As Women Take Over the World, Men Need Marriage Even More

Hanna Rosin has a fine piece in the Atlantic on how women are taking over the world.

OK, she doesn't quite put it that way. But she does note that the developing economy favors women's skills and training. The current recession has put men out of work more than usual. Things are looking up for girls in most of the world, and they are taking advantage of their opportunities.

The saddest group of guys in her article are in court-ordered "fatherhood training." These guys are mostly behind on child support and make less than their wives. Rosin's point is that women making more than their men is a growing reality. This is true.

I draw an additional conclusion from this illustration. In general, women benefit the most from marriage financially. This is still true, and given the realities of who has babies, is likely to always be true. Moreover, men are more likely to be employed in risky jobs, whereas women trade off pay and other perks for job security. Thus, there should be an increasing number of couples in which she makes the steady paycheck. During good times, he will make more; during recessions, she keeps them afloat.

One main effect, then, of women's growing economic success is that the economic benefits of marriage increase - and increasingly benefit men as much as women.

The "Boyfriend Story" Never Went Away

Caitlin Flanagan argues in the Atlantic that girls are resisting the ubiquitous hook-up culture with a revival of what she calls "the Boyfriend Story," an over-romanticized view of how men can really relate to women. I am sure that teenage girls are prone to over-romanticize many things. But their desire for boyfriends who turn into husbands has never gone away. Nor are they wrong or unrealistic.

Hook-ups are real, but they are a minority practice, and most are not quite as decadent as many fear. Moreover, even the minority of girls who do hook up get over that phase pretty quickly. They find that it works as a way to get boys to pay attention to them and to feel attractive. But then they find out that ancient wisdom that boys have two different lists, and two different kinds of attention, when it comes to girls. Girls, on the other hand, pretty much only have the "boyfriend" list. Hooking up will get a girl on a boy's list (and probably all of his friends' lists, too), but not on the "girlfriend" list.

The marriage story is still the main story that most people want and get. The boyfriend story, like the girlfriend story, is how teenagers practice for the real thing.

Elena Kagan: Another Triumph of WASP Values

Noah Feldman, a Harvard law professor, has a fine op-ed in the New York Times today about the Elena Kagan nomination to the Supreme Court. Others have noted that if, as expected, she is confirmed, the Court will have no Protestants for the first time ever. Feldman takes this as the jumping off point for an interesting and up-building claim:

Unlike almost every other dominant ethnic, racial or religious group in world history, white Protestants have ceded their socioeconomic power by hewing voluntarily to the values of merit and inclusion, values now shared broadly by Americans of different backgrounds. The decline of the Protestant elite is actually its greatest triumph.

E. Digby Baltzell, a great sociologist about whom I have written before, argued that every society needs a leadership class that assimilates talented individuals who rise from outside the old ruling class. This is hard for the top class to stick to, because it is easier and more comfortable to only promote their own. However, that way lies a caste society and increasing injustice to the talented but excluded. If, though, the leadership class can continue to include talented outsiders, it truly deserves the name of "aristocracy" in the literal sense - the rule of the best.

Baltzell goes beyond other theorists of aristocracy to see that even greater benefit comes to society if these new men (and now women) are included not just in the powerful public institutions, but also in the private world of the leadership class. The acid test of this private inclusion is if the rising individuals marry into the old top class families. If the aristocracies of individuals can solidify into a stable, but porous, network of families, then the leadership class can produce a true Establishment. Their children then are members of the top class by birth and (normally) shared breeding.

I believe Elena Kagan will be a fine Supreme Court justice. I do regret, as a Baltzellian sociologist, that she will not have descendants who can complete the assimilation of this very talented woman into the American Establishment.

Girl and Boy Hierarchies.

I am reading John Levi Martin's stimulating Social Structures. He considers how hierarchies arise among girls and boys. I paraphrase one of his points thus:

Girl hierarchies organize from the outcast up; boy hierarchies organize from the leader down.

Nerdy Dolphins

I used to teach 13th Gen, a good book written by two Baby Boomers about Generation X, which came out when Gen X was still in college. One innovation of the book was that the authors, Neil Howe and William Strauss, posted their developing thoughts on the younger generation on an electronic bulletin board, inviting comment. One persistent respondent, then a college student, eventually provided such useful feedback that his comments were included in the published book, under the name "Crasher."

Crasher's first response, though, was highly skeptical. He wrote:

Pardon me for interrupting, but this has to be one of the silliest things I've ever seen on this network. Don't you know that categorizing and defining stuff that you have no clue about is one of the fatal flaws of being a baby boomer? You guys sound like nerdy dolphins talking about hang gliding.

I have found the category of "nerdy dolphins" to be very useful when someone who knows one thing is pronouncing confidently on another - grossly missing some elementary points. I am no doubt guilty of being a nerdy dolphin more often than I know.

I have been immersed in family sociology, which obsesses on the subject of the balancing the obligations, as well as the great pleasures, of work and family. There is a large scholarly community in sociology, family studies, economics, and beyond, studying this subject. Beyond the academics, there is an immense popular literature, much of it based on research, aimed at working parents who are trying to rightly juggle their several competing duties. So I could only react with wonder today when I read a noted scholar of leisure write this:

"Obligation outside that experienced while pursuing a livelihood is terribly understudied (much of it falls under the heading of family and/or domestic life …)”

Nerdy dolphin.

Educated People Think They Are More Left-Wing Than They Really Are

As a centrist I think the left-right political spectrum does as much mischief as good, because it encourages a false polarization of what we think the political options are. Nonetheless, it is very useful. Most people can readily place themselves on the spectrum, and choose their friends and enemies based on whether those others call themselves left or right.

James Rockey, an economist at the University of Leicester, has an interesting analysis based on the World Values Survey called "Who is left, and who just thinks they are?" He compared where people places themselves on a ten-point left/right spectrum with where they place themselves on two other questions to get some objective measure of their actual position. One of the objective questions is familiar:

“Incomes should be made more equal vs We need larger income differences as incentives. How would you place your views on this scale?"

The second question sounds unusual, at least to American ears:

"Imagine two secretaries, of the same age, doing practically the same job. One finds out that the other earns considerably more than she does. The better paid secretary, however, is quicker, more efficient and more reliable at her job. In your opinion, is it fair or not fair that one secretary is paid more than the other?"

Rockey's headline finding: the more educated on average believe themselves to be more left wing than their actual beliefs on a substantive issue might suggest.

Pruetts Don't Quite Deliver on How Men and Women Parent Differently

Kyle and Marsha Pruett, well-known family researchers, have a popular new book aimed at parents. Partnership Parenting: How Men and Women Parent Differently - Why It Helps Your Kids and Can Strengthen Your Marriage begins with some promising research-based accounts of how fathers and mothers tend to approach raising children differently. The chapter called "Cuddling vs. the Football Hold," on how mothers and fathers hold babies, is particularly interesting. In later chapters, though, they pay less and less attention to complementary differences between fathers and mothers, and more and more on general, sensible parenting advice.

At the heart of the book is the Pruetts' contention that children have a relationship with their parents as a team, as well as with each parent. This is sound and important. They return often to the theme that the couple needs to work out a common plan in raising children, even while preserving their differences. This is also quite sound. They hint that research shows a pattern to these differences - fathers tending one way, mothers another. They offer even more tantalizing hints that these differences tend to be complementary. But the message that the parents need to present a united front overwhelms what is more interesting to me - just how men and women tend to differ in raising kids.

Scanzoni's Family View Goes Another Giant Step to the Left

John Scanzoni, a well-known family sociologist, has a new book, Healthy American Families: A Progressive Alternative to the Religious Right. Most of the book is the familiar liberal argument that all close relationships are equally good, marriage is an outdated institution, and children shouldn't interfere with adult autonomy.

Lately this argument has been putting more emphasis on these autonomous adults partnering with their soul mates - for as long as they feel like soul mates. Scanzoni praises Abigail Adams, John Adams' "remarkable soul mate (who also happened to be his wife and the manager of their farm)."

Likewise, divorce is nothing to lament. Rather, he offers as one his ten guidelines for progressive family life that "love and autonomy govern the transitions between being partnered and partner-free."

Scanzoni also says that it more environmentally responsible not to have children, or at least to have a "child-minimum" one-child family.

Scanzoni was raised an evangelical Christian, and went to Moody Bible Institute in the 1950s. He writes here as a "recovering evangelical" who is now against "christianists" who would impose their view of the divine on others. I don't think the religious theme is actually essential to his argument - he would be equally imposed to secular family scholars who emphasize the benefits to adults and, especially, to children of marriage.

The culture wars live, as shown by this salvo.

Expecting Fidelity Probably Does Yield a Higher Divorce Rate - But is Still Worth It

Catherine Hakim, a British sociologist, offered up to a conference of mostly American scholars the theory that U.S. divorce rates were so high because we expect marital fidelity. If we just accepted, as continental Europeans do, that some discrete affairs are inevitable in a marriage, we could have lower divorce rates, like the Italians.

As a sociological observation I have to admit that she is probably right.

Every possible social arrangement has its costs and benefits, which require trade-offs. Still, I think the greater benefits, both socially and personally, come from trying to reach the higher standard.

I do think that it is unreasonable to expect your spouse to feel like your soulmate at every moment of a long marriage. But sexual fidelity does seem possible for most people who make a public commitment to try it. And there are things we can do to improve their odds.

Babies Don't Make Your Marriage Go Sour - If You Are Religious

This week I will blog on a fine family sociology conference I am attending at Princeton.

In general, couples report that their satisfaction with their marriage goes down when their first child is born. Brad Wilcox and Jeffrey Dew found, though, that this is mostly true for secular women. For religious women who share a faith and a religious community with their husbands, having a baby does not make them less happy with their marriage.

I think this is because religious couples can see having a baby as a meaningful, even sacred act, which they are doing for others as well as for their own little family.

Is the Idea of Pre-Marital Sex Obsolescent?

This week I will blog on a fine family sociology conference I am attending at Princeton.

Mark Regnerus suggests that with the rising age of marriage, widespread cohabitation, even cohabitation with children, and the general separation of sex from reproduction, in fifteen years the term "pre-marital sex" will seem archaic.

Gifted Givers

This week I will blog on a fine family sociology conference I am attending at Princeton.

Many programs aimed at preventing unmarried motherhood try to convince women, especially poor women with little education, that they could maximize their individual profits if they just prevented babies. This is an argument that works with many richer, more educated women and men, such as those who make up such policies.

Helen Alvare argues that such policies fail because they fail to understand what these women want. They are not trying to be individual profit maximizers. They are trying to be "gifted givers." The love and care they give to their children are a gift to the children themselves, and to the community as a whole. Giving that love is something these moms are good at. Being good mothers, according to the standards of their community, is something that any mother can understand. Facing up to the responsibilities of motherhood, even without a husband, is an honorable way to face their community.

Donor Kids Want to Know Who Their Fathers Are - But Also Support Sperm Donation

This week I will blog on a fine family sociology conference I am attending at Princeton.

Elizabeth Marquardt and colleagues have produced a fascinating new report, "My Daddy's Name is Donor" on the lives and views of adults conceived by sperm donation.

She found that about half of them were bothered about the circumstances of their conception, especially that money changed hands. At the same time, almost two thirds support the existence of sperm donation, and a fifth of them have donated sperm or eggs themselves - a much higher rate than the general population.

The donor-conceived children have serious questions about their own identity. They do worse on a number of behavioral measures than either natural or adopted children. Yet most also embrace the idea that "parents have a right to a child" and think just about all methods to achieve that end should be allowed.

I believe the public discussion of donor-conceived children is just beginning. The ideas of donor offspring, which are not entirely coherent, will, I believe, shift and solidify - and polarize - as the discourse develops. I commend Marquardt for getting the ball rolling.

Authentic Happiness 2: The Main Point

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

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

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

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

Communion Technology

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

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

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

A Centrist Looks at the Parties 3: Third Parties

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

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

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

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

A Centrist Looks at the Parties 2: Democrats

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

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

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

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

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

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

A Centrist Looks at the Parties 1: Republicans

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

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

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

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

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

Authentic Happiness 1: The Pillars

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

Positive Psychology has three pillars:

Positive emotion

Positive traits – especially strengths and virtues, but also abilities

Positive institutions – democracy, strong families, free inquiry

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

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

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

Blockades Hurt Potential Friends

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

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