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.