One of the most puzzling names I have run across is Chasity, a given name for girls. According to The Baby Name Wizard, it is unknown before the '60s, peaked in popularity in the early '80s at 344th, and has fallen off quite a bit lately.
Still, it was quite popular, ranking 872 out of 4275 for females of all ages in the 1990 U.S. Census. Since girls' names are much more diverse than boys' names, being in the top 1000 is pretty good.
My problem is – how to put this delicately – that the name seems to be based on a typographical error, compounded by ignorance. A Google search for the word yields hundreds of entries in which the writer clearly meant to write "chastity."
One baby name site politely described the name as a "simplified form of Chastity."
My wife has told me that fads in girls' names are often driven by soap opera characters. I have not been able to find a soap character, or other pop culture source, which might have made this name take off in the early '80s. The most famous real person that I can find with this name is Chasity Melvin, a player in the Women's National Basketball Association.
There was a notorious case in Kentucky involving a high-schooler who was not admitted to the National Honor Society because she had just had a kid without benefit of husband. Just to make the case perfect, her name was Chasity.
Does anyone have any insight into this name?
Saturday, February 11, 2006
Friday, February 10, 2006
The Vice of Centrists
I recently offered my thoughts – succinct, I would say, though snarky might also be true – on the vices of conservatives and liberals. An anonymous respondent asked, quite reasonably, what the vice of centrists might be.
I have been puzzling over this. I don't think I have really nailed it, as I do about naming the vices of others. That may be the perennial problem of self-crit. Here is my first cut.
The vice of centrists is complacency.
Liberal and conservative activists seem to enjoy feeling righteously indignant so much that I think that is half the appeal of having an ideology in the first place. But to feel really righteous in our outrage, we have to grossly simplify the issues and options, to eliminate the middle positions and proclaim culture war.
However, sometimes a revolution really is called for. Very rarely, but sometimes. In my lifetime, legal racial exclusion was one such moment. The civil rights movement was the response, and for the most part it was conducted with great justice and forbearance. Centrists are inclined to be gradualists. But the culture of racism really needed to be removed root and branch.
So it is a good thing in the ecology of politics to have the wings as well as the great middle.
On the whole, though, it is best to have the center rule.
I have been puzzling over this. I don't think I have really nailed it, as I do about naming the vices of others. That may be the perennial problem of self-crit. Here is my first cut.
The vice of centrists is complacency.
Liberal and conservative activists seem to enjoy feeling righteously indignant so much that I think that is half the appeal of having an ideology in the first place. But to feel really righteous in our outrage, we have to grossly simplify the issues and options, to eliminate the middle positions and proclaim culture war.
However, sometimes a revolution really is called for. Very rarely, but sometimes. In my lifetime, legal racial exclusion was one such moment. The civil rights movement was the response, and for the most part it was conducted with great justice and forbearance. Centrists are inclined to be gradualists. But the culture of racism really needed to be removed root and branch.
So it is a good thing in the ecology of politics to have the wings as well as the great middle.
On the whole, though, it is best to have the center rule.
Thursday, February 09, 2006
What Conservatives and Liberals Did Right
Yesterday I criticized conservative and liberal vices. Today I want to praise their virtues.
What liberals did right was the Civil Rights Movement. Faced with a manifest evil, liberals pushed against it for decades until we all won. Most remarkable was the great forbearance that the leaders and ordinary activists showed in not responding to endless violent provocations with endless violence.
What conservatives did right was the Cold War. Faced with a manifest evil, conservatives pushed against if for decades until we all won. There was quite a bit of violence around the edges of the struggle, but the Cold War stayed a cold war at its heart.
Every virtue has its vice, and vice-versa. We become like the person with a hammer, for whom all problems are, therefore, nails.
The problem that liberals now face is that they tend to see all issues through the lens of the Civil Rights Movement. Yet the condition of women, handicapped people, homosexuals, and, next, polygamists, is not the same as that of African-Americans. The same response will not produce the same result.
The problem that conservatives now face is that they tend to see all issues through the lens of the Cold War. Yet the condition of Al Qaida, Iran, North Korea, and, next, Burma is not the same as that of Soviet Communism. The same response will not produce the same result.
Still, the self-restraint that liberals exercised in the Civil Rights Movement, and that conservatives exercised in the Cold War, is a valuable model in dealing with today's problems. We should notice and honor such self-restraint when we see it now. We argue about offensive cartoons – we don't riot, murder, and burn over them.
What liberals did right was the Civil Rights Movement. Faced with a manifest evil, liberals pushed against it for decades until we all won. Most remarkable was the great forbearance that the leaders and ordinary activists showed in not responding to endless violent provocations with endless violence.
What conservatives did right was the Cold War. Faced with a manifest evil, conservatives pushed against if for decades until we all won. There was quite a bit of violence around the edges of the struggle, but the Cold War stayed a cold war at its heart.
Every virtue has its vice, and vice-versa. We become like the person with a hammer, for whom all problems are, therefore, nails.
The problem that liberals now face is that they tend to see all issues through the lens of the Civil Rights Movement. Yet the condition of women, handicapped people, homosexuals, and, next, polygamists, is not the same as that of African-Americans. The same response will not produce the same result.
The problem that conservatives now face is that they tend to see all issues through the lens of the Cold War. Yet the condition of Al Qaida, Iran, North Korea, and, next, Burma is not the same as that of Soviet Communism. The same response will not produce the same result.
Still, the self-restraint that liberals exercised in the Civil Rights Movement, and that conservatives exercised in the Cold War, is a valuable model in dealing with today's problems. We should notice and honor such self-restraint when we see it now. We argue about offensive cartoons – we don't riot, murder, and burn over them.
Wednesday, February 08, 2006
The Vice of Conservatives is Believing that Conservatism is a Morality Test; The Vice of Liberals is Believing that Liberalism is an Intelligence Test
That pretty much says what I have to say today.
Tuesday, February 07, 2006
Family Class Blog
I am trying something new in my Introduction to Family Life class this year: a class blog. Members of the class will report on, and respond to, the syllabus for the class. They will post every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, beginning next week. In May, they will be posting on topics of their own choosing in the family field. I am looking forward to the fruits of their labors.
If you have a chance, I think they would be thrilled if you would have a look and make a comment. I find that writing for the world, as I do each day, has helped make my thoughts and writing clearer (I think, so, anyway). I am hoping that blogging will have a similar effect on student writing.
I also believe that the blogosphere is the cutting edge of cultural criticism. There is, of course, a great deal of muck in blog world, but it is also the cultural arena in which new ideas are first tried out. I want to get students to become critical consumers of blogs, as well as contributors to the discussion.
The link to the Family Class Blog is now at the top of the links list for The Gruntled Center. You can find it here. Enjoy.
If you have a chance, I think they would be thrilled if you would have a look and make a comment. I find that writing for the world, as I do each day, has helped make my thoughts and writing clearer (I think, so, anyway). I am hoping that blogging will have a similar effect on student writing.
I also believe that the blogosphere is the cutting edge of cultural criticism. There is, of course, a great deal of muck in blog world, but it is also the cultural arena in which new ideas are first tried out. I want to get students to become critical consumers of blogs, as well as contributors to the discussion.
The link to the Family Class Blog is now at the top of the links list for The Gruntled Center. You can find it here. Enjoy.
Monday, February 06, 2006
First Wave Feminism vs. Second Wave Feminism
Betty Friedan's death has got me thinking about the two kinds of feminism.
The feminism of Lucretia Mott, Susan B. Anthony, Carrie Chapman Catt, Alice Paul, and especially Elizabeth Cady Stanton was about recognizing the equal worth of the distinctive excellences of women. In particular, they did not want women as wives and mothers to be denigrated because they were wives and mothers. Of course, they fought against the discrimination that all women faced just because they were women. But their vision was of womanhood which was greater than simply being a person, of womanhood that was (at least) as excellent and necessary to society as manhood.
Now consider the most famous sentence from Betty Friedan's great book, The Feminine Mystique:
I read The Feminine Mystique while my wife was studying for the bar exam. While she was in a class of prospective lawyers that was about equally men and women in 1985, I sat outside and read about the restrictions on educated women in 1963. I appreciated how many doors had been opened to women in between, and how far as a society we had come. It was a moving experience that, as you can see, sticks with me to this moment.
In the years since then, though, I have come to appreciate the downside of Friedan's kind of feminism. Friedan's brand of egalitarian feminism thought that treating women as different from and complementary to men would be denigrating to women, making them less than people. It is right there, I think, in the famous sentence quoted above. It is not surprising that Betty Friedan was the kind of egalitarian who saw any difference as discrimination. She was trained, after all, as a communist. In recent years, though, this Marxist vision that every one is the same (and the state will give you your equal due) has not fared well in politics both global and domestic.
First wave feminism, though, had a different vision. They saw womanhood as better than mere personhood, just as manhood was better than mere personhood. This difference feminism lives on today, though academic feminists would be more likely to cite Carol Gilligan than Elizabeth Cady Stanton as a source for their ideas. Of course men and women should be equal before the law. Of course, men and women live together in the most richly intertwined ways. To say that men and women are complementary is not to put one above the other. To say that men and women are different is not to say they should live separately, or even that they can live separately.
First wave feminism was about women as women. Second wave feminism was about women as persons. Being a woman is not less than being a person; it is more.
The feminism of Lucretia Mott, Susan B. Anthony, Carrie Chapman Catt, Alice Paul, and especially Elizabeth Cady Stanton was about recognizing the equal worth of the distinctive excellences of women. In particular, they did not want women as wives and mothers to be denigrated because they were wives and mothers. Of course, they fought against the discrimination that all women faced just because they were women. But their vision was of womanhood which was greater than simply being a person, of womanhood that was (at least) as excellent and necessary to society as manhood.
Now consider the most famous sentence from Betty Friedan's great book, The Feminine Mystique:
The problem that has no name — which is simply the fact that American women are kept from growing to their full human capacities — is taking a far greater toll on the physical and mental health of our country than any known disease.
I read The Feminine Mystique while my wife was studying for the bar exam. While she was in a class of prospective lawyers that was about equally men and women in 1985, I sat outside and read about the restrictions on educated women in 1963. I appreciated how many doors had been opened to women in between, and how far as a society we had come. It was a moving experience that, as you can see, sticks with me to this moment.
In the years since then, though, I have come to appreciate the downside of Friedan's kind of feminism. Friedan's brand of egalitarian feminism thought that treating women as different from and complementary to men would be denigrating to women, making them less than people. It is right there, I think, in the famous sentence quoted above. It is not surprising that Betty Friedan was the kind of egalitarian who saw any difference as discrimination. She was trained, after all, as a communist. In recent years, though, this Marxist vision that every one is the same (and the state will give you your equal due) has not fared well in politics both global and domestic.
First wave feminism, though, had a different vision. They saw womanhood as better than mere personhood, just as manhood was better than mere personhood. This difference feminism lives on today, though academic feminists would be more likely to cite Carol Gilligan than Elizabeth Cady Stanton as a source for their ideas. Of course men and women should be equal before the law. Of course, men and women live together in the most richly intertwined ways. To say that men and women are complementary is not to put one above the other. To say that men and women are different is not to say they should live separately, or even that they can live separately.
First wave feminism was about women as women. Second wave feminism was about women as persons. Being a woman is not less than being a person; it is more.
Sunday, February 05, 2006
Is Higher Criticism Useful?
A century ago the mainline churches had heresy trials about the Higher Criticism of Scripture, while the conservative Protestants laughed it to scorn. The idea that the Bible was the result of the redaction (editing together) of alternative oral traditions and documentary fragments from many communities over a long time – in both the Old Testament and the New Testament – has one of those weird ideas imported from European unbelievers.
Today, even evangelical seminaries teach the documentary hypothesis and contextual interpretation as the standard scholarly way of reading the Bible. Only hard-core fundamentalists hold to the view that the original autographs were written at one go by their reputed human authors under the unerring guidance of the Holy Spirit. Even some fundamentalist Bible scholars allow that there might have been oral tradition behind some texts, and mutual influence between some of them. Heck, they even expound historical context in interpretation sometimes. Even literalists don't always take their literalism literally.
When I was in college and divinity school two decades ago I studied, knew, and accepted the historical development of Scripture, and knew JEDP and the pseudo-Pauline letters. Over the years, though, my memory of which face is hidden in which tree has faded.
I still accept the Higher Criticism as true. I just don't find it useful.
My pastor and Sunday school teachers talk about how Corinthians was written before Romans (I think), and Hebrews isn't really by Paul, and first Isaiah and second Isaiah and third Isaiah are all from different times and were responding to different terrible things that had befallen the Hebrews. I don't dispute their historical analysis. But I cannot recall a time when historical criticism ever helped me understand what the text means to the church. As a scholar, I could be interested in whether Ezekiel is exilic or post-exilic. As a Christian, I don't see that it makes much difference.
I am for a learned clergy. I am a Presbyterian, and our pastors slog through Hebrew and Greek and lots of theology and biblical interpretation. I am glad that their sermons "smell of the study lamp" – to a point. I think it is more important, though to clearly convey the idea that the Bible tells one story that includes us today. For the faith of individuals and for the faith of the church as a whole, this narrative is more important to know than the historical order in which the pieces of that story were assembled.
If I were teaching graduate students the sociology of religion or the sociology of family life, I would have them read through the classical arguments to work up to a rich understanding of the field. I teach undergraduates, though. Few of them will be sociologists. Almost all of them will be spouses and parents and members of religious institutions. What they really need is the best wisdom that I can bring them about how to make a good marriage, how to raise good children, how to be a good member of the faith. We read lots of current studies, but we look mostly to their applications. They know, and I know, that there is scholarship and interpretative argument behind each claim that they make and that I make, but the lived story of the family and the faith matters the most.
So for my part, I say preach the one living story of Scripture. Save the higher criticism of the Bible for the study.
Today, even evangelical seminaries teach the documentary hypothesis and contextual interpretation as the standard scholarly way of reading the Bible. Only hard-core fundamentalists hold to the view that the original autographs were written at one go by their reputed human authors under the unerring guidance of the Holy Spirit. Even some fundamentalist Bible scholars allow that there might have been oral tradition behind some texts, and mutual influence between some of them. Heck, they even expound historical context in interpretation sometimes. Even literalists don't always take their literalism literally.
When I was in college and divinity school two decades ago I studied, knew, and accepted the historical development of Scripture, and knew JEDP and the pseudo-Pauline letters. Over the years, though, my memory of which face is hidden in which tree has faded.
I still accept the Higher Criticism as true. I just don't find it useful.
My pastor and Sunday school teachers talk about how Corinthians was written before Romans (I think), and Hebrews isn't really by Paul, and first Isaiah and second Isaiah and third Isaiah are all from different times and were responding to different terrible things that had befallen the Hebrews. I don't dispute their historical analysis. But I cannot recall a time when historical criticism ever helped me understand what the text means to the church. As a scholar, I could be interested in whether Ezekiel is exilic or post-exilic. As a Christian, I don't see that it makes much difference.
I am for a learned clergy. I am a Presbyterian, and our pastors slog through Hebrew and Greek and lots of theology and biblical interpretation. I am glad that their sermons "smell of the study lamp" – to a point. I think it is more important, though to clearly convey the idea that the Bible tells one story that includes us today. For the faith of individuals and for the faith of the church as a whole, this narrative is more important to know than the historical order in which the pieces of that story were assembled.
If I were teaching graduate students the sociology of religion or the sociology of family life, I would have them read through the classical arguments to work up to a rich understanding of the field. I teach undergraduates, though. Few of them will be sociologists. Almost all of them will be spouses and parents and members of religious institutions. What they really need is the best wisdom that I can bring them about how to make a good marriage, how to raise good children, how to be a good member of the faith. We read lots of current studies, but we look mostly to their applications. They know, and I know, that there is scholarship and interpretative argument behind each claim that they make and that I make, but the lived story of the family and the faith matters the most.
So for my part, I say preach the one living story of Scripture. Save the higher criticism of the Bible for the study.
The Great Obfuscator Proposes
In this week when we celebrate the achievements of Alan Greenspan, we should note his success on the family front - that almost didn't happen.
Greenspan was known to speak in a convoluted way – the Great Obfuscator in contrast to his one-time boss Ronald Reagan, the Great Communicator. Greenspan did eventually marry NBC News correspondent Andrea Mitchell. When asked whether Greenspan was ever so roundabout and ambiguous at home, his wife said:
"Occasionally. In fact, he claims he proposed three times before I was able to understand. He was so oblique."
[Note: This was first posted on Saturday, but blogger seems to have had the hiccups and dropped it later in the day. I repost it 'cause it is amusing.]
Greenspan was known to speak in a convoluted way – the Great Obfuscator in contrast to his one-time boss Ronald Reagan, the Great Communicator. Greenspan did eventually marry NBC News correspondent Andrea Mitchell. When asked whether Greenspan was ever so roundabout and ambiguous at home, his wife said:
"Occasionally. In fact, he claims he proposed three times before I was able to understand. He was so oblique."
[Note: This was first posted on Saturday, but blogger seems to have had the hiccups and dropped it later in the day. I repost it 'cause it is amusing.]
Friday, February 03, 2006
$1 Million for Better Dads
Congress finally approved the budget, including $100 million for healthy marriages and $50 million for fatherhood initiatives, per year, for five years. $50 million for fatherhood initiatives next year, divided among 50 states, is likely to mean that Kentucky could have $1 million to do something to promote better fatherhood.
I have been involved in the discussions of the Commonwealth Marriage Initiative for the past few years. I know there is not a well-developed plan on the table for how to spend the money. There are some local agencies, but nothing statewide. There are family promotion initiatives, but few even attempting to produce better fatherhood. Moreover, it is very difficult to target government money to do anything that will deliver better fathers.
We are at a blue-sky moment. So what should we do?
As I have argued before, the only institution that can really improve families are families themselves. Yet it would not really do the job to give every Kentucky family its piece of the $1 million. We need to pick some families to have the greatest impact with this money.
My nominee: Marry Your Baby Daddy Day. There are couples in the commonwealth who have children together and who plan to marry "some day." The best thing that we could do for the children of those couples is make some day, now. Sure, there are some who are ambivalent about marriage for more than just monetary reasons. Yes, everyone should have pre-marital counseling. But the crucial facts, I think, are that they say they want to marry, and they already have kids.
So, I propose that ministerial associations and the justices of the peace get together and arrange a whole bunch of weddings so moms and dads can become wives and husbands. The average wedding costs about $20,000. If we used the money to leverage donations, we could get 100, maybe 200 weddings out of that. That is, at a guess, 500 kids who could have a permanent father at home by, say, Father's Day. If everyone is more modest in what they need, double all those numbers.
That is my idea of a worthwhile fatherhood initiative.
I have been involved in the discussions of the Commonwealth Marriage Initiative for the past few years. I know there is not a well-developed plan on the table for how to spend the money. There are some local agencies, but nothing statewide. There are family promotion initiatives, but few even attempting to produce better fatherhood. Moreover, it is very difficult to target government money to do anything that will deliver better fathers.
We are at a blue-sky moment. So what should we do?
As I have argued before, the only institution that can really improve families are families themselves. Yet it would not really do the job to give every Kentucky family its piece of the $1 million. We need to pick some families to have the greatest impact with this money.
My nominee: Marry Your Baby Daddy Day. There are couples in the commonwealth who have children together and who plan to marry "some day." The best thing that we could do for the children of those couples is make some day, now. Sure, there are some who are ambivalent about marriage for more than just monetary reasons. Yes, everyone should have pre-marital counseling. But the crucial facts, I think, are that they say they want to marry, and they already have kids.
So, I propose that ministerial associations and the justices of the peace get together and arrange a whole bunch of weddings so moms and dads can become wives and husbands. The average wedding costs about $20,000. If we used the money to leverage donations, we could get 100, maybe 200 weddings out of that. That is, at a guess, 500 kids who could have a permanent father at home by, say, Father's Day. If everyone is more modest in what they need, double all those numbers.
That is my idea of a worthwhile fatherhood initiative.
Thursday, February 02, 2006
Married Touch Cures Fear
A fascinating study put wives in the anxiety-inducing MRI machine to make their brains fire stress! stress! stress! Then the researchers watched what happened to the women's brains when their husbands took their hands for reassurance. Immediately, the wives calmed down and their brains reduced their fear shots. Having strangers hold the women's hands did not have the same effect.
Even more fascinating, the anxiety-reducing effect was stronger for the closest couples. Dr. James A. Coan, a psychologist at the University of Virginia, the study's lead author, and his co-authors, Dr. Hillary Schaefer and Dr. Richard J. Davidson of the University of Wisconsin, said that "supercouples," who scored at the highest end of emotional closeness on the study's screening questionnaire, showed the biggest effects.
This leads to the natural question: when husbands are in the MRI machine and their wives are holding their hands, do we see the same anxiety and same anxiety reduction? I asked Dr. Coan, who reports that the team is busily conducting the complementary study. He added that they will also be testing homosexual couples to see if there is a similar effect.
Here is my hypothesis: wives are more reassured by their husbands' touch than vice-versa. This goes back to the discussion of protection as one of the jobs that husbands normally do. The great thing about a scientific hypothesis is that it can be tested, and a disconfirmation is as valuable as a confirmation. So we will see what the Coan team (Coan-heads? Surely not) report next year. I will keep an eye out for it.
Even more fascinating, the anxiety-reducing effect was stronger for the closest couples. Dr. James A. Coan, a psychologist at the University of Virginia, the study's lead author, and his co-authors, Dr. Hillary Schaefer and Dr. Richard J. Davidson of the University of Wisconsin, said that "supercouples," who scored at the highest end of emotional closeness on the study's screening questionnaire, showed the biggest effects.
This leads to the natural question: when husbands are in the MRI machine and their wives are holding their hands, do we see the same anxiety and same anxiety reduction? I asked Dr. Coan, who reports that the team is busily conducting the complementary study. He added that they will also be testing homosexual couples to see if there is a similar effect.
Here is my hypothesis: wives are more reassured by their husbands' touch than vice-versa. This goes back to the discussion of protection as one of the jobs that husbands normally do. The great thing about a scientific hypothesis is that it can be tested, and a disconfirmation is as valuable as a confirmation. So we will see what the Coan team (Coan-heads? Surely not) report next year. I will keep an eye out for it.
Wednesday, February 01, 2006
Serial Monogamy, Serial Polygamy, or Worse?
Kate Zernike's story in the New York Times on rich guys who dump their wives for younger models over and over again, "The Ex-Ex-Ex-Men," is sad.
It does raise the question, though, of whether we should think of this phenomenon as serial monogamy, or serial polygamy. Since polygamy is illegal in our country, these relations have the form of monogamy. Often these deluded playboys imagine that they are in love and that this is really for life. For a while.
Still, polygamy seems to be a closer model. In formally polygamous societies, only rich men can afford multiple wives, leaving poor guys without any. In those societies, each woman and her children typically has their own house, while the husband moves from one wife's house to another. In our society, the rich man pays off the old wife so she and her children can set up their own household, while he moves on to the next. The lead example in the Zernike story is Ron Perelman, who recently dropped wife number four, Ellen Barkin. The story noted that Perelman had paid off his four exes, according to their prenuptial agreements, in the amounts of, respectively, $8 million, $80 million, and $30 million, while Ms. Barkin got $20 million. Evidently wife number two understood her man the best.
The theory of the prenuptial agreement is that it removes any temptation for the poorer party (unless you're Oprah, that would be "her") to try to get half through a divorce, while it costs the richer party (read: "him") enough to make him think twice about dumping her and moving on. And a $20 million payout to his most recent blonde might give the average millionaire pause. To a billionaire like Perelman, though, it is just another business expense.
In Perelman's case – or Donald Trump's, or any number of hugely rich guys who give themselves "weddings" every few years -- this sequence of payoffs, though, suggests another way of thinking about what these relations amount to: prostitution.
Sad, sad, sad.
It does raise the question, though, of whether we should think of this phenomenon as serial monogamy, or serial polygamy. Since polygamy is illegal in our country, these relations have the form of monogamy. Often these deluded playboys imagine that they are in love and that this is really for life. For a while.
Still, polygamy seems to be a closer model. In formally polygamous societies, only rich men can afford multiple wives, leaving poor guys without any. In those societies, each woman and her children typically has their own house, while the husband moves from one wife's house to another. In our society, the rich man pays off the old wife so she and her children can set up their own household, while he moves on to the next. The lead example in the Zernike story is Ron Perelman, who recently dropped wife number four, Ellen Barkin. The story noted that Perelman had paid off his four exes, according to their prenuptial agreements, in the amounts of, respectively, $8 million, $80 million, and $30 million, while Ms. Barkin got $20 million. Evidently wife number two understood her man the best.
The theory of the prenuptial agreement is that it removes any temptation for the poorer party (unless you're Oprah, that would be "her") to try to get half through a divorce, while it costs the richer party (read: "him") enough to make him think twice about dumping her and moving on. And a $20 million payout to his most recent blonde might give the average millionaire pause. To a billionaire like Perelman, though, it is just another business expense.
In Perelman's case – or Donald Trump's, or any number of hugely rich guys who give themselves "weddings" every few years -- this sequence of payoffs, though, suggests another way of thinking about what these relations amount to: prostitution.
Sad, sad, sad.
Tuesday, January 31, 2006
Who Sets the Housework Standards, Anyway?
[Today we welcome our first guest blogger, Sporcupine (Mrs. Gruntled).]
The more I think about it, the more I wonder if those housework studies assume that whatever the wife does is needed housework, and I wonder if that's fair.
If he's happy with a cleaning service vacuuming every other week and she insists on vacuuming every other day, is someone "right" in that debate?
If he'd alternate franks-and-beans with mac-and-cheese forever, backed with proper vegetables, and she wants to cook from scratch four times a week, what's fair? Does it matter how many cookbooks they each purchase and read?
If he'd serve company on plastic plates on the porch and she likes to get down the heirloom china, set the table with all the pieces, and later wash the china by hand to protect the gilded edge, what's the deal? We know she's elegant and he's practical, but what's an equitable split on washing up?
Home decorating is especially open to different expectations. What if she changes to different slipcovers for each season of the year, and he doesn't even notice the change? What if she carefully selects a different Longaberger basket to display in each room of the house, and he doesn't remember ever hearing the word "Longaberger"?
When the issue is adding grace, beauty, and style to a family's life, I can admire the spouse who wants to set a high standard, without saying the other spouse should do half the work to meet that goal. If the studies don't offer any distinction between necessities and niceties, I think that's a flaw.
The more I think about it, the more I wonder if those housework studies assume that whatever the wife does is needed housework, and I wonder if that's fair.
If he's happy with a cleaning service vacuuming every other week and she insists on vacuuming every other day, is someone "right" in that debate?
If he'd alternate franks-and-beans with mac-and-cheese forever, backed with proper vegetables, and she wants to cook from scratch four times a week, what's fair? Does it matter how many cookbooks they each purchase and read?
If he'd serve company on plastic plates on the porch and she likes to get down the heirloom china, set the table with all the pieces, and later wash the china by hand to protect the gilded edge, what's the deal? We know she's elegant and he's practical, but what's an equitable split on washing up?
Home decorating is especially open to different expectations. What if she changes to different slipcovers for each season of the year, and he doesn't even notice the change? What if she carefully selects a different Longaberger basket to display in each room of the house, and he doesn't remember ever hearing the word "Longaberger"?
When the issue is adding grace, beauty, and style to a family's life, I can admire the spouse who wants to set a high standard, without saying the other spouse should do half the work to meet that goal. If the studies don't offer any distinction between necessities and niceties, I think that's a flaw.
Monday, January 30, 2006
Protection is Housework, Too
There are many studies showing that women do more housework than men. Even when both husband and wife are working full time, as Arlie Hochschild famously demonstrated, women still do more of the "second shift" of cooking and cleaning and childcare.
Other studies have shown that husbands and fathers do more than their fathers did. In particular, many fathers today are much more involved in raising their children than was true in previous generations. Some more nuanced studies have further shown that in the widget-laden middle-class home, there is just less housework to do than there used to be.
There is a set of chores that men as still more likely to do – yard work, household and car maintenance, and the outside tasks in general. However, women are more likely to do the daily stuff, while men's household jobs are occasional. The equation is not quite balanced. Men come off looking like slackers in these studies, which bothers me.
Then I had a minor epiphany. There is another important category of housework that men do: protection. This includes the daily tasks of making sure the doors are locked, the longer-term upkeep of smoke detectors and floodlights, and dealing with the rarer dangers like termites and foundation cracks. Most especially, men get to deal with the Scary Noise in the Night. Many other tasks get swapped back and forth across gender lines, but in my experience, this one falls largely to husbands and fathers.
I find that I routinely engage in continuous threat assessment, especially when I am with my wife and kids. I automatically size up the dark street, the unfamiliar guy, the strange dog – anything that might endanger my family. Like most men, I don't like to sit with my back to the door or the crowd in a public place, which I believe comes from the same instinct.
Our lovely town is a safe place to live, but even here there are dangers. And, in a larger sense, providing the protection to society which makes our town safe, and (for the most part) makes our nation safe, too, is overwhelmingly the work of men.
So when we are making our accounts of housework, let's be sure to include protection as one of the valuable tasks of household life. I think that will go some way to balancing the books.
Other studies have shown that husbands and fathers do more than their fathers did. In particular, many fathers today are much more involved in raising their children than was true in previous generations. Some more nuanced studies have further shown that in the widget-laden middle-class home, there is just less housework to do than there used to be.
There is a set of chores that men as still more likely to do – yard work, household and car maintenance, and the outside tasks in general. However, women are more likely to do the daily stuff, while men's household jobs are occasional. The equation is not quite balanced. Men come off looking like slackers in these studies, which bothers me.
Then I had a minor epiphany. There is another important category of housework that men do: protection. This includes the daily tasks of making sure the doors are locked, the longer-term upkeep of smoke detectors and floodlights, and dealing with the rarer dangers like termites and foundation cracks. Most especially, men get to deal with the Scary Noise in the Night. Many other tasks get swapped back and forth across gender lines, but in my experience, this one falls largely to husbands and fathers.
I find that I routinely engage in continuous threat assessment, especially when I am with my wife and kids. I automatically size up the dark street, the unfamiliar guy, the strange dog – anything that might endanger my family. Like most men, I don't like to sit with my back to the door or the crowd in a public place, which I believe comes from the same instinct.
Our lovely town is a safe place to live, but even here there are dangers. And, in a larger sense, providing the protection to society which makes our town safe, and (for the most part) makes our nation safe, too, is overwhelmingly the work of men.
So when we are making our accounts of housework, let's be sure to include protection as one of the valuable tasks of household life. I think that will go some way to balancing the books.
Sunday, January 29, 2006
Hurrah for The Bible and Its Influence
I am strongly in favor of teaching about the Bible in all schools, including the public schools. In fact, especially the public schools, where all my children attend. The Bible is unquestionably the most important book in the history of Europe, Australia, South America, and North America. It will soon have that status in Africa, if it does not already. I think the 21st century will ultimately be one of the great Christian centuries of Asia, where it all began. Not teaching about the Bible in American schools would be an absurd folly.
On the other hand, the public schools cannot teach the Bible as true. This is the deal we have made in order to have state-supported common schools.
The same is true, in miniature, of the Ten Commandments. Of course you may post the Ten Commandments on the public school wall – just teach about them and their influence in your class. Of course you may not post the Ten Commandments on the public school wall as the school's rules for conduct – not the first four commandments, anyway.
For years there has been a movement to teach the Bible itself in school. Over and over again, the courts have rejected with as an impermissible endorsement of a particular religion. In principle this is not a partisan issue, though most of the politicians who still make such proposals are Republicans. Democrats have learned the lesson, and are now trying a new and different approach. A book, The Bible and Its Influence, has been written specifically for use in public schools to teach about what the Bible says and why that has been so determinative for Western history and culture. Legislators in Georgia and Alabama have proposed legislation to authorize school districts to have such a course.
Republicans should support teaching about the Bible and its influence. Instead, they have been fussing that Democrats are Pharisees and hypocrites for stealing "their" issue. Yet teaching the Bible and teaching about the Bible are quite different, pedagogically and constitutionally. Religious politicians of all parties should support teaching about the Bible in the public schools in the only way possible. If not, they should give up on the public schools altogether – and stop being politicians.
On the other hand, the public schools cannot teach the Bible as true. This is the deal we have made in order to have state-supported common schools.
The same is true, in miniature, of the Ten Commandments. Of course you may post the Ten Commandments on the public school wall – just teach about them and their influence in your class. Of course you may not post the Ten Commandments on the public school wall as the school's rules for conduct – not the first four commandments, anyway.
For years there has been a movement to teach the Bible itself in school. Over and over again, the courts have rejected with as an impermissible endorsement of a particular religion. In principle this is not a partisan issue, though most of the politicians who still make such proposals are Republicans. Democrats have learned the lesson, and are now trying a new and different approach. A book, The Bible and Its Influence, has been written specifically for use in public schools to teach about what the Bible says and why that has been so determinative for Western history and culture. Legislators in Georgia and Alabama have proposed legislation to authorize school districts to have such a course.
Republicans should support teaching about the Bible and its influence. Instead, they have been fussing that Democrats are Pharisees and hypocrites for stealing "their" issue. Yet teaching the Bible and teaching about the Bible are quite different, pedagogically and constitutionally. Religious politicians of all parties should support teaching about the Bible in the public schools in the only way possible. If not, they should give up on the public schools altogether – and stop being politicians.
Saturday, January 28, 2006
Oxygen
My wife sometimes talks about helpful people or situations as giving her oxygen. This is not a metaphor that resonates with me at all. I get hung up on the literal image of an EMT strapping a mask to my face – not a scenario that I find stress-reducing.
When I step back and try to accept it as a metaphor, I still don't get it. I don't get stressed very often (though I may be a carrier :-)), so I don't often feel that things are closing in, getting uncomfortably hot, or in other ways getting airless. So it may just be a peculiarity of me.
However, as I have started to listen for people talking about "getting oxygen from" something or other, it strikes me that the expression is used primarily by women.
This idea led immediately to the Oxygen cable network, which is aimed at women.
Geraldine Laybourne, founder of Oxygen,
Oxygen debuted on the symbolic date of February 2, 2000 – 02/02.
So, what do you think? Is "getting oxygen" a distinctively female metaphor for help in reducing stress? Do people also talk about "giving oxygen" to others? If it is distinctively female, why?
When I step back and try to accept it as a metaphor, I still don't get it. I don't get stressed very often (though I may be a carrier :-)), so I don't often feel that things are closing in, getting uncomfortably hot, or in other ways getting airless. So it may just be a peculiarity of me.
However, as I have started to listen for people talking about "getting oxygen from" something or other, it strikes me that the expression is used primarily by women.
This idea led immediately to the Oxygen cable network, which is aimed at women.
Geraldine Laybourne, founder of Oxygen,
christened the network "Oxygen" because she believes that in today's frenetic society every woman needs to take a deep breath. To drive home the point, Oxygen's daily programming cycle begins with Inhale, a yoga class, and ends with Exhale, a talk show hosted by Candice Bergen.
Oxygen debuted on the symbolic date of February 2, 2000 – 02/02.
So, what do you think? Is "getting oxygen" a distinctively female metaphor for help in reducing stress? Do people also talk about "giving oxygen" to others? If it is distinctively female, why?
Friday, January 27, 2006
Marriage and Caste 3: Do Spouses Make Marriage, or Does Marriage Make Spouses?
Let's visit Kay Hymowitz' "Marriage and Caste" one more time. She reviews the two standard explanations of why marriage has such a big effect on people's chances in life. Some argue that marriage creates material advantages, of more money, more hands on deck, and the sheer advantage that a committed team has over a lone anyone. Others, though,
Hymowitz goes on to make the most important point, I think, about the psychological, or really, the cultural advantage that women (and men) who stay married have:
This question of which matters more, material resources or the cultural inclination to use them, is one of the deepest and most enduring puzzles in sociology and in social life. Max Weber, following Goethe, uses the phrase "elective affinity" to explain how both of these factors work together and work at the same time. People who are inclined to act a certain way are drawn to social institutions in which other people also act that same way. And being in an institution which rewards a certain kind of action molds the people in it to value that kind of action even more. Elective affinity is, to my mind, one of the deepest, richest, and most mysterious features of social life. We both shape and are shaped by social institutions. Birds of a feather flock together – which makes them more of a feather.
So how does this play out in marriage? Marriage confers huge material advantages. People who stay married normally reap rich benefits, for themselves and their children. And the experience of marriage teaches people how to live with others, to accommodate and compromise and take pleasure in serving one another. But marriage is also a risk and a leap. People who already know how to accommodate and serve, and who trust in the whole institution of marriage in the first place, are more likely to take the risk. SO, people with both the cultural and psychological predisposition and a good material and psychological experience are likely to reap the greatest advantage from their marriages. But whatever you bring to marriage, you are likely – not guaranteed, but likely – to reap a proportionate benefit. Elective affinity multiplies the effect of social institutions, perhaps in marriage most of all.
take an alternative approach to the question of why children growing up with their own two married parents do better than children growing up without their fathers. It’s not marriage that makes the difference for kids, they argue; it’s the kind of people who marry. Mothers who marry and stay married already have the psychological endowment that makes them both more effective partners and more competent parents.
Hymowitz goes on to make the most important point, I think, about the psychological, or really, the cultural advantage that women (and men) who stay married have:
key part of that difference is that educated women still believe in marriage as an institution for raising children. What is missing in all the ocean of research related to the Marriage Gap is any recognition that this assumption is itself an invaluable piece of cultural and psychological capital—and not just because it makes it more likely that children will grow up with a dad in the house.
This question of which matters more, material resources or the cultural inclination to use them, is one of the deepest and most enduring puzzles in sociology and in social life. Max Weber, following Goethe, uses the phrase "elective affinity" to explain how both of these factors work together and work at the same time. People who are inclined to act a certain way are drawn to social institutions in which other people also act that same way. And being in an institution which rewards a certain kind of action molds the people in it to value that kind of action even more. Elective affinity is, to my mind, one of the deepest, richest, and most mysterious features of social life. We both shape and are shaped by social institutions. Birds of a feather flock together – which makes them more of a feather.
So how does this play out in marriage? Marriage confers huge material advantages. People who stay married normally reap rich benefits, for themselves and their children. And the experience of marriage teaches people how to live with others, to accommodate and compromise and take pleasure in serving one another. But marriage is also a risk and a leap. People who already know how to accommodate and serve, and who trust in the whole institution of marriage in the first place, are more likely to take the risk. SO, people with both the cultural and psychological predisposition and a good material and psychological experience are likely to reap the greatest advantage from their marriages. But whatever you bring to marriage, you are likely – not guaranteed, but likely – to reap a proportionate benefit. Elective affinity multiplies the effect of social institutions, perhaps in marriage most of all.
Thursday, January 26, 2006
Marriage and Caste 2: Education Prevents Divorce
Kay Hymowitz, in the City Journal article "Marriage and Caste" that I wrote about yesterday, reports this very important finding:
Hymowitz focuses, quite reasonably, on the bad news: the marriage gap is creating a class gap.
I see in this finding, though, a silver lining: education helps prevent divorce.
Sociologists talk about "reflexivity" as a growing feature of the post-modern information society. This refers to the way in which we gather more and more information about how society is working, then use that information to change our own actions – thus changing the way society is working. Gathering and analyzing information is not an activity apart from living, but is part of the normal functioning of our society. We all take part in, even depend on, these feedback loops to guide our normal behavior.
Sometimes talk of reflexivity seems mechanical, removed from the emotional, even blood-and-guts choices of real life. Divorce, though, is about as bloody an emotional choice as any of us are likely to face outside of combat.
So here is the good news that I glean from this cold statistic: educated people, especially educated women, learned early from the new research and society's experience that divorce really did hurt their kids. Some people, of course, weren't going to divorce anyway, no matter what the new knowledge showed. Likewise, some were going to divorce anyway, researchers – and children – be damned. But in between are a group of people who reflexively changed their actions based on feedback from the information they learned in their education or were prepared to take in because of their education.
College-educated marrieds and their less-educated counterparts would both hurt their kids by divorce. In fact, the kids of less educated parents were probably hurt more. Yet the more educated parents learned the truth first, took it in faster, and, as a group, began to take corrective action sooner. Education works; reflexivity works. The kids of might-have-divorced-but-chose-not-to parents benefit, and therefore so do we all.
Around 1980, the family-forming habits of college grads and uneducated women went their separate ways. For the next decade the proportion of college-educated moms filing for divorce stopped increasing, and by 1990 it actually starting going down. This was not the case for the least educated mothers, who continued on a divorce spree for another ten years. It was only in 1990 that their increase in divorce also started to slow and by 2000 to decline, though it was too late to close the considerable gap between them and their more privileged sisters.
Hymowitz focuses, quite reasonably, on the bad news: the marriage gap is creating a class gap.
I see in this finding, though, a silver lining: education helps prevent divorce.
Sociologists talk about "reflexivity" as a growing feature of the post-modern information society. This refers to the way in which we gather more and more information about how society is working, then use that information to change our own actions – thus changing the way society is working. Gathering and analyzing information is not an activity apart from living, but is part of the normal functioning of our society. We all take part in, even depend on, these feedback loops to guide our normal behavior.
Sometimes talk of reflexivity seems mechanical, removed from the emotional, even blood-and-guts choices of real life. Divorce, though, is about as bloody an emotional choice as any of us are likely to face outside of combat.
So here is the good news that I glean from this cold statistic: educated people, especially educated women, learned early from the new research and society's experience that divorce really did hurt their kids. Some people, of course, weren't going to divorce anyway, no matter what the new knowledge showed. Likewise, some were going to divorce anyway, researchers – and children – be damned. But in between are a group of people who reflexively changed their actions based on feedback from the information they learned in their education or were prepared to take in because of their education.
College-educated marrieds and their less-educated counterparts would both hurt their kids by divorce. In fact, the kids of less educated parents were probably hurt more. Yet the more educated parents learned the truth first, took it in faster, and, as a group, began to take corrective action sooner. Education works; reflexivity works. The kids of might-have-divorced-but-chose-not-to parents benefit, and therefore so do we all.
Wednesday, January 25, 2006
Marriage and Caste 1: Are Things Worse Now?
Kay Hymowitz has written a fine article in City Journal, "Marriage and Caste." Facing the question, "what is America’s chief source of inequality?," she answers, "The Marriage Gap." The top classes not only get educated and keep working, they marry before they have kids and stay married. The bottom classes have kids without any of these structural supports – which is why they stay poorer.
Hymowitz sums up the social consequences of this pattern this way:
Hymowitz then worries that this pattern of passing on status at the top has a worrying corollary at the bottom:
I agree with Kay Hymowitz that we have a marriage gap. I think we always have – there are a dozen reasons why kids with married parents usually do better than kids without. Nowadays, though, there are many more kids from single-parent homes, or worse. And there are many more kids with two educated professional or corporate parents who get boosted higher. So the gap is bigger, and there are more kids at the bottom.
Where I disagree with Hymowitz is whether this gap is creating a new, rigid caste system. As I see it, the social structure today is the most fluid that it has ever been. Today, more than any previous era in American history, the class, power, and status that you end up with has more to do with how you have chosen to live your life, and less to do with inherited qualities that you can't do anything about. Sure, being raised in a two-parent family is an advantage, and a single-parent background is a disadvantage. It always has been. And, statistically, people are more likely to repeat the pattern of their parents. But any given couple can choose to break a bad marital cycle – or throw away their advantage and disadvantage their own children.
SO: marriage gap, yes; marriage caste, no.
Hymowitz sums up the social consequences of this pattern this way:
Why do educated women marry before they have children? Because, like high-status women since status began, they are preparing their offspring to carry on their way of life. Marriage radically increases their chances of doing that.
Hymowitz then worries that this pattern of passing on status at the top has a worrying corollary at the bottom:
The Marriage Gap—and the inequality to which it is tied—is self-perpetuating. A low-income single mother … is more likely to raise children who will become low-income single parents, who will pass that legacy on to their children, and so on down the line. … Instead of an opportunity-rich country for all, the Marriage Gap threatens us with a rigid caste society.
I agree with Kay Hymowitz that we have a marriage gap. I think we always have – there are a dozen reasons why kids with married parents usually do better than kids without. Nowadays, though, there are many more kids from single-parent homes, or worse. And there are many more kids with two educated professional or corporate parents who get boosted higher. So the gap is bigger, and there are more kids at the bottom.
Where I disagree with Hymowitz is whether this gap is creating a new, rigid caste system. As I see it, the social structure today is the most fluid that it has ever been. Today, more than any previous era in American history, the class, power, and status that you end up with has more to do with how you have chosen to live your life, and less to do with inherited qualities that you can't do anything about. Sure, being raised in a two-parent family is an advantage, and a single-parent background is a disadvantage. It always has been. And, statistically, people are more likely to repeat the pattern of their parents. But any given couple can choose to break a bad marital cycle – or throw away their advantage and disadvantage their own children.
SO: marriage gap, yes; marriage caste, no.
Tuesday, January 24, 2006
Have Canadians Had Enough of Deconstructing Marriage?
Yesterday Canadian voters turned out the Liberal Party, which has ruled for more than a decade, and elected a Conservative government.
Last year, the Canadian Supreme Court threw out the marriage laws of all the provinces at a stroke and legislated same-sex marriage for the whole country.
Last Thursday the Canadian Justice Department recommended abolishing the ban on polygamy across the country.
The chief author of the study, Queens University professor Martha Bailey, said ``in light of the fact that we have a fairly permissive society, why are we singling out that particular form of behaviour for criminalization?''
The election was close, and the Conservative Party will not have a majority in Parliament. There are not likely to be huge changes in Canadian law. But the drift toward imposing an “anything goes” marriage standard from Ottawa may have been stopped.
At a time when South American electorates are taking a significant step to the left, it is striking that all three North American countries have elected conservative governments. Germany, which has been in the forefront of privatizing marriage, also elected a conservative government recently in a squeaker.
The main reason governments get elected, year in and year out, is “the economy, stupid.” Still, when governments deconstruct family, that most basic of institutions, even the most permissive of societies react.
Last year, the Canadian Supreme Court threw out the marriage laws of all the provinces at a stroke and legislated same-sex marriage for the whole country.
Last Thursday the Canadian Justice Department recommended abolishing the ban on polygamy across the country.
The chief author of the study, Queens University professor Martha Bailey, said ``in light of the fact that we have a fairly permissive society, why are we singling out that particular form of behaviour for criminalization?''
The election was close, and the Conservative Party will not have a majority in Parliament. There are not likely to be huge changes in Canadian law. But the drift toward imposing an “anything goes” marriage standard from Ottawa may have been stopped.
At a time when South American electorates are taking a significant step to the left, it is striking that all three North American countries have elected conservative governments. Germany, which has been in the forefront of privatizing marriage, also elected a conservative government recently in a squeaker.
The main reason governments get elected, year in and year out, is “the economy, stupid.” Still, when governments deconstruct family, that most basic of institutions, even the most permissive of societies react.
Monday, January 23, 2006
No-Fault Divorce Presumes Two Incomes
There is a horrible and very public divorce case going on now, pitting Bai MacFarlane vs. Bud MacFarlane. [Not the Bud MacFarlane of the Reagan scandals, by the way.] They were, up to now, professional Catholics. He runs the Mary Foundation, and has written Catholic apocalyptic novels. She was the happy Catholic mom who home schooled their four boys.
Then he dumped her.
One of the public issues in this case has been whether the civil courts should take any account of the religious vows, and the decisions of the religious courts, in determining custody.
I was drawn by another issue. He did not want to pay enough child support to allow her to stay home and continue home schooling their children. Instead, he sued to make her get a job. The court sided with him; she refused to comply; he got custody and put the kids in school, including full day care for the two year old.
The court was forced to judge whether an at-home, home-schooling spouse had a right to keep living the life to which she had become accustomed – indeed, to which she was religiously committed – or whether each individual is obliged to get a job and be self-supporting. Thus far, the court has taken the individualist side of this argument, not the marital side.
I asked a family court judge whether no fault has a presumption against home schooling. He replied that “DIVORCE has a bias against home schooling, fault or no-fault.” In theory, a fault standard of divorce would give the innocent spouse some claim for continuing to get enough support to keep home schooling. In practice, though, “the majority of the time most courts (in my opinion) would likely find such a result inequitable in the event that it rendered the ‘at-fault’ spouse unable to maintain some semblance of a residence. And, in most circumstances, it would.”
Most institutions in our culture now presume two incomes for a middle class or better life. This is not simply an economic fact, but is the result of legal and policy decisions to treat everyone as an individual before the law, and not as part of a family, or even a marriage. No-fault divorce laws do presuppose two-income marriages – but so does the rest of social life.
Then he dumped her.
One of the public issues in this case has been whether the civil courts should take any account of the religious vows, and the decisions of the religious courts, in determining custody.
I was drawn by another issue. He did not want to pay enough child support to allow her to stay home and continue home schooling their children. Instead, he sued to make her get a job. The court sided with him; she refused to comply; he got custody and put the kids in school, including full day care for the two year old.
The court was forced to judge whether an at-home, home-schooling spouse had a right to keep living the life to which she had become accustomed – indeed, to which she was religiously committed – or whether each individual is obliged to get a job and be self-supporting. Thus far, the court has taken the individualist side of this argument, not the marital side.
I asked a family court judge whether no fault has a presumption against home schooling. He replied that “DIVORCE has a bias against home schooling, fault or no-fault.” In theory, a fault standard of divorce would give the innocent spouse some claim for continuing to get enough support to keep home schooling. In practice, though, “the majority of the time most courts (in my opinion) would likely find such a result inequitable in the event that it rendered the ‘at-fault’ spouse unable to maintain some semblance of a residence. And, in most circumstances, it would.”
Most institutions in our culture now presume two incomes for a middle class or better life. This is not simply an economic fact, but is the result of legal and policy decisions to treat everyone as an individual before the law, and not as part of a family, or even a marriage. No-fault divorce laws do presuppose two-income marriages – but so does the rest of social life.
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