Wait To Marry - But Not Too Long

The National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy has a very sensible main point in their new report, "Knot Yet."  Delaying marriage past the teens is a good thing.  When educated couples marry in their mid or late twenties, and then have children, they are pursuing the most successful family strategy.  The less educated, though, are now having kids before marriage, in a pattern that is sure to bring them grief as a class (even if it does not harm each couple.)

I did want to raise an issue with one point in their report, though. They write:

Women enjoy an annual income premium if they wait until 30 or later
to marry. For college-educated women in their midthirties, this premium
amounts to $18,152.

I do not dispute this economic fact.  But women who wait to marry until after 30, and then to have children after that, risk waiting too long to have children at all.

Waiting the marry and have children is excellent advice for teenagers. It become risky advice for tweny-somethings.

Two Contrasting Social Lubricants

A thought for your consideration:

In low-functioning family systems, alcohol is the social lubricant.

In high-functioning family systems, humor is the social lubricant.

Nativism and Multiculturalism Are Twin, and Unsuccessful, Attempts to Resist the Melting Pot

Nativism is a rear-guard reaction by declining sectors of the old elite.  It does not work.

Multiculturalism is a rear-guard action by declining sectors of assimilating minorities. It does not work, either.

The great American melting pot works relentlessly to turn the middle of American society into Americans.  Our culture is changed somewhat by each group it assimilates, but is more continuous than changed.

And this is a good thing.

A Rough Analogy Between Peacocks and Pickups

A pickup truck is a very impractical vehicle for a family.  And if you aren't hauling bales of hay or the like regularly, it is kind of impractical for any other purpose.  Yet pickup trucks are hugely popular, especially with young men. 

I think the main appeal of pickup trucks to most of their owners is as a symbolic display of masculinity.

Displays of masculinity should, I would think, need to appeal to women to be useful in mate selection.  So why would women find a man with a pickup truck attractive?

The sociobiological study of mate selection has wrestled with a signature puzzle: the peacock's tail.  The giant, bright tail on the peacock would seem a huge hazard to peacocks - attracting predators and slowing down the peacock's escape from predators. The ingenious answer to this puzzle that sociobiologists have come up with is the "handicap theory." The peahen, who tends to select the peacock with the biggest and brightest tail, may be thinking that if this peacock can survive despite the gigantic handicap on its butt, it must have tremendous genes.

I think the pickup truck bed is something like the peacock's tail.  The pickup driver's mate may reason (subconsciously) that if this guy can succeed in having enough resources to afford a vehicle, despite the huge handicap it imposes on having friends or family, then he must really have something on the ball.

Why Is the Tea Party So Mad About Their Taxes Helping Others?

What really incenses the Tea Party is the idea that their taxes help cheaters who do not really need the help.   

That anger is what leads to the (unjust) leap from knowing that there are some cheaters to believing that all of the 47% (or whatever the number might be) are cheaters.   

When I help cheaters, I do not reap a status benefit for kindness, but lose one as a sucker.

Happy AIDS News from Africa

That headline may be unexpected. 

New AIDS cases are down 25% in a decade in sub-Saharan Africa.

The better news:  the main actors seem to be local leaders, not outsiders, especially religious leaders of many different communions.

I Partially Agree With Rand Paul: Reduce Marijuana Sentences

I do not often agree with my Senator, Rand Paul, but I do commend his efforts to reduce the federal minimum penalties for marijuana use. 

He says using marijuana is a bad idea.  As we know, he speaks from experience.  I agree with him.

But he also thinks that marijuana use is not the sort of thing that should lead to a life-ruining arrest, either.  I also agree with him about that.

Sen. Paul does not want to legalize marijuana.  Here I do not agree with him. I believe marijuana, though foolish, is not worse than bourbon.  I think it should be fully legal, fully regulated, and fully taxed.

But I am very glad to see Sen. Paul helping to create common ground with Democrats for some progress in Congress.

Are the Rising Number of "No Religion" a Sign of the World Getting Better?

Those who answer "none" to survey questions asking "what religion do you consider yourself to be?" have been rising.  They are about 15% of all U.S. adults, and in the 20-something percentages for young adults.  In Europe and other developed countries, the percentages are higher.

The proportion of religious "nones" roughly correlates with how well-ordered a society is.  In that way, the growth of religious nones might be taken as a proxy of increasing social order.

I am not arguing that irreligion makes society better, or that religious nones are happier. They aren't.

On the contrary, I am a Presbyterian elder and a pretty traditional Calvinist.

Rather, people who say they have no religion often do not mean that they are atheists.  They haven't rejected God or a spirit-infused way of thinking about the world.  They just don't take part in an institution that requires them to think about God or a divine order.  And because none of their institutions require it, most of them just don't think about religion in their daily lives - until some survey comes along and asks.

I do think that a well-ordered society makes it easier to believe that we can make a decent society ourselves, without thinking much about God. 

Yet it is also the case the the people who live within religious institutions and find their work in the world to be meaningful because it accords with a divine order are more likely to do the very things that make a well-ordered society well ordered. They are more likely to be helpful, and to be happy because they are helpful.  They are more likely to think their lives are meaningful because they help make good order for everyone. 

Especially for young people who still believe that their well-ordered world just is, rather than being something that good people make.

Are Indian Gang Rapes the Fruit of Sex-Selection Abortion?

India has been killing off girls at high rates for a generation.  Sex-selection abortions have produced ratios of 120 boys to 100 girls born in some rural provinces. There are already millions of young men in India with no reasonable hope of marriage.

The world heard the horrible story of the gang rape and murder of a woman in Delhi in 2012.  This month a Swiss woman was gang-raped in central India.  In each case the woman was with a man, who the gang beat and subdued before raping the woman in front of him.

Two cases does not make a social trend.  Still, these cases, in the larger context of masses of poor, unmarriageable men, suggests to me a story that makes sense.  Gang rape is extremely rare - almost all rapes, even stranger rapes, are by lone men who hide their deeds from everyone.  To get a whole gang of men in a condition to rape a woman together, and in front of one another, takes unusual circumstances.  And the circumstances of seeing a young woman having fun with a man seems to me the very circumstance that would madden a gang of permanent bachelors the most.

The killing off of girls, mostly by sex-selection abortion, is a great evil in the world.  China, India, Eastern Europe, and the Arab countries are the worst offenders.  I think they will reap the whirlwind.  A rising rate of gang rapes is one the forms of that whirlwind that I think likely.

What If: A Nigerian Pope?

When Karol Wojtila was chosen as Pope John Paul II, the political value was immediately apparent.  The Polish pope was an old hand at resisting communists, and was a strong voice in the years leading up to the collapse of the Soviet empire.

With that in mind, I have been thinking about what might have been: a pope from sub-Saharan Africa, the front lines of the world-wide struggle between militant Islam and Christianity.  (NOTE: I am not saying there is a struggle between all of Islam and Christianity.) 

I have no objection to the newly chosen Argentine pope, and no brief for any particular African bishop.

I am glad that the cardinals did not go with a Curia insider, or indeed with any European.  And it certainly makes sense to finally pick someone from the most Catholic continent.  But, in a sense, a South American is a safe choice.  A Nigerian would have shifted the world power balance in one of the great cultural struggles of our time. At least a little.

Differential Life Expectancy of the Rich and Poor is Half Chosen, Half Structural

The Washington Post has an interesting article by Michael Fletcher on how raising the Social Security benefit age would affect poor people much more than rich people.  The catchiest fact:

the life expectancy of male workers retiring at 65 had risen six years in the top half of the income distribution but only 1.3 years in the bottom half over the previous three decades.

However, deep in the article they also note that the behavior of the poor and the rich among the old are quite different.  Comparing a poor Florida county with an adjacent rich one (Putnam vs. St. Johns), Fletcher notes:

Adults also smoke at nearly double the rate they do in St. Johns, and they are far more likely to be obese and far less likely to be physically active.

He quotes doctors who say that the difference in life expectancy shows differences in health insurance and health care availability. Yet it is clear that a big part of the difference is due to self-chosen behavior, by both the rich and poor populations.

The centrist position here is that both factors are relevant. 

But I think at this point we can say that the many bad effects of smoking, at least, are the smokers' own dumb fault, and not primarily to be addressed by health insurance and having more doctors.  And in coming years I think we will reach the same conclusion about most causes of obesity and lack of exercise.

The Routinization of Charisma of the Pope

Max Weber described the "routinization of charisma," the process by which the personal authority of a leader is transformed into the institutional authority of the leader's office.  This is a predictable part of the rationalization of any social institution.

Pope Benedict XVI, by resigning rather than dying in office, has taken a crucial step in routinizing the charisma of the Pope into the Papacy.

I expect his successors will follow suit more often than not.

The Good, the Bad, and the Tolerated in Family Forms

I am reading a pretty good new book, What is Parenthood?, edited by Linda McClain and Daniel Cere.  It consists of paired essays arguing what they call an "integrative" versus a "diversity" model of family life.  The editors are law professors, so the central concern is with family law, but a broad range of disciplines are engaged.

This argument is a version of conservative vs. liberal, with some useful nuance in defining the terms.  Indeed, while Cere is more conservative than McClain, both claim to be moderate versions in the diversity spectrum.

The core of the integrative model is that a married couple raising their own children is the best model of family life for society as a whole.  The diversity model argues that other family arrangements can also be good for society.  The debate over same-sex marriage is a central case in this debate, but not the only one.

In her introductory essay, McClain summarizes the result of a Pew survey on what most Americans feel about the current diversity of family forms.  She says about a third oppose accepting all family forms, a third support accepting all family forms, and a third are tolerant but skeptical.

I am in that last group.  I do think that a married couple raising their own children is the best model for society.  But I also think that many children do not have that option, so in those cases the closest approximation we can manage is a good thing for society to accept and promote. Likewise, I think marriage is better for people who don't want to be alone - which is nearly everyone - so society does well to accept several kinds of marriage.

However, in the Gruntled Center Manifesto that sits on the upper left column of every post on this blog, I argue that a fundamental principle of centrism is the three-part distinction between the Good, the Bad, and the Tolerated. I think the Pew survey, noted above, show exactly the distinction I am talking about.  Extremists try to force us to believe that there are only two choices - theirs, or their enemy's.  But centrists see that most of life offers us some choices that are good, and a separate category of "good enough."

The hard part of maintaining a principled centrism is holding on to the difference between good and good enough, in the face of extremist pressures.

The Hard Passage of the Islamic Reformation

The Reformation was a necessary reform in Christianity.  One of its fruits, ultimately, was democracy in the state.  Along the way the English-speaking church and state suffered through the excesses of a Puritan regime.  But the improvement in church and in the state ultimately vindicated even that hard passage.

Islam is going through its Reformation now.  I think ultimately - within a generation or two - this will mean a revitalized Islam, as at peace with democracy, science, and social pluralism as Christianity is now.

To get there, though, they may have to go through a hard passage of some Salafist regimes.

The Arab Spring is a huge advance over the corrupt tyrannies, derived from socialism, which preceded them. 

I am confident that the ultimate result will be a democratic Arabic Islam.

But in the short run - in Egypt, in Syria, in Yemen - the world may see some less corrupt but equally hard regimes of Islamic Puritans.

Many Small Pleasures Make us Happier Than a Few Big Ones

This is one of several bits of wisdom compiled by Sonja Lyubomirsky in Myths of Happiness. 

She applies it to many areas of life, especially to the savoring of experiences and objects.

I think this idea is also helpful in thinking about the relationship between children and happiness.  Raising children can make us unhappy at any given moment. Raising children often deals a major blow to our marital happiness for years.

And yet, and yet.  Raising children is counted by most parents as the most meaningful thing they do in their lives. On reflection, most parents can come up with many precious moments of delight about their children to savor.

The lesson I take from Lyubomirsky's summation of happiness research on this subject: savor the many small pleasures of children while they are happening.  These many small pleasures are they very stuff of a happy life.

I Am Married Tomorrow

M. Keith Chen at Yale offers a fascinating study about the different effects of languages that do distinguish between present and future, such as English, and those that do not, such as German:

Speakers of languages that do not distinguish between the present and the future save more money, retire with more wealth, smoke less, practice safer sex, and are less obese, according to Chen’s findings.

I often try to get students to think about their future marriages now, to plan as strategically for their family life as they do for their careers.

The example Chen uses is Morgen regnet es - "morning raining is" - as the German equivalent of "It will rain tomorrow."

I may get students to try saying "I am married tomorrow" to see if that gives them a more future-oriented view of family life.

The Symmetry of Sexual Fantasies

I put this out tentatively, and would welcome correction as well as comment.

One of the most common sexual fantasies of men is of the nymphomaniac, a woman with an endless desire for sex.

One of the most common sexual fantasies for women is of being ravished, particularly by a bad boy.

It is very puzzling why women, who hate rape so much, and want decent men to marry, would have a fantasy like this.

It is also puzzling, though not puzzled over as much as it should be, why men, who fear sexual comparison and want loyal women to marry, would have a fantasy like this.

I think I have been looking at these fantasies the wrong way.  If I ask "what's in it for the fantasizer," the potential appeal is a little clearer.

Women want to feel irresistible, and wish their sexual attraction to be enough to not only draw a strong man, but to tame him, to overcome his resistance to commitment.

Men want to feel free to have sex with a woman without judgment, commitment, or, importantly, injustice.  They do not need to deceive a nymphomaniac that they are more committed to her than they really are.

And here is where the symmetry breaks down.  Women might fantasize about taming the ravisher and marrying him.  Men are not likely to fantasize about marrying the nymphomaniac. She goes on a different list than the potential wife.

[And no, I do not think these differences are the result of socialization, nor can they be simply abolished by social engineering.  Civilization teaches us to self-control our actions much better than it can change our fantasies.]

"Schep Naches" is a Wonderful Gruntled Idea

The Yiddish expression schep naches is commonly used to describe the pride parents and grandparents feel at the achievements of their offspring.

Sonja Lyubomirsky, in Myths of Happiness, says it can also be used to mean a general sense of "deriving pleasure from the experience of others."

In this sense, she writes, we can use it as the opposite of Schadenfreude.

Deriving pleasure, or calm contentment, from the experience of others seems to me a fine way to make my life, and my community, a happier place.

Japanese Valentine's Day

I was discussing comparative holidays with a Japanese student in my "Family Life" class.  She said Valentine's Day is celebrated in Japan - but women give men chocolate.

This struck me as odd, since the norm of courtship is for men to show their capacity for resource provision to women.

She then told me that there is also a counterpart holiday, White Day, one month later, in which men give chocolate to women.  Originally they gave white chocolate (hence the name), but now the browner kinds are also common.

And Wikipedia tells me that on White Day, if a man merely gives as much as he was given, that signals that he wants to end the relationship.  To continue the romance, he gives twice or thrice as much chocolate as he received on Valentine's Day.

The imbalance in the sociobiological universe is made right.

Your Older Self Can Help You Save for the Future

A nifty experiment from Jeremy Bailenson's virtual reality lab:

Ask 20-somethings how much they want to start setting aside for their retirement.

Then show them a picture of their own face, morphed to show what they will look like at 70.

Now they want to set aside twice as much.

This is a great nudge.