 |
|
Saturday, February 08, 2003
FROM A WAPO STORY ON HALLMARK GREETINGS: "Walley remembers an example of one card that he wrote in the swinging 1970s with the caption "Please don't promise me forever" -- a too-true sentiment that card buyers may not have been ready for. "It was a saying during those times that meant, 'Let's get together, but let's not have a total commitment,' " Walley says." And: "Hallmark released divorce cards, for instance, in 1973, when the nation's divorce rate was rapidly nearing 50 percent. Those cards, however, didn't sell well. It took another decade before consumers really began buying divorce cards." BARBARA DAFOE WHITEHEAD ON TV AND ROMANCE: "Despite its contemporary trappings, "The Bachelorette" is all about courtly love. It conjures up a leisurely world where gallant young men devote their energies and imaginations to winning the hand of their chosen fair lady. In the knightly tradition, the competition is oriented to the fine, rather than the martial, arts. Thus, Bachelorette Trista's suitors sing to her, write poems for her, give her tokens of their love and generally wear their hearts on their sleeves. Each week, she rewards the successful competitors with a red rose -- the classic symbol of love -- and sends the losers away. But the rejected suitors leave peaceably and without rancor, much less with declared intentions of harassment or stalking. The rules of the game are well understood." "THE CHILD-FAT PROBLEM": Mary Eberstadt links it to maternal employment. She cites a study that suggests that 6 to 11 percent of the growth in childhood overweight can be explained by the trend of more mothers employed full-time in the labor force in recent decades. But while suggestive and interesting, that finding strikes me as a remarkably thin empirical foundation for her conclusion, rolled out with much argumentation (again, some of it quite suggestive), that we should blame fat children on working mothers. "Parents who own their own home may be helping to boost their children's educational achievements and even reduce behavioral problems, according to a new nationwide study." I haven't been able to read the study yet, but based on the press release, I'm a bit skeptical. The bottom line for the researchers seems to be that home-owning families have ... well, better homes ... than renters, and that they move less often. No surpises there. But do these facts justify saying that buying a home will help your child behave better and do better in school? Plus, the study is published in the journal Real Estate Economics, which is, as best I can tell, linked to the real estate industry. Of course, people make these same complaints about studies showing the benefits of marriage. They agree that there are correlations between getting married and good outcomes, but want to argue about causation. To me, most marriage studies are not really susceptible to this criticism -- mostly because I think it's clear that marriage changes people much profoundly than does buying a home -- but seeing this real estate study, which I think is suggestive but a bit dubious, gives me pause. LOVE BOAT IN SINGAPORE: "A night of romance on the high seas, away from the stresses and strains of modern life. It may sound like a recipe for love. Alarmed by a drop in the island-state's fertility rates, Dr Wei Siang Yu has launched a program of fertility seminars accompanied by a boat cruise and a night at a holiday resort -- all designed to put couples in the mood. Wei, founder of health promotion company Meggpower, calls it his 'Love Boat' package." "TUNNEL OF LOVE": "South Floridians looking to put the pedal to the metal when it comes to tying the knot are saying ''I do'' at the drive-through." I'm not kidding. And this drive-through wedding place is already seeing ... well, let them say it: "The Tunnel of Love has had several repeat customers. 'We like to call them alumni,' Wolfman said." "HISTORY'S GREATEST LOVER": "The greatest pleasure is to vanquish your enemies and chase them before you, to rob them of their wealth and see those dear to them bathed in tears, to ride their horses and clasp to your bosom their wives and daughters." (Thanks to Lisa Schiffren.) From the NYTs book review, written by Margaret Talbot, of RANDOM FAMILY: Love, Drugs, Trouble, and Coming of Age in the Bronx, by Adrian Nicole LeBlanc: "In truth, you wouldn't want every book about poverty to be like LeBlanc's. As good as it is at foiling simple-minded or overly optimistic social reform schemes, there's a kind of Dreiserian fatalism about it. Its very dedication to portraying the multiplicity of hurdles, the bewildering entanglement of personal failure and structural inequality that marks lives like Coco's, allows a kind of exhaustion to creep in, not so much in the reader as in the would-be policy maker. Some books have to be fueled by a kind of willed optimism, even if that means turning your eyes away from some of the details." I'm not sure I fully agree -- policy makers need to be "willful," even at the expense of realism and detail, about what policy can do? -- but Talbot is insightful, and Random Family, based on the excerpt I read, seems to be an important book. Here's another review of the book. Friday, February 07, 2003
SOME SENTENCES, which most normal people would just pass over, without so much as a backward glance, cause marriage buffs to sigh and wince with anxiety. Reading the NYTs today in the Denver airport, this happened to me twice. Here, about Shaquille O'Neal: "Newly married, his fifth child on the way, his team on a rare roll, you almost could not bear to ruin Shaq's Shangri-La world ..." And here, from Clyde Haberman's column: "Mr. Dixon, 27, is your basic straight arrow, a Navy veteran who works two jobs as a computer specialist to provide for his girlfriend and their two small children." I'll leave it to you to judge whether marriage buffs are insightful, or a little nuts. THE AGE OF UNWED MOTHERS: Is teen pregnancy the problem? An article on teen pregnancy features a photo of a young, pretty, pregnant blonde girl in jeans. The caption: Shaeleen Johnston is glad she waited until her 20s before deciding to have a child. She is expecting a son in March.One can reasonably infer that she's not married. Would a teen pregnancy prevention program actually consider this a success story? If so, that program is a failure. The problems that accompany young unwed childbearing don't disappear when a girl turns 20. COHABITATION AND CHILD ABUSE: Children are at a higher risk for maltreatment when they don�t live with their biological, married parents. The risk is particularly high when an unmarried mother cohabits with a boyfriend. Those facts have led a state representative in Iowa to propose a law that would cause single parents to lose custody of their children if a boyfriend or girlfriend moves in. Raising awareness about these dangers for children is one thing; this proposed law is another: Stephen Scott, executive director of Prevent Child Abuse Iowa, said there's no question a child is in a riskier situation with a live-in paramour. � "The concern always about laws is when they are over-inclusive," Scott said. "The problem here is it just sweeps too broadly." I'm against adultery as much as the next person, but Joseph Farah essentially argues that murder is an acceptable response. Yikes. Thursday, February 06, 2003
HIP MAMA: The girlMom site (below) makes more sense after I found out it was created by HipMama, a website that features articles like "I Was A Teenage Transsexual Super Mom." The site is actually kind of fun to read, because the Hip Mamas try so hard to be rebellious and shocking. My favorite article was "Exploding the Daddy Myth." Choice excerpts: I wanted a child, not a marriage, and it was plain to me that motherhood offered a satisfaction and meaning in life that being a wife, per se, could hardly hold a candle to. � If there were going to be men in my daughter's life (and as it turns out, there are) �they would be connected to her through unlicensed love and commitment, not blood and/or a wedding band, which I find highly unreliable.As if unlicensed love and commitment are highly reliable. The author of this piece even criticizes On Our Own, a book that defends single motherhood, for not paying attention to Hip Mamas like herself: What blew my mind was that my impudence, my rebellion was nowhere in Ludke's 450-page book. ... [W]hy wasn't there one example of the "I-don't-give-a-sh*t-about-Daddy" Mommy? � Where were the activists, the commune-makers, the tribe-reclaimers?Her anger is understandable, if her prose is not (tribe-reclaimers?). How can she shock stuffy bourgeois sensibilities if nobody pays attention to her? She also insists that fathers are completely irrelevant. Kids do not want dads! The problem lies with moms who aren't self-actualized: Children are not born asking for "daddy," nor do they have any idea what daddyness means to their mother except through her own expressions. And, it is the mother's dreams or wishes for a daddy-figure for herself, not her kid, that are going to make an impression on her young ones. ... When you start fretting, "My child needs a father!" you need to get a grip and realize you are speaking for yourself. So go find someone�get the support and comfort you need instead of ragging on your kid as if they were incomplete. ... But you can't expect to stick some male figure in the room and expect a magical masculine euphoria. Don't introduce your kids to their absentee birth father and expect that they are going to "relate." Don't look for boyfriends who you think are "father material." Look for lovers who can love and take care of you, the Mommy.She�s right that you can�t stick some male figure in the room and expect the problems of father absence to disappear. Our culture too readily believes in magical �father figures.� But her utter selfishness�brushing aside the concerns of kids who say they want fathers�is appalling. I suppose it�s fitting that this Hip Mama's latest book is How to Write a Dirty Story. GIRLMOM.COM: This site for teen moms says it "in no way encourages teen pregnancy." But these statements are a bit problematic: Teenage pregnancy is not a "crisis" or "epidemic," like so many people would like us to believe. The only true epidemic associated with teen pregnancy is the overwhelming and universal lack of support available to young mothers. The only true crisis is the denial of the fact that teenage girls can be, are, and always have been, both sexual and maternal beings, with the capacity to love, procreate, and nurture. FOR ALL YOU TEENYBOPPERS OUT THERE: Avril Lavigne (an anti-Britney who, like, totally rocks!) sings about wanting to get married in her catchy song, �Things I�ll Never Say.� You can listen to a clip here. THE MIND OF A SINGLE MAN: Drawing upon the work of the National Marriage Project, the San Francisco Chronicle has a long article on single men and their attitudes toward commitment. Wednesday, February 05, 2003
"New research shows that girls may be more likely to develop eating disorders if they usually eat alone or if their parents are not married." FROM THE FEB 4 TALLAHASSEE DEMOCRAT: "Marriage Week USA - which starts Friday and ends on Valentines Day - celebrates the importance of marriages to our communities. In Florida, the Commission on Responsible Fatherhood will issue a white paper on Valentine's Day demonstrating the way healthy marriages benefit spouses and children. In Tallahassee, Florida State University is offering a free premarital workshop, and Live the Life Ministries is hosting a Sweetheart Banquet honoring couples who've been married 30 years or more." (Thanks to Diane Sollee.) "According to Ofsted chief David Bell, most schools have some pupils with no social skills, whose language is 'offensive' and who have 'little or no understanding of how to behave sensibly.'" I know that's it's almost always wrong even to imply that a complex social problem is reducible to one cause. But having said that, I'd give a lot to know the empirical correlation between one-parent homes and the students that he is describing. TODAY'S NYT'S ON THE KAISER TV STUDY: "'Fastlane,' is on at 8 p.m. and 'Millionaire' at 9, but then again, the family hour has grown more permissive over the past few years." THE M-WORD: In West Virginia, some schools had a program to promote tolerance and reduce bullying. To help gay students feel more comfortable, the program manual encouraged teachers to use the term "permanent relationship" instead of "marriage." That's absurd. Who thinks gay students actually take offense at the word "marriage"? I don't doubt that many gay students face harassment at school. But it seems to me that the real problem is bigoted bullies, not "marriage." Tuesday, February 04, 2003
"Sex on television is heating up, but more TV programs are including the risks and responsibilities of sexual behavior, a study released Tuesday found. The percentage of shows depicting or implying sexual intercourse rose from 10 percent two years ago to 14 percent in the 2001-02 season, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation study. The rate was even higher for the 20 top shows among teenage viewers: 20 percent of those programs included implied or depicted intercourse, the study found." FATHERING MOTIVATION: Given that a father�s commitment to his children is often mediated by his commitment to their mother, the Hofferth and Anderson study includes a counterintuitive finding: cohabiting biological fathers rated slightly higher on �fathering motivation� than married biological fathers (though the difference was not statistically significant). This was despite the fact that married bio dads reported more involvement and paternal warmth than the cohabiting bio dads. I think the explanation lies with a flawed definition of �fathering motivation.� The researchers measured �fathering motivation� as the extent to which men agreed with statements such as �A father should be as heavily involved in the care of his child as the mother,� and �In general, fathers and mothers are equally good at meeting their children�s needs.� But those statements may reflect gender role ideology more than fathering motivation. For example, a father with more traditional attitudes may be highly motivated to provide economically for his children, yet disagree that moms and dads are interchangeable and should be involved in equal amounts and equal ways. In this study, he�d appear less motivated as a father. Since cohabiting men tend to have less traditional attitudes about gender, it�s not surprising that they would strongly agree with such statements, leading to a higher �fathering motivation� score. Brad Wilcox could probably say something more about this. VERSUS: The Hofferth and Anderson study frames the issue as �biology versus marriage.� Why �versus�? Conceptualizing the issue this way is similar to studies that pit �family structure vs. family process.� Yet "structure" and "process" are *not* in opposition to each other; often they are causally related. Even if marriage and biology have independent effects, why not just explain how they both play a role, if that is what the research suggests? In fact, though the press release says, "When it comes to quality fathering, it is marriage, not biology, that separates the men from the boys," the study itself indicates that biology does play a significant role. Within stepfamilies, stepfathers who also have biological children within that family (a �blended family,� by their definition) are more likely to be involved with stepchildren than stepfathers who don�t have any biological kids in that family. This is not surprising; the authors note that �the presence of a biological child may make differential treatment of a stepchild obvious and normatively unacceptable." And regardless of marital status, biological fathers tended to report more warmth toward children than stepfathers or cohabiting boyfriends. Therefore, biology also matters. This isn't Bud Bowl, where only one side can win. It's more like the false dichotomy highlighted in Miller Lite ads: Tastes great! Less filling! Tastes great! Less filling! People, people! There's no need to fight. PER SE: Certain social scientists, upset that their findings show that family structure is linked to child well-being, resort to the assertion that "family structure (or marital status, divorce, or father absence) per se" does not matter. That's why this line from Sandra Hofferth and Kermyt Anderson's new study, "Are All Dads Equal? Biology Versus Marriage as a Basis for Paternal Investment," is so refreshing: In this research we found evidence to support the view that marriage per se confers advantage in terms of father involvement above and beyond the characteristics of the fathers themselves.... Rupert Murdoch, age 71, is expecting his sixth child, which will also be his second child with his third wife. BETTINA ARNDT ON RECENT CHILD CARE STUDIES: "Recently, some Australian researchers decided to measure these shared learning experiences - known as 'joint attention sequences' - for babies in child care. At the Australian Institute of Family Studies conference on February 12, one of these researchers, Berenice Nyland at RMIT, will spell out her findings for these infants." LETTER IN TODAY'S WAPO: "But too many parents seem willing to forfeit the job of character-building to the prevailing culture, to other people or to the children themselves. The result is character orphans being raised with music-video morality and sitcom sensibilities." Monday, February 03, 2003
MARRIAGE AND TAXES (CONT.): Responding to my piece on the marriage penalty in the tax code, Bob Patterson of the Heritage Foundation has an interesting proposal: "All existing IRAs are strictly 'individual.' A married couple cannot open a joint IRA as they can with a conventional savings, brokerage, or checking account. This should be corrected. If we are going to treat married couples as a true partnership under the tax code, then we need to allow them to treat their savings (tax-sheltered or not) as a single unit as well. In this regard, the new Treasury proposals -- which seek to consolidate the various tax-sheltered savings instruments into three simple plans -- might be an opportunity as well to permit such 'joint accounts' for married couples." I think that's a new idea, and to my mind, a good one. IN A GOOD MARRIAGE, WOUNDS HEAL FASTER, LITERALLY: "There's growing evidence that the quality of marriage is related to health," said Dr. Janice Kiecolt-Glaser, director of health psychology in Ohio State's College of Medicine and Public Health. "The question is, how? If you have a good marriage, do you sleep better? Eat better? Probably so. But what we're finding is that the quality of interaction shows in the way the body responds through stress hormones and immune function." Healthy marriages are, well, healthy. Conversely, the Ohio State team finds that experiences as marital fighting "can weaken immunity, with consequences that include reducing the effectiveness of proven vaccinations and slowing the rate of wound healing." The team also finds that the best predictors of divorce are not what the spouses say about the quality of their marriage, but rather changes in hormone levels apparently connected to marital stress. A FOUR-DAY WORKWEEK FOR YOUNG PARENTS?": "Parti Qu�b�cois Leader Bernard Landry is offering young families a four-day workweek as part of a pre-election package ... The plan would require businesses to offer parents unpaid workdays to allow them to spend more time with their children. Mr. Landry said the measure would cost businesses $100-million a year but would be more than offset by promised corporate tax reductions." Jane Fonda has withdrawn her $12.5-million donation to Harvard University's graduate school of education, "derailing plans to establish a research centre to study gender in education." CHILD POVERTY IN BRITAIN: "These are the facts: the number of children living in poverty (defined as households with less than 60% of median income) has fallen by half a million since 1997 and now stands at four million. Good progress? Well, it's certainly a reversal of a trend of annually increasing child poverty rates that started in the 1980s and led to Britain having one of the highest child poverty rates in the western world by the early 90s. But since the early 90s, the story is more ambiguous. A steady decline in child poverty between 1992/3 and 1995/6 was interrupted by a sharp increase in 1996/7, and has continued to fall. So the real story is that, since 1990, child poverty has remained roughly constant, the current rate being about the same as it was 6 years ago." But there's a twist. Because the British define poverty status in relationship to median income, when median income rises rapidly, as it did in the late 1990s, poverty (since poor people depend disproportionately on government benefits) can as a result remain steady or even increase. Conversely, poverty can decline during a recession, since government benefits may hold firmer than median incomes. Thus: "... paradoxically, the fall in poverty during the Major years was relatively easy to achieve because of the economic failure of the early 1990s, while the Blair government has found it much harder to reduce poverty because they have managed to maintain strong economic growth." It seems that this is an obviously distorting factor in the discussion of child poverty. MARRIAGE MATTERS: Headline:"Are All Dads Equal? New Findings About Fathers - Marriage Counts" When it comes to quality fathering, it is marriage, not biology, that separates the men from the boys, according to a new University of Maryland study.A pdf file of the paper is available here. Sunday, February 02, 2003
FILM: From a review in Sunday's WaPo by Robert Manne: "'Rabbit-Proof Fence' is far from being propaganda. Rather, this simple story of the seizure and escape of three young half-caste girls is a sober, historically accurate account of the racial fantasies and phobias, as well as the frankly genocidal thoughts, that masqueraded as policies promoting Aboriginal 'welfare' in Australia's interwar years." MARRIAGE GATHERING: The entire Smart Marriages conference program for June 26-29, 2003, in Reno, is now posted on its web site. |
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
