...My non-religious opposition to SSM comes from a Burkean point of view. That is, I do not believe that we should be so quick to revolutionize and to deconstruct the traditional family, which has endured for so long, and has been so key to the cohesion of our civilization. The “traditional family” (one man + one woman, bound exclusively) is not a natural fact; it is an achievement of civilization. As sociologist Carle Zimmerman shows in his historically-based “Family and Civilization,” the traditional family is a historical artifact that provides a unique basis for human flourishing — this, versus the “trustee family” (the clan, including polygamous ones), or the atomized family, which is the ultimate product of individualism. Zimmerman, a Harvard sociologist, doesn’t make religious arguments — indeed, one gets the idea that he is not religious at all — but rather observes the connection between ways of seeing the family and the individual, and the decline of ancient Greece and Rome. The book is too complex to get into in detail here, but this is a passage from a column I wrote about it some years back:

Civilization depends on the health of the traditional family.

That sentiment has become a truism among social conservatives, who typically can’t explain what they mean by it. Which is why it sounds like right-wing boilerplate to many contemporary ears.

The late Harvard sociologist Carle C. Zimmerman believed it was true, but he also knew why. In 1947, he wrote a massive book to explain why latter-day Western civilization was now living through the same family crisis that presaged the fall of classical Greece and Rome. His classic “Family and Civilization,” which has just been republished in an edited version by ISI Press, is a chillingly prophetic volume that deserves a wide new audience.

In all civilizations, Zimmerman theorized, there are three basic family types. The “trustee” family is tribal and clannish, and predominates in agrarian societies. The “domestic” family model is a middle type centering on the nuclear family ensconced in fairly strong extended-family bonds; it’s found in civilizations undergoing rapid development. The final model is the “atomistic” family, which features weak bonds between and within nuclear families; it’s the type that emerges as normative in advanced civilizations.

When the Roman Empire fell in the fifth century, the strong trustee families of the barbarian tribes replaced the weak, atomistic Roman families as the foundation of society.

Churchmen believed a social structure that broke up the ever-feuding clans and gave the individual more freedom would be better for society’s stability and spent centuries reforming the European family toward domesticity. The natalist worldview advocated by churchmen knit tightly religious faith, family loyalty and child bearing. From the 10th century on, the domestic family model ruled Europe through its greatest cultural efflorescence. But then came the Reformation and the Enlightenment, shifting culture away from tradition and toward the individual. Thus, since the 18th century, the atomistic family has been the Western cultural norm.

Here’s the problem: Societies ruled by the atomistic family model, with its loosening of constraints on its individual members, quit having enough children to carry on. They become focused on the pleasures of the present. Eventually, these societies expire from lack of manpower, which itself is a manifestation of a lack of the will to live. ...

Why? Zimmerman was not religious, but he contended the core problem was a loss of faith. Religions that lack a strong pro-fertility component don’t survive over time, he observed; nor do cultures that don’t have a powerfully natalist religion.

Labels: Christianity, conservatism, culture, demographics, extended family, family structure, gay marriage, natalism, religion

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Ozzie and Harriet step aside. The proportion of homes in America with husband-wife couples has now fallen below 50 percent, the lowest since the Census Bureau began tabulating this family data in 1940.

New census 2010 figures, released today, reveal that 48 percent of all households include a married husband and wife, compared with 52 percent in 2000. That’s down dramatically from the peak. In the 1950 census, 78 percent of all households in America mirrored the Ozzie and Harriet mold, with a husband and wife in the home.

There is wide variation from state to state. Utah has the highest proportion of husband-wife households, at 61 percent. The lowest numbers are in New York and Louisiana, with 44 percent each.

There are more interracial married couples than a decade ago. Their numbers jumped 28 percent since 2000. ...

Unmarried couples make up less than 7 percent of all households, but their numbers still jumped 40 percent from 2000. The largest increase in that group was same-sex partner homes, which skyrocketed 80 percent in the past decade. They make up less than one percent of all households, but in 2010, nearly 650,000 households identified themselves as same-sex partner homes.

Other types of living arrangements are also on the upswing. There are more people living alone. Homes with just one person made up nearly 27 percent of households in 2010. Atlanta and Washington, D.C., are the two cities with most residents living by themselves – about 44 percent in each. The Census Bureau says that probably reflects young single people looking for job opportunities.

Another growing phenomenon is the number of male homeowners living without a spouse, but with other family members. Half of these are dads with their own children. The others might include an adult son whose parent moves in, or a brother housing another brother. Think “Two and a Half Men.” This category of home increased by 19.05 percent, from 4.2 percent of households in 2000 to 5 percent in 2010.

It’s also more common to find multiple generations living together. In 2010, there were 5 million families where three or more generations lived under the same roof, about a million more than a decade before.

The new census numbers also reflects the graying of America.

Labels: aging, cohabitation, culture, extended family, family structure, Fathers, gay couples, interracial marriage, Marriage, singles, unmarried parents

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The student who has been the center of a controversy involving a mural at Pilgrim High School in Warwick says she is going to go forward and complete her mural as she originally planned.

“I’m going to paint what I originally had,” the 17-year-old student artist told WPRO’s John DePetro Show. “I just figured I would just start what I finished because it was my original plan.”

Bierendy, a junior, painted a mural depicting the life of a man ending with the man being married and standing with his wife and child. School officials had the scene with the husband, wife, and child painted over stating that it may be offensive to students that do not come from the “traditional” family.

Labels: culture, family structure, heteronormativity, Marriage, Rhode Island, schools

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So these two sociologists go into a bar and the man says to the woman, “What have you been up to?”

“I’ve been studying what I call ‘accordion families,’ ” she says. “Right now something like three and a half million American parents are sharing a house with adult kids who’ve either come back home or never left.”

“You want to talk about trends?” the man counters. “Did you know that aside from childless couples the most common household type in America is an adult living alone? That’s one out of seven adults, over 30 million people.”

Wishing to avoid an argument, the sociologists appeal to the bartender. Which trend seems more significant to him? “Beats me,” he says, “but I liked this place a lot better when the customers were political economists.”

It’s not funny, I know, but it’s not the punch line, either. That comes when the two sociologists I have in mind — ­Katherine S. Newman of Johns Hopkins University, the author of “The Accordion Family,” and Eric Klinenberg of New York University, the author of “Going Solo” — conclude their fascinating studies with a nod each to the bartender. Except by then they’re no longer in a bar; they’re in Sweden. We’ll get to that.

First let’s look at those so-called accordion families, which Newman evaluates both as a transnational phenomenon and in the nuanced particulars of individual households. Like Klinenberg, she devotes a good portion of her book to personal interviews, but where Klinenberg goes deep in his emphasis on the United States, Newman goes wide. At the extreme end of her analysis is a country like Italy, where 37 percent of 30-year-old men live with their parents, and have never lived anywhere else. Less striking but certainly notable is a parallel trend in the United States, where a higher proportion of adult children now live with parents than at any time since the 1950s.

Newman states her thesis plainly: “Global competition is the most profound structural force affecting the residential location of young adults in the developed world (or the under­developed world, for that matter)” — but one is impressed by her refusal to turn thesis into dogma. She acknowledges that different cultures define adulthood in different ways, with Americans tending to see it as “a process of self-discovery” and Europeans as “a station defined by the way one relates to others.” She also appreciates the mutual benefits of multi­generational households, as suggested by a survey showing that 76 percent of American parents of 21-year-olds say they feel close to their child, as opposed to a mere quarter of their own parents saying the same.

Still, Newman does not shy away from the larger effects of a child’s “failure to launch,” independently, into the world. Not the least of these is a generation’s failure to generate. At present there are four workers in Europe for every pensioner; by 2050 there will be only two workers for every retiree. Birthrates in the United States would also be falling if not for Mexican immigrants — yet another job they’ve taken on, along with those of lawn- and elder-care and favored scapegoat. But in Japan, the fastest-aging country in the world, where only 1 percent of the population is foreign-born, the future looks more bleak.

Labels: "emerging adulthood", aging, class, culture, demographics, economics, Europe, extended family, family structure, motherhood, work/family policy

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People generally don’t want to be totally alone, but it shouldn’t mean that they have to get married. Take the classic adolescent declaration to their good friend of the opposite sex: “If we are 40 and not married to other people, we should marry each other.” Almost everyone has had some semblance of this conversation, and the subtext is clear: they would choose each other as family. If the underlying message is companionship, its realization is limited in form — they see marriage as the only way to formalize their friendship.

Legally speaking, the only way in America to recognize family is through marriage, blood or adoption. This is a problem. Not everyone can get married, and not everyone wants to. Perhaps friends could prick their fingers and become blood brothers, but no state will recognize that. One of them could adopt the other, but then there is the “ick” factor. Maybe groups like Entourage could become domestic partners, but there are too many people. There is no legal room for best friends forever and all the legal benefits that marriage confers.

Labels: adoption, beyond marriage, children, committed relationships, culture, family structure, friendship, Marriage, parenting

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This week, New Jersey becomes the latest state to take up a same-sex marriage bill. But the Pew Research Center tells us that fewer Americans are marrying, suggesting that younger people are looking for other ways to define “family.”

Why are lawmakers so hung up on marriage? If fewer Americans are choosing to marry, what are the legal implications for relationships that are based on something other than marriage or parenting?

Syracuse University’s Kevin Noble Maillard helped organize this discussion.

Labels: beyond marriage, children, civil unions, cohabitation, committed relationships, culture, family policy, family structure, law, unmarried parents

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In the eyes of children, is it paramount that they were “planned” and “wanted”? Or does the family structure of their home matter more?

These are two of the many thought-provoking questions about donor-conceived children and “diverse” family forms in a report released Thursday from the Commission on Parenthood’s Future at the Institute of American Values (IAV).

Already, leaders in family law and family diversity are calling “intentional parenthood” a good thing because all these children “are planned and wanted,” said Elizabeth Marquardt, principal investigator and author of “One Parent or Five: A Global Look at Today’s New Intentional Families.”

But what do children think about being created to live in a home that is intentionally missing a parent? Little research has been done on this, but many young adults who were conceived by anonymous sperm donation believe “it is wrong that they were intentionally denied knowledge of their father’s identity,” said Ms. Marquardt, who directs the Center for Marriage and Families at IAV.

“If we are concerned about child outcomes,” she said, “I would suggest that it’s not just being wanted - which I think is important - but it’s also the family structure in which the child is born or raised that matters as well.”

In many cases with egg, sperm or embryo donation, she added, people are setting out to “deny a child one or both of their parents, before they are even conceived. And that is painful for some of these children.”

Labels: children, culture, donor conception, Elizabeth Marquardt, family structure, more than two parents, parenting

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...Until quite recently, such population growth always came primarily from increases in the numbers of young people. Between 1950 and 1990, for example, increases in the number of people under 30 accounted for more than half of the growth of the world's population, while only 12 percent came from increases in the ranks of those over 60.

But in the future it will be the exact opposite. The U.N. now projects that over the next 40 years, more than half (58 percent) of the world's population growth will come from increases in the number of people over 60, while only 6 percent will come from people under 30. Indeed, the U.N. projects that by 2025, the population of children under 5, already in steep decline in most developed countries, will be falling globally -- and that's even after assuming a substantial rebound in birth rates in the developing world. A gray tsunami will be sweeping the planet.

Which countries will be aging most rapidly in 2025? They won't be in Europe, where birth rates fell comparatively gradually and now show some signs of ticking up. Instead, they'll be places like Iran and Mexico, which experienced youth bulges that were followed quickly by a collapse in birth rates. In just 35 years, both Iran and Mexico will have a larger percentage of their populations over 60 than France does today. Other places with birth rates now below replacement levels include not just old Europe but also developing countries such as Brazil, Chile, China, Lebanon, Tunisia, South Korea, and Vietnam.

Because of the phenomenon of hyper-aging in the developing world, another great variable is already changing as well: migration. In Mexico, for example, the population of children age 4 and under was 434,000 less in 2010 than it was in 1996. The result? The demographic momentum that fueled huge flows of Mexican migration to the United States has waned, and will wane much more in the future. ...

Another related megatrend is the rapid change in the size, structure, and nature of the family. In many countries, such as Germany, Japan, Russia, and South Korea, the one-child family is now becoming the norm. This trend creates a society in which not only do most people have no siblings, but also no aunts, uncles, cousins, nieces, or nephews. Many will lack children of their own as well. Today about one in five people in advanced Western countries, including the United States, remains childless. Huge portions of the world's population will thus have no biological relatives except their parents.

Labels: aging, demographics, family size, family structure, Marriage, religion, siblings

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Marriage matters, but why?

For more than 20 years, social scientists have consistently found that children do better raised by their mothers and fathers united by marriage.

For most of that time policymakers have focused on the problem of "father absence," and it is a real problem. Very few boys and girls have involved, loving, supportive fathers if the man that made them is not married to their mama.

But a new crop of research is challenging the idea that the main or only problem with the decline of marriage is the absence of fathers. An equally big or even bigger problem may be the churning romantic lives of unmarried and divorced mothers. ...

Many family scholars, consistent with the liberal leanings of the academy, are responding to the accumulating evidence that marriage matters by urging society to make cohabiting and dating relationships as stable as marriages. Good luck with that one.

Here's the bottom line: When mothers' romantic lives churn, babies' and children's lives churn too.

Mothers, marriage matters because it restrains our romantic yearnings and our romantic losses. The restless search for soul mates is not really compatible with making your child feel he or she is the center of your world, infinitely beloved.

Labels: children, cohabitation, culture, dating, family structure, Maggie Gallagher, Marriage, motherhood, out-of-wedlock births, single parenting, unmarried parents

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Seven years ago, when Sabrina Morgan, 33, was single and desperate for a child, she found herself chatting to Kam Wong, 41, a gay man who was longing to be a father, in an online fertility forum. 'I instantly thought he was genuine, down-to-earth, laidback and flexible,’ says Sabrina.

'We exchanged pictures. It wasn’t about sexual attraction, obviously, but it was important what he looked like. I asked him if he had any history of baldness and loose teeth. It was part humour but it was also my way to steer towards more serious questions, like does he have any genetic health conditions.’

For Kam, who is in a long-term relationship, contacting Sabrina was about more than being a sperm donor: 'I adore children. The desire to have my own has always been with me. Because of my sexuality I thought it might never happen. The urge grew stronger in my thirties until one day I researched options. When I met Sabrina I was very nervous. This was my chance to fulfil my dreams.’ ...

Tomorrow sees the launch of pollentree.com, started by Patrick and Rita D’Alton-Harrison, ex-lawyers from north London. Rita had the idea after a number of single female friends asked for legal advice on sperm donation. 'One had looked into IVF but found the prices extortionate so turned to the internet to seek a donor. I was horrified. That’s when we had the idea to create a safe environment for women like her to explore all parenting routes.

'We can’t believe the number of young, straight women joining our site who say they are simply not prepared to wait for Mr Right. The attitude seems to be, “I’m not going to compromise with a relationship just to have children.”’

Catherine started her online search after a break-up from a three-year relationship with a man who didn’t want children. 'I’d just turned 39 and thought, “I don’t have time for this to happen again.” In a worst-case scenario I would seek an anonymous donor, but I’ve always thought a child needs a father. At the very least I wanted a donor who would visit regularly.’ ...

Leila’s first 'date’ in her co-parent search, was Paul, a 43-year-old pilot. 'We met at a Café Rouge for drinks. It felt more intense than a date. You are choosing someone who will pass on traits to the person you are going to spend the rest of your life with – your child.

'He was clean-cut with dark hair and green eyes. He told me he was a strict Catholic and had had only one serious relationship, with a girl from his church, who didn’t want children. He ached to be a parent and this was the quickest way he could make that happen.’

After three meetings they set a date to do the deed. 'You’d think that would be less weird than having sex. It was more weird. Picture it: there’s a stranger in your bathroom masturbating while you go for a walk around the block. When you get back he hands you a pot and leaves. You’re left to do the female bit, which is messy and uncomfortable.’

A pregnancy test 10 days later came out negative. After finding the encounter with Paul so awkward, Leila decided to try natural insemination (NI) – a euphemism in fertility forums for full sex – with her next potential suitor, Carl. 'I can see that could be unthinkable for a woman who is gay, in a relationship or has been assaulted ,’ she says. 'But I’m single. I don’t have barriers about sex.’

Labels: culture, donor conception, family structure, Fathers, more than two parents, parenting, sex, United Kingdom

VOTE

Yesterday, the National Marriage Project released a major report stating that cohabitation is the biggest threat to American children, eclipsing divorce and overshadowing single motherhood. While the study’s authors, led by the University of Virginia’s Brad Wilcox, admit that this is more of an issue for black and low-income families (which are more likely to have unmarried parents), the authors say that all kids “exposed to cohabitation”—as if it were a disease, or a fatal contaminant—have more emotional problems, less involved and less affectionate fathers, a greater risk of school failure, a higher risk of infant mortality, and worse physical health than kids with married parents. That’s despite economics, class, or race.

“Cohabitation is not a functional equivalent of marriage,” the study claims. And as Wilcox said at an event last night at the Institute for American Values, where he discussed the study, “cohabitation and kids don’t mix.”

In an interview this morning, I asked Wilcox how my kid—the daughter of married parents—will fare compared to the children of my unmarried friends. He told me that my daughter will always know that her parents made a commitment to each other, and transversely, to her, and that society lauds that commitment. Her friends with cohabitating parents will never have that stability, the assurance of that socially accepted bond. ...

I’m currently researching a book on only children and have come across a great deal of analysis on how children growing up in non-normative family structures are made to feel like outsiders. I can’t help but wonder if the psychological stress of being raised by cohabiting parents is akin to the experience of being an (oft-stereotyped) only child, at least in the upper economic brackets. In Sweden, where it’s become normal to parent without a marriage certificate, kids with unmarried parents don’t feel this way.

Labels: children, cohabitation, culture, family structure, Marriage, parenting, Sweden, unmarried parents

VOTE

JONATHAN TURLEY, a law professor at George Washington University, is representing the family featured on the reality show "Sister Wives" in their legal challenge to Utah's law against polygamy. It's a big, unusual family. Kody Brown is "married" to four women and father to 16 children. "One of the marriages is legal", Mr Turley writes, "and the others are what the family calls 'spiritual.' They are not asking for the state to recognise their marriages. They are simply asking for the state to leave them alone." Mr Turley goes on to make what I find to be a persuasive case. ...

Imagine the family of a twice-divorced, thrice-married woman with one child from each union. Let's say she's a stay-at-home mom who has custody of all the kids, and gets child-support payments from her first two husbands. So, children with three different fathers live together in a single household, supported by a portion of three different mens' income. How is this not de facto polyandry? How significant is it, really, that her first two husbands don't happen to live with their kids and her third husband? Suppose they move in. What then? Is it okay as long as they pay rent? As long as they no longer love the mother of their children, or vice versa? I say it's okay as long as everyone involved says it's okay. ...

But isn't polygamy, as it actually exists, a backward practice hostile to the interests of women? What about fundamentalist Mormon compounds in which children are raised in isolation, indoctrinated/brainwashed, teenage girls are married off to their uncles and impregnated, while surplus boys are ejected without the tools to cope with the outside world. Mr Turley replies:

Of course, the government should prosecute abuse wherever it is found. But there is nothing uniquely abusive about consenting polygamous relationships. It is no more fair to prosecute the Browns because of abuse in other polygamous families than it would be to hold a conventional family liable for the hundreds of thousands of domestic violence cases each year in monogamous families.

I think this is the right way to think about it. I would add that conventional monogamous marriage was in fact an abusive, exploitative, patriarchal arrangement until very recently. In 1993, North Carolina was the last state to recognise spousal rape as a crime.

Labels: cohabitation, culture, divorce, family structure, Marriage, polygamy, remarriage

VOTE

Statistics Canada will no longer collect and crunch numbers on the country’s annual marriage and divorce rates, a sign both of cost cuts at the agency and the changing nature of relationships, as definitions get fuzzier and harder to track.

The national statistical agency published its last national figures on marriage and divorce rates last week. It has been collecting divorce data since 1972 and marriage data since 1921. It pegs the cost of reinstating the collection at $250,000. ...

It will also be trickier to assess what is going well. This week, Ontario said it would require every couple in the province hoping to split to attend an information session on alternatives to going to court before getting a divorce. Evaluating whether measures like that work, five years later, has become much more difficult, Mr. Benmor said.

Statscan says it will still examine trends in family composition through its census, conducted every five years, and general social surveys. But annual data on marriage and divorce rates won’t be replaced.

Labels: Canada, committed relationships, common-law, divorce, divorce reform, economics, family policy, family structure, Marriage

VOTE

On a leafy drive in west Los Angeles, at a newly renovated home with cathedral ceilings and a backyard pool, 4-year-old Kate Eisenpresser-Davis' friends have been known to pose an intriguing question: "Why does Kate have three mommies?"

Lisa Eisenpresser, 44, and her partner, Angela Courtin, 38, share custody of Kate with Eisenpresser's ex-partner.

When asked to describe their life, Eisenpresser and Courtin respond with the same word: "Normal." Days are spent searching for the right balance between work and home, and zigzagging through Mar Vista to meetings, school and gymnastics.

Courtin is pregnant. Kate will soon have a sister, Phoebe, conceived from Eisenpresser's egg and sperm from a donor — the same 6-foot-1 Harvard grad, who scored a 1580 on the SAT, who served as Kate's donor. ...

New census figures show that the percentage of Californians who live in "nuclear family" households — a married man and a woman raising their children — has dropped again over the last decade, to 23.4% of all households. That represents a 10% decline in 10 years, measured as a percentage of the state's households.

Those households, the Times analysis shows, are being supplanted by a striking spectrum of postmodern living arrangements: same-sex households, unmarried opposite-sex partners, married couples who have no children. Some forms of households that were rare just a generation ago are becoming common; the number of single-father households in California, for instance, grew by 36% between 2000 and 2010. ...

The Times interviews also suggest that the state's stagnant economy has contributed to the erosion of traditional family models.

Marriage typically carries a host of financial benefits — a facet of traditional households touted by both social conservatives and gay rights activists pushing for the right to wed. But in Culver City, 49-year-old Xaime Casillas has declined to marry Claudia Bracho, the mother of his 16-month-old son and his partner of nearly 10 years, because he owns two properties that have fallen into foreclosure.

But, said Casillas, "I couldn't see my lady, my partner, marrying into a financial mess."

Labels: California, cohabitation, culture, economics, family structure, gay couples, gay parenting, Marriage, more than two parents

VOTE

HBO’s Big Love and TLC’s reality-TV offering Sister Wives have thrust polygamy into popular culture in the United States. Estimates are that somewhere between 50,000-100,000 families in this country are currently risking criminal prosecution by practicing plural marriage.

Proponents and detractors of polygamy use same-sex marriage to support their arguments, but that’s just a distraction, says Adrienne Davis, JD, an expert on gender relations and the William M. Van Cleve Professor of law at Washington University in St. Louis. ...

In her recent article, “Regulating Polygamy: Intimacy, Default Rules, and Bargaining for Equality,” published in the Columbia Law Review, Davis approaches polygamy as a problem of bargaining, cooperation and strategic behavior.

She proposes some default rules that might accommodate polygamy, while ensuring against some of its historic and ongoing abuses. ...

She says that conventional family law, which limits its focus to “couples,” may not be up to the task of regulating polygamy, but a legal platform such as business law may address polygamy’s central conundrum: ensuring fairness and establishing baseline behavior in a relationship characterized by multiple partners, ongoing entrances and exits, and life-defining economic and personal stakes. ...

She notes that competition among families for emotional and economic resources is not unique to what we might think of traditional polygamy.

“With regard to children, family law already accommodates intimate multiplicity, or what might be thought of as ‘de facto’ and serial polygamy,” Davis says.

“Is it better to channel legal energy into continuing to root out, repress, and punish polygamy, or into admitting it into the marriage pantheon? The answer may hinge on whether polygamy could be effectively regulated.”

Labels: children, culture, family structure, law, Marriage, more than two parents, polygamy

VOTE

The role of fathers in the modern American family is changing in important and countervailing ways. Fathers who live with their children have become more intensely involved in their lives, spending more time with them and taking part in a greater variety of activities. However, the share of fathers who are residing with their children has fallen significantly in the past half century.

In 1960, only 11% of children in the U.S. lived apart from their fathers. By 2010, that share had risen to 27%. The share of minor children living apart from their mothers increased only modestly, from 4% in 1960 to 8% in 2010.

According to a new Pew Research Center analysis of the National Survey of Family Growth (NSFG), more than one-in-four fathers with children 18 or younger now live apart from their children—with 11% living apart from some of their children and 16% living apart from all of their children.1 ...

Almost all fathers who live with their children take an active role in their day-to-day lives through activities such as sharing meals, helping with homework, and playing. Fathers who live apart from their children are much less likely to be involved in these types of activities. Many compensate by communicating with their children through email or by phone: four-in-ten nonresident dads say they are in touch with their children several times a week. At the same time, however, nearly one-third of fathers who do not live with their children say they talk or exchange email with them less than once a month. Similarly, one-in-five absent fathers say they visit their children more than once a week, but an even greater share (27%) say they have not seen their children at all in the past year.

The analysis of the NSFG was paired with a new Pew Research survey of attitudes toward fatherhood that finds a strong majority of the public saying children need a father in the home. Fully 69% say having a father in the home is essential to a child’s happiness. Only a slightly higher share (74%) says the same about having a mother in the home.

Labels: children, class, culture, economics, family structure, Fathers, Marriage, men, motherhood, out-of-wedlock births, parenting, race, single parenting

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...In fact, the fight for marriage equality works in tandem with the movement to strengthen the black family. Achieving marriage equality will actually help save the black family.

First, laws that prohibit same-sex marriage disproportionately harm black same-sex couples. According to the last Census, twice as many black same-sex couples are raising children as white same-sex couples. Black same-sex couples are also much more likely to be struggling economically. Achieving marriage equality will grant important benefits to these couples that will allow them to take care of and provide for their children and themselves.

But marriage equality helps the black community in a much broader way. Marriage equality is not just about relationship recognition. It's about family recognition, and the black community benefits from laws and policies that recognize the diversity of how families look, and demand equality for all families. ...

Likewise, marriage equality is not just about DOMA. It's not just about Prop 8. The fight for marriage equality is about fighting for equal recognition of all families. It's about combating the assumption that someone else can tell us what our families should look like. And in the black community, that assumption is dangerous, because black families are becoming increasingly nontraditional. Black families are more likely to be headed by single mothers. However, many of those mothers live with another person who helps raise the children, regardless of whether they are biologically or legally recognized as a parent. Black families are also more likely to consist of multi-generational households [pdf]. And the same policies that allow a same-sex couple to parent their children with access to all benefits they would otherwise receive grant those same benefits to aunts and uncles to raise their nieces and nephews and grandparents to raise their grandchildren. They are the same policies that allow a boyfriend to take time off work to care for his girlfriend's sick child even when there is no biological relationship. The principle that all families look different and all must be respected lies at the foundation of the struggle to strengthen the black family.

Labels: beyond marriage, children, cohabitation, culture, extended family, family structure, gay marriage, gay parenting, grandparents, Marriage, parenting, race, single parenting, unmarried parents

VOTE

I had an interesting argument with Charles Murray at yesterday's Cato Book Forum. While he expressed fundamental agreement with my views on nature and nurture, he thought parental marital status was an important exception. Children of divorce do worse than children whose parents remain married; children of never-married parents do worse than children of divorce. At least at first, Murray seemed to see these disparities as entirely causal: getting married causes your kids to do better in life; getting divorce causes some (but not all) of that benefit to go away.

I objected that divorce and single parenthood are not random. People who divorce are on average more impulsive and quarrelsome. Single parents are on average more impulsive and less achievement-oriented. Since these traits are heritable, we'd expect children of divorce and children of single parents to have worse outcomes - even if they were adopted at birth by Ozzie and Harriet.

I also mentioned that if Murray were right, he shouldn't express fundamental agreement with me. After all, about 40% of divorces end in marriage, and about 40% of kids are born out of wedlock. So if marital status matters as much as Murray says, my results hold only for (1-.4)*(1-.4)=36% of the population. ...

A few hours after the talk, Garett Jones reminded me that there's at least one paper that tries to adjudicate my dispute with Murray: O'Connor et al's "Are Associations Between Parental Divorce and Children's Adjustment Genetically Mediated?" published in Developmental Psychology in 2000. The study uses the Colorado Adoption Project to measure the causal effect of divorce. The results are mixed...

I have a knee-jerk horror of divorce. But if you asked me, "What's so bad about it?" I'd still downplay what social scientists call "adult outcomes." Instead, I'd focus on the parent-child relationship. Getting a divorce won't ruin your child's life, but it is fairly likely to forever maim or destroy the way your beloved child feels about you.*

Labels: adoption, children, divorce, family structure, Marriage, parenting

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For the child of lesbians, Mother’s Day is never simple. Sunday was no exception.

For starters, how many Mother’s Day cards should my daughter buy? As with everything else in our family, this one is particularly complicated. You may want to jot down a few notes.

My daughter has two moms, one stepmom, one ex-stepmom and one future stepmom, maybe. Every year, she scopes out Mother’s Day cards in multiple configurations, depending on relationship statuses.

My (now ex-) wife gave birth to her via artificial insemination 25 years ago. Some time later, we divorced. We each remarried. More precisely, I remarried and she got into a committed relationship, during which her partner bore a son and daughter. Both were the products of AI, which in this case had nothing to do with Allen Iverson, that we know of.

Many years later, she and her partner broke up. They worked out a time-share for the kids, who were raised with my daughter as her brother and sister. The fact that the (now ex-) partner and her progeny moved across the street streamlined the process considerably.

Labels: children, cohabitation, committed relationships, culture, divorce, donor conception, family structure, lesbians, motherhood, parenting, stepparents

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...We might well succeed in displacing the family as we know it and replacing it with “families of choice” or some other rubric for non-natalism. For that matter, I am not clear that we can now stop ourselves from carrying this radical change forward. But I am not optimistic about the consequences. It looks to me that we are turning away from something basic in the way human societies organize themselves. In the hope of achieving a greater equality we may put at risk the means by which the rough kind of equality and cooperation became possible in the first place.

Before someone else says it, let me acknowledge that this is a speculation on my part. But it is no more speculative than the vision offered by advocates of same-sex marriage. And it has the advantage of being based on a few millions years of human evolution rather than a few decades of law review articles.

Labels: culture, family structure, gay marriage, Marriage, universities

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