I don’t find this at all surprising; do any of you?
Despite all the experts who scoff at teaching adolescents to “wait” for sex, many do. About half of US 15- to 19-year-olds have never had sexual contact, according to recent report based on the National Survey of Family Growth. Now a study (based on data from the same survey) shows how important that is in later life. Read more…
There have been various studies looking at how children are affected after their parents’ divorce. A newly-released study looks at the effects of divorce before, during, and after:
Young kids whose parents divorce struggle with math, social skills and emotions such as anxiety and depression for at least two years after the split, a new study finds.
The research is the first long-term study to break down the effects of divorce by the predivorce, during-divorce and postdivorce phases. Surprisingly, said study researcher Hyun Sik Kim, a doctoral candidate at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, parents’ predivorce marital problems didn’t influence their kids’ social and school success. But once divorce proceedings began, children fell behind and failed to catch up for at least two years. [emphasis added] …. Read more…
by Anne Morse (no relation)
The signs are encouraging.
Thirty years ago this July, I stayed up to watch the fairy-tale wedding between a shy young pre-school teacher and the prince of Wales. Fifteen years, two children, and considerable adultery later, the fairy tale had fractured beyond repair.
This Friday, Charles and Diana’s elder son, William, 28, will marry Catherine Middleton, 29 — and such is the cynicism about royal marriages these days that bookies are already taking bets on when the royal divorce will occur. Read more…
(An old quiz from a Ruth Institute newsletter. How will this be helpful for children of SSM?)
Same sex couples have had the legal right to form domestic partnerships in several European countries. Denmark was the first to introduce registered partnerships, in 1989. Norway was second, in 1993, then Sweden in 1995. Data from 2 of these landmark countries, Norway and Sweden, as well as California, have been studied enough to answer this question:
What types of unions have the highest rates of divorce?
Hint: the answer is the same in all three countries! Read more…
Dr J’s most recent episode of “From the Front Lines of the Culture War” is now up for your listening pleasure. In it, she interviews Bill Duncan, attorney and president of the Marriage Law Foundation, on a wide range of topics. Their discussion includes Prop 8, DoMA, de facto parenting, and more. Check out CatholicRadioOfSanDiego.com for more information on the show.
We also have her interview on Issues, Etc, split into two topical parts. The first deals with the propensity of the Baby Boom generation to solve marital problems–large and small–preferentially with divorce. The second–graphically–explains what passed for an extra-curricular sex ed seminar at Texas A&M and how it’s related to the widespread use of pornography.
I wanted to revisit the article on Hume’s defense of marriage. There was some good stuff buried deep in the link:
Contrary to what some romantics may think, marital happiness and conjugal human love cannot be sustained by amorous or infatuating passions, Hume says, since they are by nature unstable and fleeting. “Amorous love,” he says, “is a restless and impatient passion, full of caprices and variations—arising in a moment from a feature, from an air, from nothing, and suddenly extinguishing after the same manner.” Whatever its value may be, no marriage can be sustained by it. Read more…
AMERICA’S FAMILY CULTURE HAS BECOME A CULTURE OF REJECTION: THE PARENTS OF A MAJORITY OF AMERICAN TEENAGERS HAVE REJECTED EACH OTHER
by Patrick Fagan
The Index of Belonging (45%) and Rejection (55%) gives an instant read on the social health of America by measuring the proportion of American children who have grown up in an intact married family [See Appendix 2: Chart 1: Belonging and Rejection Indices for the US]. We have undertaken this study because, bad though it may be, the out-of wedlock birth rate is not the key measure of family intactness. Rather what gives a much better read of how our American families are faring is what proportion of our children grow up in an intact home. When we take that measure (see Appendix 1 for the method) we find that: Read more…
Dr Pat Fagan of the Family Research Council and Ruth Institute Advisory Board, recently developed an “Index of Belonging and Rejection.” The Index of Belonging is the percentage of teenagers whose biological parents have lived together throughout their lives. The Index of Rejection is the percentage of teenagers whose parents have rejected one another, either through divorce, or through never being married in the first place. Dr Fagan compiles the Index of Belonging for the US as a whole, by ethnic group, by region and for the most populous cities and counties. Read more…
Go get your badges here. Cut and paste the code to insert a badge on your own website, blog, facebook page, etc. Get the word out about this conference regarding the four threats to marriage: contraception, divorce, cohabitation and same sex unions.
This is an oldie but goodie I wanted to resurrect.
by Jennifer Roback Morse, Ph.D
This article appeared in the Boundless webzine in 2001.
Research shows that cohabitation is correlated with unhappiness and domestic violence. Cohabiting couples report lower levels of satisfaction in the relationship than married couples. Women are more likely to be abused by a cohabiting boyfriend than a husband. Children are more likely to abused by their mothers’ boyfriends than by her husband, even if the boyfriend is their biological father. If a cohabiting couple ultimately marries, they have a higher propensity to divorce. Read more…
Here is something very useful: a graphic presentation of key statistics from the US National Marriage Project’s recent report showing the inroads of divorce and non-marriage on “middle Americans”. Read more…
In recent months there was a giant tsunami of public grief following the suicides of several young people. Blamed for those suicides was “bullying.”
The suicide of young people is virtually always a tragedy. So, if those who lament the suicide of young people are to be taken at their word for their desire to prevent suicide, they might want to look elsewhere for their great villain. How about divorce.
Here’s the New York Times: Read more…
by Rev. Preston Butler, Jr., Co-Founder/President of PK3 Minstries based in Oceanside, CA, and the author of “It’s OK to Have an Affair (with your spouse).”
Americans of all races and religions rightly celebrate Dr. Martin Luther King’s messages of peace, love, justice and non-violence. However, I believe these messages apply to our family lives, as well as to the civil rights struggle. Husbands and wives have duties to one another, and to their children, as a matter of love and justice. Rev King’s “I Have a Dream” speech is still one of the most memorable and magnificent masterpieces of all times. If Dr. King were here today, and asked to say a few words about marriage and divorce, I believe he would say something like this: Read more…
We hear a lot about family breakdown but not much that throws light on its true extent, or on the causes. A new study remedies that by describing the parental relationship in terms of either “belonging” or “rejection”. Read more…
The Ruth Institute Launches Contest to Promote
Positive Views of Lifelong Marriage
SAN MARCOS, CA – The Ruth Institute, a project of the National Organization for Marriage Education Fund, announces its first annual Reel Love Challenge, a video contest for young adults, aged 18-30. The contest is open to all young adults, married or single, male or female, in college, out of college, or never been anywhere near a college. This contest is for everyone in the next generation to give their ideas about what sustains love over the course of a lifetime.
Young adults should submit 30 second to 3 minute videos on the Reel Love Challenge website answering either or both of these questions: What makes lifelong love possible? Why is it worth the effort? Contestants should enter soon and take advantage of the Early Bird Contest: $100 to the first 7 videos submitted before January 6, 2011. Read more…
I am not a Catholic. But I blog for one right here at Ruth Blog.
Having made that full disclosure, I call your attention to Theodore Dalrymple’s take on a bit of stupidity recently uttered by the likes of Christopher Hitchens and Ricky Dawkins:
As everyone knows, the Catholic Church has been embroiled in a scandal about the sexual abuse of children by priests and the religious. It is the Pope’s supposed complaisance towards and responsibility for child abuse that has led people like Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins to call for his arrest for crimes against humanity, under the doctrine of universal jurisdiction for such crimes. No one would say that the church has acted always with appropriate expedition in dealing with the problem.
But the problem is not only, or even mainly, that of the church, quite the contrary. It is universally accepted that step-fathers, for example, are many times more likely to commit both physical and sexual abuse against children than biological fathers; and since step-fatherhood has now become a very much more common relationship than it once was, thanks to the social reforms of the last fifty years or so, it is likely that the great majority of child abuse that occurs in this country is committed by them. Moreover, it is a matter of common knowledge that many mothers connive at such abuse because they wish to retain the favours of the step-fathers. Read more…
Are the headlines right? Do Americans really think marriage is becoming obsolete? And does this trend simply show how the concept of family is evolving to include many different arrangements?
According to the Time/Pew poll results released last week, 39 percent of Americans do indeed believe marriage is becoming obsolete, and this belief is more common among the less-educated. Among those with college degrees (who make up only about 30 percent of the population), only 27 percent agree that marriage is becoming obsolete. Among those with “some college,” 41 percent agree. Among those with a high-school degree or less, 45 percent agree. Read more…
Despite the ease with which divorce is contemplated and achieved today, research confirms that it is not good for the mental and physical health of children. A Canadian study suggests that children who experience a parental divorce are over twice as likely to suffer a stroke at some point in their lives. Read more…
Peep.
One of our critics suggested that NOM criticizes marriage abolition via redefinition but makes “not a peep” about divorce. This is, obviously, not true. It’s about to get still more laughably untrue with this post about the effects of divorce on happiness. Peep. Read more…
One consequence that is sure to follow from marriage redefinition is that courts will be yet more empowered to assign parental rights and responsibilities.
How wonderful that would be!
If we just allow biology to determine parental rights, what a disaster! In disputed cases, we would send wet, messy biological samples to labs! There, those samples will be analyzed by scientists. Scientists who probably never took a humanities course in their lives! How can we let people who don’t know the first thing about postmodern critical theory make decisions like that? How would social justice be served?
And that’s not just in same sex cases, either.
Andrew Stuttaford discusses an article in which this frightening idea is aired: Read more…
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