I Am an Etsy

Diane Koss makes plush monsters and sells them from Cutesy but not Cutesy on etsy.com. She asked our mutual friend Rob to tell her about some people he knew with a few facts about them.

I am humbled and honored to be an etsy. I will try to live up to the role.

Slave to Parental Love

Regular reader Black Sea sent this wonderful response to one of my earlier posts. I thought it too good to leave in the Comments tail.

This bit of pop trivia may interest you. I was this morning watching on Youtube the video of Bryan Ferry's 1985 song "Slave to Love," when I noticed something rather remarkable. (Actually, it was pointed out by one of the Youtube commenters.)

"Slave to Love" is -- or maybe seems -- one of Ferry's classy paeans to erotic enchantment. Certainly much of the song is, but note that at the end of the video, as he's singing "The tide is turning, and so it seems, we're too young to reason, too grown up to dream" he's also sitting in a darkened bedoom, on the edge of the bed. Of course, one expects him to be crooning to his lover. As the camera pans down the bed, we see that he's looking at his sleeping child. In other words, it's a song about the maturation of erotic obsession into familial love.

I'm sure some people will find this trite or sentimetal, but as the father of two young daughters, I have to say that it struck me differently. Of course, it probably helps that I think Bryan Ferry more or less defines the word "suave."

The System Works: Abstinence-Only Sex Education Doesn't Survive the Test of Reality

When welfare reform was passed in 1996, Pres. Clinton compromised to get conservative votes by including funding for abstinence-only sex education programs in schools. As Sarah Kliff shows in the October 27th Newsweek, abstinence-only programs have now fallen on hard times.

This strikes me as an illustration that our government is not broken, but actually works pretty well. Both welfare reform and abstinence-only education became law by the normal kind of political compromise. More than a decade later, we are continuing welfare reform because it works. And we are discontinuing abstinence-only sex education because it doesn't work.

Marriage is Not a Luxury Good, But a Transformative Practice

Two of my fellow sociologists, Laurie Essig and Lynn Owens, offer an attack on marriage that is fairly typical of what they call "critical" sociology. They view marriage as a kind of magic that the privileged add to themselves. They conclude that

When there is broad, seemingly unanimous support for an institution, and when the institution is propped up by such disparate ideas as love, civil rights and wealth creation, we should wonder why so many different players seem to agree so strongly. Perhaps it’s because they are supporting not just marriage but also the status quo.

This is almost completely backward. Marriage is a formative institution. We make ourselves and our society more loving, equal, and richer through marriage because marriage leads people to act differently - especially men. The worst off groups are the least married. This is not because marriage is a luxury of the best off. It is because people who don't make the transformative commitments of marriage tend to end up badly off. And what is likely to individuals is nearly certain for groups.

When there is broad, seemingly unanimous support for an institution, and when the institution is propped up by such disparate ideas as love, civil rights and wealth creation, we should wonder why so many different players seem to agree so strongly. Perhaps it’s because they are trying to build up civilization and benefit everyone.

Married Parents are Happier

There has been some back and forth about whether kids make parents happy or unhappy. A new study in the Journal of Happiness Studies says that kids make married parents happier. This makes sense to me. Marrying and raising a family together as a deliberate and permanent status is a coherent, whole project. It is not each piece that may or not make a couple happy, it is the package.

Calvin at 500

This year is the semi-millennium of John Calvin's birth. My congregation has been celebrating with a three-week Sunday school session on Calvin and his legacy. Naturally, Presbyterians turn a birthday party into an opportunity for school.

I got to teach the third and final session this morning, on Calvinism and modern culture. I taught a whole course on this subject a few years ago, so I was brutally compressing a hurried term into a lightning-quick class.

We talked about the crucial role the Reformed tradition in creating democracy, the Protestant work ethic, science, and in general the "affirmation of ordinary life." This is exciting story, energizing to teach. The class was a rich one, and may lead to a longer course of study in the future.

The best part for me was articulating that the Reformed tradition has made a distinctive way of life out of an idea that is found in all Biblical faith - God made the universe as a great story and great task, in which we all have a part. God made a meaningful universe, as only God can. And God gave each and every one of us a life of work within that meaningful universe, work that is itself meaningful.

Thank you John Calvin for articulating that idea, decently and in order.

Chef's Animals

My mother sent me an email of "What chefs do when they are bored." They are really great. Here are just a couple.

Darwin's Evolutionary Context

Last night David Quammen, author of The Reluctant Mr. Darwin gave a lecture at Centre. His book was read by all the first-year students. This is Darwin year for two reasons - the bicentennial of Darwin's birth, and the 150th anniversary of the publication of On the Origin of Species.

I had known that Darwin had the basic idea of evolution through natural selection long before he published it. I had not really processed, though, just when he had his big idea. Darwin's notebooks show that it was 1838 that he had his big intellectual breakthrough. This is right in the middle of founding era of sociology.

1827 August Comte coins the term "sociology" and articulates the Law of the Three Stages of scientific evolution.

1838 Darwin conceives biological evolution by natural selection.

1848 Marx and Engels publish "The Communist Manifesto" articulating the theory of social evolution through struggle over the means of production.

It was only in 1859 that Darwin finally published the book that made "evolution" a term we think of primarily in biological terms. We are still living with the legacy, though, of the several kinds of evolutionary ideas, biological and social, in sociology. In general, the social sciences turned away from evolutionary theories just as biology was turning toward them. Now that biology is being re-incorporated into social science (especially in family studies), we may see a new turn in sociological thinking on evolution. Or a new reaction.

"Fireproof" is a Decent Marriage Movie

"Fireproof" is about a couple on the brink of divorce working back to real love and respect for one another. It is explicitly evangelical and a little clunky. But its heart is in the right place. It gets Southern evangelical culture right (it is set in Albany, GA). I particularly liked the parallel complaints that husband and wife made to their friends about how the spouse was the real problem because he/she did not give the complainant enough respect.

"Fireproof" has been the talk of the pro-marriage circuit this year because it shows in some detail what steps and what changes a couple who want to save their marriage can take to get on the right track. And the happy ending teared me up, even if it was a little cheesy.

On "Cellphones, Texts, and Lovers"

David Brooks has an interesting column on the way some people use cellphones and texting to create a fluid market in sexual hookups. The data come from New York magazine's sex diaries, submitted by readers.

Brooks' main point is that in courtship in days gone by social institutions provided a set of "guardrails" to help people sensibly get from short-term attraction to long-term commitment. He concludes that it is a loss that young people today do not have such guardrails.

I mostly agree with Brooks. I disagree on two points of emphasis.

First, most young people who court in school, with friends around and families in consulting distance, do in fact have help and guardrails. Some (not most) engage in hookups, especially in the first flush of freedom from home. But most leave that behind when looking for a serious mate.

Second, I don't think the sex diarists submitting their sad erotic adventures to New York magazine readers are young people courting. I think they are likely to be the people who are left over after the rest of their cohort finished their serious courtships, guardrails and all. They are left over, in part, because they did not court when they had the social structure to support them, but instead approached sex as just another way to spend the evening, disconnected from love, marriage, and parenthood.

Soldiers Understand Commitment, Marry Younger

Rev. Charles Rush has a wonderful story of the brief visit of his son and daughter-in-law, both soldiers, home from Afghanistan just long enough to get married.

Young Rush was the first of his siblings and friends, all elite college students and graduates, to get married. Rev. Rush made this striking observation:

And in the college world his friends inhabit, especially the fraternity world, marriage is not exactly at the top of everyone’s list.

In the world of the enlisted men and women, however, a premium is placed on loyalty and steadfast support, and this translates into a high rate of marriage, even among young people who are only in their late teens and early 20s.

Our birthrate is so low, especially among the educated classes, in part because we are delaying marriage longer and longer. One unexpected effect of this war may be to reduce the marriage age in at least one sector of the younger generation.

Alice Rossi, R.I.P.

Alice Rossi, a leading family sociologist, died this week at 87. She was criticized from the right in the '60s for proposing sexual equality. She was one of the founders of the National Organization for Women. In later years she was criticized from the left for allowing that there are some important biological differences between men and women. While not a centrist, she came closer toward the middle on the sex and gender question than most feminist sociologists of her generation.

This picture is from her term as president of the American Sociological Association in 1983.

Best Sunday News: The House Passes Health Care

Our sermon this morning was on approaching life with generosity because God is in charge, versus approaching life with fear because there's not enough. The immediate context of this sermon is stewardship season, when church members make their pledges for the coming year. Most church people are probably hearing similar sermons now.

I heard this sermon in the larger context of the vote yesterday in the House of Representatives that the richest nation in the history of the world can afford to make sure every citizen has basic health care.

God is good.

The Funniest Thing I Saw This Week

Jon Stewart doing Glenn Beck.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
The 11/3 Project
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Health Care Crisis

"Synagogue" is Gentile for Shul

The Survey of American Jewish Language and Identity by Sarah Bunin Benor and Steven M. Cohen has some wonderful findings. The main trend is that religiously involved younger Jews are using more distinctively Jewish terms, and are shifting from Yiddish to Hebrew terms.

One development that surprised me is that "synagogue" is not the favored term for Jewish house of worship by any group of American Jews. Reform Jews favor "temple" (50%), while all other denominations favor "shul": Reconstructionist (59%), Conservative (68%), Modern Orthodox (94%), Orthodox (94%), Black Hat (92%).

So what does "synagogue" mean now? For Jews of all denominations, it is the word used when talking to gentiles (80%) or non-observant Jews (62%).

The survey, which was spread virally through the internet, included many non-Jews and non-New Yorkers (including me and my students). They found that the gentiles who use distinctive Jewish words or constructions - "kvetch" or "I don't know from that" - were more likely to have Jewish friends, live in New York, or both.

One fascinating minor puzzle is that gay and lesbian gentiles are more likely to use distinctive Jewish words than heterosexual gentiles are. For example, 64% of gay men say "schmutz" (dirt), vs. only 50% of heterosexual gentile men. This pattern is not found among Jews.

There is much more in this rich study.

Involved Fathers are Good; Fathers and Mothers Working Together Are Better

Laurie Tarkan has a fine article in the New York Times on a nifty new study by the Cowans and the Pruetts (long-time family researchers) comparing a control group, a father-training group, and a couple-training group. The kids of the trained fathers came out better than the controls, but the kids of the trained couples came out better still.

Levi-Strauss, R.I.P.

Eminent anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss died at 100.

My favorite Levi-Strauss story is what happened when he gave a speech at a dinner honoring anthropological pioneer Franz Boas.

Boas died.

This has always struck me as a symbolic handoff.

I don't know who was speaking when Levi-Strauss died.

Go Green, Go Sterile?

British commentator Alex Renton is promoting the idea that the British should have fewer children to reduce the nation's carbon footprint.

This way of looking at children is so backwards that I find it viscerally distressing. Children are not a burden on the economy and the environment. Children are what the economy and the human part of the environment are for.

I am in favor of taking what steps we can and should to improve the environment for future generations. But those changes would lose much of their point if we sacrificed the future generations, too.

Have a Witty Halloween

Deskilling and Feminizing an Occupation

In our Social Structure class we are considering Barbara Reskin's "Labor Markets as Queues" and Warren Farrell's Why Men Earn More.

Reskin notes that an occupation draws more women when it is "deskilled." This also leads to pay going down. She treats this as evidence of discrimination against women.

Farrell notes that an occupation draws more women when the task is made easier and working conditions get better. This also leads to pay going down. He treats this as evidence of what happens when the supply exceeds the demand for a job.

In general, Reskin treats lower women's wages as discrimination against women, even though it costs employers more to hire men at higher wages.

Farrell points out that if employers could really get the same work from women, or any kind of workers, for lower wages, the employers would hire them. If it is not illegal to hire from the less-likely group, then some employers will break ranks with custom to save money and reap a competitive advantage.