Ruth Institute Blog

Washington Times Columnist Cheryl Wetzstein interviewed me for this article on the new book Red Families v. Blue Families: Legal Polarization and the Creation of Culture. Cheryl ably summarizes the basic premise of the book:

In blue states, families tend to be well-educated, have high-paying jobs, be tolerant of diversity and be politically liberal. They marry later in life, have children in wedlock and are dedicated co-parents….

Red-state families, however, seem to be stuck in a time warp — Read more…

The thought of kids having kids is really disturbing to me. I had my first child when I was 25, and I can say, it’s serious business. I can’t imagine doing it while trying to go to high school or even college. And who is really going to be raising these children anyhow? My guess is, the grandmothers. Let’s do a survey of how mothers of pregnant teens feel about teen pregnancy.

The picture a 13-year-old boy sitting next to his baby, which accompanied an article on this topic a while back, still burns in my memory. It was such a heart-wrenching sight. The thirteen-year-old  looked so tiny. Plus his face spoke volumes of “What have I gotten myself into?” This dad is still asking to have his pb and j cut into triangles and for rides to the library. I wouldn’t let a 13-year-old boy babysit my toddlers. Babies deserve more. Read more…

What else is buried in The Tomb of the Unknown Health Care Bill? Over at NRO, John Graham points out one of the implications for the family. Commenting on the fact that health insurers are now required to cover subscribers’ children until they turn 26:

The idea of a 26-year old “child” is curious in itself. However, there are a couple of limitations: The “child” has to be unmarried, and the coverage does not include the “child of a child receiving dependent coverage” [§ 2714(a)].

So, just to make it clear: The law will compel an employer to pay for health insurance for an employee’s unmarried, unemployed, 25-year old son or daughter; but doesn’t compel the 25-year old to pay for his or her own baby — the employee’s grandchild.

I guess that’s what they call “social justice” under Obamacare.

To marry or not to marry? That is the question. If you’re 25 and don’t have a job, but do have a baby, you can get health insurance under your parents’ plan, but your baby can’t. The baby isn’t anybody’s responsibility, evidently. If you get married, and still don’t have a job, you can’t be covered under your parents’ plan, and neither can your baby.
The incentives to out of wedlock childbearing creep up into the middle class….

Who are we kidding, people? Can anyone really argue that the trend toward cohabiting vs. marrying and single parenthood vs. natural two-parent biological parenthood is a good thing? What are those crazy Brits thinking? (And I’m half British, by the way.) Just like it’s a no brainer that food straight from the ground is far better for you than processed, hormone-injected, insecticide soaked food from the supermarket, marriage should be left the way nature intended. Do we really need to debate this?

Carolyn Moynihan

A report about families from Britain says forget about marriage; another report from the United States says save it. They can’t both be right.

One of the remarkable things about research on the family is that studies can start from the same data and reach quite contradictory conclusions. This makes family research a bit like climate change studies, with probably some doctoring of the evidence here and there. On the other hand, while climate data is invisible to most of us and the weather we experience is thoroughly confusing, what is happening to families is out there on the street for all to see. Read more…

So, basically Britain has given up on the traditional family. The Family and Parenting Institute’s new chief executive might as well resign and disband the institute then.

Carolyn Moynihan

Golly, it’s hard to keep up with the Brits and their reports on families and parenting. You would think that government and academics actually understood something about those subjects, but more often than not they add to the confusion.

The latest “major report” to pronounce on the fate of the family advises the government not to try to preserve the “traditional family” as it crumbles under the impact of marital breakdown and workplace pressures. The Family and Parenting Institute says the family as we knew it is no longer “the norm” and government efforts to rescue it are futile; members of the extended family — grandparents, uncles and aunts, even siblings and cousins — can make up for absent parents, says the FPI. Read more…

by Helen M. Alvaré, J.D., Senior Fellow in Law and Academic Advisory Board Member of the Ruth Institute.

This is the last in my series of columns on out of wedlock births.  By now you know that 4 in 10 U.S. births are nonmarital; this rises to 7 in 10 for African-American Women, and  5 in 10 for Hispanic women, our fastest growing minority population. Women in their 20s and 30s account for the lion’s share of the trend. [1]  Reactions to our predicament are suitably alarmist, but still terribly predictable. The National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy will push for both more abstinence, and higher rates of contraceptive usage among the unmarried. They will call for less complacency and more parental involvement.[2]  Planned Parenthood took the occasion to bash abstinence programs while abstinence programs linked the rise to the fact that 68% of public schools employ contraceptive instruction, which has a 4 to 1 funding advantage over abstinence in the United States. [3] Read more…

by Helen M. Alvaré, J.D., Senior Fellow in Law

“Jon and Kate plus Eight.” “Kate plus Eight.” “Jon and the Other Kate.” If there was ever a time we wanted to shield our eyes from supermarket tabloids, this must be it.  Yet, while their story is topping the pop culture charts, it seems fitting to look more closely at it in order to acknowledge not only the emotional wreckage involved, but also the light it sheds on the travesty we call our divorce laws. Read more…

by Helen M. Alvaré, J.D., Senior Fellow in Law, Culture of Life Foundation

This is the last in my series of columns on out of wedlock births.  By now you know that 4 in 10 U.S. births are nonmarital; this rises to 7 in 10 for African-American Women, and  5 in 10 for Hispanic women, our fastest growing minority population. Women in their 20s and 30s account for the lion’s share of the trend. [1]  Reactions to our predicament are suitably alarmist, but still terribly predictable. The National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy will push for both more abstinence, and higher rates of contraceptive usage among the unmarried. They will call for less complacency and more parental involvement.[2]  Planned Parenthood took the occasion to bash abstinence programs while abstinence programs linked the rise to the fact that 68% of public schools employ contraceptive instruction, which has a 4 to 1 funding advantage over abstinence in the United States. [3] Read more…

Carolyn Moynihan Mercatornet.com

British family researchers seem to be working overtime to keep up with trends that have won the UK the label, Breakdown Britain. A new report from the relationship support organisation One Plus One reviews the evidence on the effects of marital or partnership breakdown on the wellbeing of both adults and children. It finds a definite negative impact and argues that better interventions to support parents could prevent some family ruptures. Read more…

Jennifer Roback Morse, Ph.D.
IN 2007, THE MEDIA HAD A FEEDING FRENZY around a voice-mail message actor Alec Baldwin left his daughter. He screamed at her for not answering her phone. The public was shocked: many assumed that he was yet another self-absorbed celebrity, with neither control over himself nor regard for his daughter. But in fact, Baldwin had been caught in the web of the totalitarian nightmare known as the American family court system. Read more…

by Helen Alvaré, J.D.,
Senior Fellow in Law
and Ruth Institute Advisory Board Member

Several columns ago, I addressed the worry that our country’s nearly 40% out of wedlock birthrate might represent some sort of tipping point for marriage, for children’s well-being and for our society’s shared future. I reviewed in-depth interviews with single moms which revealed nearly bottomless wells of mistrust regarding the men who fathered their children. The men’s behavior did not seem to merit better. Read more…

By by Helen Alvaré, J.D.
Senior Fellow in Law and Ruth Institute Advisory Board Member

In my last column, I concluded that while public and private actors have taken many different and sometimes logical approaches to reducing out of wedlock pregnancies, they have also missed a crucial aspect of the problem: the difficulties men and women are experiencing in their relationships with one another, as evidenced by their unwillingness to commit to one another, even after a baby is conceived. Read more…

by Jennifer Roback Morse

Government indifference to responsible fatherhood is what made the tragedy of OctoMom possible.  What are we to make of the case of Nadya Suleman, the California woman who gave birth to octuplets through IVF? The case has inspired lots of internet chatter and water cooler talk. Read more…

by BRADFORD WILCOX

For millions of children across the U.S., this Sunday will not be a cause for celebration. Because of dramatic increases in divorce and nonmarital childbearing, about 28% of our nation’s children — more than 20 million kids — now live in a household without their father, up from 10 million kids (14%) in 1970, according to a recent Census Bureau report. Moreover, because most of these boys and girls see their dads infrequently (once a month or less), Father’s Day will offer cold comfort to many of these children. Read more…

Helen Alvaré, J.D., Senior Fellow in Law

Occasionally, there is a flurry of media attention to the issue of “responsible fatherhood.”  Promise Keepers will gather thousands of men at a rally or Bill Cosby will call on Black men to get more involved. But there’s much more to the modern “fatherhood” issue than these discrete news items.  Read more…

with Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse

Nancy Pelosi made Stupid History by her claim that “family planning” funds will stimulate the economy. Her argument, if you can dignify it with that term, is that reducing unwanted pregnancies will reduce the burden on the taxpayers. But she doesn’t ask herself whether more contraception is really the answer to “unwanted” pregnancies. Read more…