Review of Mitch Pearlstein’s From Family Collapse to America’s Decline: The Educational, Economic, and Social Costs of Family Fragmentation (ISI, Aug 2011) ISBN: 978- 1607093626. Paperback, 165 pages; $24.95. Read more…
Celebrity therapist and “life coach” Dr. Keith Ablow just jumped on the “let’s get the government out of the marriage business” bandwagon. I have been writing against the “privatizing marriage” mantra, going all the way back to 2005. (See also here and here.) I do not wish to rehearse those arguments here. But Dr. Ablow’s contribution to this unfortunate genre is doubly regrettable. He is, first of all, deeply mistaken about the government’s role in discouraging people from marriage. As a psychiatrist, he has no particular expertise in policy analysis, and I am sorry to say, it shows. My second regret about his foray into policy analysis is that he forsakes the area of his greatest expertise, namely, helping people live happier lives. His proposal to “get the government out of the marriage business” substitutes an easy exit strategy for the genuine work of building up marriage and family relationships. Read more…
“I hope this will be a great success. It is certainly needed!”
~Bishop Cordileone 12/4/11~
Divorce Prevention 101:
Healing Hurts & Finding Love that Lasts!
Several local parishes have decided it’s time to do something about the divorce rate within our Catholic community. And Bishop Cordileone agrees. In fact, you’ll see his full endorsement in the attached release… Read more…
By William J. Doherty and Leah Ward Sears
Divorce, a major contributor to unhappiness and social disorder, is happening much more than it ought to — much more than even the spouses involved even want — according to a new report from the Institute for American Values.
Some 40 per cent of US couples already well into the divorce process say that one or both of them are interested in the possibility of reconciliation. Read more…
 |
By Stan Gould,�Editor Read more…
Hi all, I’m so excited to have Brad Wilcox with us today. As you’ve probably heard and read, the rate of American couples who live together without being married are rising dramatically — it grew 13 percent in 2010 alone. And while it may be a simpler, more convenient arragement for many couples, that doesn’t mean it’s without complexity — especially when the couples break up. Read more…
This is really, really distressing. Let the downward spiral of marriage begin!
MEXICO CITY — Mexico City lawmakers want to help newlyweds avoid the hassle of divorce by giving them an easy exit strategy: temporary marriage licenses. Read more…
By Cheryl Wetzstein – The Washington Times
Now that government belt-tightening has become a national obsession, divorce-reform advocates are making the argument that they can be part of the solution. Read more…
Sad. The disease is spreading.
Australia is known as the Lucky Country but a report on child welfare published this week suggests that its luck is running out. Like Britain and the USA, it has an increasing number of fragile families where children are at risk of abuse and neglect, thanks to marriage breakdown, single parenthood and cohabiting relationships which have a high risk of breaking up. Read more…
by Zac Alstin
“We just drifted apart” is the most common reason for contemporary divorce. Is that a good enough reason?
According to news reports, extramarital affairs are no longer the most common reason for divorce in the United Kingdom. Infidelity has been narrowly overtaken by couples “growing apart” or “falling out of love”. Apparently this statistical shift is due to the lingering economic uncertainty: couples who would normally have divorced over an extramarital affair chose instead to delay action in hopes of a better financial resolution. Read more…
With cohabitation replacing marriage, divorce is receding as a cause of family breakdown, but it remains a serious problem. An article in the Washington Times cites US Census Bureau survey figures indicating that there were well over a million divorces in American in 2008 (1,087,920) giving a divorce rate of 8.2 per 1000 population.
The material cost is huge. Read more…
The Chinese may be catching up with the western divorce trend but, hopefully, they are not yet so cynical about marriage as to go for pre-nuptial break-up agreements — and now, insurance against contested prenups. Read more…
Some see it as a sign of greater freedom in China and therefore progress, but not all Chinese are happy that the divorce rate is burgeoning, reports China Daily.
Shu Xin, director of the China Marriage and Family Affairs Consulting and Research Center, a nongovernmental organization, warns about the negative effects on children and the “public security” issues arising from enmity between ex-spouses and even “extremes in revenge”. Read more…
Having survived their own family splits, Generation X parents are determined to keep their marriages together. It doesn’t always work.
Every generation has its life-defining moments. If you want to find out what it was for a member of the Greatest Generation, you ask: “Where were you on D-Day?” For baby boomers, the questions are: “Where were you when Kennedy was shot?” or “What were you doing when Nixon resigned?” Read more…
Do not be deceived by the recent marital misadventures of politicians, actors and athletes. In the nation’s affluent and educated precincts — from the Upper East Side to Bethesda, Md., to Southlake, Texas — the future of marriage is bright. After succumbing temporarily to the marital tumult of the 1970s, college-educated Americans have been getting their marital act together in recent years. For this demographic, divorce is down, infidelity is down, nonmarital childbearing still remains an exotic activity (only 2 percent of children born to white, college-educated women today are born outside of marriage) and the vast majority of children are fortunate to grow up with both their mother and their father. Read more…
You might think from the millions of words spilled on the subject lately that the worst thing to have happened to British society in the past 50 years is the News of the World phone hacking scandal. It’s not. A more serious contender is divorce, according to a senior family court judge. Read more…
The subject is finally getting mainstreamed. It took a whole generation suffering the ravages of family strife for it to make its way into the public conversation. Probably because the children who suffered most are now adults, in the media and the arts. Read more…
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…
Loading ...
