Centre College: the Typical Level 3 Family

By guest bloggers Amanda Nall and Teather Sanders from the Family Life class
(Part one of two)

Maggie Scarf writes about level 3 families as a stable, nontyrannical form of governance with an unresolved problem of intimacy. With the range of families on the Beavers scale stretching from “severely disturbed” (level 5) to “optimal” (level 1), it seems that level 3 might not be the best, but it is definitely a step up from the confusion and control that are found in the lower levels. Rules for a family are the glue that holds the family out of chaos. According to www.parentleadership.com, “every healthy family lives by a set of rules in the home, some high standards for attitudes and conduct directed toward the welfare of others.” Rules also let each member of the family live in the environment with a set role that comes with a set of specific rules about how to perform that role. In a level 3 family where rules are abundant, there is no confusion about where each member fits or what their responsibilities are for the family. Everyone’s behavior is effectively regulated and there is predictability, order, and control built into the family system. With letting rules dominate the family, an important sacrifice is made: intimacy.

We would like to suggest that Scarf’s Beavers scale can be used as a model for more than families. All interactions within a community can be fit into these five levels with the dominating characteristics seen as the norm within that community. Centre College, the wonderful institution that we attend, is just like a level 3 family. Not purposely, but the relations among the students are defined by rules, or as we like to call them, social commandments, leaving little room for intimacy.

The social commandments of Centre College:
1. Men and women are not to consume food at the same table in Cowan
2. Do not show affection for the opposite sex in public. This includes:
a. Holding hands
b. Kissing
c. Talking
d. Eating together
3. If you’re in an actual relationship, hide it from the general public until it is considered serious
4. “Hooking up” is okay while intoxicated, but this does not change the rules of sober interaction

There are a few circumstances where the above rules may be set aside temporarily:
1. Athletic teams may eat together and communicate with any gender as long as it is in direct conjunction with a practice or sports event
2. “Wingnuts,” who sit in the outer wings of the hall, do not follow the Cowan seating rules
3. The Cowan seating rules may be set aside during Saturday/Sunday brunch or during breakfast
4. Drunken interactions may or may not follow the rules

The Cowan seating chart is the most obvious place to view Centre’s display of the level 3 rule-bound family. Freshmen first enter Cowan thinking they can sit wherever they want and with whomever they want. They soon learn that this is not the way Centre works; there are certain rules that must be followed. Men and women are supposed to sit at separate tables, with the women sitting on the inside of the circular main room, and the men sticking to the outside tables. Looking around the outside of the room there are tables for each of the fraternities, with the inside tables designated for the sororities, freshmen women, and sports teams. Sports teams are the only ones that are allowed to sit with the opposite sex, but only if the interaction is in conjunction with a sporting event or practice. The rules are sometimes set aside during weekend brunch, when topics of conversation concern only the events of the past night, or during breakfasts, when everyone present is studying for the same upcoming test. The only way the rules can be broken during weekday lunch or dinner is if you allow yourself to be considered a “wingnut,” which is basically defined as those who prefer to sit in the wings, rather than the large main room of Cowan.

Divorce Effects, Part Two

By guest bloggers Will Adams and Ellie Guy from the Family Life class.
(Part two of two)

A recent study conducted by Norval Glenn at the University of Texas at Austin has some surprising things to say about the effects of divorce on children relative to the quality of divorce. Glenn says that children of good divorces are caught off guard by the divorce and have long-term damage to their views of marriage as an institution. Children of a bad divorce see the conflict leading up to the divorce and can justify the divorce in their minds and, while they may blame one or both parents for their actions, their faith in the institution of marriage is maintained. The children of bad divorce, however, experience a much greater psychological trauma as they are often “torn between two worlds” worse than children of good divorce are.

What Glenn’s research shows is that both good and bad divorces have detrimental effects on the children involved. He, like most researchers in the field, concedes that there are examples of abusive marriages where the parents and children are better off with a divorce, but that this population is a small minority. Save those few situations, most divorces have an overwhelmingly negative effect on children. What we see is that divorced children, having either been disillusioned by marriage or made to fear divorce in their own relationships, will have a greater likelihood of themselves either never getting married or ending a marriage in divorce.

This trend seems to indicate that we may begin to see a cyclical pattern in families that have experienced divorce. Because of this, we believe it would be interesting to conduct a study that looks at marital happiness and success based on the family history of the two people in the marriage: whether both come from intact or divorced families or if one comes from each. Our belief is that the findings would show that both spouses from intact families would be the happiest and successful, both from divorced families second, and mixed spouses the least happy. Our reasoning for listing two children-of-divorce spouses as the next happiest behind the dual-intact spouses is that we believe a percentage of dual-divorced marriages would be both so turned off by their parents’ experiences that they would be willing to do anything to make their own marriages work. Furthermore, if they both came from this background they would understand each other’s mentalities. Our reasoning for placing a mixed family history marriage as the least likely to be happy/successful is that we feel the intact-family spouse would not fully understand where the divorced-family spouse had grown up with. Furthermore, one spouse would have experienced his or her parents dealing with situations while the other one would not have that knowledge. The result would be that the two come to the marriage with unequal marital skills and knowledge.

This is all obviously theoretical. We would like to see the results of such a study and believe that it will be conducted someday and anticipate its results.

Divorce Effects, Part One

By guest bloggers Will Adams and Ellie Guy from the Family Life class.
(Part one of two)

In life, statistics do not lie, and divorce has become a large part of our life in today’s culture. Since the 1960’s and 70’s divorce rates have been on the rise in society. It has, in a sense, become more acceptable to enter into marriage knowing that there is a future possibility of divorce. But this of course does not come without consequences. Researchers have been studying the effects of divorce on families, especially those on children, and have found some overwhelming evidence that divorce is harmful for children. Many believe that by ending a conflict laden marriage they are freeing their children of the chaotic and unhealthy family structure. In reality, they are freeing their children from family structure. Parents think that children can sense the unhappiness and tension in the household, while in reality children think that their family situation (barring excessive violence or abuse) is the norm and that mommy and daddy are merely having disagreements. Furthermore, studies have shown that parental conflict does not end with divorce, but only increases the harmful effects on children as they are caught between the two parents and the two households.

While much research has been done on the harmful effects of divorce on children, led by such researchers as Judith Wallerstein, little has been done on the effects of divorce on the children after they grow up. The effects of divorce don’t cease when the child becomes an adult. The reason that little research has been done in this area is that the effects may not be apparent until decades after the initial divorce, and since divorce did not become widely accepted until the late 80s-early 90s, we have only recently been able to see the long-term effects. Only recently has data started to emerge showing that the marriages of children of divorce are traumatized by the divorce of their parents. And while the negative effects on children of divorce’s future marriages has been recognized, little has been done to attempt to explain the psychology of these effects let alone how to properly prevent them. Furthermore, recent research has begun to show surprising effects on children’s marriages based on the type of divorce experienced, which will be discussed in tomorrow’s post.

In a 1995 study reported in the American Journal of Sociology, Webster, Orbuch, and House showed that among unhappy marriages, those who had grown up in divorced families and those who had never known their fathers were much more likely to end up divorced than were those in unhappy marriages who had grown up in a two-married-parent household. This study does report several different theories put forth by other scholars pertaining to the relationship between family history and marital stability, but determines that empirical evidence does not conclusively support any of these theories.

In addition, in the 1987 Journal of Marriage and Family, Glenn and Kramer found evidence in US national surveys conducted from 1973 to 1985 that children of divorced families are more likely to divorce in the future. They supported these findings with a plethora of reasons for why this correlation might occur. Some of their theories include that children with divorced parents have inappropriate modeling for spouse roles, less social support from parents, a lower level of education, the greater likelihood of resorting to divorce, and a lower average age of getting married which ultimately leads to higher rates of divorce. Glenn and Kramer used these statistical findings to formulate a variety of conclusions that demonstrated the detrimental effects of children of divorce on their marital future.

Elizabeth Marquardt covers in depth the effects of divorce on children in their early childhood, psychologically and emotionally. She asserts that though some believe divorce is the best plan of action to avoid future disaster, in reality there is no such thing as a ‘good’ divorce that leads to a positive outcome. Moreover, as we are beginning to see with new and upcoming research, the effects do not end in childhood; they are carried throughout life and are evident in the children’s married lives and families. Which begs the question, what can be to avoid this detrimental outcome in our families and our society as a whole?

"Close Relations" Theory Pours Acid on Family Roles

Dan Cere wrote a fine essay on how the "close relations" theory is quickly displacing the conjugal theory of marriage in the laws of this country and Canada. I have written about it before. For their final examination, my family life students had to consider all we had studied in light of this conflict of paradigms. I learned something, as I always do, from these examinations.

One of the ideas we spent some time with is the Beavers Scale of Family Functioning, a family systems account that divides families into five large categories of functioning from chaotic to optimal. One of the points that Robert Beavers emphasizes (as does the author who popularized his view, Maggie Scarf) is that well-functioning families have clear boundaries around their various roles. The boundaries should not been too rigid, but neither should they be too permeable. But in order to have boundaries around family roles, you need to have some dependable roles to begin with. Beavers builds on the boundaries around the marriage, around the parent-child groups, and around the family as a whole, in addition to subsidiary roles.

The conjugal theory is, obviously, built around the roles of husband and wife. In the more amorphous world in which any close relationship is as good as any other, and none are assumed to be permanent, "family roles" melt away. In fact, under a close relations model, I don't see how we could talk about functional and dysfunctional families at all. This may be part of the appeal of the close relations paradigm to postmodernist intellectuals. The freedom from defined roles is likely to be cold comfort, though, to children caught in the chaos of a formless family.

Mom and the Prom

My mother went to Swarthmore at 17. I have seen pictures of her then – a very pretty brown-eyed girl who, well, had a figure pleasing to men. I learned what the word "chic" meant when I read the description of her in the college yearbook. She met my father at a freshmen mixer dance, and they went on to a long and successful marriage. I talked to my mother yesterday, as I do every Saturday, and we went over the news of family, friends, and the big world. My mother is part of my wisdom circle, and I am proud to be part of hers.

My daughter just turned 18, and will go to Swarthmore in the fall. She is a very pretty brown-eyed girl who, well, has a Marilyn figure. Last night my wife and I had the pleasure of enacting a classic scene with her as she got ready for the prom. She had been to the hairdresser, and came back with what she has taught me is an "up-do." Her mother had latched that hard-to-reach hook in the back, and our eldest was before us in a halter dress like the one that Marilyn Monroe wore in "The Seven Year Itch" in the famous updraft scene, except our girl's dress was black. We watched her put the last touches of her makeup on, a skill she certainly did not learn from her nerdy parents.

As I watched my daughter get ready, I thought of my mother, whom she resembles.

Thank you delightful daughter.

Happy Mothers' Day, Mom.

The Hummer Bites the Dust

The gigantic Hummer – now the H1 of the Giant Dinosaur Burner series from General Motors – has been killed. They sold 12,000 of them (that's about 50,000 VW Bugs, according to the Universal Car Mass Conversion Chart) since they began as Gulf War I chic in the early nineties.

Now that it costs $150 to fill one up (seriously), they have lost some of their charm.

Hey, maybe a Hummer Hybrid? You could even plant a whole switchgrass field on top of the car, and burn that as it matured.

But What’s in it for Dad? The Transformative Power of Fatherhood

By guest bloggers -Natalie Frost and Adam Heckmann from the Family Life class.
(Part two of two)

While fatherhood is infinitely beneficial to children, what do men gain from being active fathers in an era when it would still be fairly easy to walk away? There are many benefits to those fathers that choose to marry, or stay married to, their child’s mother. Most strikingly, there is a health correlation. Men tend to be healthier when they are fathers because of the added responsibility. They often give up bad habits like smoking and excessive drinking with the realization that they are not only role models, but their health affects their ability to care for and provide for their children. Similarly, men often become more active and eat better as fathers. There is also a mental health benefit: men who are involved with their families are less likely to suffer from stress-related health problems like dizziness and chest pain. Children also bring a sense of purpose into their father’s lives; as a result, men are often more joyful and optimistic in their new role as fathers. In short, fathers tend to live healthier, happier lives.

In addition, while fathers must carefully balance their roles at the workplace and home, fatherhood appears to be a benefit to their working lives as well. Married fathers are the hardest working, highest paid members of society. Their newfound sense of purpose contributes to an unmatched work ethic. The way fathers think is also affected- men tend to become more creative and have more flexibility in the way that they think (Brott). Fatherhood also inspires a higher level of patience and a greater sense of humor-both invaluable coping skills for parents. Becoming a father also forces men to clarify their beliefs and values; most political or moral issues can be seen in a new light and with added importance when considering the possible effects on one’s children.

Despite the overwhelming advantages of fatherhood both to the child and the father, around 34% of children live without their biological father. The rate of fatherlessness is a very real problem in the United States. Change is needed. Organizations such as the National Center for Fathering and the National Fatherhood Initiative are taking steps in that direction, offering resources to help fathers become better fathers. These organizations and experts in the field of family life are also pushing for legislation to strengthen fatherhood, including incentives for fathers to marry and altering no-fault divorce law to become more child-focused. Grassroots initiatives may prove to be the most successful, with churches, schools and local organization sponsoring activities and offering resources to fathers in their area. There are numerous ways we can offer support and encouragement to fathers. Teachers can be sure to give two copies of school handouts to children whose parents are unmarried, one for Mom and Dad. Schools can sponsor father volunteer days or invite men to be leaders on PTA and other school decision making councils. Hospitals can hand out special kits with information and encouragement to fathers of newborns in their maternity wards. Churches can sponsor seminars about fatherhood.

On a national level, there is the possibility to reach fathers in a big way. The National Fatherhood Initiative has created PSAs for the web, TV, radio and print. These ads would be ideal for publication/airing in venues such as BET, ESPN, Sports Illustrated magazine, and USA Today. If a fatherhood initiative could gain sponsorship from a large corporation, there is no limit to how much publicity could be gained, with billboards, primetime TV spots and celebrities chatting about fatherhood on talk shows.

The power of involved, caring fatherhood is unmatched. We know the importance of the role fathers play, as well as the benefits to the man himself, now we need to spread the word. Every movement begins with a single person- a blogger choosing to have a National Fatherhood Initiative web banner PSA on his site, one involved father encouraging another to join the PTA, or one poster placed by a nurse in a waiting room. We can all work to support and encourage the fathers we know become stronger forces in their children’s lives and in doing so, improve the lives of all.


“My father didn't tell me how to live; he lived, and let me watch him do it”. Clarence B. Kelland 1881-1964

These Times Are A-Changin’: Trends in Fatherhood

By guest bloggers Natalie Frost and Adam Heckmann from the Family Life class.
(Part one of two)

Legendary anthropologist Margaret Mead once noted that fathers, while biologically necessary, were “social accidents.” We now know nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, young children benefit from their fathers’ involvement; fathers help foster verbal skills and emotional security. School-age children with involved fathers receive better grades, are less likely to be held back in school, and are less likely to be expelled (Nord, Brimhall & West, 1997). In adolescence, the closer children feel to their fathers, the less likely they are to participate in delinquent activities such as theft, violence, running away, disorderly conduct and weapons use (National Fatherhood Initiative). In addition, fathers help importantly shape the development of their children’s gender identities (Lamb 1997).

Most professed, however, are the failings of many fathers to play active roles in their children’s lives and the consequences that accompany such disengagement. Books like David Blankenhorn’s Fatherless America and David Popenoe’s Life Without Father expose the “crisis of fatherlessness” that has contributed to the various problems associated with youth: low academic performance, teen pregnancy, drug use and violence. These reasons, among others, prompted the development of the National Fatherhood Initiative in 1994, with Blankenhorn himself presiding as Chairman of the Board of Directors. Since then, there has been increasing research regarding the importance of fathers, the consequences of their absence, as well as a proliferation of resources that encourage dads to become active participants in their children’s lives. The National Fatherhood Initiative is at the forefront of the revolution to involve dads in whatever station of life they may be, whether incarcerated, divorced, or a single dad. While the absence of fathers remains an important concern, the burgeoning body of knowledge concerning their role appears promising by educating and informing the public.

The changing view of fatherhood can further be seen in its impact of the working lives of men. Before, men often defined themselves by their occupations and their ability to provide for their families. There has been a shift in men’s self-perception; where once they might have seen providing as their most important role, the necessity of their parental involvement is now clear, especially as more mothers than ever before are working. Society has accommodated these new views with paternal leave for fathers of new babies, more flexible work schedules, and wider acceptance of stay-at-home dads. Even the ultra-macho Men’s Health Magazine has jumped on the fathering bandwagon with an “All-Star Dad” contest, as well as a quiz, “Are You a Good Dad?” and an interview with singer Tim McGraw about his relationship with his own absent father and his young daughters. Restaurants and stores are keeping up with the times by installing changing tables in men’s restrooms across the country. Everywhere, communities are transforming to become “father-friendly.”
-

[Not all of their citations are available today. I will add them later. Ed.]

The Global Face of Feminization of Poverty

By guest bloggers Megean Kincaid and Meg Ivey from the Family Life class.
(Part two of two)

Feminization of poverty extends into the global community. Worldwide, women earn on average slightly more than 50% of what men earn. Women who live in poverty are often denied access to credit, land, and inheritance. The factors that most often contribute are migrations, divorce, abandonment, civil strife, widowhood, unpartnered adolescent parenthood, and the general notion that children are women’s responsibility. A 1992 UN report found that “the number of rural women living in poverty in the developing countries has increased by almost 50% over the past 20 years to an awesome 565 million -- 374 million of them in Asia, and 129 million in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Women who head households have greater constraints in obtaining resources and services in housing and agriculture. Because women have less access to land, credits, capital, and jobs with good incomes, and because they are likely to have dependent children, they are disadvantaged and more vulnerable to poverty. The majority of women in female-headed households in developing countries are widowed, and to a lesser extent divorced or separated. In the developed countries most female-headed households consist of women who are never married or who are divorced.

Cross-national comparisons show us that the feminization of poverty is avoidable. The Netherlands keeps the sex-poverty ratio low by establishing a high income floor; the welfare state does not allow anyone to be poor, regardless of family status or employment situation. Sweden keeps the sex-poverty ratio low by subsidizing employment and by keeping wages high through union agreements. Since women’s labor force participation is very high, this insures that few women are poor. Unlike the Netherlands or Sweden, Italy has fairly high levels of poverty but the high marriage rates keep sex differences in poverty very low.

In addition to government programs and initiatives, education is a major factor in eliminating the feminization of poverty. The intergenerational transmission of poverty (i.e., from mothers to daughters) is characteristic of households maintained by women who have had early childbearing experience and incomplete secondary education. The less education a woman has, the more likely she is to live in poverty (Scales, Scales, and Morse, 1995). In a study conducted in New York State for the Center for Women’s Policy, 100% of the TANF (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families) recipients who received a 4-year degree and 81% of those who received a 2-year degree began earning incomes well above the poverty level.

As we have seen in countries like Sweden, the feminization of poverty is not inevitable. With government programs providing assistance, better jobs opportunities for single mothers, and more educational resources, we can help ensure that the gap between the sexes decreases.

(Cited, not available online: Bryan Scales, Kathy Scales, and S. Morse. "Education and Training: The Path Out of Poverty for Women." AAUW Outlook, 1995, Summer, pp. 19–24.)

The Domestic Face of Feminization of Poverty

By guest bloggers Megean Kincaid and Meg Ivey from the Family Life class.
(Part one of two)

The term feminization of poverty was first used in 1978 in order to describe the inequality in poverty rates between men and women. The leading cause of the feminization of poverty in the United States is single motherhood. “The United States has one of the highest percentages of children living in poverty among the industrialized nations, because the majority of them are living in mother-headed households” (DiNitto and McNeece, in Tiamiya and Mitchell). The complications that exacerbate the situation are no-fault divorces, child support laws, and “pink collar” jobs. The no-fault divorce movement has “weakened women’s bargaining position” when it comes to maintaining the standard of living post divorce (Schrag). The amount of labor and capital built up by the women in these relationships is often overlooked in the divorce settlement, and therefore undervalued overall. For instance, a woman may sacrifice time and money in order that her husband may become better educated and establish a lucrative career. This sacrifice leaves the woman unprepared for work and unable to provide for her children post divorce. Following divorce, women experience a 30% drop in the standard of living. At the same time, men see a net gain of 8% (Henderson). Both men and women experience loss to begin with, but men bounce back with a vengeance. The final implication of no-fault divorce is that it most often impoverishes women and children.

Current child support laws work in conjunction with no-fault divorces to add to the plight of single mothers. 90% of divorced children stay with their mothers. In many states, child support laws do not take into consideration the rising costs of education and care for children as they age. Inflation is also commonly ignored. Therefore, a fixed amount of child support received by mothers is no longer adequate as children grow older. Sadly, this is one of the better scenarios for single mothers. “Only half of divorced women who are entitled to child support receive the full amount. One-quarter receive none. Nationally, defaulting fathers owe $4.6 billion in child support” (Henderson). For many women faced with defaulting fathers and insufficient child support payments it would be too costly and time consuming to pursue justice through the court system.

Single mothers have to work more in order to provide for their children than they would if married. These mothers often work part time to be with their kids, or, more likely, in low paying “pink collar” jobs. These jobs denote low-skill, low-wage, female-dominated positions. “Among all low skill jobs women’s wages are less than 60% of the typical blue collar jobs held by men” (Sapiro). “Pink collar” jobs don’t offer many health benefits for the women or their families. Many mothers enter into these jobs because the positions are entry-level and the women have previously been absent from the work force. However, these jobs do not often lead to higher paying jobs with better benefits. In these cases it is difficult for any single mother to support her family without the benefit of federal aid money.

It is our conclusion that the movement to no-fault divorce has done more harm than good for the freedom of women. It places single mothers at the mercy of inefficient child support laws and their ex-spouses. In every case, it is the children of these divorces that suffer the most. In addition to losing valuable time spent with their parents, these children feel the financial effects of divorce. In a “pink collar” job a woman must work more, and spend more time away from her children, to earn the same amount of money as a man in the same situation. The plight of impoverished single mothers would be improved with a change in no-fault divorce laws, encouragement for delinquent fathers to pay child support, and improvements in health benefits for single mothers in “pink collar” jobs.

Works cited:
Henderson, Zorika Petic. “Divorce impoverishes women and children.” Human Ecology,
1993, Vol. 21 Issue 1, p2

Sapiro, V. (1999). Women in American Society: An Introduction to Women’s Studies, 4th ed. London

Schrag, Peter. “Going for Broke” Nation, 1985, 12/7/1985, Vol. 241 Issue 19, p620

Tiamiyu, Mojisola and Shelley Mitchell. Urban Review; Mar2001, Vol. 33 Issue 1, p47

When Imagining Their Future, Men See Clear Jobs and Hazy Families; Women See the Reverse.

I asked my family life class, none of whom are older than 23, to imagine their lives at 45. I wanted them to think of what kind of marriage, family, and career they would have then, then work backwards to think about what milestones they would need to meet along the way to get there. This is a sobering exercise for most students. Nearly all of my students, male and female, want it all – marriage, kids, and career. Men and women, though, respond to the exercise in different ways.

The men have detailed plans for what sort of work they would like to do, and what next steps they will need to take to get there. They know that they would like to marry and have kids along the way. After a term of family life class they know that most fathers need to become the main providers for their families when their kids are little, and they are starting to think about how to meet that responsibility. The career and provider path is pretty clear. They know they want a wife, even if they don't know who yet. Kids come with the wife. Both wife and kids, unless they already have a specific woman in mind, are pretty hazy.

The women have detailed plans for when they would like to have kids, how many, their ideal birth order, and, while they are at it, their names and personalities. They often have a notion of who they would like to marry, and have thought about what kind of father that fellow would make. In a separate track, they have been preparing for a career, though after a term of family life class they have a more realistic idea of what is involved in juggling a career and kids. If they don't have a husband picked out, they usually still have a pretty clear notion of the kids they would like.

Most of the men, and all of the women, assumed that their spouses would work. None of the men, and very few of the women, mentioned what kind of work they wanted their spouses to do.

Colleges spend a great deal of time on career preparation for students. Students, though, when you ask them to think about it, put much greater emphasis on the family they want than the career they want.

A Glimpse of Islamic Women in Small-Town America

My students are visiting unfamiliar religious services as part of our American religion course. Several have been to a small-town mosque, tucked away in an unmarked building amidst an office park on the edge of town. One woman attended Friday prayers on the women's side of this mosque. Afterwards, the Muslim women generously talked with her about their lives and experience of the faith in America. I was particularly struck by two sociologically interesting snippets reported by Jessica Woodworth.

After the service ended, the women gathered around us, talked to us about Islam, and answered any questions we had. The imam [a man, heard through the intercom], they said, was a doctor and usually left quickly after the prayers ended. In fact, three of the six women there were physicians but currently choose to be stay-at-home mothers instead. They feel that their families are financially stable enough to make that decision, and they value family life more than earning more money.

Most Muslims in Kentucky are immigrants and their children. These immigrants are admitted for their professional skills, especially in medicine, and perform a valuable service in underserved areas, such as Eastern Kentucky.

The United States will reap a great harvest for generations to come from this wave of smart, educated, disciplined Muslim families.

The Muslim women wanted to explain to the Centre College women their distinctive customs.

Foremost, they explained why they chose to wear a hijab. The woman whose husband is Pakistani and who accepted Islam several years ago, said that the hijab is worn for modesty. … All of the women were dressed modestly. … The two Indian-looking women wore beautiful clothing from overseas. Two other women with “ethnic” backgrounds wore pants, a long-sleeved shirt, and a large headscarf that covered their hair and upper body. One woman wore jeans and a full-length dress and hijab; the woman still accepting Islam wore long-sleeved nursing scrubs and also put on a homemade skirt and hijab before the prayers began. For these women, it is hard to find clothing modest enough in America. The one woman who initially greeted us said she is almost six feet tall and has much trouble finding clothes in which she feels comfortable. She said she drove to Michigan once to pick up some clothes she ordered and otherwise she often depends on the two older Indian women to find her clothes from abroad.

I appreciate the emphasis on modesty, especially as a father, and commend the Islamic community for holding up that issue for everyone. A hijab is more covering than I think my daughters need, but in the great religious ecology of America, it is good to have a group of women who choose that discipline in dress for themselves. In other countries we might believe that men, backed by the religious police, impose these standards. This group of doctors, on the other hand, clearly choose their dress themselves.

I also enjoy the detail of how foreign customs get indigenized and made natural to Americans. The dress over the jeans is wonderful; the homemade skirt pulled on over nursing scrubs is touching. Islam is here to stay in small-town America.

[I thank Jessica for these details, which I would not have been able to collect myself.]

Same-Simian Relations in Spain

This one is almost beyond parody:

Madrid, April 25, 2006. The Spanish Socialist Party will introduce a bill in the Congress of Deputies calling for "the immediate inclusion of (simians) in the category of persons, and that they be given the moral and legal protection that currently are only enjoyed by human beings." The PSOE's justification is that humans share 98.4% of our genes with chimpanzees, 97.7% with gorillas, and 96.4% with orangutans.

Fascinating question immediately arise. What is the age of consent for a chimp? Will PETA and ETA join forces for a Great Ape Autonomous Region in northern Spain, since they already speak an unintelligible language?

Most importantly, will apes continue to vote Socialist, or will they be lured away by the conservatives' promise of a reduced tax on bananas?

Effects of China’s One-Child Law

By guest bloggers Alex Plamp and Mary Jo Tewes from the Family Life class.
(Part two of two).

Most young people in China grew up as only children. Two thirds of them report feeling lonely as children, and wishing they had had a brother or sister. Since parents are only allowed to have a single child, all of the family’s resources and emotional investment get funneled into this one child. They are considered, with almost worshipful language, the “sun” of the family. Chinese only children are often described by others as willful and selfish because of this upbringing. When factored in with the fact that this generation is also mostly male, it can be guessed that the effect of this kind of childhood is likely to combine with the general nature of bachelors to trigger ever more destructive behaviors.

Related to the one-child law, divorces in middle-aged couples are increasing greatly in China as well. Divorcees between 30 to 40 years of age account for 46.5 percent of divorces in 2003, up 9.5 percent from 1981 (the article is here). These middle-aged couples are the parents of the present overwhelmingly male generation. I wonder if the divorces are another unexpected effect of the one-child law. Miscarriages, infertility, and the death of a child have been shown to exert considerable stress on marriages generally, so what effect does it have on a couple when they feel pressured into choosing an abortion? The ironic thing is that, though many of these couples paid the ultimate price in order to have a son who could care for them in their old age, that arrangement is now jeopardized by the divorce. Will the son bring both parents into his own house, as is the tradition, to care for two parents who will not speak to each other? Or will he be forced to pay for not just one but two or even three households, in order to maintain peace through separation?

Incidentally, the marriages of the present unbalanced generation are often more stable than those of their parents. Only 6.6 percent of couples younger than 30 got divorced in 2003, which is a big drop from 37 percent 22 years ago (see previous link). The older couples’ marriages are generally troubled by the infidelity of the husband. However, younger married men may have trouble finding a mistress, even if they want to cheat. Because of the shortage of women, men feel lucky to be married at all, and are more likely to value their wives as a blessing.

According to Maggie Scarf’s Intimate Worlds, the most important characteristic of Level 1 families is flexibility. The one-child law keeps families from exercising the natural flexibility that would otherwise allow them to accept female children, and just generally function normally. While the law has kept the country’s population under control, which is good, the effects it has had on individual families have been very detrimental.

What the Chinese need now is to learn to be flexible in reconciling this law with their tradition. The current demographic crisis is a sign that the law and tradition have not been reconciled to each other sufficiently. Both factors must become less rigidly defined in order to coexist without causing too much suffering for the families. Recent additions to the law, such as providing tuition discounts and other incentives for raising girls, and allowing parents in specific communities who are both only children to have two children instead of one, are steps in the right direction toward flexibility. A welfare system would ease the children’s burden of caring for aging parents, and the parents’ worries that if they have a girl they will not be cared for in their old age. In certain situations, a wife’s parents should be allowed to live with their daughter instead of the husband’s parents living with them, if that arrangement is more convenient for that family. Parents of girls should be allowed to feel just as secure about their retirement as parents of boys.

China’s Surplus Men

By guest bloggers Alex Plamp and Mary Jo Tewes from the Family Life class.
(Part one of two).

A recent post on Familyscholars.org discussed a CBS news report detailing the immense overpopulation of men currently plaguing China (the post is here; the original CBS story is here). According to the article, an average of 120 boys are born for every 100 girls, and China faces an overhang of 40 million bachelors.

As Dr. Weston stated in class earlier this semester, “An unmarried man is the most dangerous thing in the world, and large groups of them break things.” China's overpopulation of men has already led to dramatic increases in social problems, including a huge, floating population of 140 million migrant workers, as well as higher rates of crime, prostitution, and bride kidnappings. Perhaps most frightening, according to the original blog post, is the fact that societies with surpluses of men have historically engaged in expansionist foreign policies – that is, they invade their neighbors. Overpopulations of men are also a problem in India and most Muslim countries, which could lead to some nasty testosterone-fueled conflicts in the Eastern part of the world in the near future.

For 25 years, China has enforced a rule of one child per family, in order to curb its dangerously high population growth. Given the option of having only one child, families have favored boys overwhelmingly – The news article cites a traditional preference for boys in Asian societies, noting that it is men who usually care for their parents when they get older.

The one-child policy, which is enforced with sterilization and/or mandatory birth control, has decreased China’s potential population by 300 million people, which is not a bad thing in itself. But if families are forced to choose, they are much more likely to choose a boy over a girl, simply because men have a higher chance of success in society – they have more opportunities to earn money and gain power, thus providing security for their families. Therefore, rather than doing away with the one-child rule, China is making attempts to change the anti-female sentiment in the country. The CBS article says “school fees for girls have been reduced, and laws changed so daughters can inherit land,” indicating that the key to equal preference for boys and girls is going to depend on increased opportunities for women’s social, economic, and political advancement in Chinese society. That is, if women are more capable of succeeding on their own and acquiring the resources necessary to take care of their families when they get older, then parents will be much more likely to have girls.

Personally, we think this development is inevitable. Men don’t like to share women, and Chinese men are eventually going to realize that they need many, many more of them around. However, unless the anti-girl sentiment changes overnight, the one-child rule is not going to encourage much change, and it’s probably going to take a substantial amount of time to change the mindset of over a billion people.

In the meantime, here is a suggestion: What if China changed the law so that families had to stop having children after they had one girl and one boy? Naturally this is not a perfect solution – it would not help the overpopulation problem, and might lead to even more abortions (say, for example, a family already has a boy, keeps trying, but keeps having boys?) Still, something must be done to get some more women into China, before all the unmarried men go crazy and kill each other.

Divorce is Not the Pot of Gold at the End of the Rainbow

By Ginny Anderson and Rebecca Bush, guest bloggers from the Family Life class
(Part two of two)

In our family life class, we have seen that divorce has far-reaching negative consequences for adults, children, and society as a whole. Why then, do half of all American marriages continue to end in divorce?

During the divorce revolution of the 1970’s, popular theory purported that spouses had a responsibility to themselves and to their children to end a reportedly unhappy marriage. This quickly became conventional wisdom. In discussing her own parents’ 1970’s era divorce, Elizabeth Marquardt, author of Between Two Worlds, says

“leading experts assured parents that as long as they found happiness their children would be happy too. Some experts even insisted that parents in unhappy marriages had a duty to divorce or they would irrevocably damage their children. More nuanced ideas about happiness—that there are degrees of unhappiness in marriages, that marital happiness can go in cycles, that divorce doesn’t necessarily make adults happy, that children’s natural inclination is not to worry about their parents’ happiness so much as their own—did not have much influence in the early seventies.”

In a 2002 study by the Institute for American Values, family scholars supported these statements. They determined that divorce, just like the illustrious BMW, does not make unhappy couples as happy as they think it will. One finding stated that, “Unhappily married adults who divorced or separated were no happier, on average, than unhappily married adults who stayed married.” Again, we see that there is a discrepancy between the predicted outcome and the actual outcome of an important choice. The lives of divorced spouses, and indeed their entire families, are no more gratifying post-divorce. This brings us to one of the study’s other key findings: “Divorce did not reduce symptoms of depression for unhappily married adults, or raise their self-esteem, or increase their sense of mastery, on average, compared to unhappy spouses who stayed married.” Ultimately, divorced couples reaped none of the benefits that they expected, such as personal satisfaction and self-fulfillment and instead found themselves facing a battery of unexpected negative consequences.

If divorce is not the solution to marital dissatisfaction, what hope then exists for unhappy couples? This is where we return to our earlier discussion on the transitory nature of happiness itself. If happiness is an internal function, subject to frequent highs and lows over the course of one’s life, then we can predict that happiness in marriage will follow this same pattern. The study confirms this hypothesis: “Two out of three unhappily married adults who avoided divorce or separation ended up happily married five years later.” Furthermore, if the decision to divorce is made in an emotional “hot” state, even a sustained emotional hot state, the couple is unlikely to give heed to all of the potential outcomes, such as economic instability, loneliness, depression, diminished physical health, and emotionally divided children.

For unhappy couples seeking to improve their marriages without suffering the unhappy consequences of a divorce, there are ways to foster lasting feelings of satisfaction. The marital tensions can be waited out, worked through, or worked around. Cliché though it sounds, “time heals all things” can be applied to most marriages, as evidenced by the two-thirds of unhappy couples who reported greater satisfaction after five years. The study calls this the “marital endurance ethic.” The less passive approach, “the marital work ethic,” can be to directly combat the sources of unhappiness through changed behavior. Finally, if happiness appears unattainable within the relationship, it is at least attainable for each individual through meaningful actions and interpersonal relationships, again confirming that lasting happiness is an internal state of mind rather than a result of external conditions.

Chasing Rainbows: The Search for Happiness

By Ginny Anderson and Rebecca Bush, guest bloggers from the Family Life class
(Part one of two)

The Oxford English Dictionary defines “happy” as “Having good ‘hap’ or fortune; lucky, fortunate; favoured by lot, position, or other external circumstance.” The underlying assumption of this definition is that the condition of happiness is derived from the fulfillment of outside desires—the next promotion, the better body, the new spouse, the beach vacation, the crème-filled donut. However, we purport that this is an archaic definition for one of humankind’s most fundamental emotions. Happiness is far more ephemeral: it is El Dorado, it is Brigadoon, it is Shangri-la.

In a 2004 New York Times article entitled “The Futile Pursuit of Happiness,” Jon Gertner discusses a study by eminent psychologists and economists on the human ability to predict future happiness. The study concluded that humans often overestimate the intensity of their emotions toward any given event and the duration that they will experience those emotions. There is always a discrepancy between what people predict that they will feel in response to something and what they actually experience. Gertner uses the example of purchasing a new car, saying, “We might believe that a new BMW will make life perfect. But it will almost certainly be less exciting than we anticipated; nor will it excite us for as long as predicted….[This] characterizes how we experience the dimming excitement over not just a BMW but also over any object or event that we presume will make us happy.” Instead of material gains or fleeting experiences, the study shows that friendships and social interaction are among the few things that give “lasting pleasure.”

According to the study, happiness is a temporary state, much like anger, infatuation, anxiety, or lust. It has far less to do with the good and bad events that occur over the course of one’s life than it does with the human brain’s very cyclical regulation of emotional highs and lows. Decisions made in an emotional “hot” state rather than in a “‘cold’ state of rational calm” do not result in the pleasurable outcome that one envisions at the time, often bringing unforeseen consequences. Thus, it is unwise and even potentially detrimental to make serious life decisions based on transient and anticipated emotions like happiness. It is, therefore, not surprising that in the context of marriage and family life, we find that marital satisfaction is also of a cyclical nature. This has significant implications for the choice to divorce and the future effects thereof.

The Gruntled Center in May

My Family Life class has been working hard all term. One of the new skills of the term has been to learn how to read and write blogs. For the rest of this month, you will see the best fruits of their labors.

Starting tomorrow, and running Tuesday through Friday each of the next four weeks, I will be posting the best blogs from my class. Their assignment was to write a two-day post on a family topic of their choosing. They are pretty good, I think. I will let you be the judge.

I will keep my regular Saturday to Monday pattern (and I have a doozy for next Saturday …). See you then.

Need to Balance The Church Headquarters Budget? Fire the Prophets

The Presbyterian Church (USA), my denomination, will announce another $9.5 million dollars in cuts to headquarters operations tomorrow. This will be the third or fourth major downsizing (I have lost track) since the reunited church created the Presbyterian Center in Louisville in 1988. It probably won't be the last. The Presbyterian Church loses a small city's worth of members every year. As the base shrinks, the money flowing downstream to HQ dries up, too.

The church's membership losses have not been the main reason that the denominational center faces another budget crisis, though. The money going to local congregations has actually been pretty steady. However, fewer and fewer congregations have been willing to send their per capita tax – ok, it isn't really a tax, but it is a highly suggested voluntary contribution – down the line to the higher judicatories, the more centralized offices of the denomination. And while there are many members who give extra gifts to their own congregations, and even to the presbyteries (regional bodies) that make up the Presbyterian Church, fewer and fewer give directly to the denomination.

I think the main reason that headquarters is being starved for money is that the rank and file don't trust that their gifts will be well spent. Let me be clear here – I have many friends in the Presbyterian Center, and I think HQ does many important jobs for the church. The quiet work of supporting congregations gets few headlines, but is most welcome to those who get helped.

The headlines, though, go to the self-styled prophets who work for the church, who "get out ahead" of the denomination to lead the church into social changes that the prophets know Jesus – or JusticeLove – would want us to do. In my church these change just so happen to always be in a leftist direction. I would have the same objection, though, to rightist prophets working in the central church staff.

Church bureaucrats should not be prophets; prophets should not be church bureaucrats.

As a rule of thumb, I would say that people who tell you that they are prophets, aren't. In the Bible, the kind of official prophets who work for the establishment get shown up by the real prophets who are sent by God.

The church needs prophets, as does society as a whole. That is why God keeps sending them. The place of prophets is outside the house of power, speaking truth. The Presbyterian Center is a house of power. It needs servants who the local congregations can trust. If the church trusted the HQ, the money would flow.

Jane Jacobs Was an Urban Giant, Like King Kong

Ok, I just made that up.

Jane Jacobs, whose Death and Life of the Great American Cities is one of the most inspiring books I have ever read, died this week.

I was raised in the suburbs. For me, the city was a place for field trips and occasional cultural adventures. I never thought of it as a place people could actually live. Death and Life opened for me, as for the generation of new urbanists my age and older, the vision of cities as the most vibrant form of human existence. I have since lived in and enjoyed cities, as well as lamenting their defects (I did live in D.C. for three years, after all). And I am the first to say that small towns, like the one in which I am now blessed to live, is a great place to raise kids.

But cities really do drive civilization. I thank Jane Jacobs for convincing a generation of suburban kids like me that urbanity is vital for everyone.

College Drinking, Part 2: Same-Sex Intimacy

Yesterday's blog argued that college drinking lets people from families with intimacy-preventing rules to temporarily suspend those rules. With the "social lubricant," men and women are freer to get close to members of the opposite sex, without permanently undermining the rules. This brought some very interesting comments, especially from Ken Lammers, that another function of college drinking is to allow members of the same sex to bond with one another. I agree entirely with this point.

Peggy Sanday, in Fraternity Gang Rape, posits that fraternity members have a strong homosexual attraction for one another, which they ruthlessly suppress through shared lust for women. Thus, frat boys talk dirty, watch porn, brag about hook ups, and, in the extreme case she studied, gang rape women in the frat house. I think Sanday is wrong in her basic thesis. But she does point to a problem for fraternities and other men's groups.

Fraternity men do bond strongly with one another as brothers. Their brotherhood would be ruined by a hint of homosexual attraction (as literal brotherhood would). Fraternities need a way to temporarily suspend the strong rule against intimacy with other men without confusing that intimacy with sexual attraction. Drinking games and drunken revelry suit that need.

I still think my main point is right: people from the Level 3 Rule-Bound families most need a social lubricant to get close to others. Men, and to a lesser extent, women, from such families would find that alcohol would make other solidarity-building activities easier. Even for men from more flexible and intimate families, though, I suspect that the rules against intimacy with other men are pretty strong. This would explain why fraternities have such a strong drinking culture, even when women are not present. Sororities also drink quite a bit, but in my experience they do not do so when men are not going to be involved to nearly the same degree.

I thank Ginny Anderson and Ken Lammers, two fine examples of different eras of Centre students, for advancing this interesting discussion.

College Drinking: from Academic Pressure, or Family Functioning?

In my family life class we study the Beavers Scale of family functioning. In the middle of the Beavers Scale is the Level 3 family, which he describes as "rule bound." In such families, order is maintained by a set of rules, yet these same rules often prevent intimacy. I (not Robert Beavers) speculated that this kind of family is the most common kind, the kind that most Centre College students come from. This would explain to me why most, but by no means all, students drink so much alcohol: the "social lubricant" lets them suspend the rules and allow intimacy temporarily. In the morning, though, the rules, and their authority to create order, snap back into place.

Ginny Anderson, a fine student in that class, offered this further insight in her class journal:

You suggested in class today that your average “fraternity party-goer” comes from a Level Three family, using alcohol to suspend the inhibiting family rules and foster a sense of intimacy with others. Although this would never have occurred to me, I’m inclined to agree, because it fits so well into the pattern of alcohol use at this college.

In general, when Centre students drink, it isn’t a glass of wine at dinner, or a beer while the game is on. It is “split a pitcher” margaritas at dinner, rum and coke at the pre-party, and an extra helping in the solo cup as you head out the door. This isn’t about enjoying a refreshing beverage – it is absolutely about being at least moderately blitzed before you have to interact with people of the opposite gender. Groups like SMART (alcohol peer educators) and the Panhellenic Council [the sorority coordination board] sometimes postulate that this behavior is academic-related escapism – the “work hard, play harder” mentality. But I don’t think that really gets to the root of the problem. Alcohol (ab)use is fairly standard across the spectrum of colleges and universities (with notable exceptions, of course), even at schools where the workload is lighter than Centre students experience. The great equalizer in this case could be the number of the students that were born and raised in rule-bound families.

I feel like a lot of pieces of information start coming together when you consider college social scenes in this light. Alcohol use as a method of shedding inhibitions. The way that college women say it’s easier to sleep with a guy than have a genuine conversation with him. And a study that I read in intro psychology, which observed the “placebo effect” of alcohol. Women who thought they were drinking beer but were actually receiving a non-alcoholic substitute still act as if the rules are suspended (which is often manifested in provocative and forward behavior). All of these become “intimacy crutches” for people (especially women) who never learned how to find real intimacy. But with this behavior, all they ever get is the substitute, never the real thing.

Defending Opal Mehta

Kaavya Viswanathan, teen author of the best-selling How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life, has been accused of plagiarism. She borrowed phrases and structure from other novels about young adult life, especially from Megan McCafferty's Sloppy Firsts. Viswanathan, who is very apologetic and calls herself a big fan of McCafferty's work, said the plagiarism was inadvertent. Some commentators and legal scholars have been skeptical of this defense.

I believe her.

I live with teenagers, who borrow and sample phrases from so many sources that they have no idea where they came from. They will take a line – from conversation, from reading, from the radio, from a movie – and use it as their instant message screen name for a couple of weeks, and move on. In the mean time, everyone they communicate with reads the phrase, perhaps dozens of times, without knowing where it originally came from.

My daughters introduced me to the wonderfully silly novels of Louise Rennison featuring English teenager Georgia Nicholson. Georgia has a distinctive way of speaking, and I find myself using her constructions – "My heart leapt like a leaping thing on leaping pills" -- without thinking of sources or attribution. Therefore I fully sympathize with an actual teenage author who has fully absorbed phrases from teen fiction in her own writing without knowing it.

I bought Opal Mehta, and await the end of our busy school term to enjoy it.

Students Show More Sense Than Grownups In T-Shirt Case

Tyler Harper, a student at Poway High School in Poway, CA, wore a shirt to school which read "Be Ashamed, Our School Embraced What God Has Condemned'' on the front and "Homosexuality Is Shameful'' on the back. Not surprisingly, this provoked a response from some other students. They discussed the issue, stated their disagreement, and left it at that. No violence, no disruption, no breakdowns. "While words were exchanged, the students managed the situation well and without intervention from the school authorities. No doubt, everyone learned an important civics lesson about dealing with others who hold sharply divergent views.''

That is the assessment of Judge Alex Kozinski. Yes, the grownups turned this t-shirt into a federal case. Literally. The school banned the shirt on the grounds that it might injure homosexual students and might interfere with learning. When the case got to the notorious Ninth Circuit of the federal appeals court, the court sided 2 – 1 with the school's ban. Judge Kozinski issued a sharp dissent, partly quoted above.

Judge Kozinski is right. Tyler Harper expressed his views civilly. The other students, according to the record, responded the same way. Free speech wins. The marketplace of ideas is served. Students actually learn something in school.

The attempt to enforce anyone's political correctness in schools backfires. It teaches students that school officials are hypocrites when they talk about critical thinking, and cowards when they don't support actual critical thought. When the common schools are captured by one ideological faction, it fuels the movement to create separate schools and undermines support for the very idea of common schools and a common culture.

The remedy for speech you don't like is more speech.

The Bank of Mom and Dad is the Right Way to Transfer Wealth

The New York Times has a popular story now about parents continuing to subsidize their twenty-something and even thirty-something children. They cite a University of Michigan study by Bob Schoeni that found that 25 and 26 year olds get from their parents an average annual gift of $2,300. This is often in the form of payment for particular things, like cell phone bills, or childcare, or insurance, rather than a general cash subsidy.

Some lament this trend as exacerbating young peoples' "failure to launch." I think it is a good thing. Economists have been wondering for years how the Baby Boom's massive accumulation of wealth will get transferred to the next generation – or taxed, or just spent. Investing in your children so that they can begin adult life seems to me an excellent, nuanced way for this transfer to begin. People are at their most thoughtful in investing in, and for, their own families. I would trust parents to calibrate their support correctly much more than I would count on the government or the market to do so.

I now sit in a house made possible with a down payment loan from my parents, to whom we are all daily grateful. I have already begun to calculate how we can save for the junior Gruntleds once their massive tuition payments end. I see down payments on my hypothetical grandchildren's childhood homes in the dim distance. And that is a good next thing to save for.

Church Organists, Tremble

Sociologist Mark Chaves, in Congregations in America, reports that the largest 10 percent of congregations contain about half of all churchgoers on an average Sunday.

Scott Thumma, the leading expert on megachurches, found that about 80% of them use electric guitar or bass and drums “always” in their services, and over 93% do so “often” or "always." Megachurch attenders are notably younger and have more kids than the mainline denominations do, so this preference is likely to multiply in coming generations.

Add to this that Roman Catholics, the nation's largest denomination, do not rely on organs.

The era of the church organ, which we think of as ancient, but is really less than two centuries old, may draw to a close in a generation or two.

The DTR Talk

Students have been describing a new phase in their ambiguous courtship ritual: the "define the relationship" talk. They dread it.

They hang out. The group does things together. Two people start "talking" (or are "at the talking stage"). Some kissing may happen about here. Or more. Possibly with alcohol involved. While still hanging out, and doing group things, and talking.

At some point, the couple starts to wonder if they are a couple. Often, he is enjoying the ambiguity, especially if the kissing and more is included. Usually, she will crack first. She will say, "we need to define the relationship." Then an earnest and often uncomfortable conversation follows, which, she hopes, will result in clarity.

How will she know for sure if they have moved up to boyfriend and girlfriend?

He lists her that way on Facebook.

Space Your Babies Close Enough to Mess Each Other's Roles

A new study in the Journal of the American Medical Association says that the ideal spacing for babies is at least 18 months, but fewer than five years. Too close together and your risks of low birth weight go up, at the rate of 1.9% per month. Too far apart, though, and you start to run the risk of birth defects or sheer difficulties in having children, though co-author Dr. Agustin Conde-Agudelo acknowledges that these reasons are more speculative.

This five-year gap reminded me of another aspect of family life: birth order effects. Frank Sulloway, in Born to Rebel, says that birth order effects are strongest for siblings who are fewer than five years apart. If there is more than a five-year gap between one sibling and the next it is as if you started over, and the next kid is more like another first born.

Putting these two things together, the Expert Advice of the moment would lead to this conclusion: Have your kids far enough apart that they can occupy distinct niches (unlike "Irish twins" born nine months apart). On the other hand, don't have them so far apart that they don't shape and influence one another.

I am happy to report that the Gruntled kids just about fall within the parameters: 17 months between the first two, then four years to the next. No birth weight of birth defect problems. And they definitely influence one another's roles, in the family and in the world.

Divorce is a Polarizing Institution

The family sociology class is working through Marquardt's Between Two Worlds: The Inner Lives of Children of Divorce, which I have written about before. This time I was struck by a point I had missed before.

Institutions are made up of sets of related roles. We make the institution real by enacting the roles.
Marriage is an institution in which men and women learn to be husbands and wives by doing it. The structural logic of marriage draws a couple closer, and works best if they act in a unified way. It is especially important for a married couple to present a united front to their children.

Divorce is also an institution. Ex-husband and ex-wife are roles, too, though they are less defined by law and custom than are their affirmative counterparts, husband and wife. The structural logic of divorce pushes a couple apart. The natural drift of people who no longer have to accommodate one another would produce a widening gap. More than that, though, the divorce will be easier for each of the exes to bear if the couple is demonstrably different from one another, too different to live together. The more different they get, the more the divorce seems justified, even inevitable.

Marquardt's point is that the more different the parents become, the harder it is for their kids to construct one coherent moral worldview.

Blogging

Today's post will be a more interactive than usual. I am being interviewed by Melinda Roeder from our local television station, Channel 36 in Lexington, about blogging, while I am writing this blog. One of my main points is that blogging is an interactive medium. So if you happen to be reading this while the story is running tonight at 11, please reply, thus completing the loop and/or introducing a wrinkle in the space-time continuum.

I have been blogging for the whole school year. I have come to welcome the daily discipline of collecting and organizing my thoughts. Francis Bacon wrote that "writing maketh a precise man," and I have found it to be ever so. I tell that to students when they fuss about the number of writing assignments in their Centre College classes. That is the glory of a small college, though – the professors can take the time to read (and improve) student papers, one by one.

There have been several stories about this blog on the college webpage and in our local newspaper, the Danville Advocate-Messenger. My Introduction to Family Life class produces a wonderful blog based on the studies we read together. My students have been reading other blogs and joining in their wider conversations. Melinda Roeder mentioned that she has a blog on MySpace.

Yet the spellchecker in Word still does not know "blogging" as a real word. I imagine in the next edition of Word, blogging will be included. According to Technorati, there are 35.6 million blogs in the world. By this time next year, there should easily be 100 million. Students take to it as a normal way to communicate. Some of them get in trouble for being too candid. They imagine, as young people do, that their friends will read what they write – forgetting that the other billion computer users can read it, too.

Blogging will shake out eventually. Many will try them, and stop. The discipline of writing regularly is a hard one, like sticking to a diet. But blogging will also become a standard way for people who want an interactive conversation about a very specialized topic to get instant information, and informed responses.

Recruiting Vandals is No Way to Teach

Sally Jacobsen, and English and Women's Studies professor at Northern Kentucky University, saw a pro-life display on campus. A student group had set it up with permission, the sort of thing that happens as part of the normal exchange of ideas at campuses everywhere. Professor Jacobsen disagreed with the display. She felt her personal beliefs were "horribly violated."

What would you expect a decent professor to do here? Go on a rampage, like Islamist cartoon rioters? Write a letter to the campus paper? Set up her own counter-display? Or perhaps, if the professor saw her job as, you know, teaching students, go talk to the students she disagreed with and have a civilized argument?

No, she thought up a possibility that would never have occurred to me: she recruited students to destroy the display.

University president Jim Votruba has, to his great credit, strongly and publicly criticized the professor and the students. They will not only face campus discipline, but the case has also been turned over to the police.

As you know, we at the Gruntled Center are not prone to advocating harsh remedies. But in this case, I think Sally Jacobsen deserves more that just being fined. She deserves more than being fired. In my opinion, she has shown that she does not understand what a professor is.

Sally Jacobsen should be banned from the profession.

Matzoh Brie

It is the custom of the Gruntled family to honor the Jewish part of our heritage (we are very much American Mixed-Breeds) with matzoh brie for Easter morning. It used to be hard to get matzoh in Danville, Kentucky. The growing cosmopolitanism of our world, though, means that not only does our local Kroger always stock matzoh this time of year, but in multiple varieties. I like the everything kind, but the more delicate palates of the junior Gruntleds leads me to get the plain kind.

So here is the one and only recipe to appear in The Gruntled Center:

Break some matzoh up into a bowl of warm water.

Beat some eggs.

Scramble them together in a frying pan over medium-high heat to the consistency you like.

Good with a bit of salt, I think.

Happy Easter.

Unkatunk

Students "hook up" at Centre College, as they do at most other colleges. The term is deliberately ambiguous, covering all sorts of ill-advised physical intimacy from kissing to intercourse, usually while drunk.

Not all students hook up, though. Recently one of those who does not was describing a conversation among a group of students, in which they started listing all the people each had hooked up with. It became a game to see if they were all linked indirectly in this way. All of them were – except my student (and bully for her, I say).

I passed this on to my brother-in-law. He says this issue arose one day in his Cornell University dormitory, Risley Hall, where they made a giant hook-up map which connected all of the dormitory's residents – save my brother-in-law and his roommate. And bully for them, too. He says this conversation led the Cornell students to create a special term to describe how two people who have hooked up with the same third party are related to one another. The word they came up with is "unkatunk," which, as far as he can recall, was just a nonsense sound that appealed to them. And sure enough, the word appears on UrbanDictionary.com, with this definition:

unkatunk

defines the relationship in which you and someone you know have slept with the same person. kind of a variant on the transitive property of sexual multiplication.

a < -- sex -- > b
b <-- sex -- > c
a < -- unkatunk --> c

orig. Risley Hall, Cornell University

My surveys at Centre revealed that hooking up does not go all the way to intercourse as often as other people think it does. I expect the same is true at Cornell. Nonetheless, if, say, Facebook were to connect all the various hook ups it notes, I would guess that three quarters of the entire national college-going class are within six degrees of unkatunk of one another.

Should You Get Serious About Marriage in College?

A thoughtful woman in my family class posed this question in her journal for me:

In my experience, many of my girlfriends do not want to pursue “anything too serious” during college, in their words, “I am young, I don’t know where I’m going to be next year and I want to keep my options open.” The mutual feelings among college males about their uncertain future, and natural inclination to short-term sexual relationships, creates this liminal space as well. … It seems a career track is problematic for women all around when it comes to marriage and family. Aside from providing extra resources, it works against marriage in general. Although it can be overcome, it seems like the pursuit of a career almost always works as an antagonist to family and the pro-marriage ideas. This is the most frustrating realization I have come to in this course. Have I misconstrued it?

I don't think careers are antagonistic to marriage and family. Indeed, smart women need brain food and challenges, as smart men do. Family is great, but it is not all you will do in a long life. However, delaying marriage in favor of your career throughout your twenties does run a risk of making family impossible.

I would counsel an opposite strategy – you don't want to get too serious about careers now, because who knows what spouses and children the future will bring. Family first, then career, is the more likely strategy to let you "have it all."

New Hope for Second Marriages

My students come to the family class knowing one big scary fact about marriage: 50% of marriages in this country end in divorce. I am therefore always happy to help unpack that idea. The most encouraging fact I can give them in response is that most first marriages endure. Indeed, since they have managed, with only a couple of exceptions, to get beyond their teenage years without kids or marriage, and are likely to graduate from a good college and be employed, the odds for their marriages working out are quite good, indeed.

So how can we have a 50% divorce rate if most first marriages last? Because most second marriages don't, and the odds go down with each new iteration as you approach the Elizabeth Taylor/Jennifer Lopez asymptote. The divorce rate for first marriages is under 50%. The divorce rate for second marriages, though, is over half, closer to 60%.

Recently, though, I have read some good news about second marriages, too. Barry and Emily McCarthy, in Getting It Right This Time, report that second marriages which make it through the first two years successfully have the same divorce rate as first marriages. That is, most second marriages which make it past the first two years will endure.

At the Gruntled Center, we are strongly in favor of first marriages enduring and thriving. But we also believe that it is never too late for a happy ending. For those who are already divorced or in a second marriage, it is cause for celebration that you can get it right the second time. The McCarthys go into detail about how to have a healthy second marriage, and we are definitely all for healthy marriages. A healthy second prevents a sad third, a disastrous fourth, and the death spiral beyond that.

The divorce rate for first marriages is going down, for good reasons and bad. It is now a little below 50%. We may hope that if the opinion leaders of America come back to supporting marriage, we might get that rate below 40% in a decade or so. That would mean fewer people in the position to consider second marriages. But it would also be good to bring down the divorce rate of second marriages. It would be realistic, I think, to aim to get the second marriage divorce rate below 50% in this same coming decade.

How to Have a Traditional First Date

Last night I had a discussion with a number of students about dating. The common complaint of college students, at Centre College and elsewhere, is that it is impossible to date, that there is no structure to courtship. As Elizabeth Marquardt and Norval Glenn demonstrated, between "talking" and "joined at the hip" there are no intermediate steps. So we set out to do something about it. We came up with a rough protocol for a first date.

The first thing that all agreed on is that he has to take the initiative. This puts men in the position of being shot down (again and again). But the basic fact is that ultimately she does the deciding, so the first step in the dance of courtship has to come from him.

Here was the list we came up with from there. He should:

Make it clear that is it a date when he asks.
Ask nicely and confidently.
Give her sufficient time to prepare.
Have a plan.
Show up on time.
Plan something short and fun, which could be extended if things go well.
Offer the chivalrous courtesies – opening doors, waiting for her, etc.
Plan to pay. (This was a little contentious, but the consensus was that he should pay on the first date, even if she offers to share, because he picked the place and the plan.)
At the end of the evening, politely thank one another in words, and no more.

Two things struck me as important about this plan.

First, they were all supportive of the idea of having a standard protocol for a date, to cut through the debilitating ambiguity of the college "hook up/quasi-married" dating life.

Second, almost all of the ideas about what to do and not do on a date where about him. Even when I asked, "what is the woman's role in a date?" nearly all the answers concerned how she should respond to his initiative. The students thought she should be attentive and attractive, and go with the flow.

I think there is a further unsaid action that both of them are doing on a date, but much more so in her head: assessing the other as a potential mate. In this conversation, and in many other studies, men and women turned out to be different in how long a list they had of what they wanted and didn't want in a potential mate, and how early and automatically they applied it. Women are not passive on a date: they are constantly assessing. Indeed, most of the women will go directly from the date to a post-mortem assessment with their girlfriends. The men, on the other hand, are less likely to go in their minds all the way from first date to first child, much less rehash it with the guys later.

I think there is a crying need for some structures to courtship in college life. My hope is that discussions like this one can help start that revolution, which comes from the bottom up, from the students themselves. It is too late for in loco parentis at campuses like mine. But it is not too late for grownups to help young people pick their mates with more structure and deliberation.

I would very much welcome your comments and suggestions.

At-Home Mother vs. Housewife

Caitlin Flanagan, in her new book To Hell with All That: Loving and Loathing our Inner Housewife, makes a useful distinction. She is not a housewife, but an at-home mother. The difference is that a "housewife," defined herself "primarily through her relationship to her house and her husband," while "an at-home mother feels little obligation to the house itself." This distinction is especially valuable for women who are wives and mothers, like their own mothers, but unlike their own mothers, have full-time careers even when their children are small.

I am grateful that, among the many forms of compatibility that my wife and I share, we have about an equal tolerance for clutter. We have had to adjust to one another's quirks in that regard – the symbol of which is that one side of our bed gets made each morning, but not the other. And we have hugely increased our mess threshold with each child. We have hopes that that will get better when everyone is grown.

As I think about this distinction, neither of us was an at-home spouse for very long, but both of us have seen our primary family obligations to be to the people – spouse and kids – and not to the house. We are blessed with a goodly place, but only essential work will get done on it until the last tuition is paid.

At-home mother is a workable status. A clean house is gravy.

Second Generation Polygamy Raises Girls to be Child Brides

The ongoing trial of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, a breakaway Mormon sect that has been practicing polygamy for decades, shows what happens after polygamy gets established. The patriarchs of these extended clans raise girls for the purpose of giving them as teenage brides to other polygamist patriarchs. The girls are told it is their religious obligation to marry whoever their father picks, and be a dutiful wife and mother to him. Period.

Proponents of polygamy, like the ACLU, are imagining adults who are free to choose whatever domestic arrangement they like. First generation polygamy might even work that way. But after that, girls become a trading asset, passed from one polygamous clan to another. Even the young woman who testified in the trial, who was told by her father when she was 16 that he was marrying her off to "some Barlow boy" (he couldn't remember the name) the next day, was reluctant to testify. When asked to explain why to the mystified jurors, she said, "We were taught that we would go to hell" for speaking out. "After I got away from that religion, I still felt like I would be damned if I 'spoke out' because that's just how I was raised."

If ever there should be a feminist issue, fighting polygamy should be at the top of the list.

The "Wicked" Gospel of Judas

I went to see the musical "Wicked" last week with my daughters and one of their friends. It tells the backstory of the Oz witches, the good one and the wicked ones. I will not be spoiling the story to say that the title character turns out not to be so wicked, but misunderstood. She is the only one who understands the true nature of the magic of Oz and its wizard.

There has been a bit of a flap recently about the "Gospel of Judas," an ancient Gnostic text recently translated and made available to the public. It tells the backstory of Jesus' apostles, the good ones and the wicked one. I will not be spoiling the story to say that the title character turns out not to be so wicked, but misunderstood. He is the only one who understands the true nature of the gospel of Jesus and His God.

Both seem to me to be interesting explorations of possible alternative pasts. Neither is likely to shake my understanding of the nature of reality. Nor is either text likely to convince me of the intellectual's favorite fantasy – that the universe has a secret at its heart that only special people can know and understand.

And "Wicked" has better songs.

"Wicked" is Great With Teenagers

I took my two teenage daughters and one of their friends to Chicago this week to see "Wicked." This was fun in itself. The show, which concerns the early days of the good and wicked witches of Oz, is fine, and the production was well done.

I had an additional pleasure, though, in traveling with these young ladies. Having three teenage girls loudly and happily singing "Popular" and "Defying Gravity" and the rest of the soundtrack while wizzing (so to speak) through Indiana is a wonderful domestic pleasure.

They also make a great captive audience for puns; they groan so well.

Meth is Worse for Families

Today family therapist Kathy Miles talked to my family class about recent social problems that affect families. I knew that Kentucky, and other rural states, had a significant problem with methamphetamines. Every week has stories of a meth lab being busted in the small towns around here.

Miles told us that meth is worse than other drugs for families because the binges last longer – days instead of hours. When police raid a meth lab, they take a social worker with them, because they are likely to find kids who have been completely neglected for days. A common horrifying detail of these arrests are of the five year old who has been trying to take care of herself – and feed and change a baby. Miles said that all foster placements in eastern Kentucky are full, in part because the meth lab kids urgently need to be removed from their homes.

Every drug takes a toll on families, but this one seems particularly painful. It will be better for us all when this particular fad is over.

One-Flesh Union of Complementary Persons

So, what was the upshot of my couple of weeks with The Meaning of Marriage?

I have been convinced that the marriage makes two people one flesh. I pretty much thought that before, but taking this as a secure foundation for thinking about marriage – independent of whatever the state calls "marriage" – is a great help.

I also already thought that men and women are complementary as a group, though any particular couple works this out in a unique way.

Putting these together, marriage is a one-flesh union of complementary persons, prior to politics.

Right now, I don't really see how you could do that with more than one other person. I will keep thinking about it.


[This one is short and late in the day because I had a wonderful, family-building trip with my daughters to the big city to see "Wicked." A good time was had by all.]

Contraception and Abortion Create More Poor, Fatherless Kids

Sociologist Brad Wilcox, in his Meaning of Marriage essay, reviews the high hopes that some had in the 1960s and '70s that the Pill and easy abortion would mean that every child would be born into a secure home. If it was so easy to prevent births that the parents were not prepared for, this reasoning went, then responsible parents would only have children when they were married and financially ready.

It turns out, though, that there are lots of irresponsible parents. In facts, there are plenty of guys willing to make babies, then leave it up to the mother to decide to have all the children she wanted. After all, it was her choice. Contraception and abortion, and the culture of choice that came with them, shifted the balance in a relationship from the women who wanted to marry and raise kids with their husbands, to the men who might or might not follow through in marrying their pregnant girlfriends and raising the children they made.

The problem of fatherless children affects all classes, but is most common, and hurts the worst, among the poor. In fact, having children without husbands is the main way that women get and stay poor.

When responsible people free themselves from rules that would force them to act responsibly, they feel freer – and do the right thing anyway. However, the unintended consequence of removing the rules and restraints is that other people feel free, too – but often don't do the right thing anyway. Leaving the responsible people to help pick up the pieces.

"Naked, Fragile, Unenforceable Agreement"

That is what Katherine Shaw Spaht says marriage is fast becoming under the law. The law, she says in The Meaning of Marriage, is rapidly retreating from its traditional defense of marriage, to instead making it just another private agreement. The three traditional elements of the legal understanding of marriage – permanence, mutual fidelity, and sexual complementarity – are all being eroded, dropped, even treated as mere prejudice.

Spaht's solution was to help draft the covenant marriage law in Louisiana. This is a second category of legal marriage, more demanding than the usual civil contract, that couples may voluntarily choose. It requires more time and preparation going in to marriage, and, if necessary, getting out. It establishes in law higher standards of marriage, especially if children are involved. Ironically, it does so through the mechanism of a contract (despite the covenant language). Spaht is trying to turn the very tools that have been undermining marriage to marriage's defense. I honor the project of covenant marriage, and note that it has been hugely successful – among the five percent or so of Louisiana marriages which use it.

I do not think things are as far gone as Spaht does. Marriage is a much stronger institution in our culture than it is in our law. And marriage could not survive without cultural support, no matter what the law said. But she is surely right that the law's rapid retreat from marriage threatens to undermine cultural support in the medium run.

To stem that tide we need a strong defense of marriage in law as a permanent, mutually faithful, and sexually complementary relation. Which is what we are talking about in this blog every day.

Marriages Have Privacy Because Marriage is Public

Katherine Shaw Spaht, in her Meaning of Marriage essay on how law has been abandoning marriage, cites an important step down the slippery slope in one of Justice Thurgood Marshall's opinions. In the 1978 case Zablocki v. Redhail, Justice Marshall wrote, "it would make little sense to recognize a right of privacy with respect to other matters of family life and not with respect to the decision to enter the relationship that is the foundation of the family in our society" – the decision to marry. I normally agree with Justice Marshall, but in this instance I think he is exactly wrong.

Marriage transforms individuals and society because it is a public vow. We recognize marriage as a status apart from all others, as making two persons into one flesh, because it is a public promise by the couple and by society. That vow carries with it many grave responsibilities, most importantly to raise any children that the marriage might produce. Raising children well is a grave public duty.

We accept the privacy of what goes on in families more than in any other institution. Family privacy is not absolute; other institutions will intervene if family members are beating one another. But we grant the most leeway and place the most trust in families to do in private what they want because we believe that, ultimately and in the main, that private freedom will most enhance the public good.

Society has a great interest in marriage as a public act and public status because marriage is a shield behind which people have privacy. If the state treats marriage as just another private choice that individuals might make, society loses the public benefit of marriage, and marriages lose the trust that allows society to respect their privacy.

Will Republicans Ever Deliver to "Family Voters?"

The Reagan coalition was an "alliance of opposites" which joined the traditional big business base of the Republican Party with social libertarians and religious conservatives, all of whom wanted "smaller government." The conflict between the libertarians and the Christian conservatives was always the most obvious fault line in the party. The alliance, though, was enough to put Reagan and Bush I in office, and sweep the Republicans to power in Congress. Of the three legs of the Reagan Republican stool, big business, and the rich people who run them, got the most, libertarians got something, and family values conservatives got not much. Some defended the conservative credentials of the party, though, for achieving what could be done over Democratic and "liberal elite" opposition.

The second time around, the current President Bush held together that coalition. Republicans expanded their control of government, and have been in power long enough to effectively control the judiciary, too. Unlike his two Republican predecessors, George W. Bush really is an evangelical Christian from a red state. He has talked the talk for a long time, and now has the political muscle to make it so.

So, what have family values voters gotten for their quarter century of loyal support of the Republican Party? Almost nothing. Whenever there is a conflict between business interests and traditional family interests (as there is on almost every issue), the governing party has sided with business.

This is not just my conclusion. Lately, some heavy hitters among conservative Christian Republicans have been critical of the Bush administration on exactly these grounds. Alan Carlson, president of the Howard Center for Religion, Family, and Society, said "when the interests of big business and the interests of average families collide, the GOP almost always gives way to the interests of big business." Even more significant are the criticisms from Tony Perkins, head of the Family Research Council, the research arm of Focus on the Family. He notes that "When you look at what the [presidential] discussion has been since 2004, marriage has been absent from the vocabulary."

One of the great achievements of both parties in the 1970s was to mobilize evangelicals to vote at all. In 1976, the "year of the evangelical," previously apolitical evangelical voters turned out for born-again Democrat Jimmy Carter to throw the Watergate rascals out. Four years later, evangelicals moved to their more natural home, the family-values-talking Republicans under Reagan.

It is hard to imagine evangelicals as a group deciding the reject all worldly politics. But it is easy to imagine a continuing erosion of evangelical voting, as they conclude that the Democrats are too opposed to their family values, and the Republicans, though they talk a good game, are too wedded to mammon to deliver for God. If Republicans won't actually produce traditional family laws under George W. Bush plus majorities in both houses of Congress and the Supreme Court, they probably never will.