...But America's tragic number — tragic because it is difficult to conceive remedial policies — is 70%. This is the portion of African-American children born to unmarried women. It may explain what puzzles Nathan Glazer.

Writing in the American Interest, Glazer, sociology professor emeritus at Harvard, considers it a "paradox" that the election of Barack Obama "coincided with the almost complete disappearance from American public life of discussion of the black condition and what public policy might do to improve it." This, says Glazer, is the black condition:

Employment prospects for young black men worsened even when the economy was robust. By the early 2000s, more than a third of all young black non-college men were incarcerated. More than 60% of black high school dropouts born since the mid-1960s go to prison.

Mass incarceration blights the prospects of black women seeking husbands. So does another trend noted by sociologist William Julius Wilson: "In 2003-2004, for every 100 bachelor's degrees conferred on black men, 200 were conferred on black women."

Because changes in laws and mores have lowered barriers, the black middle class has been able to leave inner cities, which have become, Glazer says, "concentrations of the poor, the poorly educated, the unemployed and unemployable."

High out-of-wedlock birth rates mean a constantly renewed cohort of adolescent males without male parenting, which means disorderly neighborhoods and schools. Glazer thinks it is possible that for some young black males, "acting white" — trying to excel in school — is considered "a betrayal of their group culture." This severely limits opportunities in an increasingly service economy where working with people matters more than working with things in manufacturing employment.

Now, from the Educational Testing Service, comes a report about "The Black-White Achievement Gap: When Progress Stopped," written by Paul E. Barton and Richard J. Coley. It examines the "startling" fact that most of the progress in closing the gap in reading and mathematics occurred in the 1970s and '80s. This means "progress generally halted for those born around the mid-1960s, a time when landmark legislative victories heralded an end to racial discrimination."

Labels: culture, economics, family structure, poverty, race, schools, single parenting

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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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INFIDELITY is rampant in nature. Birds, mammals, amphibians and even fish all cheat if the conditions are right, forcing mates to remain perpetually vigilant. People are no different. Although cheats are publicly condemned, or in some cases impeached, infidelity is common and public disapproval does little to dissuade the sinner. The disapproval of God, however, is a different matter, and a new study suggests that prayer can indeed guide people away from adulterous behaviour.

Frank Fincham at Florida State University and his colleagues knew from looking at past studies that couples who attend religious services are more likely to be satisfied with their marriages and less likely to be unfaithful than those who do not, but they did not understand why. Speculating that the act of praying might itself cause romantic relationships to become more resilient, the team set up an experiment to explore prayer and fidelity.

The researchers recruited 83 undergraduates who reported both being in a romantic relationship and praying at least occasionally. Participants were given a survey that is used by psychologists to measure levels of infidelity on a nine-point scale (with nine being highly unfaithful). The survey instructed them to think of the person that they were most attracted to besides their partner and then asked questions like how aroused they felt in that person’s presence, how emotionally intimate they had been with him or her, and how physically intimate they had been. In a second survey, participants were asked to state how strongly they agreed with statements like “my relationship with my partner is holy and sacred”, by rating levels of agreement on a nine-point scale (with nine indicating very strong agreement).

Following the survey, the participants were randomly assigned to one of four daily activities: praying for the well-being of their partner, engaging in undirected prayer, thinking about positive aspects of their partner or reflecting upon their day. Participants did as they were asked for four weeks, and kept written logs of what they were praying (or thinking). At the end of this period, the team again measured infidelity and how sacred the participants felt their romantic relationships were.

Labels: committed relationships, culture, premarital sex, religion, sex, universities

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For years, I fought in court to stop him from ending our marriage. Now that NY has become the 50th state to enact no-fault divorce, women no longer have that option. ...

I’m not sure my attorney thought I’d actually try and exercise my right to keep my family together. But that’s what I did. In any other state it would have been impossible. But in 2003, New York was the last state in America that still didn't have no-fault divorce on the books. After California passed America's first no-fault law in 1970, divorce frenzy swept the nation, and by 1985, every state in the country had followed suit–every state except for New York, where my husband and I happened to live.

When I refused a quickie divorce on his terms, he served me with divorce papers filled with baseless complaints.

“The whole thing is a pack of lies,” I said to my attorney, sobbing. “He’s the one committing adultery.”

“Then deny it, and sue him for divorce,” Saul said.

“But I don’t want a divorce,” I cried. “I love my husband.” Twenty years wasn’t something I wanted to chuck overnight. Made of strong Southern female stock, I grew up believing the words “until death do us part” were non-negotiable. Family was paramount, and divorce virtually unheard of. “I don’t think there’s anything in life that can’t be forgiven,” my aunt said when I asked for her advice. To me, that pretty much covered the whole territory.

One night when I was up reluctantly working on the divorce papers, my eldest daughter appeared by my side. “I don’t want you to get a divorce,” she said. I didn’t either. Yet until this moment, it hadn't occurred to me that I had the power to stop this from happening. I realized perhaps the break-up of my marriage wasn't inevitable and that by standing up, maybe I could also help others.

Labels: culture, divorce, divorce reform, New York

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...It’s easy to dismiss this case as just one more bizarre news story from Down Under, but May-Welby’s case could also represent the future of gender identity. Although no one is keeping statistics, researchers who study gender say a small but growing number of people (including some who have had sex-change operations) consider themselves “gender neutral” or “gender variant.” Their stories vary widely. Some find that even after surgery, they simply can’t ignore previous years of experience living as another gender. Others may feel that their gender identity is fluid. Still others are experimenting with where they feel most comfortable on what they see as a continuum of gender. “For some, it’s a form of protest because gender is such a strong organizing principle in our society,” says Walter Bockting, an associate professor and clinical psychologist at the University of Minnesota Medical School who has been studying transgender health since 1986. “Their identities expand our thinking about gender.”

In fact, some researchers compare the evolution in thinking about gender to the struggle that began a generation ago for gay and lesbian rights. Dr. Jack Drescher is a member of an American Psychiatric Association (APA) committee that is currently reviewing changes to the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, which is used around the world by clinicians, researchers, regulatory agencies, and insurance companies to classify mental disorders. DSM-5, as it’s called, won’t be published until 2013, but Drescher’s committee is reconsidering the diagnosis of gender-identity disorder, which encompasses people who do not identify with the gender assigned to them by biology. ...

How all the debate will play out in this country is still unclear, but college students may be among those leading the charge for change. Many campuses—including Harvard, Penn and Michigan—now offer gender neutral housing and more unisex bathrooms to accommodate students who don’t fall neatly into male or female categories. The Common Application, which is used by most college applicants, just announced that it is considering adding voluntary questions that would give students a broader array of choices to describe their gender identity and allow them to state their sexual orientation, after gay advocates urged the change. How long before such changes begin to show up in other parts of society is unclear. But Drescher says he is certain of one thing after a lifetime of working with gender: "There is no way that six billion people can be categorized into two groups." Now if we could only figure out the pronoun problem.

Labels: culture, gender, professional associations, universities

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It appears Seton Hall University will offer a controversial course on gay marriage over the objections of Newark Archbishop John J. Myers, according to the professor scheduled to teach the class.

The undergraduate seminar course — called "The Politics of Gay Marriage" — is to begin Tuesday with about two dozen students, said W. King Mott, an associate professor of political science. ...

The syllabus for the class says the course will focus on gay marriage as a contemporary political idea and may bring guest speakers to campus to share their personal stories.

"This point of view does not dismiss those that hold a religious belief; all perspectives are welcome in this discussion," the syllabus says.

Mott, one of the few openly gay professors at Seton Hall, came up with the idea for the elective class for upperclassmen. He said students will explore the social and political issues surrounding the gay marriage debate without advocating for either side.

Labels: Catholic Church, culture, gay marriage, universities

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A tragic crisis of enormous magnitude is facing black boys and men in America.

Parental neglect, racial discrimination and an orgy of self-destructive behavior have left an extraordinary portion of the black male population in an ever-deepening pit of social and economic degradation.

The Schott Foundation for Public Education tells us in a new report that the on-time high school graduation rate for black males in 2008 was an abysmal 47 percent, and even worse in several major urban areas — for example, 28 percent in New York City.

The astronomical jobless rates for black men in inner-city neighborhoods are both mind-boggling and heartbreaking. There are many areas where virtually no one has a legitimate job.

More than 70 percent of black children are born to unwed mothers. And I’ve been hearing more and more lately from community leaders in poor areas that moms are absent for one reason or another and the children are being raised by a grandparent or some other relative — or they end up in foster care.

That the black community has not been mobilized en masse to turn this crisis around is a screaming shame. Black men, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, have nearly a one-third chance of being incarcerated at some point in their lives. By the time they hit their mid-30s, a solid majority of black men without a high school diploma have spent time in prison. ...

The aspect of this crisis that is probably the most important and simultaneously the most difficult to recognize is that the heroic efforts needed to alleviate it will not come from the government or the wider American society. This is a job that will require a campaign on the scale of the civil rights movement, and it will have to be initiated by the black community.

Whether this is fair or not is irrelevant.

Labels: culture, family structure, foster parenting, men, out-of-wedlock births, poverty, race, single parenting

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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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“I don’t know what I’ve done wrong,” the patient told me.

She was an intelligent and articulate woman in her early 40s who came to see me for depression and anxiety. In discussing the stresses she faced, it was clear that her teenage son had been front and center for many years.

When he was growing up, she explained, he fought frequently with other children, had few close friends, and had a reputation for being mean. She always hoped he would change, but now that he was almost 17, she had a sinking feeling.

I asked her what she meant by mean. “I hate to admit it, but he is unkind and unsympathetic to people,” she said, as I recall. He was rude and defiant at home, and often verbally abusive to family members.

Along the way, she had him evaluated by many child psychiatrists, with several extensive neuropsychological tests. The results were always the same: he tested in the intellectually superior range, with no evidence of any learning disability or mental illness. Naturally, she wondered if she and her husband were somehow remiss as parents. ...

But that left open a fundamental question: If the young man did not suffer from any demonstrable psychiatric disorder, just what was his problem?

My answer may sound heretical, coming from a psychiatrist. After all, our bent is to see misbehavior as psychopathology that needs treatment; there is no such thing as a bad person, just a sick one.

But maybe this young man was just not a nice person.

Labels: children, culture, parenting

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In case you’ve been busy worrying about the economy, immigration, or a resurgent Taliban, let me draw your attention to Jennifer Aniston.

Promoting her new movie, The Switch, about a single, fortysomething woman who decides to have a baby with the help of a sperm donor, Aniston had this to say at a press conference: “Women …know that they don’t have to settle with a man just to have that child…Times have changed, and what is amazing is that we do have so many options these days.’” On his show, Fox News host Bill O’Reilly responded by calling Aniston “destructive to our society.”

Aniston hit back: “For those who’ve not yet found their [Prince Charming such as] Bill O’Reilly, I’m just glad science has provided a few other options.” The rest is P.R. history.

By “amazing” options, Aniston, who happens also to be a fortysomething single woman, was referring to sperm donation, an increasingly popular way to create fatherless families. O’Reilly’s charge to the contrary, most single women who have a baby through donor sperm struggle for years to find husbands so they could raise their children with fathers before finally concluding they had no choice but to go it alone.

Given the ranks of can’t-commit child men out there, you have to have some sympathy for their plight.

But choice mothers, as the older, more educated donor moms often call themselves, use a language of empowerment that lends some weight to O’Reilly’s accusation. Aniston herself is guilty of trivializing men’s role in children’ lives when she says that women “don’t have to settle with a man just to have a child.”

Labels: culture, donor conception, Fathers, My Daddy's Name Is Donor, single parenting

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Economists may assert that we’re in the early stages of a recovery, but surveys continue to show that the impact of the Great Recession on American families is deep, widespread and grim. A Pew Research poll published last month indicated that more than half of all adults in the U.S. labor force had experienced some “work-related hardship” — a period of unemployment, a pay cut, a reduction in work hours or an involuntary move to part-time employment — since the recession began in December 2007. A report in March from the Population Reference Bureau showed that more than 70 percent of Americans age 40 and over felt they had been affected by the economic crisis. Government data indicate that the net worth of the average American household has shrunk by about 20 percent — the greatest such decline since the end of World War II. Long-term unemployment — joblessness lasting six months or more — is also at its highest level since the mid-1940s. According to recent data from the Rockefeller Institute, 20 percent of Americans have seen their available household income decline by 25 percent or more. ...

That the Great Recession could then bring hope for a major recalibration — a resetting of all the clocks — is not surprising. Unfortunately, though, it’s not happening in any meaningful way. The poor are getting poorer, and the rich, despite stock-market setbacks, are still comparatively rich. The most devastating losses in household wealth over the past two years have been suffered by the middle class. And families are fraying at the seams. The Pew poll showed nearly half of people who had been unemployed for more than six months saying their family relationships had become strained, and a New York Times/CBS poll of unemployed adults last winter found about 40 percent saying they believed their joblessness was causing behavioral change in their children.

Parents who have jobs are working longer hours than ever. Mothers are taking shorter maternity leaves. The birth rate is on the decline. The divorce rate is declining, too — it’s too expensive for people to break up their households — but that’s not necessarily a family-friendly thing, as a report from the Council on Contemporary Families noted in April: “We know from the experience of the Great Depression of the 1930s that divorce rates can fall while family conflict and domestic violence rates rise.”

Labels: children, culture, demographics, divorce, economics

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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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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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The country’s largest lawyers’ group has backed a resolution calling on all state legislatures to let same-sex couples marry. The group, the American Bar Association, adopted the measure Tuesday in San Francisco at its annual meeting The resolution was sponsored by the New York State Bar Association, and only one speaker voiced opposition during debate on it, said Stephen P. Younger, president of the New York group. The vote, which was overwhelming, Mr. Younger said, comes days after a federal judge in San Francisco struck down California’s voter-approved ban on same-sex marriage.

Labels: culture, gay marriage, professional associations

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Researchers found that when people in a couple are put under pressure they produce fewer stress related hormones than their single counterparts.

Scientists found students given tests they believed would affect their career prospects had much less of the stress hormone cortisol flowing through their bodies if they had a partner. ...

Prof Maestripieri, of Chicago University, said: "We found unpaired individuals of both sexes had higher cortisol levels than married individuals.

"Although marriage can be pretty stressful, it should make it easier for people to handle other stressors in their lives."

The study found single students also displayed higher testosterone levels than their married or committed colleagues – a finding that mirrors previous human research as well as animal observations.

Labels: committed relationships, culture

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"When I was little, my mother had a talk with me about having a 'public face,' because not everyone would understand our family," says Koe Sozuteki, a 20-year-old woman who grew up in a large poly household in Seattle. "That was a hard conversation to have in elementary school."

Sozuteki has a bio mom, a bio dad, a stepmom, three other poly moms, "several other matriarchal women in the community who I think of as moms," and an uncle. She also has a brother and half a dozen poly siblings—children she grew up with but is not related to by blood.

Sozuteki was teased in school about her family, she says, and she didn't get much support from teachers. ...

So in addition to more traditional activities for families with young children— canoeing, puppet-making classes, drum circles, and Frisbee golf—Polycamp now offers workshops for grown-ups. "We added some adults-only stuff," explains Quintus, "things like life-drawing classes, a snuggle party, an adults-only variety show, a bondage workshop."

Speaking as a parent myself—a sex- positive, kink-positive parent—um... a bondage workshop? At a family camp? With kids running around?

"The adults-only workshops are held indoors, in specific cabins and shelters," Quintus explains to me. "Kid-friendly activities are scheduled at the same time, so the kids are occupied whenever there's an adults-only workshop or activity going on. We have chaperones; we have rules." ...

"Children want to love and be loved," says Quintus. "Children grasp the concept easily. As they've gotten older, we've explained that ours is not the traditional form that most relationships take. We're not ashamed of our lifestyle. We're open with family and friends. But they had a right to know that their family is unique."

Sozuteki says she's happy and that she's grateful to have been "born into a tribe of intimate friends."

After a long period of celibacy, Sozuteki's bio mom is now involved in a quad.

"When I turned 7, my mother became celibate because she wanted to focus on me," Sozuteki explains. "I was having a hard time when people my bio parents were dating came into my life and then left my life when things didn't work out."

Sozuteki identifies as poly—her first relationship, she notes, was a quad—but her closest sibling, her brother, is in a monogamous relationship. She currently works at the Center for Sex Positive Culture, is studying to become a sex educator, and coined a widely embraced term in the poly community: "polycule."

Labels: children, culture, parenting, polyamory

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The two sets of 15-year-old twins on opposite sides of the country share a lot of similarities.

Ask all four of them their favorite food, they will say sushi. Ask them about an annoying habit, they will say they bite their nails. They describe themselves as athletic, outgoing and open-minded. They have brown hair, full lips and broad hands.

They are also the biological offspring of sperm donor No. 1096.

Fifteen years ago, sperm donation enabled two mothers to give birth to the children they always wanted. Now the internet age has allowed their twins -- Jonah and Hilit Jacobson in Georgia and Jesse and Jayme Clapoff in California -- to find each other.

Their connection happened partly from persistence and partly from luck in 2007. The two families had joined the Donor Sibling Registry online, where they found their half siblings by searching for families with a matching donor identification number.

These aren't the most conventional sibling relationships, but the teens are gradually forming friendships and growing closer, the siblings say. Today, 12 offspring from sperm donor No. 1096 have connected through the site. ...

The Jacobson twins said they don't want to know or meet their sperm donor.

"I already have a dad," Hilit said.

Jonah chimed in, "I have no desire to meet him. Maybe I'd like to see a picture of him, but that's it."

A family isn't just about biological connections in the Jacobson household.

They said, "A family is what you make it." ...

Like many young men, the money from the donations went to pay for bills during school. He said he didn't think much about what happened to his donated sperm after he graduated.

Then three years ago, he received an unexpected e-mail from a child conceived from his sperm. The 14-year-old girl revealed to him the donor identification number from her file.

She had done some detective work on her own to find his e-mail. She was excited to learn that her donor identification number matched his.

Whitehurst was already the father of two children when he received the e-mail. Still, he chose to have a relationship with the 14-year-old girl. Over the years, Whitehurst has been contacted by two more of his donor offspring through the web.

The three donor siblings and Whitehurst have formed a bond. He takes the donor offspring and his own children on vacation together. He said the children all get along.

"They don't expect anything undue from me," said Whitehurst, now a 44-year-old physician, adding that, "They don't expect me to show up and become a full-time dad. I like to get together with them, and the great thing is my two kids like them, too."

But some reproductive technology experts said a generation of sperm donor children easily connected by the web comes with challenges. Not all sperm donor offspring want to get to know their half siblings or the sperm donor, said Susan Crockin, an attorney and reproductive technology expert in Massachusetts.

"What if someone and their family don't want to be a part of an unexpected family?" Crockin said.

Labels: culture, donor conception, Fathers, My Daddy's Name Is Donor, siblings

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Among the government's most interesting reports is one -- published by the Agriculture Department -- that estimates what parents spend on their children. The latest version finds, not surprisingly, that the costs are steep. For a middle-class husband-wife family (average pretax income in 2009: $76,250), spending per child is about $12,000 a year. Assuming modest annual inflation (2.8 percent), the report estimates that the family's spending on a child born in 2009 would total $286,050 by age 17. A two-child family would cost about $600,000. All these estimates may be understated because they do not include college costs.

These dry statistics ought to inform the deficit debate, because a budget is not just a catalogue of programs and taxes. It reflects a society's priorities and values. Our society does not -- despite rhetoric to the contrary -- put much value on raising children. Present budget policies punish parents, who are taxed heavily to support the elderly. Meanwhile, tax breaks for children are modest. If deficit reduction aggravates these biases, more Americans may choose not to have children or to have fewer children. Down that path lies economic decline.

Societies that cannot replace their populations discourage investment and innovation. They have stagnant or shrinking markets for goods and services. With older populations, they resist change. For a country to stabilize its population -- discounting immigration -- women must have an average of about two children. That's a "fertility rate" of two. Many countries with struggling economies are well below that. Japan's fertility rate is 1.2. Italy's is 1.3, as is Spain's. These countries are having about one child for every two adults. ...

We need to avoid Western Europe's mix of high taxes, low birth rates and feeble economic growth. Young Americans already face a bleak labor market that cannot instill confidence about having children. Piling on higher taxes won't help. "If higher taxes make it more expensive to raise children," says demographer Nicholas Eberstadt of the American Enterprise Institute, "people will think more about having another child." That seems common sense, despite the multiple influences on becoming parents.

Labels: children, culture, demographics, economics, tax policy

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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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