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Friday, September 19, 2003
DEAD SPERM DONORS NOW TRUE FATHERS: Britain has passed legislation allowing the dead fathers of children born from frozen sperm to be named on birth certificates. The move ended a long-running legal battle with a small group of women seeking to have their late partners officially recognised. � PA COURT ABOLISHES COMMON LAW MARRIAGE Tossing aside centuries of tradition, a Pennsylvania appeals court has issued a landmark ruling abolishing common law marriage, saying it is no longer practical for couples to wed without a state license. By a split vote, the Commonwealth Court said the state's practice of recognizing unions sealed by a simple private vow has created an impossible situation for third parties trying to determine whether a person is married or single. � CANADIAN OPPOSITION TRIES AGAIN ON ANTI-GAY MARRIAGE LEGISLATION: The opposition in the Canadian Parliament renewed its attack on gay marriage on Thursday with the introduction of legislation to cement a heterosexual-only definition of matrimony while allowing provinces to provide for same-sex civil unions. MARRIED GAY CANADIAN COUPLE BARRED FROM ENTERING U.S. AS ONE FAMILY: A married gay couple on their way from Canada to a human rights conference in Georgia were not allowed to enter the United States today because the two men insisted on filling out a single Customs clearance form declaring themselves a family. Thursday, September 18, 2003
FROM NORWAY: Prime Minister Kjell Magne Bondevik said his government would be willing to reexamine the controversial new additions to Norway's marriage law, if parliament was agreeable, newspaper VG reports. A unique clause requiring partners to agree that they have equal rights to a divorce has deeply offended the Catholic Church. DIVERSE OPPOSITION: An alliance of African American, Latino, Asian, Jewish, Catholic and Muslim religious leaders lent their support Wednesday to a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage that will soon be introduced in the Senate. UNMARRIED WITH CHILDREN: A front page article by Karen Peterson in today�s USA Today. She writes: About 41% of opposite-sex live-togethers have children younger than 18 in their homes. That means about 4% of the nation's children live in a new and growing family form� Several experts and parents interviewed agreed that cohabiting relationships can work well as parenting arrangements as long as the couple is �stable.� Yet, as Peterson also reports, the break up rate for cohabiting couples is about twice what it is for married couples. How can we, as a society, be so gloomy about the prospects for lasting marriage (think of all the people quoted in news articles who say, essentially, hey, half of marriages end in divorce, so why bother?) yet be so upbeat about an alternative arrangement for kids that is twice as unstable? Wednesday, September 17, 2003
FROM CANADA: "The Canadian government may water down or alter its controversial plan to legalize gay marriage, a senior cabinet minister said on Wednesday after a vote showed Parliament was almost evenly split on the issue." THE FAMILY STRUCTURE TREND: I've been betting, and hoping, that an examination of unpublished Census Bureau data would show that the proportion of U.S. children under age 18 living with their two biological married parents increased between 1996 and 2001. But alas, such is not the case. Ye Luo of the University of Chicago did the research for us, and the results are interesting, but not fantastic. Among all U.S. children, the proportion living with two biological or adoptive married parents actually dipped slightly, from 62.5 percent in 1996 to 61.2 percent in 2001. The proportion of children living in various cohabiting and stepfamily household configurations went up slightly. The proportion living in one-parent homes remained essentially the same. Among African American children, the proportion living in one-parent homes dropped from 54.9 percent to 51.3 percent. Among children living in poor households, the proportion living with their own two biological married parents appears to have increased slightly. Again, based partly on some suggestive earlier studies and partly on hope/intuition, I was banking on much better news. But it seems that the best that we can say is that, for probably the first five year period since the late 1950s or early 1960s, the family strucuture trend, from the perspective of the living arrangements of children, essentially stopped getting worse. Maybe in the NEXT five years we will see -- make happen -- a real turn-around! The tables containing the data I've cited are here. FROM THE BROOKINGS INSTITUTION: The Census Bureau will release new data on poverty and income for 2002 on September 26. Based on figures from the Census Bureau's American Community Survey, released earlier this month, it is widely expected that the 2002 data will reveal some increase in poverty. FROM AUSTRALIA: "Marriage breakdowns may be costing Australian taxpayers at least $3.6 billion a year in social security payments, court and other costs but the long-term social cost is far more damaging, say family study experts." FROM MADELEINE ALBRIGHT'S MEMOIRS: "Joe and I had sat sipping coffee in the comfortable armchairs of our living room a thousand times," she writes. "That morning was different. Joe, just back from an overseas assignment, said we had to talk. Then, without warning, he said: 'This marriage is dead and I am in love with someone else.'" FROM INDIA: "Rajkot police have arrested two people for posing as marriage agents. According to reports, the agents would find brides for young men, but a few days into the marriage, the bride would disappears." FROM UTAH: "Couples who take a premarital class before exchanging rings and saying "I do" would get a break on the marriage license fee under a proposal being considered today by a legislative committee." FROM INDIA: "An Indian man is planning to appeal after a landmark ruling in the Calcutta High Court that he has no right to force his wife to live with his family." FROM JACKSON COUNTY, MICHIGAN: "Jackson County Commissioners passed a resolution "Protecting the Sanctity of Marriage," by a vote of 7 to 3. But critics say it sends a divisive message to the gay community." FROM VIETNAM: "This is but one kind of marriage brokering taking place in Vietnam, where sociologists say women are increasingly marrying foreign men and going abroad to places such as Taiwan." FROM CANADA: "Canada's Parliament today endorsed the government's plan to legalize same-sex marriage, rejecting an opposition attempt to preserve the traditional notion of matrimony. The non-binding vote -- 137 supporting the government and 132 for the opposition -- on the Canadian Alliance party's motion to reaffirm the definition of "marriage as the union of one man and one woman to the exclusion of all others" was symbolic, but it shows how deeply divided this country is over whether marriage should be redefined." Here's today's Toronto Star editorial, "A House Divided." Tuesday, September 16, 2003
From today's Boston Globe, an interesting profile of Ray Hammond, a pastor, medical doctor, and community leader who disagrees with his friend Sen. Edward Kennedy on a constitutional amendment on SSM. THE CANDADIAN OXFORD DICTIONARY'S new definition of marriage will be "The legal or religious union of two people." OK, call me inconsistent. I am a fence-sitter on the SSM issue, wanting rights secured for gay and lesbian couples and their children, and also worried about legally redefining marriage in ways that may have unexpected consequences for the vast majority of children who are not being raised by gay and lesbian parents. But I am stunned that when the SSM issue is not even settled yet in Canada � only just now coming up for debate in Parliament � a Canadian dictionary is already redefining marriage. And look at what a flat definition we end up with, as though the editors are trying to say as little as possible about what marriage is in order to avoid offending anybody at all. Count me among the offended. Marriage is a lot more than a simple legal and/or religious union between two people. Heck, by this definition business partners who�ve signed a contract making them responsible for each other�s financial debts could be considered married. CHILDREN OF DIVORCE AND COLLEGE � One young woman, a child of divorce, I interviewed for my study was the child of a mother of modest means and a father who was very successful (although admittedly financially stretched between several ex-wives and children). She spent summers and holidays every year with her father and felt they were close. This young woman won entry to a prestigious Ivy League university partly because of an application essay the admissions office loved: She wrote that when her parents got divorced her family �didn�t divide, it multiplied.� She wrote glowingly of the beloved stepparents and siblings who would not be in her life, and all the experiences she would not have had, if not for her parents� divorce. Yet, when her dad learned that she planned to go to the Ivy League university, he flipped. He knew he would be responsible for college costs, but he�d been hoping she�d go to the local state university. He took her mother to court and said some incredibly hurtful things in an argument with his daughter. She ended up going to the expensive school, he ended up paying at least part of it, but their relationship was strained for years, even though she followed in his footsteps and entered his prestigious profession (with her maternal grandparents footing the bill for the rest of her education). David is right. The question is not whether policy should treat divorced and married parents differently. The question is whether divorced and married parents act differently. What financially successful, married father would flip out, sue his wife, and accuse his daughter of betraying him because she got into a great university instead of going to the state school down the road? A married father of modest means might shake his head and lay awake at night worrying, but in most cases he would figure out a way, as David said, to pay as much as he could. And balancing his financial worry would be a sense of tremendous pride for what his child had accomplished. Unfortunately, we can�t legislate that. DAVID LETTERMAN IS GOING TO BE A FATHER: "Letterman broke the news to his studio audience that his girlfriend Regina Lasko is pregnant ... The best thing about becoming a father so late in life, he says, is that he'll probably be dead by the time his kid starts making trouble. He says he and Lasko are talking about whether they should get married." FROM BRITAIN: "Fathers 4 Justice is planning more demonstrations over the coming months, but it has refused to reveal the nature of its plans. The pressure group, whose motto is "children need both parents", is determined to keep pressure on the courts to allow fathers and grandparents more access to their children through staging protests in public." P.S. Here's a sympathetic portrait of the fathers rights movement from Barbados. FROM CANADA: Ottawa's proposed same-sex marriage legislation will face its initial political test Tuesday, when MPs vote on a symbolic Opposition motion setting out marriage as the exclusive union of a man and a woman ... The Alliance motion reads: "That, in the opinion of this House, it is necessary, in light of public debate around recent court decisions, to reaffirm that marriage is and should remain the union of one man and one woman to the exclusion of all others, and that Parliament take all necessary steps within the jurisdiction of the Parliament of Canada to preserve this definition of marriage in Canada." "WORK AND MARRIAGE: The Way to End Poverty and Welfare," from the estimable Isabel Sawhill and Ron Haskins of the Brookings Institution. Monday, September 15, 2003
TV REVIEW: "All of Us" is more unusual, a comedy about the pain of a broken marriage. Robert James Sr. (Duane Martin), an entertainment reporter for a Los Angeles television station, is in love with a young, sexy and kind kindergarten teacher, but not yet divorced from the older, less sexy, less kind mother of his son. Some may find the premise refreshing, but it is mostly revisionist: a portrait of the trophy wife as victim. When Tia, the teacher, worries that Robert's wife will use Bobby Jr. to stop his father from signing the final divorce papers, she seeks consolation from her sassy support group at school. "This is war," one of her colleagues tells a distraught Tia (Elise Neal) in the teachers' lounge. "You're fighting with rocks and sticks, and she's got the mother of all bombs: the baby bomb." CHILDREN OF DIVORCE AND PAYING FOR COLLEGE. Very informative AP article on this subject: Alexander Durand was delighted when his daughter earned admission to two of New England's top private colleges. He was furious when a judge ordered him to help pay tuition at the school offering far less financial aid. A married parent would never be subjected to such an order. But New Hampshire, where both Durand and his ex-wife live, is one of a growing minority of states allowing courts to force divorced parents to pay for their children's college costs ... The issue is generating debate nationwide as lawyers, legislators and parents argue over whether the children of divorce - in an era of skyrocketing tuition - deserve legal protections different from the children of intact marriages.To me, to answer the question of whether policy should or should not treat divorced parents differently on this issue, we first have to ask whether, policy issues aside, divorced parents act differently on this issue. And the answer is, yes they do. There are individual exceptions, of course, but here is the rule. The married father is typically quite willing and even eager to pay as much as he can afford, while the divorced noncustodial father tends to think that what he is being asked to pay is too much. A pretty fundamental difference, wouldn't you say? "Women who are in satisfying marriages have a health advantage over unmarried women or those in unsatisfying marriages, according to a study published in the September issue of Health Psychology, a journal of the American Psychological Association (APA). The study, involving middle-aged women over a 13-year period, finds that women in good marriages were less likely to develop risk factors that lead to cardiovascular diseases compared with other middle-aged women." THE CANDADIAN OXFORD DICTIONARY'S new definition of marriage will be "The legal or religious union of two people." (Until recently, the Canadian legal definition of marriage derived from an 1866 court ruling in England, in which Lord Penzance wrote: "I conceive that marriage, as understood in Christendom, may ... be defined as the voluntary union for life of one man and one woman, to the exclusion of all others.") Sunday, September 14, 2003
DOES IT MATTER WHERE YOU LIVE IF YOU'RE DIVORCED? Norval Glenn and David Blankenhorn published an oped last week arguing that a new study, which suggests that children of divorce fare worse if their parents move far apart, was weak and limited. As someone who studies children of divorce, and who is a child of divorce myself, my feeling is that, barring convincing research, I�m not sure that it matters a whole lot one way or the other whether parents live nearby or far apart. Yes, it's hard when parents live on opposite coasts or in different countries. Yes, kids whose parents live within an easy drive of one another may stand a better chance of seeing both of them more. But is there a big difference between one hour and three hours? Or five? In fact, I am increasingly suspicious that it might actually be more stressful for kids when their divorced parents choose to live very close together so that the kids can "see them both as much as they want." I think that puts an awful lot of burden on the kids to make many decisions about when to go see a parent, how long to stay, when to leave, etc. It may be psychologically easier for the parents to live some distance away because it stays their responsibility to work out how the child will get back and forth between them. I remember when I was nine years old and my mom and stepdad split. My stepdad moved into an apartment that was near my school, which was a few miles from my house and I walked there a lot of days. For a while I made a habit of dropping in to visit him some days on my way to or from school. But then I kind of trailed off and eventually he moved much further away. Yet a little part of me has always felt guilty that I didn't go by to see him more when he was close. In contrast, my dad always lived far enough away that it was his and my mom's responsibility to work out when I would see him. I didn't feel guilty for not seeing my dad enough because I knew, and I knew that they knew, that I had no control over it. In some ways I think the supposed benefits of "living within an hour's drive of one another" is just another good divorce wishful fantasy. What matters is not where the divorced parents live, what matters is that they are divorced. One home becomes two and each becomes an increasingly different world. Even if they move into separate houses and share a backyard the child's life is forever different. Now it becomes his responsibility to see and visit with his parents, maintaining an inner calculation of equal time, glancing at their faces when he leaves to see if they're sad to see him go, and all the rest, while children of married parents can just *be*. They live in their home and see their parents as a matter of course, without having to think about it or plan it. The difference is huge. SOMETIMES SECRETS ARE GOOD: A Guardian columnist on new technologies allowing detailed pictures in the womb of unborn baby smiling, crying, yawning, and more: Doctors will claim that they represent an increase in human knowledge; I see them rather as an aspect of human hubris, an infinite desire to control. While poor babies around the world crave life's basics, ours will be able to show their first digital smile to posterity. "Starting Monday, the cable channel that thrives on dating and wedding stories is going to fill the moment in between with its new show, "The Perfect Proposal," in which cameras will capture the wondrous moments of two people as they agree to forsake all others." |
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