my 2 cents in for what’s changed, is there are few social sanctions to bad behavior. Understand, I do differentiate between the person and the behavior. We, actually, reward bad behavior, in so many ways, that it’s become the ‘new cool’.
Today, we as a society, have lost the idea of ‘society’. We don’t understand the ‘common good’. We do whatever we want, when we want, and however we want. The ‘individual’ has supplanted the ‘common good’. If we ‘feel’ the least bit discomfited, we opt for the easy way out.
We’re not being taught that life, commitment involves sacrifice. Sacrifice of what ‘I’ want, to the long view of what is best for all.
I lay part of the problem to the good of the feminine being misunderstood and in part, debased, because of that misunderstanding; and, I own that I am part of the problem. The good and the beautiful of the feminine involves a deeply spiritual aspect that is intertwined with the noble definition of ‘sacrifice’. It knows at heart the meaning of ‘family’; and, seeks to make it so. It is no longer the ‘I’; but, the ‘we’ of being. It is willing to ‘sacrifice’ the ‘I’ at almost any cost.
The feminine being considered the “weaker” sex, has no notion that in its weakness lies its greatest strength. That strength is seldom about ‘I’ … necessarily, about ‘we’. To realize the ‘we’ is all about ‘sacrifice’.
Teresa:
There’s a difference between being “supportive of bad behavior” and being supportive of struggling families. Providing support to a child who results from premarital sex does not mean you support premarital sex. It means you support children, no matter where they come from.
If you can’t see what interest the state has in helping struggling families, then you’re not even trying. Do you really think it’s OK to let children be raised in abject poverty, where they are more likely to turn to drugs and crime, just to make some point about bad behavior and small government?
Besides, many of these children you will end up paying for anyway; you can pay for their food now or their prison sentences later. Which would you rather your tax dollars go to?
I am tired of this absurd notion that welfare recipients are somehow taking other people’s money. Taxation is a legitimate public purpose, as is helping the poor.
Hector has a point; a segment of our society has become totally selfish and uncaring to the common good. Teresa and far too many conservatives to name exemplify this well. They believe their non-existent right to not have their tax dollars go to help poor people trumps what’s best for everyone.
Wait. Are you actually arguing that single mothers should be forced by the government to give up their children for adoption, for the crime of having sex before marriage?
Tell me, Teresa. Should my mother have been forced to give me up for adoption, rather than raising me as best she could?
And how do you square this position with your stated love of “small government?”
You seem to believe that single mothers live a cushy existence in which they never face any consequences for their actions. If you lived a day in their shoes you would know how ignorant your statements are. Being a single mother is hard work. The consequences of being a single mother far outweigh whatever sins you think they committed to make that baby.
Ah. So when you say you support small government, what you actually mean is that you want a government that arrests people for having premarital sex. You want a dictatorship, likely a religious one, that enforces your strict moral code. And you wonder why people are rejecting your philosophy.
Re: We made the decision we made based on actual, on-the-ground conditions—not theoretical conditions. In theory, the woman in the NYT article is better off with a husband. In reality, she was not better off with the father of her children, there is no evidence that had she married him he would have been a responsible parent and husband, and as an economically struggling single parent she is statistically unlikely to be able to meet and marry a man of quality until after her children are grown
La Lubu raises an excellent point here, and (as a biologist) I have to express some scepticism of the (to me) sloppy science and statistical approaches that some people bring to this whole marriage debate.
It isn’t particularly meaningful to say ‘married people have more success raising children than single people’, and it really offers rather little guidance as to what any particular person should do in a particular case. It’s quite possible that the population who get married is different than the population that raise children without marriage, and that getting married actually wouldn’t help their situation one bit. It’s also possible that the circumstances that are leading most people to raise children alone, make it such that marriage wouldn’t have worked out any better *for them*, and might have made their condition a lot worse. You can’t say that ‘single childrearing is bad’ without meaningfully weighing the costs and benefits against the likely alternatives *for that person, in that situation*.
In the natural sciences, the way to address these kind of questions would be to run experiments where the experimenter assigns people to ‘married’ or ‘single’ treatments. With human beings, obviously, you can’t do that, morally speaking. The best thing we can do is to try to figure out the conditions under which marriage would *work* better than staying single, and then trying to get people to make an honest assessment (along with their partners, friends, religious authorities, communities etc.) whether they fall into that category.
Shorter version: just because married childrearing works out better, in the agregate, than single childbearing, it doesn’t mean that married childrearing will work out better *for you*. Maybe women are increasingly staying single because our economy, culture, and value system is making more and more men unmarriagable.
Any response I could make to Teresa would fall woefully short of this blog’s ‘civility’ standard, of which much has been recently made, so I’ll refrain from responding.
Re: I have to assume, lacking information to the contrary, that a person is making rational decision about their parenting circumstances.
I wouldn’t assume that (I’m pretty cynical about people’s abilities to make good choices), but then I wouldn’t assume the contrary either. I wouldn’t make any judgment until we embark on some very detailed studies of the reasons why people get married, stay single, or make other decisions about childrearing, that would need to be informed by psychology, economics, evolutionary biology, anthropology and other disciplines. If such detailed study has been done, certainly not enough attention has been paid to them in the popularized versions of debates about marriage that we tend to hear.
Chris S.,
“Providing support to a child who results from premarital sex does not mean you support premarital sex. It means you support children, no matter where they come from.”
Giving State support to single mothers, that from out-of-wedlock births, absolutely supports premarital sex w/children. The support for that mother and child should be from any other family involved, the mother herself (when possible) faith beliefs, or persons so disposed by charity.
The State, in justice, has no responsibility, no duty to support what will corrode its cohesion. In fact, it has every responsibility to sanction behavior that is contrary to its best interests.
Chris, you do me an injustice by assuming what my family upraising was. Further, I am not impugning your mother, and the sacrifice and hard, grueling work she did to raise you. And, no, I don’t think unwed mothers have a cushy existence, nor do I believe the State should intervene to remove those children from the mother … unless, the child is at risk from abuse, neglect or adequate resources. The State should be the last resort to alleviating bad choice behavior … not, the first or only choice.
What I am saying, whether it hurts anyone’s feelings, including my own, is that the State serves its best interests by making difficult what endangers its existence. Pre-marital sex, extra-marital sex is a choice (and, no, I don’t want it to be illegal). Choices have consequences. Those consequences should not necessarily be ameliorated by the State, just because the consequences are tough.
I am, Chris, in many ways a social justice liberal … in the vein of Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin. I believe that the best route to help the poor is not through the gigantic bureaucracy of the State, which becomes evermore burdened by groups beholden to it; but, through my own work and my own dollars through my faith group, and other small groups that I work with.
Chris, I know you’re taking my comment as a personal attack upon you and your mother. It was not meant, as such.
Chris S.,
“If you can’t see what interest the state has in helping struggling families, then you’re not even trying. Do you really think it’s OK to let children be raised in abject poverty, where they are more likely to turn to drugs and crime, just to make some point about bad behavior and small government?
Besides, many of these children you will end up paying for anyway; you can pay for their food now or their prison sentences later. Which would you rather your tax dollars go to?”
Chris, are you implying that the State has been absent from actually attempting to do what you describe here? Has not the experiment been undertaken since former President Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society and the War on Poverty of lifting people from abject poverty, intervening in education, providing sustenance? Are we to forego any recognition that all of this has taken place, is taking place … and, is found wanting?
I echo, Diane M’s thought:
“… something has sure as hell changed.
We are all part of the problem; and, that ‘we’ includes the proper role of the State.
Teresa writes: “I am, Chris, in many ways a social justice liberal … in the vein of Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin. I believe that the best route to help the poor is not through the gigantic bureaucracy of the State, which becomes evermore burdened by groups beholden to it; but, through my own work and my own dollars through my faith group, and other small groups that I work with.”
Most “faith groups” do not in fact do “charity” or pursue social justice. They simply take money from the state to do their “good works.” The biggest example of which is Catholic Charities, which is funded primarily through contracts with the state.
Teresa – I don’t think the change here is the State. Government supported welfare was reformed back in the 1990s. People who get it have to work and they can’t get it for more than five years in their whole lifetime.
Nevertheless, births outside of marriage are going up and divorce is still high. This is affecting the middle class.
One likely change is simply the lack of good jobs for people without college degrees. It’s generally harder to just make a living.
I see government involvement as a good way to get things done, in any case. I don’t think there’s anything in religious teachings against that.