Three of life’s major milestones became a little scarcer last year.

The United States birthrate fell again in 2009, according to a report released Friday by the National Center for Health Statistics (PDF).

There were 13.5 births per 1,000 people last year, compared to a rate of 13.9 births per 1,000 people in 2008. In 2007, the rate was 14.3 births. ...

The marriage and divorce rates also fell in 2009. The center estimates that there were 6.8 marriages per 1,000 people in 2009, after a rate of 7.1 and 7.3 marriages per 1,000 people in 2008 and 2007, respectively.

Labels: culture, demographics, divorce, Marriage

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...Yet, according to relationship advice columnist Deborrah Cooper, it is this devout style of belief and attachment to the black church that is keeping black women like Davis -- single and lonely.

Clinging to the gospel

Cooper, a writer for the San Francisco Examiner, recently made claims on her blog SurvivingDating.com that predominantly black protestant churches, such as African Methodists, Pentecostal, and certain denominations of Evangelical and Baptist churches are the main reason black women are single. Cooper, who is black and says she is not strictly religious, argues that rigid beliefs constructed by the black church are blinding black women in their search for love.

In raising the issue, Cooper ignited a public conversation about a topic that is increasingly getting attention in the black community and beyond. Oprah Winfrey, among others, recently hosted a show about single black women and relationships after a Yale University study found that 42 percent of African-American women in the United States were unmarried.

Big Miller Grove Missionary Baptist Church, a predominately African-American Baptist church in Atlanta, is holding a seminar on the question of faith's role in marital status on August 20.

"Black women are interpreting the scriptures too literally. They want a man to which they are 'equally yoked' -- a man that goes to church five times a week and every Sunday just like they do," Cooper said in a recent interview.

"If they meet a black man that is not in church, they are automatically eliminated as a potential suitor. This is just limiting their dating pool."

The traditional structure and dynamics of black churches, mostly led by black men, convey submissive attitudes to women, Cooper says, encouraging them to be patient -- instead of getting up and going after what they want. ...

One of biggest reasons black women are single, Cooper says, is because of a lack of black men in the church. According to the PEW study, "African-American men are significantly more likely than women to be unaffiliated with any religion (16 percent vs. 9 percent). Nearly one-in-five men say they have no formal religious affiliation."

Watkins believes the social structure of the church keeps black men from attending. "Those appealing, high-testosterone guys have a hard time getting into the 'Follow the leader, give me your money, and listen to what I have to say' attitude."

"Many of us have a difficult time submitting to the pastor who is just another man."

The male pastor, Cooper says, is the "alpha male" for many black women. Over-reverence for the pastor - or any religious figure for that matter - creates barriers for the black man, she says, because he feels like he must compete for the No. 1 spot in a black woman's heart. ...

The Rev. Renita J. Weems, a bible scholar who holds a degree in theology from Princeton, strongly disagrees with Cooper about why many black women remain single and says she is reinforcing one message: "It's the black woman's fault." ...

"The reason why black women who go to black churches are not married is because they are looking for certain values in a man," Weems says. "It is not the church that keeps them single, but the simple fact that good values are lacking in some of our men."

Labels: Christianity, culture, Marriage, men, race, religion, women

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Why are so many people in their 20s taking so long to grow up?

This question pops up everywhere, underlying concerns about “failure to launch” and “boomerang kids.” Two new sitcoms feature grown children moving back in with their parents — “$#*! My Dad Says,” starring William Shatner as a divorced curmudgeon whose 20-something son can’t make it on his own as a blogger, and “Big Lake,” in which a financial whiz kid loses his Wall Street job and moves back home to rural Pennsylvania. A cover of The New Yorker last spring picked up on the zeitgeist: a young man hangs up his new Ph.D. in his boyhood bedroom, the cardboard box at his feet signaling his plans to move back home now that he’s officially overqualified for a job. In the doorway stand his parents, their expressions a mix of resignation, worry, annoyance and perplexity: how exactly did this happen?

It’s happening all over, in all sorts of families, not just young people moving back home but also young people taking longer to reach adulthood overall. It’s a development that predates the current economic doldrums, and no one knows yet what the impact will be — on the prospects of the young men and women; on the parents on whom so many of them depend; on society, built on the expectation of an orderly progression in which kids finish school, grow up, start careers, make a family and eventually retire to live on pensions supported by the next crop of kids who finish school, grow up, start careers, make a family and on and on. The traditional cycle seems to have gone off course, as young people remain un­tethered to romantic partners or to permanent homes, going back to school for lack of better options, traveling, avoiding commitments, competing ferociously for unpaid internships or temporary (and often grueling) Teach for America jobs, forestalling the beginning of adult life.

The 20s are a black box, and there is a lot of churning in there. One-third of people in their 20s move to a new residence every year. Forty percent move back home with their parents at least once. They go through an average of seven jobs in their 20s, more job changes than in any other stretch. Two-thirds spend at least some time living with a romantic partner without being married. And marriage occurs later than ever. The median age at first marriage in the early 1970s, when the baby boomers were young, was 21 for women and 23 for men; by 2009 it had climbed to 26 for women and 28 for men, five years in a little more than a generation.

We’re in the thick of what one sociologist calls “the changing timetable for adulthood.” Sociologists traditionally define the “transition to adulthood” as marked by five milestones: completing school, leaving home, becoming financially independent, marrying and having a child. In 1960, 77 percent of women and 65 percent of men had, by the time they reached 30, passed all five milestones. Among 30-year-olds in 2000, according to data from the United States Census Bureau, fewer than half of the women and one-third of the men had done so. A Canadian study reported that a typical 30-year-old in 2001 had completed the same number of milestones as a 25-year-old in the early ’70s.

Labels: culture, Marriage

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Romance isn't dead, it just needs a little cash injection - according to those old romantics known as the Australian Family Association. Late last week, the AFA announced that couples deserved to receive a federally funded ''reward'' for staying married. As AFA vice-president Mary-Louise Fowler put it: ''One innovative idea is the idea of a marriage bonus - if you become married and you remain married for five, 10, 15, 25 years." ...

As those of us bound up in holy matrimony well know, wedded bliss sure can feel like bloody hard work sometimes. But don't just take our word for it. A day after the AFA's suggestion, the Coalition announced that, should it win office, it would provide $200 vouchers for couples to use in marriage or parenting education.

The proposal is billed as a critical response to the "enormous" financial and emotional cost of the "many" marriages dissolving like fairy floss inside a Swedish sauna.

It's true that more than 47,900 divorces were granted in 2007, but what the AFA and the Coalition conveniently leave out is the fact that divorces in this country have been steadily decreasing since 2001, while marriages are actually on the rise. ...

Contrary to what the AFA says on its Facebook page, the "stability, morale, security and prosperity of the Australian nation" is not built solely on the bedrock of marriage. Society also needs justice, understanding and inclusion.

As "Casey" wrote in response to the report last week: "What if I don't want to get married because I am not religious and don't see the point, yet I stay with my partner for 50 years because I am committed to them? Does that mean I contribute less to society and therefore shouldn't be rewarded?"

She makes some good points, but Casey might well have added that until a person's sexual preference no longer dictates whether he or she can legally take the plunge, incentives such as the AFA's marriage bonus must be seen for what they are: disingenuous and discriminatory.

Labels: Australia, committed relationships, divorce, Marriage

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No-fault divorce is now legal in every state, making filing for divorce in America — whether both parties agree or not — simply a matter of getting the proper paperwork.

New York just became the last state to adopt the legislation, passing a bill in early July that was signed into law this week by Governor David Paterson. ...

Robin Fretwell Wilson, an alumni professor at Washington and Lee University School of Law, also noted that no-fault laws erroneously overlook the fact that sometimes, one spouse is at fault:

By bypassing mutual agreement, S3890 would treat nearly all divorces alike. Under current New York law, fault matters in property distribution and alimony only in rare instances, when “so egregious” as to be “a blatant disregard” of the marriage. Beating one’s wife with a barbell until she is unrecognizable would count, but verbally abusing and striking one’s wife and child while intoxicated would not, even if the abuse required a physician’s care. Not all reasons for divorcing are equal. Often someone is at fault and that should matter if the law is to do justice.

...
McManus advocates reforming divorce laws on a state-by-state basis, recommending that states lengthen mandatory separation periods prior to granting divorce and replace no-fault divorce (which he calls “unilateral divorce”) with mutual consent divorce in cases involving children. His goal is reconciliation between spouses whenever possible.

Marriage Savers is one of several groups expressing a surge of concern for the state of marriage in the U.S. Marriage Savers works through “Community Marriage Policies” that establish standards requiring premarital counseling and ongoing marriage-enrichment courses, including conflict resolution and step-family support. According to the Maryland-based nonprofit, once a community gets a significant number of people to sign this type of agreement, the divorce rate drops.

Labels: culture, divorce, divorce reform, Marriage, no-fault divorce

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Labels: culture, Marriage

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Here are some commonplace arguments against gay marriage: Marriage is an ancient institution that has always been defined as the union of one man and one woman, and we meddle with that definition at our peril. Lifelong heterosexual monogamy is natural; gay relationships are not. The nuclear family is the universal, time-tested path to forming families and raising children.

These have been losing arguments for decades now, as the cause of gay marriage has moved from an eccentric- seeming notion to an idea that roughly half the country supports. And they were losing arguments again last week, when California’s Judge Vaughn Walker ruled that laws defining marriage as a heterosexual union are unconstitutional, irrational and unjust.

These arguments have lost because they’re wrong. What we think of as “traditional marriage” is not universal. The default family arrangement in many cultures, modern as well as ancient, has been polygamy, not monogamy. The default mode of child-rearing is often communal, rather than two parents nurturing their biological children.

Nor is lifelong heterosexual monogamy obviously natural in the way that most Americans understand the term. If “natural” is defined to mean “congruent with our biological instincts,” it’s arguably one of the more unnatural arrangements imaginable. In crudely Darwinian terms, it cuts against both the male impulse toward promiscuity and the female interest in mating with the highest-status male available. Hence the historic prevalence of polygamy. And hence many societies’ tolerance for more flexible alternatives, from concubinage and prostitution to temporary arrangements like the “traveler’s marriages” sanctioned in some parts of the Islamic world.

So what are gay marriage’s opponents really defending, if not some universal, biologically inevitable institution? It’s a particular vision of marriage, rooted in a particular tradition, that establishes a particular sexual ideal.

Labels: culture, gay marriage, Marriage

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...To be fair to Mr. Blankenhorn, though he is no expert on same-sex unions, there is a great deal of social-science evidence connecting marriage and the active engagement of two biological parents with child well-being. And there is simply no other way to view the age-old, universal institution of marriage than as rooted in the biological family.

Marriage, like all cultural institutions, evolves; and it may look very different in different cultures. But the institution's common denominator across time and cultures has been its dedication to the offices of reproduction. The great 20th century cultural anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowsky stated that while marriage is as old as human life, it has never been primarily a romantic, or even an economic, bond. It has been principally an arrangement for bearing children.

Over the course of the 20th century, the institution of marriage endured precipitous change. In fact, there remain in Western nations today only very tenuous connections between marriage and parenthood, as we once understood those connections. Thirty-eight percent of American children are now born out of wedlock. A recent Pew analysis of 2008 census data showed that only just over 40% of Americans consider children fundamental to marriage.

The once-critical relationship between sexuality and parenthood also is quickly becoming irrelevant. The explosion of reproductive technologies make it possible for men and women to reproduce regardless of sexual orientation. Finally, gender roles have become so fluid that they strain court decisions on family matters. The courts can no longer rely, as guidelines in family cases, on the once deterministic roles of "husband," "wife," "mother" and "father." ...

They care about marriage precisely because in a culture searching for meaningful symbols, marriage is the veritable symbol of culture. Jonathan Rauch, a leader in the gay-marriage movement, puts it succinctly enough: Gay people want to marry because "marriage is the foundation of civilization."

Labels: David Blankenhorn, gay marriage, Marriage

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Holly Hill knows all about extramarital affairs. After spending a year as a mistress for hire, she wrote the memoir "Sugarbabe" (Side note: If you want to get a book deal, do anything for a year) -- and the pseudonymous author has plenty of wisdom for married women who don't want to discover their spouses have been "hiking" the "Appalachian Trail."

In a polarizing interview with CNN Tuesday, Hill made the case for managed adultery, explaining, "a woman that negotiates infidelity with her partner is far more powerful than a woman who is sitting home wondering why he's late from the office Christmas party," because "it's better to walk the dog on a leash than let it escape through an unseen hole in the back fence." And if you're the sort of person who views your spouse as an easily trained pet, that should work out great.

I'm all for whatever floats anybody's relationship boat -- especially when it involves two people being direct about their own desires. Straying, after all, can take the form of anything from a Spitzer-like hooker situation to a Sanford-esque meeting of the "soul mates." So if two people have very different sexual appetites, being upfront about outsourcing intimacy seems considerably less cruel than condemning one partner to either lying or going without a very basic human need.

But I don't believe there's any foolproof way to game the system. The heart, the mind and the loins rarely stay obediently confined to the gated communities in which we try to keep them. One day you've got a great, no-strings-attached thing going with a sex buddy. The next you realize, oh crap, I have real feelings for this asshole. One day you say you don't care if your lover gets a stroke job from someone else. The next day, you do, terribly. We can think outside the box all we want, but there's a reason there's a Facebook relationship status called "it's complicated." ...

But honest to God, how much more of this "Wanna keep your man? Let him stray" tripe are we supposed to swallow? And, when, by the way, is anybody going to write the book about how to hang on to us ladies? (Hint: We too enjoy getting laid.)

Labels: adultery, culture, gender, Marriage, men, monogamy, women

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It takes a marriage to keep a father investing in his biological children. A mother will keep investing in her biological children no matter what. Of course, there are exceptions to this sociological rule. But, on average, men are much more likely to invest–financially, emotionally, and otherwise–in their biological children when they are married to the mother of their children, whereas women tend to invest in their biological children no matter what their marital status.

A new study in Social Forces, which explores the financial implications of the divorce revolution on parental financial support of adult children, provides more evidence in support of this rule. Sociologists Shelley Clark and Catherine Kenney point out (a) that the divorce revolution has dramatically reshaped the character of intergenerational family ties and (b) that women now have a lot more income and assets of their own to share with their adult children.

You put these two facts together and you find that, in the wake of a divorce, fathers who remarry are much less likely to support their adult children than divorced mothers who remarry or remain single. (Interestingly, divorced fathers who remain single [and few do] support their children at a slightly higher rate than divorced mothers who remain single or remarry.) So, the bottom line here seems to be that the flow of the father’s money is influenced much more by his marital status, whereas the flow of the mother’s money is influenced much more by her biological relatedness to the child. Note: children are most likely to receive financial support from their parents when they remain married to one another.

Labels: divorce, Fathers, gender differences, Marriage, motherhood, stepparents

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...The premise of the movie Timer is that you can be implanted with a timer that will count down to the exact moment of your first meeting with your soulmate. Both of your timers will start beeping some enchanted evening, and it's happily ever after.

We both really enjoyed the movie, which explores different problems that crop up despite the perfect matchmaking device on everyone's wrist. The main character's timer is blank, which means that her soulmate hasn't been fitted with a timer yet, so she seeks out men without timers and then brings them to the kiosk to be implanted with timers if things are going well - no sense in wasted time "being in love" when you've got a soulmate to find. Her stepsister's timer says she'll have to wait until her mid-40's to find her soulmate, so she deals with her despair via random hookups and a little light substance abuse. Their younger brother's timer says he'll meet his soulmate as a freshman in high school, and there's an amusing subplot that I won't give away. ...

And I've just kept mulling over how oppressive it would be to marry someone under those circumstances - "We are soulmates. The beepers beeped. Everything must remain perfect, because we are soulmates!" Taking the vocation out of the equation. What would that imply if your soulmate was in a paralyzing accident six months after the wedding, for example? Would you get a refund, or would that just mean that you were the person most biometrically capable of caring for your spouse in those circumstances? You know? Is heroic sacrifice taken out of the picture entirely?

I find the idea of vocation to be so much more liberating.

Labels: culture, Marriage

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Labels: Black Marriage Day, culture, Marriage, marriage counseling

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The other day I watched two friends, both Indian, get married in a beautiful garden in Santa Cruz. One is Christian, the other Hindu, so they had two ceremonies. There was a three-tiered wedding cake and a sacred fire. But the really amazing part of the ceremony was that one of their fathers had flown in from India to bless them. It was amazing because my friends are both men. ...

One friend said that when an unmarried Chinese friend told his parents that at least he wasn't gay, they retorted, "We'd rather you were gay with kids."

When I left India for America, my aunts worried about who I might end up marrying. "I hope it's another Bengali," one told me. Over the years, that relaxed to, "I hope she's a Hindu." Then it became, "At least another Indian," until finally we reached, "I hope you'll get married before we all die." ...

In fact, I can imagine this ad in the local Indian weekly:

"Hindu very well-established Los Angeles family invites professional match for daughter, 25, 5-foot-3, slim, fair complexion, U.S. born, senior executive in Fortune 500 company. Loves music and dancing. Prospective lesbians encouraged to reply in confidence with complete bio data and returnable photo. Must be professional, under 30, caste no bar."

It might just be time for the gay arranged marriage.

Labels: arranged marriage, culture, gay marriage, India, Marriage

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The other day I watched two friends, both Indian, get married in a beautiful garden in Santa Cruz. One is Christian, the other Hindu, so they had two ceremonies. There was a three-tiered wedding cake and a sacred fire. But the really amazing part of the ceremony was that one of their fathers had flown in from India to bless them. It was amazing because my friends are both men. ...

One friend said that when an unmarried Chinese friend told his parents that at least he wasn't gay, they retorted, "We'd rather you were gay with kids."

When I left India for America, my aunts worried about who I might end up marrying. "I hope it's another Bengali," one told me. Over the years, that relaxed to, "I hope she's a Hindu." Then it became, "At least another Indian," until finally we reached, "I hope you'll get married before we all die." ...

In fact, I can imagine this ad in the local Indian weekly:

"Hindu very well-established Los Angeles family invites professional match for daughter, 25, 5-foot-3, slim, fair complexion, U.S. born, senior executive in Fortune 500 company. Loves music and dancing. Prospective lesbians encouraged to reply in confidence with complete bio data and returnable photo. Must be professional, under 30, caste no bar."

It might just be time for the gay arranged marriage.

Labels: arranged marriage, culture, gay marriage, India, Marriage

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...Contrary to what some of my friends in the gay-marriage movement believe, however, homophobia is far from the only reason for opposition. Another group, which I think is at least equally large, feels threatened—less by the normalization of homosexuality than by the abnormalization, so to speak, of the conventionally defined family. “Nothing personal, do what you want,” they tell us, “but leave the definition of family—of marriage—alone!”

One way to see that more is going on than homophobia is to reflect, for a moment, on a peculiar fact: gay marriage is far more controversial in America than either same-sex adoption or same-sex child custody.

Think about that. Isn’t it odd? The care of children, by definition, involves third parties who often have little or no choice about their situation. If there is a case for harm, one would think it would be strongest here—not in the union of two mutually consenting adults. In fact, the other side has a very hard time articulating any concrete harm at all that gay marriage would do. Yet efforts to make a political issue of gay adoption have consistently failed, while, wherever it appears, gay marriage finds it cannot not be a political issue.

What is behind the alarm raised by gay marriage?

To answer this question, I think one must widen the aperture and look at same-sex marriage in the context of a much larger cultural battle over the nature of family, of marriage, and even of adulthood: a debate over what it is that constitutes, and should constitute, the template for “normal” in all of those areas.

Labels: contraception, culture, divorce, economics, gay marriage, Jonathan Rauch, June Carbone, Marriage, men, Naomi Cahn, out-of-wedlock births, poverty, Red Families v. Blue Families

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In vetoing Hawaii’s civil unions bill, Gov. Linda Lingle noted that the bill was “essentially marriage by another name.” ...

Like most civil-unions legislation, this bill was an attempt to grant marital rights and responsibilities without using the “M word”—a compromise that, for whatever strange reason, satisfies many opponents of marriage equality. Polls across the country show substantially greater support for civil unions than for marriage equality, even when the statewide rights and responsibilities would be legally identical in theory. ...

Okay, but suppose we grant identical legal boundaries to the relationship. Wouldn’t it then be a marriage, legally speaking?

Here’s where marriage-equality opponents get pushed into a corner. If they answer “yes,” they have to give up the argument that legal same-sex marriage is impossible by definition. If they answer “no,” they find themselves saying that a legally identical relationship isn’t legally identical.

The only way out of this logical pretzel is to distinguish between two senses of “marriage”—a legal sense, the boundaries of which are drawn however the law says they’re drawn, and a religious or metaphysical sense, the boundaries of which exist independently of human intentions.

The religious/metaphysical sense is surely what people have in mind when they say that same-sex marriage is impossible by definition. But the law isn’t—or shouldn’t be—in the business of religion or metaphysics. It should be concerned with the legal boundaries, period.

Labels: civil unions, culture, gay marriage, Hawaii, John Corvino, Marriage

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We still think of the archetypal unwed mother as a Jamie Lynn Spears—a dopey teenager who dropped her panties and got in over her head. A generation and more ago, that's who most unwed mothers were. But according to the most recent statistics from the Centers for Disease Control, teenagers account for only 23 percent of current out-of-wedlock births. That means the vast majority of unwed mothers are old enough to know what they're doing: Unwed births are surging among women ages 25 to 29. ...

Readers also like to rebuke me for my preference that two decent people who are committed to each other and find themselves procreating without intending to should provide the stability of marriage for their child. "Having a child will be stressful and life altering enough. Parents need to work on their relationship on their time schedule." "I feel that a baby is its own blessing. Have that blessing before you get married." "How dare you imply that an unexpected pregnancy should lead to marriage? You are simply out of touch with modern culture."

That may be. But it also means that modern culture is out of touch with the needs of children. Some researchers identify out-of-wedlock births as the chief cause for the increasing stratification and inequality of American life, the first step that casts children into an ever more rigid caste system. Studies have found that children born to single mothers are vastly more likely to be poor, have behavioral and psychological problems, drop out of high school, and themselves go on to have out-of-wedlock children.

For 10 years, the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study at Princeton University has followed the families of 5,000 children, three-quarters born to unwed parents. According to the research, most of these parents, both women and men, said they wanted to get married—and to each other. But they somehow feel this mutual decision is beyond their power to make. And by not making it, the forces of inertia start pulling them apart. Five years after their children's births, only 16 percent of the couples had married, and 60 percent had split. ...

I get letters all the time that describe the turbulence that results from deciding marriage is archaic. Sometimes the writers start with a conflicted sense of hope. "My ex is rather immature and irresponsible. I had a recent fling with him that resulted in pregnancy. I am overjoyed with the impending arrival of my baby, but I fear that no one else in my life will feel the same way." This is followed by more conflicted and less hopeful letters when the kids are small. "My boyfriend and I have a child who is almost 2. He also has a daughter and I have two other children. We bought a home together, but a week before we were about to move in, he left me. Now it's four months later, and he's bought me an engagement ring, but I found out he had a girlfriend during the time we were split." "I have two children with my ex-boyfriend. We broke up because last year a paternity test he was ordered to have came back positive. Even though we are not together, I still want my kids to have a father in their life. I also know he is ignoring his new son because he wants nothing to do with the mom, but that little boy also deserves to have a male figure who cares."

Labels: committed relationships, culture, economics, Fathers, Marriage, out-of-wedlock births, single parenting

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Can you spot a good marriage? I was pretty sure I could, starting with my own.

My husband and I rarely argued, we had similar careers, we shared common interests. Things weren't perfect, but we seemed to be humming along in harmony better than most other couples we knew.

In fact, nobody was more surprised than we were when our 17-year marriage ended in a New Jersey divorce court.

It turns out, though, that the signs of trouble had been there all along, if only I'd known what to look for. Instead, I was judging my marriage by the wrong standards -- which, I've since learned, most of us do. In one now-famous study, researchers asked therapists, married couples, and others to watch videotaped conversations of ten couples and try to identify the relationships that had ultimately ended in divorce. The results were abysmal -- even the therapists guessed wrong half the time.

So how can you diagnose the health of your relationship? Armed with huge volumes of data on married couples, scientists have identified some simple but powerful indicators that can help couples recognize marital strife long before their relationship hits the skids.

The way you were

Imagine a couple that go hiking on their first date. In a happy marriage, the wife might tell the story this way: "We got terribly lost that day. It took us hours to find our way back, but we laughed about how neither of us had a good sense of direction. After that, we knew better than to plan another hiking trip!"

But if the relationship was stressed, she might tell the story this way: "He lost the map, and it took hours to find our way back. After that, I never wanted to go hiking again." Same story, but instead of reflecting a sense of togetherness -- using pronouns like "we" and "us" -- it's laced with negativity.

Research has shown that analyzing what's known as the marital narrative -- the way you talk about the good and bad times of your early years together -- is about 90 percent accurate in predicting which marriages will succeed or fail.

Labels: divorce, Marriage

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When Akiko Orita decided not to register her marriage in 1998 to keep her maiden name, it was supposed to be a temporary measure until Japan's civil code changed to allow married couples to keep separate surnames.

Twelve years later, her marriage is still unregistered and the topic is a hot-button issue ahead of Sunday's upper house election. ...

The debate heated up after the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ), which advocates letting married couples keep separate names if they wish, took power last year and fanned expectations that the government would submit a bill to amend the civil code.

Faced with opposition from a coalition ally, the government's plan to submit a bill stalled, and the DPJ omitted the issue from their manifesto.

Both the main opposition Liberal Democratic Party and the DPJ's tiny coalition ally the People's New Party (PNP) said in their campaign platforms they are against letting married couples have separate names, while the Social Democrats support it.

NOT SO FAST

Japan is the only country in the Group of Eight major industrialized nations that requires married couples to register under the same surname.

The rule is tied to Japan's traditional concept of the family institution, which in the past ensured properties, businesses, and surnames were passed on to men within the family unit.

Those against changing the civil code say it's a matter of family unity and are wary of the impact on children's identities and a possible increase in divorce if the law is amended.

Labels: gender, Japan, Marriage

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CAIRO — Egypt's highest judiciary body on Wednesday overturned a ruling ordering the Coptic church to allow its faithful to remarry, the official MENA news agency said, in a move welcomed by the church.

The Supreme Constitutional Court overturned a May decision by the High Administrative Court that obliged the head of the church, Pope Shenuda III, to issue a second marriage permit to divorced Copts requesting one.

That ruling sparked demonstrations in Cairo, with angry protesters, saying it went against the Bible, charging state interference in religious affairs.

Copts forbid divorce except in proven cases of adultery, or if a spouse converts to another religion or branch of Christianity.

Civil marriage alone is not recognised in Egypt.

Wednesday's ruling "has relieved Coptic church leaders who trust and respect the Egyptian judiciary and believe in its justness and its ability to correct any contradictions in rulings," Hani Aziz Amin, a church representative, told MENA.

Labels: Christianity, divorce, Egypt, Marriage, religion, remarriage

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