Archives: Marriage

Bill Dobbs at today’s NYT Room for Debate:

Far from being radical, a vote for same-sex marriage is a vote for marriage. The only safer act for a politician is kissing a baby.

Marriage Media
Week of April 2, 2011
Courtesy of Bill Coffin

1. How to Maintain a Healthy Marriage (in Good Times and Bad), heallovebe

A reporter asked the couple, “How did you manage to stay together for 65 years?” The woman replied,” We were born in a time when if something was broken we would fix it, not throw it away. . .”

2. Defining the Relationship, The Quinnipiac Chronicle

A study done by the Institute for American Values’ 16-member Courtship Research Team, which surveyed 1,000 college-aged women nationally over an 18-month period, agrees.

“Because they can hang out or hook up with a guy over a period of time and still not know if they are a couple, women often initiate ‘the talk’ in which they ask, ‘Are we committed or not?’ When she asks, he decides,” the study says.

3. The Myth of the Disappearing Middle Class, The Washington Post

[A]dults who graduated from at least high school, had a job, and were both at least age 21 and married before having children had about a 2 percent chance of living in poverty and a better than 70 percent chance of making the middle class — defined as $65,000 or more in household income. People who did not meet any of these factors had a 77 percent chance of living in poverty and a 4 percent chance of making the middle class (or higher).

4. Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010, Heritage Foundation

Drawing on five decades of statistics and research, Coming Apart demonstrates that a new upper class and a new lower class have diverged so far in core behaviors and values that they barely recognize their underlying American kinship – divergence that has nothing to do with income inequality and that has grown during good economic times and bad.

5. Taking Mystery out of Marriage, The Houston Chronicle

During a fight, for example, it is not a good idea to stretch out the talking points or to deliver them with extra-special emphasis. “One of the counterintuitive rules in the midst of an argument is to say it shorter and to dial down the volume and intensity,” Lerner says. “Make your point in three sentences or less.”

In that spirit, Lerner shares some of her favorite tips: [10 Points]. 10. Go small. Pick one or two rules and work on them for three months. That’s how long it really takes to change your behavior.

6. Can Women Raise Boys to be Men?, Queens Chronicle

Opening the discussion for the opposition, clinical social worker Rodney Pride, who serves as vice president of youth development at United Black Men of Queens, said, “Eight out of 10 boys are without a positive male role model in their families and that ain’t good. So many boys are walking around with a level of anger.”

7. Disadvantaged Families and Child Outcomes: The Importance of Emotional Support for Mothers, Child Trends

Raising children is a challenge for parents from all walks of life. However, parents who experience social and economic disadvantages face particular challenges in trying to meet the needs of their children. Some of these parents have support in rearing their children, but many do not. This Research Brief takes a close look at the link between the emotional support that mothers receive—or do not receive—in raising their children and their children’s development.

For more, see here.

We have an opinion piece in today’s Raleigh News and Observer:

If you want to create a backlash against mother-father marriage – if you want to convince people that the real agenda of marriage advocates is not protecting marriage, but ignoring and ostracizing gay people – then this amendment might be to your liking. But we believe that the cause of marriage is hurt, not helped, by gratuitously linking it to the cause of never under any circumstances helping gay and lesbian couples.

Marriage Media
Week of March 26, 2011
Courtesy of Bill Coffin

1. Couples Who Argue Together Stay Together, Chicago Tribune

The study does come with a couple of caveats, Doherty said: First, nobody is recommending that you put down the newspaper and pick a fight with your spouse. Also remember that there’s a difference between “good fighting” and “bad fighting,” and the latter can be as destructive as the former is beneficial. “Research has shown that a soft start-up is the best way,” Doherty said. . .

2. The Gray Divorcés, Wall Street Journal

Most sociologists argue that boomers entered marriage with expectations very different from those of previous generations. “In the 1970s, there was, for the first time, a focus on marriage needing to make individuals happy, rather than on how well each individual fulfilled their marital roles,” says Prof. Brown, author of the gray marriage paper.

3. David Quinn: Rising Divorce Rate No Help to Any Society, Independent.ie

He added: “It’s just my experience. I don’t have that paragon of married life to look at and think, ‘Oh yeah, that’s it! That’s what I want!”. . . This is also one reason why cohabitation has become so widespread in Western societies, including Ireland. But this is not something we can be sanguine about, especially when children are involved. Research such as the British Millennium Cohort Study shows that cohabiting parents are more than twice as likely to break up as married parents.

4. FamilyFact of the Week: Headlines Mask Cohabitation’s Continued Risks, Heritage Foundation

However, children born to cohabiting parents do not receive the same benefits as those born to married parents. And they don’t fare much better financially than children in single-parent homes, meaning they are about five times as likely to be poor as their peers in married-parent homes. Additionally, because cohabitation relationships are more likely to dissolve, children are at an increased risk of experiencing parental breakup and the variety of negative outcomes associated with it.

5. Twenty-Six Years Later, What Happened to the “Marriage Crunch” Generation of Women?, Think Big

The June 2, 1986 cover of Newsweek magazine cover carried the headline “The Marriage Crunch: If you are a single woman here are your chances of ever getting married.”. . .

By 2010, 75% of college-educated women who were exactly 30 years old and single in 1986 had married at some point in the intervening 24 years. 69% of women who were exactly 35 and single in 1986 married their Prince Charming and even the old maids, the women who were 40 at the time that Newsweek made these dire predictions, were more likely than not to marry before their 65th birthdays – 68% married.

6. Mitch Pearlstein: Connecting Family and Achievement Gap, MinnPost

In “From Family Collapse to America’s Decline: The Educational, Economic, and Social Costs of Family Fragmentation,” Pearlstein argues that the U.S. achievement gap will not be solved by educational reforms but by policies that reduce the number of children growing up outside of the marriages of their biological parents.

The book, according  to its introduction, “connects dots that have never been adequately connected before: family fragmentation…[ellipses in the original] how that leads to educational weakness…how that, in turn, leads to economic weakness…how that results in a loss of U.S. economic competitiveness…and how they all lead to growing and very disturbing class cleavages.”

7. The Administration for Children and Families Presents the Strengthening Families Evidence Review, US Department of Health and Human Services

To provide information to people and organizations interested in supporting and operating responsible fatherhood programs, the Office of Planning, Research, and Evaluation of the Administration for Children and Families, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), contracted with Mathematica Policy Research to conduct a systematic review of research on programs serving low-income fathers.

For more, see here.

[This post is adapted from a comment I wrote a couple of months ago.]

In comments to an earlier post, Elizabeth wrote:

And, if not, if we finally strip away every last social and legal norm and channeling mechanism that tries to say that heterosexuals should try *really* hard to be responsible for the new life their sexual unions often produce — and often unintentionally produce — then what do you propose to do with all those children whose parents we have now freed from obligation? Leave the children all to be raised by their mothers alone, trusting that something special in women makes them generally stick by their kids? Give them all to nice gay couples to raise instead? What?

If we define — in law and social norms — marriage as something that has nothing to do, at its core (yes Fannie there’s that word again), with trying to channel the frequently procreative effects of heterosexual sexuality, then what do we do about the resulting mess?

I don’t think we should “strip away every last social and legal norm and channeling mechanism that tries to say that heterosexuals should try *really* hard to be responsible for the new life their sexual unions often produce.”

However, it’s not the case that “stripping away every last norm” and “legally recognizing same-sex marriage” are the same thing.

The most rational-seeming of the arguments against same-sex marriage is that marriage equality, in some difficult-to-describe way, marginally erodes the commitment of heterosexual parents to raising their own children. This gives opponents of equality a plausible explanation for why the sky has not fallen on families in Massachusetts; the negative impact is real, but it’s not visible because it’s too small and gradual. Or the negative impact is real, but is swamped by other, more positive factors (such as Massachusetts’ relatively low divorce rate).

But Elizabeth’s argument suggests that the impact of marriage equality is not marginal, but catastrophic. But if that’s the case, then why hasn’t the sky fallen in Massachusetts? If “every last social and legal norm” has been stripped away in Massachusetts, shouldn’t we be able to measure that in some concrete way? More single motherhood, more divorce, more something?

Here’s the problem for opponents of equality. If their claim is that the impact of marriage equality will be catastrophic, then their view is already been disproven by events. Family formation has not catastrophically crashed in areas with marriage equality.

But if their claim is that the impact of marriage equality is impossible to measure because it is small, gradual, and swamped by other factors, then in fairness to lgbt people, they should stop opposing marriage equality.

Read More

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

1. CDC: Only Half of First Marriages Last 20 Years, MSNBC

Even though Americans are marrying older, the divorce rate has remained high, a new government report shows. . . Among women there was just a 52 percent chance that a first marriage would survive for 20 years, according to the report from the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics. Men appeared to be slightly more successful, with a 56 percent chance. . .

2. Nearly 40% of Women Today Have Never Been Married, USA Today

The data, out today from the National Center for Health Statistics, are based on 22,682 in-person interviews from 2006 to 2010 with men and women (not couples) ages 15 to 44. Among the 12,279 women studied, the percentage of never-marrieds rose to 38% from 33% in 1995.

3. Wedding Bells Still Chime, New York Times

The story, Mr. Cherlin said, is more about postponement than abandonment. Marriage has declined precipitously among young women, both college graduates and women with less education. But most women do eventually marry. According to the report, 82 percent of women who ended their formal education after graduating from high school will marry by the age of 40. Among women with a college degree the figure is 89 percent.

4. College Degree, Religious Faith Help Marriages ‘Survive’ to 20th Year, Washington Times

America’s marriage culture may be changing, but two statistics look about the same as they did 30 years ago:

• By the time women reach age 40, about eight in 10 will have married for the first time, just as they did in the 1980s.
• And 20 years later, only 52 percent of these wives will still be married – also about the same as before.

5. How Threat Emotions Cause Us To Misread Our Partner, Psychology Today

The function of anxiety and anger is to viscerally warn of a danger so that we take self-protective measures. To succeed at this task, we’re designed to over-estimate threat. The only surefire guarantee that actual risks are never missed is giving ambiguous threats the same credence as definite ones. Better to be safe than sorry. This evolutionary adaptation was vital for survival on the savannah, but it’s another story entirely with our relationships.

6. Iain Duncan Smith Promises to ‘Champion’ Families and Marriage, BBC

Work and pensions secretary Iain Duncan Smith said policy had “cloaked neglect of the family under the veil of neutrality”. . . The government’s Social Justice: Transforming Lives report promises to reverse the “couple penalty in the welfare system” and provide relationship support “acting early to keep families together”.

7. The Christian Divorce Rate Myth, Crosswalk

“Whether young or old, male or female, low-income or not, those who said that they were more religious reported higher average levels of commitment to their partners, higher levels of marital satisfaction, less thinking and talking about divorce and lower levels of negative interaction. These patterns held true when controlling for such important variables as income, education, and age at first marriage.”

For more, see this site.

From the Associated Press:

The leading national organization opposing same-sex marriage has sought to split the Democratic Party base by pitting African-Americans and Hispanics against gay-rights groups, according to confidential strategy memos made public by court officials in Maine. [...]

The documents, dating from 2009, were written by the National Organization for Marriage and had been kept from the public until Monday, when they were unsealed by court officials in Maine.

The Human Rights Campaign has posted the released NOM documents. One passage from NOM’s strategy document:

The strategic goal of this project is to drive a wedge between gays and blacks—two key Democratic constituencies. Find, equip, energize and connect African American spokespeople for marriage; develop a media campaign around their objections to gay marriage as a civil right; provoke the gay marriage base into responding by denouncing these spokesmen and women as bigots. No politician wants to take up and push an issue that splits the base of the party. Fanning the hostility raised in the wake of Prop 8 is key to raising the costs of pushing gay marriage to its advocates and persuading the movement’s allies that advocates are unacceptably overreaching on this issue.

NOM’s representatives often talk about the value of civil discourse, and in particular complain about the use of the word “bigot” and the hostility of Proposition 8 opponents.

In light of these documents, I think we have to seriously doubt NOM’s sincerity. In fact, it’s impossible to believe that NOM has ever for a moment desired civil disagreement. NOM deliberately provokes lgbt people into anger, in order to denounce those who they succeed in provoking. I cannot imagine a clearer example of hypocrisy.

If you genuinely want civil disagreement, then you don’t deliberately “[fan] the hostility” in your opponents. If you genuinely want pro-SSM folks to stop using the word “bigot,” then you don’t “provoke the gay marriage base into” calling others “bigots.”

Maggie, if you’re reading, could you please address this? How could you call for civil disagreement, while secretly plotting to fan hostility? Am I mistaken to see that as cynical and hypocritical?

* * *

Although there’s nothing wrong with NOM seeking Black allies and supporters, there’s something ugly about the way NOM wants to “drive a wedge between gays and blacks.”

I’ve complained in the past that marriage equality opponents consider lgbt people instrumentally, rather than as people. Thus, opponents of marriage equality say that they oppose SSM in order to “send a message” about mothers and fathers, or to incrementally support a “marriage culture,” but they very rarely have concern for the well-being of the lgbt people whose families are being treated as post-it notes.

NOM’s attitude towards African-Americans seems similar. Black people are desired as fronts, not as partners. For example, despite the centrality of African-Americans to their strategy, NOM’s strategy doesn’t include recruiting Black people to decision-making positions within NOM. (Check out the faces here and here, to see what I mean.) Why not?

Did NOM ask, is a bunch of white folks provoking a fight between lgbt people (some of who are Black) and the Black community (some of whom are gay) really what’s best for the Black community? Did they worry about their “wedge” being “driven” right through the families of Black lgbt people? It doesn’t seem to have occurred to them.

* * *

Speaking of trying to drive a wedge into families, the strategy document also proposed paying $50,000 for a staff member to work full-time trying to “identify children of gay parents willing to speak on camera” on NOM’s behalf. Politics doesn’t get any uglier than that.

As Miranda at Right Wing Watch points out, if NOM really did this, “it seems that a year’s worth of full-time work didn’t turn up a single child of gay parents who was willing to be portrayed as a ‘victim’ of marriage equality.”

* * *

If you want to follow this issue in more detail, the blog “Good As You” has been all over it. NOM’s response has so far been limited to a single “some of our best friends are non-white” post.

Says Josh Kraushaar in the National Journal:

Young voters are the driving force behind making gay marriage politically acceptable. But black voters, despite their overwhelming support for the president, are among the leading opponents of gay marriage … The conventional wisdom has been that supporting gay marriage would alienate blue-collar whites, and that’s been the main reason he’s [Pres. Obama has] been hesitant to come out in favor before the general election.  But in this case, it’s a crucial element of his own base that’s preventing the president from taking bolder steps to advance a cause that he seems to believe in, but hasn’t publicly embraced.

I don’t know whether this analysis is right.  But the buzz is, that there is at least some serious discussion of the president endorsing gay marriage prior to the election. 

I’m sure that there are plenty of historical examples of a president, for political reasons, declining publicly to support a position that he in fact appears to hold, but personally, and as an Obama supporter, I can’t help but notice the irony.  From the vantage point of the elite (and increasingly, mainstream) public debate, if your public position is yes to civil unions but no to gay marriage, yet you don’t really mean it, it’s not perfect but it’s OK.  But if you say it and actually mean it, it’s an entirely different story.