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Friday, June 27, 2003
Blogging will be light, because I'm in Reno at the SmartMarriages conference. Wade Horn gave the opening speech last night. In the Q and A afterwards, a few people wanted to press Wade on issues not directly related to the Healthy Marriage Initiative. For example, one guy reference the Supreme Court's decision to strike down sodomy laws as something about allowing "crimes against nature" (which--naturally--I found quite offensive). But then others asked Wade to support universal health care, universal child care, affirmative action, and to take on corporations. At first I was slightly annoyed that people asked questions so unrelated to the topic at hand, but I suppose it just reflects the diversity of the marriage movement--from a guy who calls certain types of intimacy between 2 consenting adults "crimes against nature" to the guy wearing the "Bush Is a Weapon of Mass Destruction" button. Wednesday, June 25, 2003
FROM AUSTRALIA: More on the Howard government's growing interest in fathers' rights and joint custody. MATERNAL FEMINISM (CONT.): Maggie Gallagher on the recent increase in the number of mothers at home with children. Tuesday, June 24, 2003
IMPORTANT FINDINGS: Really interesting new research brief, Barriers to Marriage Among Fragile Families, from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study. Among the low-income, unmarried couples in their study, they estimate that about one-third are "marriageable"; about one-third are potentially marriageable, yet facing serious problems such as the father not working or mental health problems or substance abuse; and about one-third are not marriageable, due to either the couple no longer being romantically involved or the presence of domestic violence. To me, these are very important findings. (Have they been widely reported? If so, I've missed it.) They do not support the view that marriage is an all-purpose panacea for low-income parents and children, and they do not support the view that marriage promotion in low-income neighborhoods is a waste of time and effort. They DO support the view that careful, targeted marriage promotion as a part of TANF re-authorization could improve the lives of a significant number of low-income parents and children. Important stuff. In The American Prospect, E.J. Graff wonders at some length why the U.S. is so "backward," compared to many other countries, on the issue of legal recognition for same-sex couples. Her self-righteous tone -- her whole style says, "only a moron or a Baptist could fail to agree with every point I make" -- is pretty hard to take, but she does have a lot of interesting information about what's happening in other countries. And she also writes: In the 1970s, as different-sex couples started shacking up in massive numbers, Canada, Australia and New Zealand decided to make marriage automatic -- lest women get exploited, tossed aside and land on the dole. No need to sign in: Should you and your honey dally more than a few months at the same address, the state automatically treats you as married, with or without your consent. Amazing to me how she is apparently willing to toss aside, without so much as a backward glance, the venerable idea that part of the very definition of marriage, part of its essence, is that it is a relationship entered into freely, deliberately, and voluntarily. Graff seems perfectly content to let the state effectively "marry" couples without their knowledge or consent. DON'T SHORTCHANGE YOURSELF: "Divorcing couples who ignore the changes in tax law ''are shortchanging themselves,'' says Bruce Richman, a partner with accounting firm BDO Seidman and author of Guide to Tax and Financial Issues in Divorce." FROM KOREA: Even without an increasing divorce rate, the road to marriage is by no means smooth in Korea. Traditionally, Koreans tend to perceive marriage as a family business, not as a personal affair between the bride and the groom. That is why parental approval is indispensable for a marriage, and why people want to consider so many things before they reach the final decision, such as the spouse's family background, social status, income, education and so on. No wonder Koreans are amazed by some "innocent" Americans who without hesitation marry a divorcee with one or two children from a previous marriage when he falls in love with her. Koreans are even more amazed by the fact that quite a few Americans spend as little as $500 for their wedding, whereas many Koreans are known to spend approximately $50,000 for their children's wedding. MIDNIGHT THOUGHTS OF A MARRIAGE BUFF: I was just thinking that so many of the academics that rank among the most vocal critics of the marriage movement are based on the West Coast: Judith Stacey (USC), Scott Coltrane (University of California, Riverside), Stephanie Coontz (Evergreen State College, in Washington), Philip Cowan (Berkeley), Carolyn Pape Cowan (Berkeley), Arlene Skolnick (Berkeley), Pepper Schwartz (U of Washington), Constance Ahrons (USC). It�s remarkable, really. Monday, June 23, 2003
President Bush's about-face on funding for AmeriCorps (pledged to expand the program by 50%; actually cutting the program by 80%) strikes me as an awful decision for our civil society. Newsweek's Jonathan Alter explains. FROM AUSTRALIA: The ACTU will launch a legal bid today to allow working parents to take leave during school vacations to relieve pressure on families at Christmas time and other holidays. And the claim has won qualified support from Australia's biggest employer group, which says it will investigate flexible holiday leave if unions consider extending part-time work provisions to such industries as construction. The ACTU also wants the Australian Industrial Relations Commission to extend unpaid parental leave from 12 to 24 months and to give parents the right to convert from full-time to part-time work after the birth of a child. HIDDEN AGENDAS: Critics sometimes accuse the fatherhood and marriage movements of having a hidden agenda. Sure, we say we�re concerned about the well-being of children, but our real agenda is to strengthen patriarchy, promote rigid gender roles, oppose gay rights, destroy the safety net for poor families, and other bad things. Obviously, I don�t think that�s the case, largely because I think strengthening patriarchy, etc., are bad things. (And I think it�s just as unfair when conservatives make sweeping statements about how feminists �hate men� or don�t care about children.) Nevertheless, I�m willing to suggest that radical �family diversity� advocates are somewhat guilty of being sly about their real agenda. For example, take the quote below, about how gay marriage is good not so much as an end in itself, but as a means to breaking down social norms of monogamy and family. Many�probably most�advocates of same-sex marriage strongly oppose that viewpoint. But even those who embrace deconstructing family norms rarely make that explicit argument in the public debate. For example, Dorian Solot of the Alternatives to Marriage Project told the Washington Times that the slippery-slope argument�that gay marriage would lead to group marriage��is flawed.� But Solot, to whom I�m unmarried, is not quoted as saying that the Alternatives to Marriage Project supports polyamory and group marriage. Did the reporter leave that out, or did Solot not offer up her support for polyamory? Solot and her partner, Marshall Miller, express their support for polyamory on a radio show devoted to transgender issues, in an article in the Journal of Bisexuality, and in their book Unmarried to Each Other. Oddly, though, in the glowing profiles of Miller and Solot that regularly appear in mainstream media sources, their support for group marriage doesn�t seem to warrant a mention. Is this because the reporters leave that information out, or because Miller and Solot are selective in discussing their organization�s support for group marriage? STRUCTURE THAT PROCESS!: "People can preach about marriage till they're blue in the face, but kids are going to continue to be raised in a variety of living arrangements, and it's better to identify and encourage the processes that produce healthy kids than to make a fetish out of one particular family structure," said Stephanie Coontz, marriage historian at Evergreen State College in Washington and co-chairwoman of the Council on Contemporary Families.Stephanie Coontz makes this point about "process, not structure" constantly. And pointing out for the umpteenth time why it's misleading probably won't prevent her from saying it again later this afternoon. But, for the record, here goes. As an academic matter, it is wrong to suggest that what counts is something called "process," whereas the best way to treat "family structure" is to, as she puts it, avoid making a fetish of it. It's wrong, in other words, to pit the two influences against one another, as if the influence of "process" served to lessen the influence of "structure." It does not, and this is not one of those questions on which scholars can simply have different opinions. It's a question of whether the scholar is using, or misusing, basic social science methodology. Here (courtesy of Norval Glenn of the University of Texas) is the issue: ... estimating the effect of a variable that intervenes between the independent variable and the dependent variable cannot lessen the estimated effect of the independent variable. For example, estimating that the quality of the parent-child relationship matters cannot disconfirm the thesis that family structure matters, because the latter affects the quality of the parent-child relationship. So when Deborah Salem and her colleagues ... write that �family process plays a more important role than family structure for adolescent development,� they are making a misleading statement regarding the social science evidence on the possible effects of family structure. This type of mistake, though basic, is quite common. KINKY RIGHTS? (see below) If I have to spend the next decade of my adult life listening to other adults demanding 'kinky rights' I am just going to give up and go live in a cave somewhere. DOMESTIC VIOLENCE REVISED: A while back a scholar told me that plenty of studies showed that women initiated a good deal of domestic violence, but that no one was willing to talk about it. Feminists had written a narrative defining men as aggressors and women as pure victims and anyone who departed from the narrative was likely to be pilloried. This article suggests that time is past. Recent studies show that while women are far more likely to be injured during an episode of violence, they often play an active role in the family drama. I think this is one more example that doctrinaire feminism is losing its hold on the culture's understanding of relations between the sexes. In Saturday's NYTs, Peter Steinfels interviews Don Browning, Barbara Whitehead and me on same-sex marriage. KINKY RIGHTS?: I am a huge fan of Andrew Sullivan, but lately I�ve noticed that he has a tendency to accuse some opponents of gay marriage, like Stanley Kurtz, of being "paranoid" and �far-fetched and hysterical.� I�m curious what Sullivan would say about this quote from Sheeri Kritzer of the Bisexual Resource Center (her comments do not represent the BRC's position): Same-sex marriage is great; and I feel that after that battle has won, polyamorists and people who are happy being single will speak out. It's a progression; just like gay rights had to be accepted as real issues before lesbian rights (before bi and trans and kinky rights, blah blah blah). It's how we can subvert the system, USING the system.Now this essentially is the slippery slope argument Kurtz and others make, but coming from someone who *wants* to weaken social norms of monogamy. Maybe Kurtz is a bit alarmist, but he�s not hysterical�he�s simply taking seriously the arguments about the �subversive� nature of gay marriage. Perhaps Sullivan would respond that those who want to subvert marriage are just a radical fringe. Maybe so. But even a radical fringe (whether on the right or the left) can have a disproportionate impact (for better or for worse) on the whole. As readers of his blog know, Sullivan certainly thought responding to the radical anti-war left deserved a great deal of his time, thought, and attention. UPDATE: To be clear, I'm not equating gay rights with "kinky rights," to which Ms. Kritzer refers. I have no idea what "kinky rights" are. UPDATE: People have asked why there's no link to the Kritzer quote. It's from email correspondence, and she explicitly gave me permission to quote her. Also, her views probably don't represent the views of your average same-sex marriage proponent. Sunday, June 22, 2003
WHERE THE FATHERS STAND: A friend visiting tonight told me about the sermon at her liberal mainline church this morning. The pastor preached about missed opportunities, those moments when we could make a real human connection or deepen a relationship, but because of fear or other reasons we choose not to. My friend tells me the sermon was rich and powerful. But the chilling part came at the end. The worst, the pastor said in closing as he walked to the back of the church, was when he performed a wedding, and the father of the bride came in a few minutes late. He took a seat at the back of the church right here, the pastor said, pointing. And he just sat through the ceremony, looking at the bride, wondering, the pastor supposed, if it was too late now to have a relationship with his little girl. Maybe this choked me up because I just went to a wedding yesterday, and spent the afternoon and evening observing this lovely bride in the arms of her family and her new husband. Her father walked her down the aisle, danced the first dance with her, and kept her in the eye of his video camera all evening long. It was her day, but it was her parents' day too, and her father especially seemed to stand about ten feet tall, bursting with generosity and love and pride. REVISIONISM? When I think of books that have done a great deal of damage in the family debates, I think of Carol Stack's PhD-dissertation-turned-book All Our Kin. Released in 1974, the book was an in-depth portrayal of poor, urban, black single-mother families. Stack showed how these mothers relied on extensive kin networks to survive despite intense poverty, and her work was often assumed to have disproven the Moynihan Report's thesis about the negative effects of single-parent families on children and communities. Here is a 1999 description of the book (emphasis added): All Our Kin is an eloquent portrait of the social networks and value systems that evolved within African-American communities to combat grinding poverty. In communities plagued by single-parent families and joblessness, the book chronicles intense loyalties and an intricate trading system that ensures survival. The book challenges white America to reevaluate its notion of family.Plagued by single-parent families? Is that a slip? That almost sounds like Moynihan. FAST FACT: "Dr. Etcoff notes that in one study of married couples, less than one-half of one percent of the women were taller than their husbands." From the NY Times Magazine: General managers aren't shrinks, but they've absorbed enough Dr. Phil to know that some measure of childhood stability is necessary to becoming a productive, law-abiding adult. League rosters may be stuffed with the sons of absent fathers, but entering the league without either parent is pretty much uncharted terrain. Surely, empathetic G.M.'s thought, a kid making the jump straight out of high school is going to be in over his head without his mom. |
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