WEDDING MADNESS MEETS MARRIAGE PHOBIA: Colleen Carroll Campbell

at STLToday:
...With so much time, treasure and tears invested in tying the knot these days, it's easy to forget that the state of matrimony — as opposed to the state of weddings — is in serious trouble. America's divorce rates are among the highest in the world; married couples now constitute a minority among U.S. households; and out-of-wedlock births are at an all-time high, with nearly four in 10 children today born to single mothers. The ranks of couples living together have risen 72 percent since 1990, transforming cohabitation from a pre-marital anomaly to a social norm — and, for many young couples, a substitute for marriage rather than its precursor.

Statistics show that young Americans still value marriage, however. A recent Child Trends study found that more than eight in 10 unmarried adults ages 20 to 24 believe it is important or very important to be married someday, and a Pew poll released last year found that young adults rank parenthood and marriage far above career and financial success on their list of life priorities.

Hence we see young women transfixed by "Say Yes to the Dress" reruns and dreams of fairy-tale weddings even as they shrug off the possibility of marrying the father of their children. Others reverse the shotgun-wedding response to an out-of-wedlock pregnancy, resolving not to marry their child's father until well after the birth lest a "baby bump" cramp their wedding-day style. Many young men, meanwhile, spend years sharing sexual intimacy and a household with women they do not consider "marriage material" — a judgment that often persists even after their live-in girlfriends have borne their children. ...

So what's driving today's disconnect between wedding fantasies and marriage realities? The University of Virginia's National Marriage Project and the Institute for American Values' Center for Marriage and Families recently released a study tackling that question. Edited by sociologist W. Bradford Wilcox, the report cites the "increasingly elusive soul mate model" of marriage peddled by Hollywood and the wedding industry as one possible answer.

In recent decades, the report notes, Americans have shifted from thinking of marriage as a permanent, practical union that integrates 'sex, parenthood, economic cooperation and emotional intimacy" to seeing it as "primarily a couple-centered vehicle for personal growth, emotional intimacy and shared consumption that depends for its survival on the happiness of both spouses." This switch — from regarding marriage as something that helps you thrive in life and raise your children well, to seeing it as a capstone to the success you already have achieved and something that should last only as long as it completely fulfills you — has convinced many struggling Americans that a successful marriage is out of their reach.
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Labels: class, cohabitation, culture, Marriage, National Marriage Project, unmarried parents, weddings, weddings vs. marriage

posted by Eve at 5:52 PM VOTE

"MARSHALL PLAN" FOR MARRIAGE GAP: Cheryl Wetzstein

in the Washington Times:

..."We cannot afford to be a nation where marriage is a luxury good," W. Bradford Wilcox and Chuck Donovan wrote last week in Christianity Today magazine.

It's not enough to repair the nation's economic house, they wrote. Renewing marriage must become a national priority — in fact, it needs "something on the scale of a Marshall Plan for marriage," Mr. Wilcox and Mr. Donovan wrote, referring to America's massive rebuilding efforts in Europe after World War II. ...

Even the emotional satisfaction of marriage is ebbing for the less-educated. When spouses aged 18 to 60 were asked if they were "very happy" in their marriage, almost 70 percent of the highly educated spouses said yes — the same number as in the 1970s.

But for moderately educated Americans, the number of "very happy" spouses slid from 68 percent in the 1970s to 57 percent in 2000s. The least-educated spouses also lost ground, falling from 59 percent "very happy" to 52 percent. ...

The roiling of marriage has stemmed from a "decline in marriage-friendly values" and a disconnection from religious attachments, Mr. Wilcox and Mr. Donovan, senior research fellow at Heritage Foundation, wrote in their Christianity Today article. As faith and pro-marriage values have faded, so has the "marriage mindset."

The solution is to realize that America's economic prosperity, well-being — and in my view, even happiness — is directly tied to the depth and breadth of its marriage culture. Family breakdown costs the nation $112 billion a year, according to one analysis. Father absence costs $100 billion a year, says another.

There are many ways to strengthen marriage, from tax breaks to relationship classes to strengthening job prospects for young men who didn't go to college. A bill with $75 million apiece for marriage grants and responsible fatherhood grants is awaiting President Obama's signature.

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Labels: class, culture, economics, Marriage, National Marriage Project, religion, W. Bradford Wilcox

posted by Eve at 1:57 PM VOTE

Class and the Culture War (II): Ross Douthat

blogs at the NY Times:

One final point on the National Marriage Project report. I’ve been emphasizing the bad news, but I do think it’s genuinely good news that well-educated opinion — as opposed to just well-educated behavior — has been moving in a more conservative direction on divorce. (48 percent of college-educated Americans now agree that “divorce should be more difficult to obtain,” up from just 36 percent in the 1970s.) When social conservatives try to envision public policy responses to the crisis of the American family, they’re almost inevitably stymied by the fact that our upper class (which is, by extension, our policymaking class), while increasingly conservative in the way its members arrange their own private lives, remains intensely allergic to the kind of legal and cultural paternalism that certain earlier elites practiced as a matter of course.

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Labels: class, culture, divorce, divorce reform, economics, Marriage, National Marriage Project

posted by Imapp Staff at 7:49 PM VOTE

THE STATE OF OUR UNIONS: The National Marriage Project

press release:

Drawing on the latest national data, the 2010 issue of The State of Our Unions, "When Marriage Disappears: The Retreat from Marriage in Middle America," concludes that in Middle America, marriage is in trouble.

New data indicate that trends in nonmarital childbearing, divorce, and marital quality in Middle America increasingly resemble those of the poor, where marriage is fragile and weak. However, among the highly educated and affluent, marriage is stable and appears to be getting even stronger. "When Marriage Disappears" is the first report to address the causes of the retreat from marriage in Middle America; it finds that shifts in marriage attitudes, increases in unemployment, and declines in religious attendance are among the trends driving the retreat from marriage in Middle America. ...

The report finds:

* The moderately educated middle (high-school-educated Americans who make up 58% of the adult population) is dramatically more likely than highly educated Americans (college educated Americans who make up 30% of the adult population) to have children outside of marriage. In the early 1980s, only 2% of babies born to highly educated mothers were born outside of marriage, compared to 13% of babies born to moderately educated mothers and 33% of babies born to mothers who were the least educated (high school dropouts who make up 12% of the adult population). In the late 2000s, only 6% of babies born to highly educated mothers were born outside of marriage, compared to 44% of babies born to moderately educated mothers and 54% of babies born to the least-educated mothers. ...

* In a historic reversal, the cultural foundations of strong marriages—adherence to a marriage mindset, religious attendance, and faith in marriage as a way of life—are stronger now among the highly educated than among the moderately educated. For instance, teenagers from highly educated homes are more likely to report that they would be embarrassed by a pregnancy (76%) than their peers from moderately educated homes (61%). Highly educated Americans are also now more likely to attend church on a weekly basis (34%) than moderately educated Americans (28%); by contrast, in the 1970s, highly educated Americans were less likely to attend church than the moderately educated.

more (read the entire report as pdf or html)

Labels: class, cohabitation, culture, divorce, economics, Marriage, National Marriage Project, out-of-wedlock births, religion

posted by Eve at 2:30 PM VOTE

CAN THE RECESSION SAVE MARRIAGE?: W. Bradford Wilcox

in the Wall Street Journal:

Judging by recent press reports, the family fallout associated with the Great Recession has been severe. Take the Bachmuth family, profiled last month in the New York Times. After Paul Bachmuth lost his job at a Texas electric consulting firm in December of last year, his life and marriage took a turn for the worse. Often dejected, he would spend hours surfing the Internet or watching television.

Paul and his wife, Amanda, fought over money. She also resented the part-time job she had to pick up at a day-care center to keep the family solvent, especially since she continued to shoulder the bulk of the family's cooking, cleaning and laundry. "She kind of had something in the back of her mind that it was partly my fault I was laid off," Mr. Bachmuth told the Times. The couple is now seeing a counselor.

The Bachmuths' experience is by no means unique, according to "Money & Marriage," a report released this week by the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia and the Institute for American Values. As the report notes, the financial pressures associated with the Great Recession can lead to a downward spiral of marital recriminations, tension and conflict as spouses struggle to pay bills, adjust to the loss of a job or find themselves forced out of their home. This downward spiral is especially likely to unfold when a husband loses his job—a particularly salient reality in the current recession, where more than 75% of the job losses have fallen on the shoulders of men.

In some cases, this spiral leads directly to divorce court. In recent years, couples who report disagreeing about money matters once a week are about twice as likely to divorce compared with couples who disagree about money less than once a month, according to the report.

But there may be a silver lining in all this financial pain. For most married Americans, the Great Recession seems to be solidifying, not eroding, the marital bond. The divorce rate is actually falling. It declined to 16.9 divorces per 1,000 married women in 2008 from 17.5 divorces in 2007 (a 3% drop), after rising from 16.4 divorces per 1,000 married women in 2005 (a 7% increase).

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Labels: culture, divorce, economics, Marriage, National Marriage Project, W. Bradford Wilcox

posted by Eve at 9:29 AM VOTE

THE STATE OF OUR UNIONS 2009: MONEY AND MARRIAGE: New report

from the National Marriage Project:

The State of Our Unions monitors the current health of marriage and family life in America. Produced annually, it is a joint publication of the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia and the Center for Marriage and Families at the Institute for American Values.

The 2009 State of Our Unions makes clear that money matters for contemporary American marriages. In particular, this edition of The State of Our Unions answers the following questions:

* How is the Great Recession affecting the institution of marriage, as measured by changes in marriage and divorce rates in the U.S.?
* How do family finances—especially credit card debt and family assets—shape the quality and stability of contemporary married life in America?
* What do evolutionary psychology and the contemporary study of finance have to tell us about the best division of financial labor for husbands and wives?
* Is the Great Recession likely to foster egalitarian relationships between husbands and wives?

more (or download the report here in PDF)

Labels: culture, divorce, economics, gender, gender differences, Marriage, National Marriage Project

posted by Eve at 4:59 PM VOTE

WHAT YOUNG ADULTS NEED TO KNOW ABOUT COHABITATION BEFORE MARRIAGE

A Comprehensive Review of Recent Research (PDF, from the National Marriage Project at Rutgers)

Labels: cohabitation, Marriage, National Marriage Project

posted by Eve at 8:56 AM VOTE