Authentic Happiness 2: The Main Point

Positive Psychology has made an elaborate effort to identify the different strengths that people can have. They have set out to create a positive alternative to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the summary text of psychology. Martin Seligman's Authentic Happiness makes an interesting claim: don't try to have all strengths possible to people, but concentrate on your signature strengths. The main point of the book, I believe, is this:

“the good life is using your signature strengths every day to produce authentic happiness and abundant gratification. This is something you can do in each of the main realms of your life: work, love, and raising children.”

This raises a further question for a sociologist: do groups of people have distinctive signature strengths?

And beyond that, what kind of society would emerge if each person pursued his or her signature strengths?

Communion Technology

Danville hosted its big event of the year, the Great American Brass Band Festival. This morning saw the traditional community church service on the college lawn. The Canadian Salvation Army band supplied the music, and most of the downtown churches participated in the service. This is practical ecumenism at its best.

We had a new piece of communion technology this year. We each received a little plastic cup of grape juice. It was sealed at the top. Above the seal was another layer with the text "This is my body, which is broken for you. Take, eat: do this in remembrance of me."

The most amazing part was that in between the top layer printed with the text, and the second layer which sealed the cup, was a little tiny communion wafer.

A Centrist Looks at the Parties 3: Third Parties

Third parties only hurt the party closest to them. They are a gift to their enemies. Ross Perot took enough votes away from George H.W. Bush for Bill Clinton to get elected. Ralph Nader took enough votes away from Al Gore for George W. Bush to get elected.

The third parties are drawn from the angry wings. Centrists tend not to go in for the kind of institution destroying that you would have to do to make a third party.

I see an asymmetry, though, between the two kinds of third parties. There are angry extremes on both ends of the political spectrum. Aside from tiny socialist sects, though, the left extremes hardly ever split from the Democratic Party to mount a third party challenge. The Nader campaign was unusual because he persisted in a vanity campaign into the general election, even when it was clearly hurting his own side. Contrary to the usual stereotype, it is Democrats who are more disciplined about working within the party. This is the advantage of a being a "big tent." On the right end of the spectrum, though, short-lived parties come and go all the time. Whether organized around a rich guy or grass-roots anger, libertarian and nativist "parties" keep splitting the right and undermining the Republican Party.

I believe there are more significant third parties on the right than the left because the right wing of American politics was born of the marriage of Protestant sectarianism and "you can't tell me what to do" individualism. Both sides of this family are good for creating motivating passion. But they are bad for sustaining political parties.

A Centrist Looks at the Parties 2: Democrats

The Democratic Party is a center-left party. At this time, it is the biggest tent. The Democratic Party is not a centrist party, but it has the greatest room and tolerance for centrists.

The left wing of the Democratic Party was been disappointed with President Obama. They have mounted primary challenges to several centrist Democrats.

I believe the big advantage that centrists have in the Democratic Party, as opposed to the Republican Party, is that these attempted purges have not, for the most part, succeeded. Several establishment Republicans have been knocked off by the Tea Party wing. No establishment Democrats have been knocked off by leftists in the Democratic Party this cycle. (I don't think anyone could count Senator Spector as an establishment Democrat.)

After President Reagan's defeat of President Carter in 1980, the Democratic Party was torn apart for a season by ideological fights and recriminations. The metaphor of a circular firing squad was appropriate. The party was brought back by a rising generation of centrists who were willing to horse trade with the other side. The country, and the world, enjoyed a moment of peace and prosperity.

The Republican Party is having its circular firing squad moment now. The emotional energy is on the right wing. But the future of the party lies, I believe, with a rising generation of centrists who will be willing to horse trade with the other side.

This is a great moment for the Democratic Party. I believe the Obama administration has done about as good a job as could be done in cleaning up the massive destruction they inherited, of which the Gulf oil spill is only the latest legacy. At the same time, they have had a few significant legislative and diplomatic achievements, with more to come before the mid-term elections. The party in power will, no doubt, lose seats in the mid-term, as usually happens. But eventually there will be centrists Republicans to work with, who will strengthen the centrist Democrats. Together they can use America's moment as the world's super power for the good of all.

A Centrist Looks at the Parties 1: Republicans

I am a centrist. I pick the party that has the most viable place for centrists. I have voted for and registered as a Republican in the past. Lately, though, I find the Democratic Party is the only viable home for a centrist. The Democratic Party is a bigger tent. The Republican Party is prone to purges designed to drive out the ideologically impure, including centrists who want to work with the other party to govern.

The Republican Party was born of establishment white Protestantism, which remains the core Republican constituency today. I am an establishment white Protestant. Most members of my church, the mainline Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), are Republicans. The great strength of the historic core of the Republican Party has been fiscal responsibility and a strong military to build up good order in society. I believe American politics works best when one party holds up this side of government, in constant dialogue with the party of helping people in need and defending the weak for the compassionate order of society.

Sometimes, though these Republican virtues get pulled, by anger and fear, to a bad extreme. Fiscal responsibility becomes "only spend money on me"; a strong military becomes "use any force on anyone who might threaten me"; build up the good order of society becomes "prevent government". Worse, establishment white Protestantism has a tendency, when fearful, to become an angry nativism that turns harshly against immigrants and imagined conspiracies by foreign ideologies.

The precursor to the Republican Party was the Whig Party. It had the same core and, at its best, the same strengths. The Know Nothing movement tore apart the Whig Party. The Know Nothings lasted only a few years, and produced no legislative achievements. Today the Tea Party movement occupies the same position in relation to the Republican Party. I do not think the Republican Party will be torn apart, as the Whigs were. But I do think that the current nativist tempest will subside, the fear and anger will recede to the wings.

I look forward to the return of the traditional Republican Party as a partner with the Democratic Party in good government.

Authentic Happiness 1: The Pillars

I have previously blogged on Martin Seligman's Learned Optimism, the starting point of his trilogy on positive psychology. This week I will be considering the conclusion of his trilogy, Authentic Happiness.

Positive Psychology has three pillars:

Positive emotion

Positive traits – especially strengths and virtues, but also abilities

Positive institutions – democracy, strong families, free inquiry

Positive psychology has to make a case for positive emotions because they are arguing with Freudians, who say that our achievements and creativity are driven by channeling negative emotions. Seligman argues, probably too emphatically, that "there is not a shred of evidence that strength and virtue are derived from negative motivation." This is mostly an intra-psych squabble about how important and fleeting emotions are.

The strength of positive psychology, in my view, is its attempt to reconnect the psychologists' "traits" with the philosophers' and religious leaders' "virtues." The empirical work that positive psychology builds on is best when it shows how habits of action produce our long-term gratifications and troubles. My favorite sentence on the ambition of Seligman's movement is this: "we need a psychology of rising to the occasion."

The part I am most interested, as I try to construct a positive sociology, is his claim that the third pillar is positive institutions. I think he makes a suggestive beginning in this book in connecting positive character with positive institutions. Most of this work, though, remains to be done. And nearly all of it, I think, is beyond the tools of psychology.

Blockades Hurt Potential Friends

I have long thought the blockade of Cuba was a bad idea. If we had had vigorous trade relations with Cuba from the outset of the Castro regime, they would be turned into a democratic market society no later than 1989, and probably long before. Isolating Cuba from the strong appeal of freedom and freely available stuff just pushed them into the arms of the Soviets and strengthened the Communist regime. I look forward to visiting democratic Cuba soon after we end this foolish policy. Aid and trade wins friends among ordinary people, even if the regime never likes us. In the long run, even in the medium run, that friendship and ordinary intercourse matters more.

The blockade by the Israeli government of Palestine is a bad idea. If they had vigorous trade relations with one another, and all the other kinds of intercourse normal between two intertwined nations, Palestine could turn fully into the democratic market society that it almost is already. Isolation pushes ordinary Palestinians into the arms of Hamas and the violent extremists. Fomenting permanent fear has a similar effect on ordinary Israelis and their equivalent extremists. Aid and trade wins friends among ordinary people, even if the regimes never like one another. In the long run, even in the medium run, that friendship and ordinary intercourse matters more.

Lean Green Beef

What Mrs. G. asked me to get at the grocery store. Inadvertent, but too funny. A keeper.

Learned Optimism 3: What is Pessimism For?

In Learned Optimism, Martin Seligman makes a good case for the many benefits of optimism. So, he asks, what is pessimism for? Why did it get selected for in evolution?

The answer is that pessimists are more accurate about what was and is than optimists are.

In any organization, Seligman argues, you need the optimists to pursue a vision of the future in the face of adversity. And you need some pessimistic bean counters to keep accurate tabs on what resources you actually have and what actions are actually happening now.

I like this balance, even dialectic, of complementary types.

As I argued yesterday, though, I think Seligman is wrong about what optimism is. He conflates optimism and cheerfulness. He sees optimism as the ability to persist in doing in the face of obstacles. He does not have a place for cheerful realism, the ability to accurately see the good and bad in the world, and remain cheerful. His account of optimism tends to reduce virtues to psychological traits that help us achieve the end of getting what we seek. He does not really have a place for virtues as habits of action that let us live in a good way, whether that achieves the ends we seek or not.

Learned Optimism 2: Is Seligman Right About Optimism?

In Learned Optimism, Martin Seligman says that if you have a pessimistic explanatory style, when something bad happens to you, you blame yourself. I think he is right.

Seligman then goes on to say that if you have an optimistic explanatory style, when something bad happens to you, you blame it on others.

I do not think this is right. I do not think this is what optimism means. And I don't think these are the only choices. The bad effect on you could be the effect of social structure - of the unintended consequences of other people's actions, which were not bad in themselves or aimed at you. The bad effect could be due to nature, or even higher forces.

This individual focus - either it is my fault or it is your fault - may be an occupational hazard of psychology. Or it may be that he had found some test items that correlate with the opposite of pessimism, some of which are related to optimism, and some of which are not.

I think Seligman is right about pessimism, but wrong about optimism.

Learned Optimism 1: What is a Pessimistic Explanatory Style?

This week I will be blogging on Martin Seligman's Learned Optimism, one of the fundamental books of positive psychology.

I think Seligman's starting point is true and powerful. If, when faced with adversity, you habitually believe that:

a) it is your fault;
b) it is due to a pervasive fault of yours; and
c) that this fault ruins your life; then

many things in your life, and the lives of others you interact with, will be made worse as a result.

In Seligman's terms, a pessimistic explanatory style will produce worse results than an alternative, more optimistic explanation of adversity will.

Commencement Closes a Loop

We went back to alma mater, Swarthmore College, for the eldest Gruntled child's happy graduation.

The entire ceremony was great. When the streaming video (which was broadcast live) is available I will post the link.

I asked in a post some years ago "Does Swarthmore Reproduce My Family, Or Does My Family Reproduce Swarthmore?" The answer is "yes."

A loop has been closed.

Completing a Grand Loop in the Life Cycle

Today our eldest child graduates from college.

In our specific era and class, this is her real graduation into independent adulthood. We will, of course, continue to love and help her all of our days. But from now on she will not be temporarily away from our home, but a person with her own center of gravity elsewhere, who pays us welcome visits.

Adding to this sense of completion of a loop is the fact that she is graduating from our alma mater.

And for a further dash of sweetness, yesterday we walked by the Meeting House on campus where we were married, 28 years before that moment.

The Dangers of Iced Coffee

Thaler and Sunstein, in Nudge, talk about how the initial conditions are so important in priming a group to react one way or another. They cite an experiment which went one way if the group was given hot coffee first, and a different way if they were given iced coffee.

“Those given iced coffee are more likely to see other people as more selfish, less sociable, and, well, colder than those who are given hot coffee.”

Don't Nudge Marriage

The one thing I thought Thaler and Sunstein were most wrong about in Nudge was the idea of privatizing marriage. They propose that the state "get out of the marriage business," offering only legal civil unions. Marriage would be left entirely to religious institutions.

Their account of marriage misses the fact that marriage as a social institution is not primarily about the feelings of the married couple, but about the best arrangement for raising children. Marriage works best for kids, and produces many of its benefits for married people, because it is a permanent, socially recognized and supported institution.

Marriage is not a nudge, but a permanent choice to change yourself into a part of something larger than yourself.

Save More Tomorrow

The best-known example of a nudge from Thaler and Sunstein is "Save More Tomorrow."

Most Americans say they want to put more money away in savings accounts, but few do it. If you offer employees an option to select automatic savings from their paychecks, most will say they are for it, but only about a fifth will actually get around to setting it up. However, if the default is that they are all signed up for an automatic savings deduction of, say, 2%, unless they opt out, 90% will start savings.

And what has happened two years later, when the workers have had a chance to see that 2% flow out of their paycheck and into a savings account? 98% have joined the automatic savings plan.

That is a pretty good nudge.

The further nudge of Save More Tomorrow is that every time you get a raise, a hunk of it is added to your savings deduction, before you ever see it in a paycheck. Then your savings starts to really build up - and you never miss it.

Conformity, Proportion, and the Wisdom of Crowds

Thaler and Sunstein note that many people tend to follow the crowd, even when at their reflective best they know better. When Solomon Asch's conformity experiments are tried around the world, 20 - 40% of people will go along with the crowd of the experimenter's secret collaborators even when they can see that the crowd is wrong.

Thaler and Sunstein conclude that this fact means we should adjust our choice architecture to help people resist being improperly swayed by the crowd. One way to do this is to show that when people think "everyone is doing it" the real proportions are quite different. Knowing that a number of others go their own way - even if only a minority - gives courage to those who want to follow their instincts or values, but don't want to be too deviant. And showing the true proportions of anything in a whole population is beyond what anyone can know from just looking around. For true proportions you need sociology.

Choice Architecture

Thaler and Sunstein make the case for libertarian paternalism, as I noted yesterday.

Some might object that nudging is not libertarian, but statism disguising itself as liberty.

Thaler and Sunstein have a good answer for that. Any situation that requires choice has an implicit "choice architecture." Doing nothing is also a choice.

A big finding of the psychological research and behavioral economics that lies behind the book Nudge, though, is that many times most people don't get around to making a choice, or implementing the choice they made in their minds, or find too many choices paralyzing. None of these conditions are the same as reflectively choosing not to act. The implicit choice architecture of many choices we face tends to produce thoughtless inertia.

What a thoughtful choice architect would do about that situation, therefore, is try to structure the choices such that it is easier to assess the choices, and put our choice into effect. Moreover, there are many situations in which we can know what most people are likely to want to choose. Straight-up paternalism (whether exercised by the state or any other institution) would lead the choice architect to make that choice for other people. What libertarian paternalism does instead is to make it easy to take the most likely choice as a default, but allow an easy and clear opt-out if the chooser wishes too.

Choice architecture is inevitable - it is implicit in any array of choices. Nudging people to choose, and choose wisely, is a social good without social force.

Libertarian Paternalism

This week I will be blogging Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein's Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth, and Happiness.

Libertarian Paternalism is the wonderful name that Thaler and Sunstein give to their approach to social organization.

Their approach is paternalistic, in that it helps people make choices that will improve their lives - as the people themselves see it. Sometimes, though, we make choices automatically or in the heat of the moment that we would not make if we thought about it. Thus, the paternalism is in setting up our choices to get us to pick what our reflective selves would want - even when we are not being reflective.

Their approach is libertarian, though, in that you can opt out of choosing what the system urges you to choose. You are free to have a different opinion. You are free to make foolish choices. You are free to reject what you know is good for you out of sheer cussedness.

Thaler and Sunstein don't force you to choose what it good for you. But they do nudge.

Libertarian Paternalism, by its seeming union of opposites, ends up centrist.

Commencement 2010: You are Not Special

Centre College held Commencement today.

The unexpected element of the address by Wayne Meisel, head of the Bonner Foundation, was "you are not special." Evidently he had been running across some young people who had been told they were special so often that they didn't think they had to work hard, pay their dues, or pitch in unasked.

His illustration was "wash the dishes in the office sink without an attitude."

Sage advice. Unusual in a commencement address. A corollary, I think, of the Protestant work ethic, from a self-described preacher's kid.

My New Foundation

My wife has been doing some work with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

I was thinking that I should have a foundation, too. I could have it jointly with my children. I could be the bull in charge, and my kids, or "little goats" in the more formal parlance of foundations, could be my partners.

The Bull and My Little Goats Foundation.

Paternal Postpartum Depression

A new meta-analysis of many others studies suggests that 10% of new fathers feel depressed after the birth of their children. Equally interesting, dad's depression seemed to correlate with mom's depression.

As a guest couple said to my family life class this term, "having a baby is like dropping a bomb in your relationship."

Why The Fear Wave Now?

David Brooks notes that "if you grew up in a big city in the '70s, then life is better for you now in every respect." But this also means that if you grew up in a big city in the '70s, you came of age in a time of crime, drugs, riots, a lost war, and family collapse. If you grew up near a big city in the '70s, as David Brooks did, as I did, the spectacle of the terrible things happening nearby and Coming For You Next was, if anything, even scarier than if you lived within it and learned how to cope with real dangers.

Your worldview is shaped by what was going on when you first started noticing the world. Even if the actual world gets much better - as it has for young Boomers and old Xers - your adolescent worldview tends to stick with you. The generation that came of age in the 1970s, what Doonesbury rightly called "a kidney stone of a decade," are now coming to power.

I think the fear that drives much of American politics now is not driven by real threats of today. They are driven by the scary conditions that prevailed in the childhood and early adolescence of today's rising ruling cohort.

It Really is Important for Government to Make People Happy - With Government

One more interesting idea from David Halpern's The Hidden Wealth of Nations:

"the growing use of subjective satisfaction measures may prove to be the single most important innovation in public services of the last decade."

Subjective satisfaction measures means asking people if they are happy with the services they are getting from government. By looking at the details of what citizens do and not like about their interactions with the state, the government can get a reality check about how it is doing, and which things it needs to improve.

The Canadian government did detailed studies of citizens' satisfaction with the service they were getting. The government was often surprised that the things that bothered and pleased people were not what the government workers providing the service thought it would be. For example, people were much more upset about the police not showing up when they said they would than about whether the police solved the crime. The Canadian government then set targets to improve consumers' satisfaction with government services, starting from this baseline. They evaluate agency heads on whether people are actually more satisfied with the service they are getting, not on whether the agency was satisfied that it followed its own procedures.

The State Should Not Let Fear Be the Declarative Norm

More thoughts inspired by David Halpern's The Hidden Wealth of Nations.

The "declarative norm" is what we perceive others to be doing. We are much more likely to do something if we think that "everyone is doing it."

I have always thought that one of the distinctive functions of sociology is to show people the true proportions of every practice - everyone is not doing it (whatever it is); X percent are doing it, but you could choose to be in the Y percent who are not.

The government often makes the big mistake of inflating a problem to get more attention. However, this strategy makes it more likely that people with think that problematic behavior is the declarative norm, which makes them more likely to do it.

I believe that of all the big mistakes government can make, promoting the culture of fear as the declarative norm is the biggest mistake of all.

Babies Prefer Helpers to Hinderers.

Paul Bloom, a Yale psychologist, has done some nifty studies in which babies watched puppets and toys in little stories in which some characters helped others, while other characters hindered others.

The babies overwhelmingly preferred the helpers.

When toddlers where shown similar stories, they punished the hinderers.

Morality is built in. It is not merely a social construct.

Donut Prince Commercial

This is a great pro-marriage ad.

Inequality With Respect and Equal Access is OK

David Halpern, in The Hidden Wealth of Nations, reported on the Blair administration's attempts to improve the lot of the worst off in Britain by removing barriers to achievement. To the discomfort of the left, they discovered that removing barriers didn't do much to reduce inequality because many people at the bottom didn't want to seize more opportunities (and more work).

He also reports that most nations are not opposed to inequality, if they think the process that produced it is basically fair. This is true regardless of how unequal that nation's economic condition actually is.

So Halpern suggests a sensible centrist aim for government. The state should focus on fostering decency, mutual respect, and access to basic services, especially on the part of the state itself. The government should not put its main effort into eliminating inequality or poverty.

Monetizing Good Behavior Cheapens It

This is a point that I have been noticing from other studies of paying people for gifts, but was clarified for me by David Halpern in The Hidden Wealth of Nations.

The economy of regard is a vast gift exchange of labor, respect, and love. If we tried to reduce the many gifts that we give to family, friends, and fellow citizens to the cash economy, we would stop doing those good acts. The economy of regard runs on trust - the trust that in the not-too-long run, what you give will come back to you, and probably several-fold. The cash economy exists for those situations with low trust.

Yet trust is the foundation on which functional social life runs. We try to turn mere cash relations into personal relations all the time - which makes the cash relations work better. The hidden wealth of happy nations is trust. Reducing social relations to cash economies reduces the very social wealth that makes nations happy.

Fear of Crime Shows Our Weak Social Ties

David Halpern, in The Hidden Wealth of Nations, directly addresses the culture of fear, which I think is what makes our politics irrational. He reports that Britons fear crime, immigration, and terrorism, even though crime is down, immigration is overwhelmingly positive, and terrorism is extremely rare. Americans share these fears. What these fears have in common is a fear of the Other all out of proportion to the actual threat. Halpern writes

“Fear of crime is … showing a mirror to ourselves – a glimpse into the hidden wealth or poverty of a nation.”

Nations that promote social connections and social trust are happier, calmer, less fearful. They also have less crime. And their discussion about crime, immigration, and terrorism can be conducted in a calmer, more proportionate way.

Fighting fear is not just rational, it actually makes the social order better.

Nations Unite on Social Values, The World Remains Diverse

I am continuing with David Halpern's The Hidden Wealth of Nations today.

Some globalization writers worry that countries are becoming all the same. Some writers on immigration worry that diversity will tear countries apart.

The opposite is happening, says Halpern. Using World Values Survey data, he says that, outside of a small globalized sector in many countries, nations are actually becoming more different from one another. And they are doing so by coming together around their common values - allaying the fears of those alarmed by immigration.

The hidden wealth of nations is the trust and connections that our social relations and shared standards of regard build up.

The Economy of Regard

I am working through David Halpern's The Hidden Wealth of Nations. Halpern was a chief policy analyst for Tony Blair. He is starting from a problem I have written about several times recently - the disjunction between high levels of happiness and high levels of income in nations. His argument is that what really makes a nation happy, once its basic needs are met, are the giant web of relationships that we have with family, friends, and fellow citizens. These relations usually take the form of long circles of gift-giving, which more or less even out in the end. We do these things for others not for money, but for regard - our regard for them, and theirs for us.

The economy of regard, Halpern argues, is much larger than the economy of monetary exchange. Indeed, quite a bit of what we work for and buy is to give to others out of regard. Happy nations have a healthy economy of regard. Since we work much harder and better at measuring the economy of monetary exchange than we do at measuring the economy of regard, the major wealth of nations is hidden.

Inequality Makes Rich Liberals Unhappy

The Easterlin paradox, as we noted yesterday, finds that above the midpoint, more money does not make people happier.

The complementary macrosocial finding is that inequality in society is not closely correlated with overall happiness. Nor are poor people normally unhappy in unequal societies. Indeed, some of the happiest people in the world, according to Carol Graham's studies in Happiness Around the World, are in sub-Saharan Africa, which are very unequal societies.

Yet happiness studies at the macrosocial level almost always have a big concern with opposing inequality. Where does this concern come from, if not from the actual data on happiness?

From the guilt of rich liberals, especially in rich societies, Graham concludes.

The Easterlin Paradox - The Foundation of Macro Happiness Studies

I am working my way through the mountain of research in the past generation on happiness. Half of it is micro work done by psychologists. The other half are macro studies done by economists. We sociologists have some catching up to do.

The foundation of macro happiness studies is Richard Easterlin's finding that richer nations are happier, but the richer people in them are not.

When you plot income against happiness, the curve goes up steeply to about the mid-point, then flattens out, kind of like a small r. This curve is the same for individuals within a nation, and for nations as a whole.

Some researchers I respect say that there isn't really a paradox, because the curve does not flatten (as much) if you measure percentage change in income, instead of absolute increases. I will ponder over those claims hereafter.

The basic finding of the Easterlin paradox makes sense to me. From poor to average, more money really does make your life easier and opens other options. From middle to the Gatesian stratosphere of income, though, more money does not add big increments of happiness. Richer nations are happier because the people who are relatively poor live decent lives, materially, whereas the poorest people in desperately poor nations are really badly off.

Happiness Correlates Hold in Non-Rich Countries, Too

Getting richer doesn't make you happier above the average income. Chronic health problems make you unhappy. Unemployment makes you unhappy. Divorce makes you unhappy. These are strong findings from across the rich countries of the world.

Carol Graham, in Happiness Around the World, added her own study of Latin America, Russia, and Afghanistan, and collected other studies of sub-Saharan Africa. The result: the same relationships hold in middle-income and poor countries, too.

The happiest people were sub-Saharan Africans, among the poorest people on earth. Their absolute wealth is low, but personal happiness is tied more to having enough to live, and then having good family and friend relationships.

Obesity as a Poverty Marker - for White People

Many Americans are fat, including many poor Americans. Carol Graham, in Happiness Around the World, reports that poor white Americans feel worse about being fat than poor black or Hispanic Americans do. Her reading of this fact: poor white Americans think other people see their being fat as marking them off as poor, whereas being fat is spread among all classes of black and Hispanic Americans enough that obesity is not taken as a poverty marker.

Blocked Ascendants and Frustrated Achievers

Carol Graham, in Happiness Around the World: The Paradox of Happy Peasants and Unhappy Millionaires, found that the poor people who stay poor are often happier than people who are rising out of poverty. She notes, as many happiness researchers have found, that happiness rises as income rises up to a midpoint, then flattens out at the higher levels of income. In her surveys of many developing countries, Graham found that the least happy were those she called "frustrated achievers." These are people who are rising educationally and economically, but are stymied. In developing economies there are many people with more education and ambition than the economy can absorb. They have a broader view of the possibilities of advancement than the peasants, so it bothers them more than they can't reach their (new) goals.

I was reminded of one of the interesting ideas that came of the massive studies of worldwide religious fundamentalism that Martin Marty and his associates conducted in the 1990s. They found that a fertile field from which to recruit fundamentalists was among people with modern education who were nonetheless unable to find a place in the modern sector of the economy. The Marty team called such people "blocked ascendants."

It makes sense to me that frustrated achievers and blocked ascendants - who appear to be the same people - are both unhappy with the way their society is organized, and open to a suggestion that things would be better if society were restored to a previous, God-given order. I don't know if fundamentalism makes people any happier, but it would make their lives feel more meaningful.

The New Form of Government for the PC(USA) is Still a Good Idea

A new Form of Government was proposed for the Presbyterian Church (USA) at the General Assembly in 2008. Predictably, it was sent back to the church for study until the next assembly, which meets in July. I think the great majority of Presbyterians have no idea that a new Form of Government has been proposed, nor that there is a consequential debate going on. This is pure polity wonk material. As a polity wonk, I feel a duty to weigh in.

The Presbyterian Church, like every big Christian denomination, has always had a range of theological views and religious practices under the big tent of the Bible and traditional theology. Presbyterians takes a specifically Reformed approach, which has some particular consequences, but this picture is true of every large denomination.

For the past long generation in the PC(USA) we have had a continuous theological and cultural struggle. One important front in this struggle has been over the precise wording of the Form of Government (FOG), the portion of the church's constitution that regulates who does what in the church. We don't usually have fights over the part of the constitution about how worship services are to be conducted. While we have a few large disagreements about what we confess theologically, the church made the portion of the constitution that is full of theological confessions merely advisory in the 1960s. So, ever since then, nearly all fights have been about the Form of Government. As a result, the FOG has grown from a short, practical set of regs that commissioners brought to presbytery meetings in their breast pocket, to a fat rulebook.

The idea behind the new Form of Government was to make the denomination-wide FOG a slimmer set of general operating principles. The governing bodies of the church - the local sessions, the presbyteries, the synods, and the General Assembly - would create their own manuals of operations within the general constitution. The different governing bodies could be a little different from one another. The big principles of the church would apply to all. That way, the church would not have to spend every single assembly fighting over amending the by-laws to suit one side of the culture war or the other.

In the upcoming assembly there are a few overtures to shelve the nFOG. The ground of their objection is that, in the words of Central Washington Presbytery,

the proposed changes to the Constitution of the PC(USA) are so vast and foundational, that they are not simply changes to our current communion, but would go so far as to functionally constitute the creation of a new denomination. As such, we believe that many who have taken ordination vows to a vastly different constitution would no longer believe that their vows were still in force. We believe the potential chaos of both intentional changes and unintended, unforeseen consequences will not serve to advance the mission of the church and will only escalate the level of strife and distrust that already exists.

They object to nFOG because it might have unforeseen consequences. That is true. That is true of every change to the constitution.

They object to nFOG because it would let presbyteries have somewhat different rules from one another. That is also true. But that has always been true of the Presbyterian Church, and every large denomination that has ever existed.

The great gain of adopting the new Form of Government is that the inevitable diversity within the Presbyterian Church could be contained within the overall order of the church, while allowing some variation at the local level. The attempt made by both extremes in the church's culture war to force everyone to comply exactly with the views of one wing or the other damages the church unnecessarily. They force the other extreme out. Worse, the endless skirmishing so disheartens the vast loyalist center that they just withdraw from the denomination altogether.

End the war. Allow local variation. Pass the FOG.

Derby Day!

Today is the central ritual of Kentucky's civil religion, the Kentucky Derby.

My favorite part of the whole ritual pageant is the parade of Derby hats. An excellent array can be found here.

I favor the comparatively constrained classics.

I understand that there is also a horse race involved.

Surrogates Beat Imagination to Predict How Something Will Make Us Feel

I have been reading Daniel Gilbert's Stumbling on Happiness. This is not really about happiness, but about the many ways in which memory and imagination mislead us. If we want to know how some choice might make us feel, we are not likely to get it right if we go by either how we remember it made us feel in the past, nor how we imagine it might make us feel in the future. Instead, our best source of how something would make us feel is how it is making someone else feel in the present. We are better off, in other words, treating other people's feelings as a surrogate for what our own would be.

However, we resist relying on stranger's feelings to predict our own because they are not us. The best line in the book, I think, is this: “if you are like most people, then like most people, you don’t know you’re like most people.” We tend to think ourselves more unusual than we really are - both better and worse.

Each year I find that this is a hard lesson to teach students who are trying to develop a sociological imagination. Most people are average and normal. That means most of my students are average and normal. That means I am average and normal in most things. Of course there are exceptional points. But not as many as we think. The belief that we are unusually unusual is an average and normal belief.

As I often tell Mrs. G., I am a regular guy. She and the kids deny it. That is normal.

The Daily Sex Challenge

A British couple, seven years married, set themselves a challenge of daily sex for a month. They were returning to the practice of their first years of marriage, which they had drifted away from. However, they found that the daily sex experiment was harder to stick to than they thought it would be - normal life raised many hurdles. Still, they also found that it brought them closer together, made them more attentive to one another, and they looked and felt better.

What struck me about this experiment was that they found it so challenging without children. One weekend they babysat their small nieces, who wished to stay up and be entertained. When she fussed to her sister that the kids would cramp their challenge, the mother of the small girls simply said "welcome to my world."

The Kavanaghs ended the account of their experiment in the Daily Mail by saying they were glad they did it, never felt closer, and wanted to start a family.

Feeling That Your Spouse Supports You and Is Pulling In the Same Direction Keeps You Healthier

There is a fascinating article in the New York Times Magazine by Tara Parker-Pope about how a happy marriage helps you stay healthy.

One of the several findings she reports is that women, especially, benefit from the sense that their spouse is present and feeling emotionally supportive. For men the cue is a little different: they like to feel that their spouse is working with them on the same project, not fighting to control them or the relationship.

When Babies Cry it Out, Are They Really Learning Helplessness?

When our eldest was a baby we tried the advice in some parenting books to let her "cry it out" and learn to just go to sleep without being held. I was able to stand her crying for about 15 minutes, uttered an expletive that became famous in the family, and picked her up. End of experiment.

Now Penelope Leach, the favorite parenting advice source of the knowledge class, argues that crying it out is so stressful to babies that they can be scarred, even brain-damaged, by the high cortisol levels this experience induces.

I will be interested in how the scientific argument develops. As for me and my house, we will hold the baby to sleep. More fun for us, too, in the long run.

Proud to be "Trustworthy"

My kind of science. Ish.

Disney's Weenie

Eminent sociologist George Ritzer gave a plenary address to the Southern Sociological Society this week on consumption and hyperconsumption. I learned a wonderful new term from this address: a weenie. Walt Disney, a genius at marketing, thought that his theme parks needed a tall, striking visual magnet to draw visitors along through the park. And as they were drawn along toward the magnet, their path could be lined with stores selling them stuff. He called these visual magnets "weenies." Cinderella's Castle is the great Disney weenie.

Ritzer said the principle of the weenie has not been lost on brand makers around the world. He showed a series of images of the arms race of tallest buildings in the world, as they have grown increasingly outsized. The biggest weenie of them all is also the most ridiculous: the Burj Khalifa in Dubai. It is, indeed, the world's tallest building - a Chrysler Building stacked on top of an Empire State Building. It is also, Ritzer said, empty, and not in use except for the observation tower. The Burj Khalifa is the perfect emblem of both the weenie and of hyperconsumption.

Strong Marriages Fight Risk

Tonight I heard Angela O'Rand's very interesting presidential address at the Southern Sociological Society. Her topic was "The Devolution of Risk and the Changing Life Course." What she means by devolution of risk is that we used to have a more orderly life course, but now that order has devolved into a thousand paths and no certain route. This uncertainty has increased our risk.

O'Rand cited "ephemeral families" as one of the devolving institutions that increases risk. She cited most other institutions, too, especially economic ones.

She is right that the family life course can't be taken for granted as it once was. But I don't think we need to accept that families simply are ephemeral and have no order. Of all of the devolving institutions in social life, families are the ones we have the most capacity to make for ourselves. The economy, the state, the educational system, even religious institutions may be largely beyond our control. But we can make our own marriages and family life stronger, more orderly, and less risky.

Black Men in Prison Undermine Black Marriage

The Economist has a good story on how the high prison rate for black men contributes to the abysmally low black marriage rate. They cite a study by Kerwin Kofi Charles and Ming Ching Luoh which estimates that for every 1% increase in the black male incarceration rate, there is a 2.4% reduction in the number of black women who ever marry.

Nisa Muhammad, promoter of the annual Black Marriage Day, urges educated black women to be more open to marriage with blue-collar black men. I think this is a very sensible idea.

Moreover, middle-class black boys are not likely to commit crimes, but are likely to become educated, middle-class black men. They have their pick of educated black women, who outnumber their male counterparts by about 40%.

The Economist concludes that "the simplest way to help the black family would be to lock up fewer black men for non-violent offences."

I disagree. The simplest way to help the black family would be for fewer black men to commit crimes in the first place.

"Day Fratting" a New Term for an Old Bad Idea

Every year there seems to be a story in which college women who get drunk and fool around with guys discover that this is not satisfying, leaves them feeling empty, and does not lead to serious romance.

This year's edition brings a new term: day fratting:

Imbibing for hours in the front yard of a fraternity. Day fratting can result in "afternoon delight," noncommittal physical activity between two people that can include casual sex.

Planned Parenthood is Unnatural - and a Good Thing

In the family life class this week we are discussing Promises I Can Keep, a fine study of poor single mothers. It is so hard for my class of bourgeois people who plan their entire lives to comprehend having a baby at 15. What is harder to comprehend is that most of the mothers said that their babies were neither planned nor unplanned. Living a life without planning is through-the-looking-glass for people like my students (and me) for whom deferred gratification is one of the top seven habits of our fairly effective lives.

Which led to an interesting discussion about which way of viewing the world - planning or not planning parenthood - was the odder. From the social world of the college-going class, not planning is odd. But we realized that from the perspective of most people in the world, and most people who have ever lived, the idea of tightly controlled and limited fertility is supremely odd.

Planning parenthood is very unnatural. Planning parenthood is a great achievement of civilization. Civilization, though, has developed one crucial brake and help that the poor single mothers we are studying skipped: get married first.

Competing Second Comings: Christ vs. The Caliphate

The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life has released a study of religious life in sub-Saharan Africa - the most religious region in the world.

One of the driving facts of religious life in Africa is the competition between Islam and Christianity. The report details many elements of this competition, some of which are actually quite encouraging.

One comparison was new to me. They asked Christians "do you believe Jesus will return in your lifetime?" The median answer among the 19 sub-Saharan Africa countries was 61%. This question is often asked of Christians in this country, and usually produces high percentages of "yes" answers among conservative Christians of all denominations.

Pew asked a parallel question that I had not seen in a survey before. They asked Muslims "do you expect the caliphate to be re-established in your lifetime?" The median answer among the 19 sub-Saharan African countries was 52%.

Theologically, these two answers are not really parallel - the return of God Incarnate to establish a new heaven and earth is metaphysically a bigger deal than the restoration of the earthly rule of Muslims. Sociologically, though, I think the two ideas are parallel for many people. The second coming of Christ will, many Christians think, mean a golden age for Christians; the second coming of the caliphate will, many Muslims think, mean a golden age for Muslims.

Moreover, I think the competition between Islam and Christianity in Africa has probably spurred on the hope of both kinds of second comings as a way of resolving the competition.

Making an X

A friend posted this Facebook status, with responses.

I. wonders what made her twin boys think it would be a good idea to go in the front door (upon arriving home from MDO), through the house, out the back door, and then pee on the deck - at the same time. A tree would be ok, I guess, but the deck? Sigh.

G.
That's just a boy for ya! At least it WAS outside....

I.
True, G.! What's even funnier is when they think they must go at the same time (in the same potty) inside and laugh hysterically because, in their words, ..."We made a X!!"

Williams Syndrome Kids Show That Racism Requires Social Fear

Williams Syndrome is a genetic defect that deprives children of the ability to read social danger signals. They are at higher risk of being victimized.

The silver lining of this risk, though, is that they do not have social anxiety. Little kids with a normal genetic configuration strongly favor their own race at three years old. Williams syndrome kids do not. Researcher Andreas Meyer-Lindenberg concluded that racism requires social fear.

Equally interesting, I think, is that Williams syndrome kids are just as likely as other kids to see strong differences between males and females.

50 Things to Do in Kentucky Before You Turn 50

Today is my 50th birthday. A year ago I solicited suggestions for the 50 things you should do in Kentucky before you turn 50. A year ago today I published the top 25 suggestions. Today I will reproduce that list, and take an inventory of how many I made it to.

I picked the top ten based on intrinsic excellence and national or world impact as a symbol of Kentucky. This means there has to be some horses, bourbon, coal, and basketball. There should also be some tobacco, but I do not have an excellent nominee for that category.

Kentucky Derby: I attended last year, soon after posting this list.

Mammoth Cave: I went as a kid. I would like to go back.

UK basketball game at Rupp Arena: I had tickets to see the UK men play Drexel at Rupp Arena in what turned out to be their 2000 victory (UK2K). However, I had to give the tickets to another in order to fetch my snowed-in daughter. So Mrs. G. and I attended a UK women's basketball game, a very satisfactory victory over Ole Miss in the more intimate confines of Memorial Coliseum.

Maker’s Mark factory: Not yet, though I have been to the Labrot and Graham distillery

Lincoln Shrine: I took the kids some years ago, as well as two other Lincoln cabin sites in Kentucky.

Fort Knox - Patton Museum: Not yet. And I better go soon, as they are moving stuff out.

Louisville Slugger Museum: This is the easy one that I should have done half a dozen times already. This summer, for sure.

Red River Gorge & Natural Bridge: Yes, with the family some years ago.

Abbey of Gethsemani: I took students in my "American Religion" class there a couple of years ago.

Van Lear coal museum (& Loretta Lynn) [or something like this]: No. This was really an attempt to find some specific coal-related site that is worth visiting. I still don't have the perfect nominee in this category.

The next ten are places are perhaps a step down, but big in Kentucky:

My Old Kentucky Home: Took the kids some years ago.

Shakertown: Several times.

Keeneland: Several times. I took my "Class Culture" seminar there one year.

Moonbow at Cumberland Falls: I have been to Cumberland Falls, but not on the right night to see the elusive moonbow.

Museum of the American Quilters Society: Nope. My mom has, though.

Southeast Christian: Several times, including taking a class there.

Creation Museum: Yes, and I have even written about it in the Kentucky Humanities magazine.

Berea College: Many times.

Cane Ridge revival site: Yes, including taken classes there and attending the bicentennial celebration.

Ashland - Henry Clay's home: Yes.

I will round out this first list with five food suggestions.

Hot Brown at the Brown Hotel: Yes, recently.

Kentucky Fried Chicken at the (reproduced) original store in Corbin: Yes.

Ale-8-One at the plant in Winchester: Almost, but not yet. Soon.

Moonlite Bar-B-Q in Owensboro: Yes

Miguel’s Pizza at Natural Bridge: Yes

Keep the Healthy Marriage Initiative

One of my favorite acts of the Bush administration was the Healthy Marriage Initiative. This is a small program by federal standards - about $100 million. The money went out as grants to states, and the states did various things with it.

My idea: provide a mass wedding for couples with children who plan to marry "someday." I still think this is the biggest bang for the buck that we could get in the short run.

The Obama administration plans to cut out the whole program. I don't think, as Robert Rector of the Heritage Foundation does, that they are doing this because "The statist Left is not content to merely watch marriage die; it seeks to nail the coffin lid tightly shut." I think they just see it as one way to save money in a recession.

Nonetheless, promoting marriage is the most effective thing the government could do to reduce the number of children who grow up poor. Cutting the Healthy Marriage Initiative is penny-wise, but pound-foolish.

Who Represents My Race? Barack Obama

I am attending the annual Posse Plus Retreat. The Posse Scholarships bring a diverse group of student leaders from Boston to Centre College in mutual support groups (posses) of ten per class. Each year the forty Posse Scholars invite about twice that number of students, faculty, and staff to a retreat in the beautiful Kentucky countryside to talk about an important issue. This year's topic: Does Race Still Matter?

In one of the exercises designed to probe what we think race means we were each asked to consider the question "Who represents your race?" My instant answer: Barack Obama.

I am white, Obama is black. More precisely, I am descended from many of the nations and faiths of Europe, the kind of "Euro mutt" that most Americans are. My ethnicity is American. Obama is descended from that same Euro melange as well as East Africans (not the West African ancestors that most black Americans have). His ethnicity is also, I believe, American.

I take race seriously as a part of social identity. Race matters in America. As long as we are a nation of immigrants, which I hope we will always be, and as long as race matters on earth, which is likely to be a very long time, race will always matter in America.

Race is a very complex social construct, of which biology gives only one part. Race is made as much by culture as by biology. I say the American melting pot is going as strong as ever. At any given moment there are many distinct ethnic groups, some of them partly defined by race. But over time they all melt into the American ethnic alloy.

People who believe in the strength of that American alloy share my culture. If they are products of that melting pot themselves, they share my ethnicity. American ethnicity includes a faith that all the races of humans are real, but meltable.

I believe Barack Obama both shares and represents that American ethnicity, an ethnicity that ultimately includes all the "races" of the earth. He also represents the promise that even the deepest am most searing racial divisions of the American past can be overcome in the American alloy. That is my faith as well as my people's story. Obama represents my race.

Premarital Sex is the Norm - on the Way to Marital Sex

Here is an interesting statistic:

• 94: Percentage of women who have premarital sex today
• 93: Percentage who did the deed without wedding bands 30 years ago

In fact, the vast majority of women and men have had sex before marriage for much longer than that. The difference is that when women had premarital sex in the past it was normally with her soon-to-be husband. Today there is a less certain connection between sex and marriage.

A wise teacher of mine, E. Digby Baltzell, said that he thought premarital sex was OK with the person you were going to marry. Of course, there is a risk that you could be wrong about the future, a risk that is greater for women. I think that immediately premarital sex is a different category, morally and practically, from not-even-thinking-about-marital sex. To see the trends in those two kinds of nonmarital sex we need to ask different questions.

Marriage is an Achievement of Civilization, not Nature

Robert Wright, in a blog on why it is worth talking about Tiger Woods' marriage that I otherwise agree with, makes this puzzling point.

So we’re stuck with this unfortunate irony: the institution that seems to be, on average, the least bad means of rearing children is an institution that doesn’t naturally sustain itself in the absence of moral sanction — positive sanction for fidelity, negative sanction for infidelity.

I don't think this is ironic, because I don't think marriage is a bond made primarily by our biological nature. Instead, I think the mother-child bond is natural. The mother-father bond, and therefore the father-child bond, is a great achievement of culture. Indeed, I think marriage and fatherhood are the fundamental civilizational institutions.

And civilizational achievements, like marriage, are made of moral sanctions.

The Class Gap in Breastfeeding

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have released a new study on who breastfeeds.

Mom has high school diploma or GED:
starts breastfeeding 65.2%;
still at it at 1 year 19.9%

Mom has college degree:
starts breastfeeding 85.4%;
still at it at 1 year 28.6%

South Korean Sex Ratio Straightening Out

One of the world's great tragedies is the massive rate of aborting girls in Asia. Since it became easy to tell the sex of an embryo most Asian countries have seen a huge rise in sex-selection abortions aimed at killing girls and producing only boys. In some provinces in China the normal male/female ratio at birth of 103/100 has been pushed up to 120/100.

The good news is that in South Korea, after a binge of girl abortion in the 1990s, the boy/girl birth ratio is trending back to normal. Laws against sex-selection abortions are better enforced there than before, and better than they are elsewhere in Asia. More importantly, there seems to be a change in culture that values girls and boys more equally. There also appears to be less acceptance of abortion in general.

[This table is from an analysis by Christophe Guilmoto]

South Korea is the most Christian country in Asia, after the Philippines, and is the most Protestant country in Asia by a good way. I believe the Christianization of South Korea has contributed to its standout movement away from "gendercide," just as Christianization contributed to that nation's notable transition to democracy.

Traditional By Choice

I have often thought that would make a great bumper-sticker. In fact, if I ever launch my long-imagined aphorism business, that is what I would call it.

I am the product of the free-est to choose nation, generation, class, race, and sex that has ever existed. What I choose is mostly traditional, because I have come to see the wisdom of the traditions and the communities that live them.

Too much choice can be debilitating. If you try to live by keeping all your choices open, you can never actually live. And people who choose to live according to structured traditions in mutually accountable communities are the happiest.

Happy Easter!

(that is all)

(that is enough)

Manners Militia

Signe Wilkinson, one of my favorite cartoonists, expresses my sentiments exactly.

Universal Education in India

A great piece of gruntled news is that India has passed a law offering free education for all children. 70 million children who effectively had not schooling will now be educated. Millions of Dalit (untouchable) children, who India previously did not even pretend to educate, will be included.

India is so enormous that it already has almost as many college graduates as the United States has people. Nonetheless, the bottom of the Indian educational system - that is, those left out of the "system" altogether - were very very badly off indeed.

The main thrust of this law has been to educate all of the poor. One side effect will be that girls of all classes will more reliably be educated.

Threat Fighting Without Fear Mongering

Yesterday I wrote about how promoting fear undermines the social order more than terrorists do. This brought several questions about how society should appropriately deal with actual threats.

Fear is a life-saver in response to immediate threats. However, when we have a minute to respond with more reason and less adrenaline, we are better off putting our fears back in a proportionate, subordinate place.

It is rational to fear a bear when it is right in your face. It is not helpful to have that level of fear every time you go outside. If you live in bear country you rationally lock up your garbage. You don't do anyone any good by promoting a feeling of fear about a possible bear attack all the time.

Yes, there are small groups plotting attacks designed to kill and maim Americans. They use terrorism to terrify. If we respond by being terrified all the time, the terrorists, by definition, win. If we fight them with as calm, rational, and efficient a method as we can muster, we win. Our military is tracking down a real Muslim militia in Afghanistan and Pakistan without trying to terrify the U.S. population. The FBI is tracking down a real Christian militia in Michigan without trying to terrify the U.S. population. That is the right way to fight threats without promoting fear.

Fear-mongers Undermine Society More Than Terrorists Do

David Brooks has a fine column on how happiness has far more to do with good personal relations than it does with wealth, power, or success. For the community-level (as opposed to individual-level) correlates of happiness, he gives this useful summary:

If you want to find a good place to live, just ask people if they trust their neighbors. Levels of social trust vary enormously, but countries with high social trust have happier people, better health, more efficient government, more economic growth, and less fear of crime (regardless of whether actual crime rates are increasing or decreasing).

The opposite of trust is fear. The acid that destroys social happiness is fear. People who promote fear destroy society more effectively than do the people who commit frightful acts. The terrorist terrifies us once - and then we can pull together. The fear monger terrifies us all the time, undermining the very social asset that best helps us build a strong and happy society.

The Meaning of "Wife" is Changing, Yet Stays the Same at Heart

Lisa Belkin, who writes the Motherlode blog, has a short piece in the New York Times Magazine about the changing meaning of "wife."

She notes that her mother, a divorced feminist who switched from teaching to lawyering, rejects being a wife. Belkin is a highly invested wife and mother, trying not to be too much of a helicopter parent. She thinks that the next generation of women won't know what to do with the wife role because it will be too indefinite, have too many possible meanings. She thinks the crucial change is that the men who young women marry are taking on more of the house roles, especially the parenting roles, that wives and mothers used to do almost exclusively.

I think Belkin is right that the key to changing the wife role comes from husbands taking on more of the kid-raising. Belkin also notes, though does not emphasize as a cause, that wives bring home almost half the family income among young marrieds, and a fifth of young wives make more than their husbands. I believe this latter fact is the other half of the equation of re-jiggering husband and wife roles.

On the other hand, biology will continue to make women into mothers in powerful ways. That will be the starting point for the great majority of married couples' role negotiations. I believe that the Millennial generation will differ most from the '70s feminism of their grandmothers in seeing that the crucial part of marriage is not primarily about the identity of husband and wife as individuals, but as a partnership to raise children.

Trying to Understand the American Civil Religion While Living It

Yale sociologist Philip Gorski offers a fine overview of the several traditions of American civil religion. The kind he likes, civic republicanism, is a middle ground between religious nationalism (think Sarah Palin) and secular liberalism (think Ayn Rand). In this ground-clearing essay, "Civil Religion Today," Gorski helpfully lays out the competing traditions, which was his main task. He also concludes that any kind of realistic story of American civil religion has to include the fact that hope does sometimes win.

I agree with all of this, and plan to build on it in my American religion course. I think the deep underlying idea of any study of American religion is the struggle of competing civil religions. This is a hard idea for students to get, though, so we work our way through all of the particular denominational traditions first.

What I am wrestling with now is how the tradition of civic republicanism can help me understand the particular narrative of American civil religion that I was raised in and embrace. My story sees America as a city on a hill, the nation with the soul of a church, an errand in the wilderness. The Revolution was a world-historical step forward in creating a democratic nation, which rests, as Tocqueville, said, on continuously reproducing a virtuous citizenry. The Civil War was the necessary re-making struggle of the nation to overcome our core contradiction between democracy and caste. This struggle was not fulfilled until the Civil Rights Movement. Our vocation in the world now is to be the last best hope of democracy without becoming an empire.

This narrative is a deep and real American tradition. What I am trying to suss out is whether the tradition of civic republicanism, apart from its specific American form, offers guidance and limits to how we can live out this narrative without being corrupted by the unprecedented world power that America now has.

Rodan the Stork is a Good Dad

Rodan, a stork, flies back 8,000 miles from South Africa to Croatia each year to return to his wounded mate. They raise a bunch of little storks. He teaches them to fly. Then back he goes to South Africa, to return again the next spring. He has been doing this for five years, and will likely keep returning.

Republicans vs. Democrats on Obama

A new Harris poll has some fascinating numbers on what Republicans and Democrats believe about President Obama. Since I reported earlier on some of the interesting beliefs of Republicans in a Republican-only poll, I am glad to have some comparative numbers. All the questions began "here are some things people have said about President Obama. Please indicate for each whether you believe it is true or false." I will give Republican vs. Democratic "true" answer percentages.

Let's start with some fairly straight-forward factual matters:

57 vs 15 Is a Muslim
45 vs 8 Was not born in the U.S. and so is not eligible to be president

Then let's look at his political intentions:

61 vs 17 Wants to take away Americans' right to own guns
51 vs 12 Wants to turn over the sovereignty of the United States to a one world government
41 vs 8 Wants to use an economic attack or a terrorist attack as an excuse to take dictatorial powers
22 vs 5 Wants the terrorists to win

Finally, some global assessments of his being:

67 vs 14 Is a socialist
47 vs 12 Resents America's heritage
45 vs 8 Is a domestic enemy that the U.S. Constitution speaks of
22 vs 6 May be the Anti-Christ

The last two questions are particularly interesting, as I believe they are, within the American civil religion, two versions of the same thing.

For the record, I believe all of these claims are false.

Recession's Silver Lining: Falling Divorce Rates

Divorce rates go down in recessions because divorces cost money. They typically go back up again afterwards. Still, we could cut the divorce rate in half if couples would just stick out difficult times. Some couples on the road to divorce before the recession will have time to reconsider while they wait out economic hard times. One of the things they can consider is that divorce is likely to make their economic difficulties permanent for themselves and their children.

Forty Years After "The Female Eunuch," Germaine Greer Celebrates Divorce

The author of one of the provocative blockbusters of '70s feminism thinks the feminist movement has been a great success. I mostly agree. I am puzzled by what she cites as evidence, though: the high divorce rate. She reads divorce as due to women heroically accepting hardship rather than acquiescing in servility. Some divorces, no doubt, fulfill this claim - much more so then than now. Still, I think she is way out of date on what drives most women to seek divorce today.

If divorce and feminism are importantly connected today, I think it is more that our high divorce rate shows the acquiescence of feminism in a false view of women and men as most fulfilled when they are most autonomous.

Obama's Big Year

Universal health insurance passed Congress last night. I believe this will be the signature achievement of the Obama administration. After all the compromises were made, both with Republicans and with fellow Democrats, the final bill was, as the president said, "straight down the center of American political thought." I think that within a few years universal health care will be as much a part of the grain of American society as Social Security and Medicare. We will look back on this debate and wonder why some people thought getting health insurance for all was such a scary idea.

I think many of the other things that President Obama wants to do have been waiting on passage of this law. Now he can go ahead with other elements of his agenda. He will be able end the war in Iraq, fight the war against our 9/11 attackers, close the Guatanamo Bay prison, end "don't ask, don't tell," draw down the war deficit, stimulate jobs in energy-efficient industries, make us less beholden to oil barons, work together with the great powers of Europe and Asia to defuse new nuclear threats. Oh, and while he is at it, improve race relations in America. I believe the president will have a big year.

President Obama's approval rating today stands at 26% strongly approve, 42% strongly disapprove. I believe that a year from now, those numbers will be reversed.

Vas Madness

A wonderful trend has taken off over the last three years: get a vasectomy, recover while watching the NCAA "March Madness" basketball tournament. Starting in Oregon in 2008, urologists all over the country are now promoting snip 'n' swish specials. (OK, I made that name up). Appointment days before the first and second weekends of the tournament, in particular, fill up. Some even send their patients home with the game schedules, pizza coupons, and a bag of frozen peas.

I think this could become V-day for men.

Politically Correct Commitment Tokens

Martin Donohoe has an article in the Human Rights Quarterly about how immoral flowers, diamonds, and gold are - that is, the very things men are most likely to give women as tokens of love and commitment.

He ends with this suggestion for alternatives:

Substitute gifts include cards (ideally printed on recycled paper), poems,
photos, collages, videos, art, home improvement projects, homemade meals,
and donations to charities.

I don't think most of these will work. Part of the point of a commitment gift, such as an engagement ring or a wedding band, is not aimed at the beloved women. Rather, they are meant to show the world that he has taken the plunge to commit to her only. Donohoe's suggestions of actions, rather than objects, strikes me as a particularly male way of showing love. All of these objects and actions are good and would, likely, be appreciated for their intention. But they do not take the place of engagement rings and wedding bands. If he wants an alternative to diamonds and gold, he needs something a little more public, substantial - and probably shiny.

Building Character in Rich Kids

We are reading Robert Frank's Richistan: A Journey Through the American Wealth Boom and the Lives of the New Rich in my senior seminar. Frank's main point is that there are so many rich people in America now - 10 million households of millionaires or better - that they form a separate subculture, the "nation" of Richistan.

Most of America's rich are new money, made by hard working meritocrats and successful entrepreneurs. A major problem for the rich in all ages is raising children without spoiling them. Frank reports that even in deliberate structured programs to train "aristokids" in the special problems of managing wealth, such as Wealthbridge, the children rarely have the work ethic of the parents. In the cases Frank presents, only the children who were deliberately deprived of money they didn't earn, or kids who for personal reasons wanted to outdo their parents (fathers), showed real drive.

I am glad that today's rich parents are worried about spoiling their children. I am glad that many of them are competing with one another to put huge piles of money in good works and charitable foundations, rather than simply hand it on to their kids to consume. These hard-working parents who were so successful at making money naturally want their kids to be good at the same thing. I think a more prudent strategy, though, would be to see the mission of inheritors to be wise administrators of charities, rather than following in their parents' footsteps to build even bigger fortunes. In the whole population of rich kids, of course, there should be some of each, and there will inevitably be some wastrels. Still, it is hard for parents of any class to see their children as having a different mission and destiny than the parents themselves had.

I am drawn again to the wisdom of John Adams:

I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. My sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history, naval architecture, navigation, commerce and agriculture in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelain.

IQ and Faithful Men

Satoshi Kanazawa reports in the new Social Psychology Quarterly that the higher an adolescent's IQ, the more likely he or she is to be an atheist and a liberal as an adult. This correlation has been reported before.

What is new in this study is Kanazawa's finding that the higher a male adolescent's IQ, more the likely he is to value sexual exclusivity as an adult. The same is not true of women, who generally favor sexual exclusivity across the IQ board.

What Kanazawa does not note is that these correlations pull against one another in family life. Monogamous men are more likely to invest in their children, and their children, in turn, are more likely to succeed in life. Liberals and atheists, on the other hand, are less likely to have children in the first place. So even if Kanazawa is right that liberalism and atheism are an evolutionary advantage because they open people to new experiences, they seem to also be an evolutionary disadvantage. Monogamous men, on the other hand, seem to reap an evolutionary advantage regardless of ideology, because human babies require so much more investment than the babies of any other species.

Counting Classes (ABC Poll)

ABC News released a poll about how financially stressed the middle class is feeling. Asking people what class they are is always a tricky business. Americans will readily accept "middle class" as a designation, but are more resistant to labels that move away from that middle. Yet, logically and empirically, if there is a middle there must be a bottom and a top. What ABC hit upon was this: "Would you describe yourself as working class, middle class, upper middle class, or better off than that?"

Generally, if you give Americans three class choices - lower, middle, upper - 80%+ will choose middle. If you offer "working class" as an option, the middle group splits into "working" and "middle" halves. This poll adds the not-very-compromising "upper middle," plus the helpful euphemism "better 0ff than that" to draw out at least a few of the actually rich. They did not offer a "worse off than that" option for the actually poor. So what did they get?

Better off than that: 3%
Upper-middle: 11
Middle: 45
Working: 36
- and another 2% volunteered "Worse off than that."

The average income for the middle groups seems pretty realistic to me:
Upper- middle: $95,000
Middle: $55,00
Working: $35,000

This seems to me a good snapshot of the self-perception of a middle-class nation.

Telecommuting Takes Guts - For the Boss

National Public Radio has a series this week on Work-Life Balance. They cite a survey showing that 45% of companies offer telecommuting, though on an "ad hoc" basis (not further explained).

The central boss in the radio report, Katie Sleep of List Innovative Solutions, is enthusiastic about telecommuting for her employees. She especially likes the 95% retention rate over 16 years, which she (rightly) calls astonishing. But she notes two caveats. First, she doesn't telecommute herself, because she "likes being around people." And second, she has to be willing to fire employees who take advantage of the flexibility and lack of direct supervision that telecommuting offers.

I think telecommuting is an excellent development for much of white collar work. However, I think it also adds to the burdens of bosses, and increases the likelihood that they are the ones who need to regularly appear in the office, because telecommuting increases the difficulty of managing and supervising - even if the best workers are happier as a result.

Millennial Priorities: Parenthood Separated From Marriage

The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life has released a rich report on the Millennial generation, today's teens and twenties.

One very interesting finding about family life: most put "being a good parent" as a top priority, but only about a third put "having a successful marriage" as a top priority.

I don't think this really means that young people do not value marriage. I think it means that they think parents should be good parents no matter what - even if their marriage falls apart. On the whole, this high priority on good parenting is a good thing for the future.

I take this priority with a grain of salt, since millennials are much closer to being children than being parents. Only about a fifth of them are married already. We should revisit this question in a decade or so.

Pro-Marriage Rap Song

I did a Google search for "pro-marriage rap song."

The outcome? "No results found." In the whole internet.

"Black Women Save Only $5" is Very Misleading

Single white women in their prime working years have a median net worth of $42,600.

Single black women in their prime working years have a median net worth of $5.

That makes for a pretty shocking headline. However, the story leaves out the most elementary controls that would allow an apples-to-apples comparison.

An obvious one is whether they are, in fact, working. A second is how much education they have. I think it likely that a greater proportion of the black women in the large 18-to-64 age group are younger than white women in that age group.

The biggest factor we need to control for, though, is whether these single women are mothers or not. Most white single women do not have children. Most black single women, as best I can figure, do have children. Single women with children are not likely to accumulate any net worth.

White and black women with similar education are likely to start at nearly identical salaries, on average. I don't have comparative wealth figures with the appropriate controls, but it stands to reason that single white and black women with similar education and no kids are likely to accumulate similar net wealth.

Gendercide Much Worse for Third Children

The Economist has a cover story on "gendercide," the massive rate of abortion of girls in Asia.

At birth in natural populations there are about 103 boys for every 100 girls.

In many Asian countries, especially China and India, aborting girls has become so common that that ratio has become 120 to 100. Some provinces of China - the richer ones, where the one-child policy is better enforced and raising children costs more - the ratio is above 130 to 100.

Something I had not appreciated before is that the ratio goes up dramatically for each later birth. In India, which does not have an official limit on the number of children, there are more girls among first-borns than in China. For the second child, though, many Indian parents who already have a girl are more likely to keep aborting a second girl until they get a boy. For a third child, the ratio of boys to girls is 200 to 100 in some regions.

This rate of killing girls is horrible in itself. It also so short-sighted and dangerous. Those unmatched boys will grow into tens of millions of unattached men. Then we will all reap the whirlwind.

Do Men Delay College Graduation in Order to Grow Up?

There are 133 women in college to every 100 men. By age 25 there are 141 female college graduates for every 100 male graduates. The headline news has been that at age 22, the traditional age for college graduation, the ratio of female to male college graduates is 185/100.

Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers, whose work I often cite in these pages, have opened the question of why men take longer to graduate from college.

It is well known that all through adolescence girls, as a group, are more mature than boys. I think that is one of the main reasons that girls are more likely to stay in school and go straight through to college commencement in the first place. The senior women at Centre often lament that their male counterparts aren't as mature as they are in thinking about marriage and children. I think this is one of the reasons that, on average, women pick husbands who are a couple of years older than they are - to try to equalize their maturity levels.

So here is my gruntled, hopeful, silver-lining-seeking hypothesis: men are taking longer to graduate than women because they are trying to catch up to the women in maturity.

Anonymous Sperm Donation is Harder Than it Looks

Sperm donation is easy, um, mechanically. As the donors say, they get paid to do something they do for free anyway. And the sperm donor business is so successful that there are for-profit companies, as well as many labs and non-profits. The technological and economic aspects get better and easier every day.

What is getting harder is to stay anonymous. The Donor Sibling Registry brings together children of the same father to compare characteristics. The biographical facts that donors give about themselves are becoming easier to search and cross list. And if the donor is ever in a DNA registry, each of his children is full of enough comparable genetic information to establish a match. Sperm banks are starting to back off of their claim of permanent anonymity. They promise that the bank will not release the donor's identity, but admit that technological advances may make them findable anyway.

I think the other part of anonymous sperm donation that is getting harder is the belief that children made from your sperm are not, in a deep way, related to you. Of course donors know that they are the fathers of the children made with their sperm. I think they have underestimated how strong a tie that actually makes, even if they never meet their children. For several generations social science has convinced the educated public that nurture trumps nature. As a card-carrying sociologist I was trained in this view. I have changed my mind over years of study and parenthood. I am holding the line at 50/50 in the nature/nurture debate.

I think there are so many points of biological similarity between fathers and their children that it would be an unusual man, and a very unusual child, who would not be moved by the similarity. Moved to try to make a personal connection. Which would make anonymously donating sperm and walking away forever harder to do.