Maybe ‘I do’

Unless we celebrate marriage as the best environment for raising children, many of them will face a lifetime of poverty.

The Brookings Institution economist Isabel Sawhill wrote this year that if individuals do just three things – finish high school, work full-time and marry before they have children - their chances of being poor drop from 15 percent to two percent.

The respected scholar of child poverty went on the say that “unless the media, parents and other influential leaders celebrate marriage as the best environment for raising children, the new trend – bringing up baby alone – may be irreversible.”

Sawhill is not alone in her observations.

Across the Atlantic, the UK Centre for Social Justice concluded in its report, Breakthrough Britain, that the fabric of society was crumbling, leaving at its margins an underclass, where life is characterised by dependency, addiction, debt and family breakdown. It is an underclass where a child born into poverty today is more likely to remain in poverty than any time since the late 1960s. The Centre identified five key paths to poverty: family breakdown, serious personal debt, drug and alcohol addiction, failed education, worklessness and dependency.

In Australia, demographers at Monash University were some of the first in the Western world to observe a growing gap between the married educated, employed and well-off and those who are less educated, in marginal or no employment, and are unpartnered. It is a trend that has since been recognised in the US, the UK and elsewhere.

Hundreds of social science studies across the Western world now point to one incontrovertible conclusion: that the incidence of family breakdown and unpartnered parenthood is having a significant impact, especially on children, but also on adults and society.

The studies report problematic outcomes for the health, education and well-being of the young people affected by the changes. Where children experience more than one family transition, the risks compound.

This is not to say that all the effects apply to each child whose parents’ divorce, or who is raised by a single parent. There is no way to predict how any particular child will be affected, nor to what extent. But it is clear that there are widespread ramifications for this cohort of children as a whole.

Nor is it to suggest that many single parents are not doing a good job, often in very difficult circumstances.

Renowned sociologist Professor Andrew Cherlin notes that even if a minority of the affected children have their lives altered, it is still a lot of children.

Increasingly, social scientists argue that we must do something about the issue.

One the world’s leading marital scholars, Professor Paul Amato, concludes his survey of the research that “studies consistently indicate that children raised by two happily and continuously married parents have the best chance of developing into competent and successful adults.”

Professor Amato adds: “Because we all have an interest in the well-being of children, it is reasonable for social institutions (such as the state) to attempt to increase the proportion of children raised by married parents with satisfying and stable marriages.”

The alternative is to treat the negative consequences as the unavoidable flotsam of modern relations. This is a counsel of despair.

In my book, Maybe ‘I do’ – Modern marriage and the pursuit of happiness, I have drawn from hundreds of studies to chart the impact of family structure on the health, happiness and well-being of adults, children and society.

The cultural and legal changes that have facilitated the trends are discussed, and the impact across the western world charted. I also examine the policy responses to date, before proposing a number of directions.

Four goals are identified. First, nations should have an explicit marriage and family policy. Second, they should seek to maintain at least a replacement birth-rate. Third, national policy should proclaim the ideal of marital permanence and affirm marriage as the optimal environment for the raising of children. Finally, the policy should value family stability and reinforce personal and inter-generational responsibility.

A number of specific policy suggestions to support marriage are proposed. First, better education about relationships should start in schools. Most schools have some form of sex education, but it should be augmented by an ongoing program of relationship education.

Second, the Labour MP Frank Field recently proposed in the UK that there should be more education about parenting for young people. He had observed that an increasing number of youngsters do not have a workable model of positive family life.

Third, pre-marriage education should be expanded. Currently, only a minority of couples participate in such programs, but those most in need often miss out.

Fourth, new parenthood is often a stressful time. There is a need to raise knowledge about parenting skills, something which the UK Prime Minister, David Cameron, has responded to with an education voucher for all new parents.

Fifth, many people enter new relationships when previous ones break down. Often this involves the formation of stepfamilies. These complex new arrangements involve many tensions for both parents and children. More assistance is required to prevent these relationships breaking down at an even higher rate than original marriages.

There is also a need for greater research into which programs provide the best assistance in preventing marital dysfunction and supporting the widespread aspiration that most people have for a happy and stable marriage.

Finally, many people later regret their divorce and wish that something more could have been done to save their marriage. The provision of reconciliation services was envisaged when no-fault divorce was introduced, but this has been abandoned largely. While maintaining the right to divorce, we could do more to allow those couples who so wish to pursue a reconciliation of their marital differences.

None of these proposals, which are outlined in detail, are remarkable, but taken together could help to address a trend that increasingly worries many social scientists and policy makers.

While policy makers can encourage marital stability, there is a limited impact that they can have on the culture. For this reason, the book concludes by examining those factors which social scientists observe are likely to assist individuals to achieve their aspiration for a healthy and happy marriage, and those that detract from this goal.

The problem with starting a family today

Couples and young families from Generation X and Generation Y (also known as “Millennials”) are struggling in today’s global economy. Various individuals and groups are studying their plight and publishing reports replete with advice on how to improve matters.

Dr Paul Kershaw is a self-styled “family crusader” associated with University of British Columbia’s Human Early Learning Partnership. They released a report in late 2011 calling on Canada’s provincial and federal governments to spend $22 billion for social programs to fix a declining standard of living for young families. Recommendations include subsidized daycare that does not exceed $10 in daily parental costs, a shorter work week and increasing parental (maternity) leave to 18 months. Unafraid of controversy, he blames Baby Boomers for the current predicament of younger families, whom he terms “Generation Squeeze”.

Baby boomers won the economic lottery and are soon to retire “as the wealthiest generation we've ever seen,” Kershaw said in one media interview. Some Boomers might beg to differ, notably those still paying off their children’s college educations (the usefulness of which, in some cases, seems to be inversely proportional to the expense), or those whose 20- and 30-something kids have moved back home—sometimes with unemployed spouses and children in tow. By some reports, fully 25 percent of Boomers have little or no retirement savings.

Late last month Canada’s Institute for Marriage and the Family (IMFC) released a report titled, The trouble with Gen X and Gen Y families: Why starting a family today is harder than it was for the Baby Boomers. The family values organisation contends that the older generation is not to blame for the problems, and that we need to consider other, heretofore unexamined factors.

“There is consensus that Canadian families today face a more difficult financial reality than the Baby Boomers due to longer periods in school, the declining value of higher education, higher home prices, higher taxes and a changing and less secure job market,” says the IMFC. “However, there is an elephant in the Canadian family’s living room and it is family breakdown.” While not the sole reason for financial difficulty, divorce and cohabitation in lieu of marriage are clearly trends that have concrete–and negative—economic repercussions, says the report.

To satisfy the social scientists, including the armchair variety, it acknowledges a chicken-or-egg conundrum: “It is impossible to establish conclusively whether the poor economy changed families, or whether changed families affected the economy.” However, it cites compelling evidence that strong families make strong economies, and conversely that family breakdown results in huge societal costs, financial and otherwise.

In an era of big government and even bigger debts and deficits one may therefore legitimately question whether it would be wise, as the saying goes, to throw good money after bad. The Kershaw plan, which would cap parental daycare costs (while causing the taxpayers’ share to soar exponentially) and reduce working hours (for an already shrinking workforce) is almost farcical: where will the revenue come from to pay for it? Will our legislators voluntarily relinquish their lavish pensions, decimate unwieldy bureaucracies, or cut programs that benefit large voting blocs?

National Post columnist Barbara Kay, noting the inter-generational friction, suggests that in such an economic battle the youngsters are bound to lose. Boomers are not only reluctant to give up their jobs, but they also cling to “untenably expensive government benefits, because politicians genuflect before our massive voting numbers.”

Boomer self-interest is only half the story, however. Ms Kay describes Millennials as “unrealistic, under-adaptive…cosseted, self-satisfied, [and lacking] humility and competitive drive.” Ouch. Kay Hymowitz, in her important book Marriage and Caste in America, is kinder to the post-1960s cohorts in finding that they lack a “life script”. In other words, they may have an idea of where they want their lives to go, but don’t always know how to get there.

Yet even some Millennials would agree with Barbara Kay’s assessment. I did an informal survey of Gen X and Y couples amongst friends and relatives (rendering this anecdotal rather than scientific), but it was interesting to hear their experiences and opinions, as well as those of their peers. Unrealistic expectations abound: for example, some couples in their first year of marriage expect to enjoy the same standard of living their own parents worked thirty years to achieve.

Among the XY-M couples who are succeeding at marriage, raising families, building careers, and home ownership, certain values and principles seem to crop up repeatedly: stable family of origin, strong work ethic, thrift, a willingness to postpone (or sacrifice entirely) certain material goods to achieve other goals (such as one parent staying at home with small children). Even apparently outdated notions such as a commitment to church attendance, premarital sexual restraint and lifelong marriage are part of their life script.

Not bad, for the children of those recalcitrant Boomers. Perhaps it’s of a piece with Ms Kay’s perception: “It’s an unusual war where the victors refuse to let the losers lose, offering generous shelter, sustenance and mentorship to the vanquished,” in what she calls “spontaneous kinship altruism.” Might that mean “family values”? Go figure.

But the return of destitute fledglings to the parental nest is at best a short-term solution, and one that obviously doesn’t work for 20-somethings and even 30-somethings whose parents are not in a financial position to assist them. “Public policy should allow Gen-X and Gen-Y to be more self-sufficient as they raise their families, needing neither to rely on funds from family, nor on government largesse,” insists the IMFC.

This is especially true in an era of staggering government debt, where, in future, the very existence of the social safety net may be in question. The West’s demographic troubles and governments’ fiscal troubles go hand-in-hand. In 1981 there were six Canadians in the work force for every retiree; by 2031 there will be only three. Gen X and Y cannot support the looming tax burden and thus, “We cannot rely on governments to create new institutions to solve the financial issues of both generations.”

In a positive vein the IMFC makes several worthwhile recommendations:

Allow Income splitting which lowers the tax burden on families and would benefit all families with children. Under current Canadian tax law, government daycare subsidies do not benefit families with one parent at home. Thus, one-income families bear a disproportionate amount of the tax burden, essentially subsidizing the dual-income couple’s childcare.

Restore the life script which puts love, marriage and children in the best order for life-long family stability, through a combined effort by communities, families and schools.

Teach the social science research showing there is a difference in outcomes between marriage and cohabitation -- a job for schools, secondary and post-secondary.

Add civil society support. Based on the social science research of outcomes of marriage versus cohabitation, families, churches and broader communities should encourage children to see lifelong marriage as realistic and attainable

As laudable as the last three points sound, in today’s social climate one is tempted to say, “Good luck with that.” Governments have become so used to controlling education and interfering in the community sector at the behest of certain ideological groups (gender activists spring to mind) that it will be very difficult for them to pull back.

So it seems that the onus will remain on strong families to provide the best models for engendering domestic and financial success. Before you can live in an equitable, family-friendly society, you have to be the sort of person determined to build one. But that brings us back to the chicken and the egg.

Entitlement America - a nation of takers?

The ballooning of the welfare state is corrupting the American character as well as burdening generations to come, argues a scholar. America goes to the polls on November 6 under a dark, threatening cloud: the gargantuan $16 trillion national debt -- and its inevitable expansion, at least in the short term, whoever wins the White House. Not only in the US but in welfare states around the world this issue has become critical as waves of baby boomers turn 65 and start collecting their retirement benefits. Suddenly, the younger generations, whose numbers have been thinned by "choice", become extremely necessary as earners and taxpayers. As for those workers yet to be born, they already have their future mapped out as debtors to the lifestyle of their parents and grandparents. Pensions and prescriptions, however, are not the only benefits driving welfare states deeply into the red. Means-tested benefits, including free or subsidised healthcare, to relieve poverty are also causing budget blowouts. In a new book on the growth of government-funded entitlements in the US, political economist Nicholas Eberstadt points out that in 2010, no less than one-third of households received anti-poverty transfers while the poverty rate was less than half that (15.1 percent of the population) -- and these households accounted for nearly half of all America's children. Today, astonishingly for a wealthy country, half of all American families receive some kind of government benefit. In fact, says Eberstadt, over the past 50 years, entitlement payments have "turned American governance upside down," growing through good times and bad -- and under Republican administrations as well as Democratic -- from well under a third of the federal government's outlays to two-thirds by 2010. Today, all the other responsibilities of government make up barely one-third of federal spending. Eberstadt, who holds the Henry Wendt Chair in Political Economy at the American Enterprise Institute, sees this expansion of the welfare state as a malign development, eroding not only the US economy but, more seriously, the American character and the nation's tradition of independence. The title of his book says it all: A Nation of Takers: America's Entitlement Epidemic. Driving the detailed statistical case he presents is a passionate argument that his country is squandering its moral as well as material capital. It stubbornly refuses to address its appetite for handouts and its habit of dependency -- even to the point of mortgaging the next generation. He points to five symptoms of this moral effect: The flight from work by men. Between 1948 and 2011 the proportion of adult men who did not consider themselves part of the workforce steadily rose, from under 13 percent then to almost 27 percent now. By 2003—well before the Great Recession—7.2 percent of American men of prime working age were outside the workforce (as against just 3 percent in Greece!). Social trends relating to women, recessions and ageing all play a part in this, but there is also a factor of "not wanting to work" made possible by entitlements. Gaming the system. "Exhibit A is the explosion of disability claims and awards under the disability insurance provisions of the U.S. Social Security program," aided and abetted by health professionals. "In 1960 an average of 455,000 erstwhile workers were receiving monthly federal payments for disability. By 2010 that total had skyrocketed to 8.2 million (and by 2011 had risen still further, to almost 8.6 million)" -- an eighteen-fold increase during a time of tremendous improvements in public health. Myth of pay-as-you-go entitlements: in reality increasingly financed by the unborn. "Social Security and Medicare both are intergenerational resource transfer plans, whereby today’s takers, with very few exceptions, consume at the expense of those born after them. ... That fateful line was crossed by the U.S. welfare state long ago: there has never been any great interest in protecting of the rights of the unborn on the part of U.S. social insurance programs and their presumptive beneficiaries." Crowding out defence. Although national security is a Constitutional responsibility of government "U.S. government outlays on entitlements do not merely exceed those for defense nowadays, they completely overshadow defense outlays." The true problem with "affordability" lies with overall spending priorities. Entitlements, dependence, and the politics of populist redistribution. Redistributionist policies (taxing the rich at progressively higher rates and giving it to the poor -- or borrowing from other countries or other generations for the same purpose) promote a "something-for-nothing" mentality and delegitimizes earned success. Some "claim that our opportunity society no longer really works. The irony here is that something-for-nothing politics can itself make the claim come true—if pursued on a sufficiently grand scale and in a sufficiently reckless manner." Eberstadt's point here is a moral one: entitlements are corrupting. William Galston of the Brookings Institution disagrees. In a dissenting viewpoint published in Nation of Takers he challenges a number of Eberstadt's interpretations of the data and defends the growth of entitlements as part of a civic compact. He rightly points to interdependence and the principle of reciprocity that undergirds it as part of a well-functioning society: "When I do something for you that you would be hard pressed to do for yourself and you respond by helping me with something I find difficult, we depend on one another and are the stronger for it." Galston argues that this reciprocity extends not only between different layers of society and between regions, but through time. Thus, many entitlements involve an "intergenerational compact". However, it is difficult to see the reciprocal principle at work when existing generations bequeath a colossally mortgaged, if not bankrupt system to those yet to be born. Besides, isn’t there something deeply ironic, if not dishonest, about a social compact with new generations whom we admit into the world increasingly on our own strictly limited terms? The original intergenerational compact is between parents and their children, but the family has been reduced by the birth control culture that sprang up alongside the entitlement state, and broken down by collateral damage from both trends. Indeed, as many scholars have observed, the welfare state itself is partly responsible for family breakdown. As Eberstadt puts it, "the perverse incentives embedded in federal-family support policies were actually encouraging the proliferation of fatherless families and an epidemic of illegitimacy” in the decades since 1960. And although “the tangled pathology linking entitlement programs to the feminization of poverty and the rise of the female-headed family” was partly addressed by the welfare reform efforts on the mid-1990s, the trend has continued and now 41 percent of all births in America, and more than half of those to women under 30, occur outside marriage. Just how indebted to their parents and grandparents these children and those to come will feel, remains to be seen. As bad as this situation seems, however, it also suggests a way forward to a renewed culture of independence and interdependence. Any political regime that genuinely wants to bring public spending under control and get the economy on a sound footing will have to address the state of the family by promoting marriage, ceasing to burden the married family with unfair taxes, and withdrawing funding from educational programmes that promote sexual liberalism. As another scholar, Yuval Levin, points out in his response to Nation of Takers (see accompanying article), the family is one of those institutions (the most important) between the individual and the state where most of life is lived and where true flourishing is possible. The role of government is to facilitate life in this realm of freedom and initiative, not to invade it and take over its various roles. If it followed this advice, the next American government could become a model not only for conquering the debt problem, but for renewing the social contract between the generations.

Misogyny for the politically disenchanted

Misogyny for the politically disenchanted The Australian Prime Minister became an internet sensation after she denounced the misogyny of the Opposition Leader in Parliament. But does the word mean anything any more? The opinion media in Australia is still abuzz over our Prime Minister Julia Gillard’s impassioned speech against the alleged misogyny of the Leader of the Opposition, Tony Abbott. So powerful was the Prime Minister’s speech that her popularity soon increased to its highest point in over a year, and even the English language seemed to shift a little in its otherwise glacial progression, as Macquarie decided to amend its dictionary’s definition of the relevant term: augmenting ‘hatred of women’ with ‘entrenched prejudice of women’. Long term readers will know that if there were a term for ‘hatred of linguistic innovations’, I would own it, use it, perhaps name my first born child after it. Hearing people use words in ambiguous ways makes me very uncomfortable, and I counter this discomfort by going to my ‘happy place’ which is, according to urbandictionary, “a psychologically-induced trance-like state, where a person may regress from a stressful situation”, but is, according to me, the Online Etymology Dictionary: www.etymonline.com. There we find that ‘misogyny’ entered English in the early 17th Century, and has a reliable Greek pedigree. It means ‘hatred of women’, but comes from a time and place in which even a neutral attitude to women might seem pretty hateful by modern standards. Sadly the etymology is of little use to us in this instance. While we could start investigating whether Abbott truly hates women, those who have raised and sustained the ‘misogyny’ charge have already admitted that they don’t really mean what the word really means. The only good thing to come out of this whole fiasco is the realisation that ‘prejudice of’ is more correct than ‘prejudice against’, even though it sounds completely wrong. The use of ‘misogyny’ in this context is very similar to the use of ‘homophobia’. The word is applied loosely, yet in the popular imagination it conjures up the very worst possibilities. The Prime Minister quoted some of Abbott’s more grievous instances of woman-hating: “If it's true… that men have more power generally speaking than women, is that a bad thing?” And then a discussion ensues, and another person says “I want my daughter to have as much opportunity as my son.” To which the Leader of the Opposition says “Yeah, I completely agree, but what if men are by physiology or temperament, more adapted to exercise authority or to issue command?” Does this statement denote misogyny? As a philosopher, it is hard to say. The statement could denote a range of things, and it is only really by knowing the person that we can hope to discern the intent behind the words. It could, for example, constitute a disinterested speculation about the evolutionary development of the sexes, as a possible explanation for the disproportional representation of the sexes in parliament. On the other hand, it could constitute a weak empirical claim, designed to legitimise various generalisations about the roles women ought to play in public life. The fact that it is almost a taboo subject in polite company does not render the comment misogynist by default. Yet sexual prejudice is a real problem. Gillard’s speech captured an international audience, ignorant of the political context, but moved by the content of the speech itself. Women (I am told) identified with the spirit of the speech, as it substantiated the numerous occasions on which many women have remained silent in the face of insidious, pervasive prejudice of their sex. The hidden political context is that Australia is more than two years into the longest, most bitter election campaign in our history. When the 2010 election resulted in a hung parliament, we were told again and again that another election could be called at any time. Though the political tension has become somewhat familiar, for all intents and purposes we are still stuck in the early days of that awkward result. Both parties are equally savage in their determination to maintain supremacy for an election that could be called at any moment. Unfortunately the political high ground and the moral high ground are very far apart. The opposition took advantage of sexist text messages sent by the Speaker of the House to push for his removal. Gillard’s now famous speech was interpreted locally as merely an animated attempt to turn the ‘sexism’ charge back on the Opposition Leader. It was a charge of hypocrisy, a ‘tu quoque’ argument given almost transcendent power by a collective sense of grievance over genuine instances of misogyny and sexism. But in the end, anything we might learn from this saga is tainted unless we remember the ignoble political motivations behind both sides of the debate. There is no part of this farce that cannot be attributed to the hung parliament we have endured for over two years. The real lesson is that desperate politics poisons reasoned debate. Our best hope may be just to switch off until it’s all over.

Discovering the value of home

A conference next week may hold the key to the recovery of Europe in the longer term.

Italian Family

Italians are, famously, attached to their family, and the European economic crisis affecting their country has given them even more reason to turn to home for support. Recent research shows that a third of adult Italians – and more than 60 percent of young adults – live with their parents. Families in Greece, Spain and other parts of Europe -- and even further afield -- are also likely to be seeing more of each other these days.

“In these times of Europe’s public stress and crisis when the public sphere becomes unbearable, the home assumes a vital role in the life of citizens and families as a place where individuals can be nurtured,” says hospitality expert Anne Zahra. The modern market economy undervalues the home, she points out, and this is one of the chief contributors to the problems in Europe.

“The neoliberal market economy does not recognise the value of the home unless it is quantified as an economic value. And because Western society is dominated by this neoliberal market ideology, it does not properly understand the value of nurturing and therefore the value of the home.”

Dr Zahra, a senior lecturer in tourism and hospitality management at the University of Waikato (New Zealand), is the organiser of a three-day conference on this issue to be held next week in Rome. Home and Identity: The public-private nexus is a collaborative effort between her university and Roma Tre University, together with Fondazione Oikia and the Home Renaissance Foundation. The conference, following up previous work by Home Renaissance, will look at ways to bring the home and its vital social role into academic realm and public policy.

The media could also be more help. The New York Times, for instance, has no department or blog focusing on the domestic sphere as such. The home finds its place in the Fashion and Style section as half of the duo, “Home and Garden”, as though décor and family dinners were equally important. Other aspects of home are found in blogs on motherhood and ageing parents under the heading of Health, Family and Education. Home as the place where cultures and societies are made or broken is elusive.

“The home is not recognised in Government policy, in economics, in law, in media and in academic circles such as sociology and public policy,” says Dr Zahra “There is work on violence and abuse in the home but not the value of the home in positive terms. The purpose of this conference is to start discussing this in academic fields, drawing from a number of disciplines. The conference focuses on developing interdisciplinary academic debate where we can start investigating the importance of the home and its contribution and value to society.

“We will be looking at the context of the home in both the public and private spheres of society, at how the private impacts on the public and how the public shapes the perception of the private dimensions of the home.”

A keynote speaker is French sociologist Jean-Claude Kaufmann of the National Centre for Scientific Research at the University of Paris Descartes. His topic, “Home of Little Happiness”, reflects his many explorations of domestic life and questions of identity. Professor Kaufmann is the author of books on, among other things, the new trend of single woman, the meaning of cooking, and what the contents of women’s handbags reveal -- in Le sac: Un petit monde d'amour.

Other speakers include Giuliana Mandich of the University of Caligari, an expert on urban sociology, who speaks on “Home boundaries, everyday cultures and capabilities”; Marita Rampazi, of the University of Pavia, on “Repositioning the boundaries: memory and plans in the homes of young women”; and Fiorenza Deriu of the University of La Sapienza, on “Being a woman in the contemporary confusion”.

This is not, however, just a conference about women and their changing role. “Definitely not,” says Dr Zahra. “It’s more looking at the philosophical, sociological and economic dimensions of the home and the role of both men and women in the home, their contribution to the home. There are a number of presentations by male academics who emphasize the role of men in the home.”

Whereas previous conferences aimed to act as catalysts to see the home discussed, “this one is research-based with strong philosophical underpinnings. It is aimed at fostering research in the silent spaces of the home and its role and contribution to society.”

Perhaps Tony Blair’s proposal for a European President is one of the solutions to the debt crisis in that part of the world. But without recognising the role of the basic cell of society and nurturing it, such high-level manoeuvres seem doomed to failure.

The coming social Frankenstorm

There is a storm brewing that the election results can only fuel.

As the destructive roar of Hurricane Sandy dwindled and died last week, leaving Americans along the Atlantic coast facing colossal damage, the climate change alarm bells could be heard in all their urgency. Warming oceans and melting ice caps could have played a decisive role in creating the “Frankenstorm” that claimed 100 lives, left hundreds homeless and will cost $60 billion to repair. “Now will they listen?” the global warming pundits demanded of the sceptics.
This week the alarms are sounding again for many Americans, but it’s nothing to do with continuing stormy weather. The cause does, however, have a lot to do with ecology: human ecology -- the integrity of the human being who is both matter and spirit and the conditions under which he or she may thrive and contribute to genuine social progress.
On Tuesday just over half of US voters put Barack Obama back in the White House. This is a president who supports abortion and free contraception as women’s rights, who has declared support for same-sex “marriage”; whose last campaign ad propositioned the youth vote with the sultry line, “If it’s your first time, do it with a great guy.” This a president who, for all his rhetoric about freedom and diversity will not allow religious objectors to his “contraceptive mandate” the freedom to run their businesses, their schools and other institutions according to their consciences.
In short, this is a president who is a distinct threat to the natural family and to its chief supporting institution, the church, and no amount of “God bless America” can disguise that.
With the encouragement of his example, voters in three out of four states with initiatives relating to marriage on Tuesday’s ballot (Maine, Maryland and Minnesota) have opened the way for same-sex marriage. The tally will likely be four by the time the count is finished in Washington. Like the popular vote for Obama himself, the margin of victory is small but potentially very damaging to the foundations of American society -- and to others which still look to the United States for leadership.
The foundation of society is the family. The family is constituted by the marriage of a man and a woman exclusively committed to each other for life and open to the generation of children by their loving intercommunion. This is the norm indicated by the body and by human reason enlightened by religious faith, by the experience of the ages and in our own day by social scientific studies. This is the basic ecological system that allows individuals and society to flourish, and it is the breaking down of this family environment that is pushing the US and other Western societies over fiscal cliffs.
That breakdown is in large measure due to the attack on human sexual ecology represented by government promoted contraception and abortion, to which we can now add the reproductive technologies that enable lesbian and gay couples to acquire children since they cannot generate them. In all this the rights, the health and the happiness -- the very existence -- of the next generation is gambled with.
President Obama talked in his victory speech about obligations to future generations. “We want our children to live in an America that isn’t burdened by debt; that isn’t weakened by inequality; that isn’t threatened by the destructive power of a warming planet,” he said, provoking another round of applause.
But the threats to coming generations are far more profound than debt or global warming. As for inequality, it can only be fuelled by the further breakdown of the family conceived of as a collection of human beings arbitrarily assembled -- and just as arbitrarily taken apart again. Unless the President of the United States can get a grip on the basics of human ecology he will escalate the human Frankenstorm that is already brewing in the overheated social experiments of the 21st century.

A controversial gay parenting study revisited

… and found to have much in common with less controversial gay parenting studies.
 
 In the July issue of the scholarly journal Social Science Research, Professor Mark Regnerus (pictured) published an article detailing initial results from his New Family Structures Study. His results suggested that adult children who had been raised, for at least a brief time, in families with a gay, lesbian, or bisexual parent were more likely to report dysfunctional adult outcomes than those who had been raised in other family structures, especially families with continuously married heterosexual parents. In the same issue of the journal, three other scholars rendered comments on the NFSS results and Regnerus addressed their comments as well. His study raised a huge outcry of protest, which led, among other things, to the University of Texas conducting a preliminary investigation into the ethics of his study (he was cleared of any malfeasance). Subsequently, in the November issue of SSR, several scholars, including the editor of SSR and an auditor of the review process, rendered their verdicts on the study. Professor Regnerus also provided a revised analysis of the data, attempting to address some of the criticisms of his study. How different was Regnerus’s method to that of other studies? I also weighed in on the discussion with a commentary pointing out, as SSR editor Dr. James D. Wright noted, “that many of the most controversial methodological and measurement decisions made in the Regnerus paper have well-established precedents in the larger social science literature”. My approach was different than those of the other commentators, who were generally “for” or “against”. My main question was, “How different was what Regnerus did methodologically compared to what other scholars have done in the past ten years when investigating similar issues?” I considered sample selection, sample size, definition of family forms, measurement of sexual orientation, statistical analysis, funding, and consistency of results with other research, citing over 110 examples of other previous research. Space here does not permit me to detail all of my findings but I will discuss a few of my comments. While some have tried to vindicate the Regnerus study by citing my comments, my intent was not to laud the study but to place it in context relative to other social science research. The conclusion to be drawn may be “similar methodological limitations” as much as anything. Criticisms would apply to others Use of Knowledge Networks data. Regnerus was criticized, for example, for using Knowledge Networks (KN) for obtaining his sample. KN does not appear to conduct random national samples per se but provides a hired panel of respondents thought to compare favorably to the characteristics of a national random USA sample. For myself, I am concerned about turning over one’s data collection to another organization because you may not understand all of the small decisions (or errors) made in that complex process. However, my search of the academic literature led to over 20 published studies that had used KN, including research by Professor Gregory Herek, an internationally renowned gay psychologist, as well as research sponsored by the Human Rights Campaign, a pro-gay advocacy group. Thus, while I might be “cool” towards the use of KN, it is clear that the research company has been used by a wide variety of scholars, who have had success getting published in leading journals with data drawn from its panels of respondents. Regnerus reported that his response rate was approximately 65%; in contrast, Herek’s research with KN featured a response rate of only 30%, apparently far lower. Use of mixed orientation households (MOMs). Much has been made of the possibility that Regnerus succeeded in gathering data from children from mixed orientation marriages (MOMs). However, many other attempts to study GLB families have involved such marriages. One study, for example, featured 72% of children who had been born into a previous heterosexual marriage before joining a lesbian couple family at an average age of over 4 years. However, the results of such studies are heralded as showing us how well lesbian families are doing, even though they involve many of the same limitations vis-à-vis MOMs as Regnerus’ NFSS study. Funding issues. With respect to funding, many published studies have been funded by pro-gay advocacy groups and yet few report doubts about the influence of such funding on research outcomes; but since the NFSS was funded by conservative groups, such doubts are brought to the forefront. Outcomes for children. There is considerable research – detailed in my commentary in SSR – that notes the instability of lesbian and gay parental relationships, the tendency of their children to be involved in substance abuse, and the tendency of such children to experiment with or adopt same-sex sexual behaviors or identities -- results similar to those that Regnerus reported. In other words, at least some of Regnerus’s findings were very similar to results from many other studies from around the world. Reservations Surely some will attempt to portray my comments as a whitewash, as if I agree with all of Regnerus’s methodological decisions. That is hardly the case. First, I think that it would have been wise, especially once it became apparent that there were few very stable GLB families in the Knowledge Networks panel, to contract with a pro-gay research organization to collect data from at least 30, preferably 100 or more, stable same-sex families, to permit a more valid (although still limited because of possible selection effects) comparison with similarly stable heterosexual families. Second, I think Regnerus should have reported a type of bracketing of his results – worst case, best case, and modal case – in his first article. However, in his first article, he presented a worst case analysis. In his second paper, he presented more of a modal case analysis. As far as I can tell, we have yet to see a detailed best case analysis. Third, it is not clear to me that using average comparisons of outcomes for different family structural forms is the best approach for assessing the intertwined role of family structure and family process in the development of children. I hope to try some of my different ideas over the next few months to see what some of those better ways might be, if permitted by the characteristics of the data in the NFSS. As my own review of other studies shows, however, the wholesale ad hominem attacks on Professor Regnerus and the complete dismissal of all of his methods and professionalism continue to be unjustified, even though his research – as all research - deserves careful scrutiny. His decisions about research design and analysis were within the ball park of what other credible and distinguished researchers have been doing within the past decade. Walter Schumm is a Professor of Family Studies at Kansas State University, with over 300 publications, including approximately 250 journal articles. He is also a retired colonel, U.S. Army. Dr. Schumm served as a paid consultant (6-7 days) in the early stages of the development of the NFSS. Dr. Schumm presented each of the articles or comments related to the NFSS from Social Science Research in his assessment of the NFSS at a round table discussion at the National Council on Family Relation’s annual conference, November 2, Phoenix, Arizona.