Ruth Institute Blog

by W. Bradford Wilcox

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…

by Carolyn Moynihan

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…

by Sheila Liaugminas

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?

by Carolyn Moynihan

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?

• Opposite sex married couples: men and women are so different, it is a wonder they ever stay married.
• Male unions: men are naturally less committed, and less monogamous, so their partnerships don’t endure.
• Female unions: women get so emotionally distraught over things. A union of two women, without any male counter-balancing their roller-coaster, is very unstable.

Hint: the answer is the same in all three countries! Read more…

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…

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…

by Carolyn Moynihan

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…

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…

by Carolyn Moynihan

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…

by Carolyn Moynihan

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…

Often good comes from the bad. Case in point:

By Mary Pilon

Sure, divorcing in tough economic times might involve the use of a Taser, but according to  fresh data released on Friday from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, the divorce rate is at its lowest point since the early 1970s. And infidelity has continued to decline. Read more…

By James Tillman

September 21, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) — According to Dr. Stephen Baskerville, professor of political science at Patrick Henry College and author of “Taken Into Custody: The War Against Fathers, Marriage, and the Family,” the government “is engaged in a direct assault on the family” that is causing its breakdown – which in turn allows government to reach into yet more areas of civil society under the pretext of solving the problems that the breakdown of the family creates. Read more…