A NEW CASE FOR GAY AND STRAIGHT MARRIAGE: Maggie congratulates

Jonathan, it is always exciting to be present at the conception of a book, congratulations and I look forward to reading your latest.

As to your question "what is the evidence marriage itself matters," of course Linda Waite wrote the book on that one and I helped her do it. I assume you are focussing on adult well-being here. The long answer to your question is in The Case for Marriage. The short answer is that of course absent randomized experiments we cannot absolutely prove anything. But the evidence that the intrinsic benefits of marriage (as opposed to the chimerical legal ones) are not mere selection effects are quite strong. The first line of evidence is the numerous attempts by social scientists to control for confounding factors. The second, even stronger line of evidence, are longitudinal studies on say mental health, that have measures of mental health before entering marriage and then follow people as they marry, divorce, stay married or stay single. Plus of course we have strong theoretical reasons to believe that marriage itself changes people's lives in ways that leave them off, from settling down, to adopting longer time horizons, to some of the benefits that come from specialization and exchange.

Look forward to hearing more about your venture. I do note, for the record, that this is what the seventh book making the case for gay marriage (although yours sounds like it is quite original), while there is not a single full-length book making the case against. Wonder why!
posted by maggie at 9:42 PM VOTE

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