"SAY GOODBYE TO THE TRADITIONAL FAMILY"? (posted by Eve)

Business Week's cover story, "Unmarried America," gives us another go-round of the argument from despair: Marriage is dying and there's nothing you can do about it. Best to replace it with maternity leave and a "social safety net," the way the Europeans do....

Excerpts:

"Thirty years ago, a single woman like Herskowitz would have been considered
an aberration. An old maid. Today, she's so typical that the highest IQs in
Hollywood and on Wall Street and Madison Avenue are fixated on dreaming up
products for the swelling ranks of unattached urbanites just like her. Add
to these monied romantics a growing number of gay couples such as Luke
Schemmel and Jonathan Shapiro, who are raising two adopted kids; divorced
parents such as Jason Lauer and Terresa Lauer, who share custody of their
7-year-old son; single parents like Mark Cunha, a widower who is raising a
son and daughter alone; and young men like Vincent Ciaccio, who broke his
Italian mother's heart when he got a vasectomy three years ago at the age of
23 because he didn't want to get tied down. Along with the growing numbers
of cohabitants and elderly unmarrieds, these wildly divergent types are the
force behind a huge demographic shift taking place in this country: We're on
the verge of becoming -- at least in the legal sense -- a nation of
singletons. ...

"Certainly, there are scores of reasons to encourage marriage. Social
research suggests that it is one of the republic's great stabilizers. Living
with two happily married parents is the best shot a kid has for a successful
launch in life. Marriage attaches fathers to children and protects
adolescents from the scourges of addiction, suicide, teen pregnancy, and
crime. Matrimony also offers families a layer of economic protection in an
era when demands for individual competence and educational achievement have
never been greater; when even members of the middle-class face slippery job
security, diminishing benefits, and bidding wars for houses in the
ever-dwindling number of good school districts.

"But just because matrimony is good for society doesn't mean that outmoded
social benefits are -- especially when so many kids are not living in the
kinds of traditional households that current social policies favor. As more
and more companies begin to loosen the connection between benefits and
marriage -- and partners who act like they are married are treated as if
they are -- it's likely that there may be even higher rates of cohabitation
and even lower rates of marriage, as has already happened in Europe. The
difference, though, is that European countries have stronger social safety
nets in the form of long, subsidized maternity leave policies; good
part-time jobs for mothers; and tight-knit extended families, who help care
for children born to single parents."
posted by maggie at 3:59 PM VOTE

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