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by Carey Roberts |
November 30th, 2006
There is overwhelming research that shows marriage benefits both men and women in terms of their financial and emotional well-being. So what do we need to do to entice men back into the courtship ritual?
Am I the only one who is worried about the collapse of the traditional American family right before our very eyes?
Census Bureau bureaucrats are not in the habit of making apocalyptic pronouncements, but last year Mark Mather reported that the “dramatic decline” in the married population is “one of the biggest demographic stories of the past several decades.” Now, married couples now account for a minority – 49.7% to be exact – of all U.S. households.
The cause of this extraordinary demographic shift is two-fold. First, Americans are getting married only half as often as we used to. Second, since 1960, the share of divorced Americans rose from 2% to 10%.
African-American communities have been especially hard-hit. In 1960 four-fifths of all Black families had fathers and mothers at home. Three decades later, that number had plummeted to 38%.
As a result of the decline of marriage, illegitimacy is on the upswing. Just last week the National Center for Health Statistics announced that almost four in 10 babies were born out-of-wedlock in 2005.
All this is very bad news for kids, since children raised only by mothers are more likely to be poor, suffer from a host of behavioral and academic problems, and get in trouble with the law.
For sure, the great majority of young women say they plan to get married and have kids some day. So why has Cosmo replaced Bride magazine in the supermarket check-out lines?
Some experts cite the “greater economic independence of women,” as if a single mom scraping by on a welfare check is what female liberation is all about. Others argue that Americans are simply delaying the age of marriage, suggesting that women who are nervously watching their biological clocks just need to be a little more patient.
But there’s one fact that’s hard to dispute: our country faces an acute shortage of marriage-minded men.
Two years ago Barbara Whitehead and David Popenoe of Rutgers University did a national survey of single heterosexual men, ages 25-34. To everyone’s shock, they found 22% of the men declared no interest in finding their One and Only. That means two million American women will likely never see the inside of a wedding chapel.
Now, hooking-up is replacing that quaint courtship ritual that used to be known as “dating.” When Norval Glenn and Elizabeth Marquardt surveyed college senior women, they found that one-third of the women had been asked on fewer than two dates.
And this past August the New York Times ran a piece on “Facing Middle Age with No Degree, and No Wife,” which revealed the reluctance to wed runs especially deep in less educated men.
There is overwhelming research that shows marriage benefits both men and women in terms of their financial and emotional well-being. Plus, married folks live longer. So what do we need to do to entice men back into the courtship ritual?
The Nasty Nellies have been giving marriage a bum rap for years, so sadly there are no quick fixes. But this is what we need to do.
First, we need to dispose of the boogeyman of the patriarchal ogre lording over his beleaguered wife. If that image was ever true, it certainly doesn’t apply to any couple that I know of. In fact, the reverse now seems to be more commonplace: the harried, henpecked husband who’s hectored to keep his feet off the furniture during the ball game.
Second, we need to consider the effects of the Supreme Court’s 1992 Planned Parenthood v. Casey decision that banned fathers from participating in decisions to keep the unborn baby, thus leaving them biologically disenfranchised.
Third, we’ve got to do more to help boys excel academically. Trash the Title IX quotas, provide special help for boys who are lagging, and tell teachers to stop expecting boys to act like girls.
Fourth, we need to do a major overhaul of our nation’s domestic violence laws, which allow any woman to plunder her husband’s assets and steal his children by merely claiming “abuse.”
And fifth, reform of our divorce laws is long overdue, so fathers are encouraged to remain involved in their children’s lives as parents, not every-other-weekend visitors.
Sadly in low-income Black communities, marriage is essentially a dead institution. And there are groups in our country that now want to extend their agenda of family destruction to society at large.
The family is the very building block of a civilized and prosperous society. What will it take to bring back the exuberant peal of June wedding bells?
careyroberts@comcast.net
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Responses to "The Silence of the Wedding Bells"
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I'm a single white male who just turned 20 years old this past week, and I can tell you I have absolutely no desire to get married in the near (5-10 year) future. Why you ask? Well, I'll try to explain. To begin, I'm currently not dating or looking. I'm in school, living with my parents with no job and I don't want or need the added pressure, expense or responsibility of a girlfriend. If that sounds selfish, it probably is. I'm honest enough with myself to acknowledge that I'm focused primarily on myself and my future (read that academic and financial future) at this point in my life and I'm not interested in "sharing my life" with anybody. People who get married between my age and 25 usually do so because they are needy, they realize later on that they're both too selfish to sustain a relationship and they divorce. I'm saving myself the trouble and the money, in my estimation. Second, the liberated women of today are about as appealing to spend time with as Charles Manson. We've bred an entire culture, whole generations of both men and women (girls and boys, I guess, really) with an understanding that men are slime, men are stupid, men should shut up and do what they're told. Watch any popular family sitcom - dad is a blundering oaf who can't handle money, has no clue what is going on in the household and sits around watching sports instead of helping mom like he should be. Thankfully mom is a smart, sophisticated power-woman who can solve any problem by herself in 30 minutes or less. It'd be great to think that that was just TV, but young women and men have, to a large extent, bought the story and they play those roles. I have two friends who are engaged, and they play the cliche "yes dear" role as if it were scripted to them. Women have a chip on their shoulder, a machismo mentality. They want to be in control, they want to be the Alpha Male, and if you don't like it, you can just shut the hell up or get the hell out, you patriarchal, oppressive slimeball ! But even though you're supposed to act like a spineless weenie in the face of this cosmic female power, you're also supposed to be a heroic, princely character who rides in on a white horse to defend the princess's honor when convenient. And if you're a person for whom politics and ideology is an important compatibility factor, and you happen to be conservative, you may as well abandon all hope. A conservative woman under the age of 40 is the proverbial needle in the proverbial haystack. Today's modern woman is compassionate and caring with a deep desire to cure poverty via government agency and help impoverished African children while theirs (the one's they haven't exercised their God-granted right to choose upon) rot in daycare for 8 hours a day while they're pursuing their career (it is patriarchal and oppressive for women to stay at home and take care of children. If anything, the man should be doing that so that the woman can be free to pursue her career goals, lest he be branded a patriarchal ogre of the lost age). If I wanted to live with a man with breasts, I'd move to San Fransisco and fine me one. Then to top it all off, if I marry a woman who works (in other words, if I marry a woman who isn't Amish) I get to pay combined income taxes, and unless I get a prenuptial agreement (which liberated women look very favorably upon), half of my assets can pull a disappearing act at the whim of this woman of my dreams. And all of this is supposed to lower my blood pressure and improve my finances? Well, where do I sign? I know I'm focusing only on the negative, but from the perspective of a conservative young male, that's the case for not getting married, and it's strong enough to keep me away from the institution at my tender age.
Comment by Patrick Mulligan | November 30, 2006
Patrick - Excellent Post. For only being twenty you have one heck of a head on your shoulders. Now for another perspective- of a married 35 year old.
I have only been married for 2 years, and in my opinion (which I believe can be backed up by facts), this is the growing trend of Generation X, marrying later in life. Why-
1. College: the four years of drinking, promiscuity, over-eating, over-indulging, over-everything most kids attempt to complete as a right of passage for adulthood simply is not an environment that promotes love, faith , and sacrifice; which are the foundations of marriage.
2. Men are not as dumb as women think we are. If you count up all the sins against womanhood that men have been the cause of according to the feminist movement, men are fearful of the reprucussions. I put the anolgy right next to reparations for slavery. The single white male of today is responsible for every evil that has ever existed in the world, you can say we may be getting a little bitter and choose just to go it alone for awhile.
3. The lost morality of people. At one point in society (a mere 30 years ago), a man would marry a womean if she became pregnant as the right thing to do if nothing else. Now the expectation is 17 percent of income and get the heck out of the poor woman's way.
p.s- the last two years have been the best of my life.
Comment by Honker | November 30, 2006
Both the original article AND the first response are ridiculously pessimistic.
First, while 49.6% of households sounds low, let's look at a couple of factors. In every married household, there are 2 married people, or in a couple of rare cases, one person while the other is away on business trips or military service. This significantly raises the proportion of the population that is married. And of the remaining 50.4% of households…they include: widows and widowers (which, due to some warfare abroad is slightly higher than it would've been before), committed couples who are planning to get married or are in the preparation stage of marriage, single college kids with roommates, and those who are dating and actively looking for someone.
Second, the 22% of men who aren't interested in finding their one and only is not only not alarming, but there's nothing that remotely suggests it's anything new. There have always been men who had no interest in marriage, and who stayed single for life. That we now have a number…no biggie. The number of reasons that these guys have no interest in finding their one and only are displayed by our first respondant. That they are not interested now doesn't mean they never will be. Sometimes it's a low priority. Othertimes, people aren't looking but find their special someone. Quite frankly, it's not big on my priority list right now. Getting out of debt, doing well at school, and trying to get myself out there in conservative journals comes first. So I'd be one of those 22%, as apparently would Patrick. What are the odds that this attitude will prevail in either one of us throughout the next decade? Almost zero. Again, this is not a cause for concern.
And finally, in response to the claim that all college women are little tyrants, I don't see it. Of course there are foolsh women, especially at college. But there are also plenty of nice girls, tomgirls, there's a whole gambi of women out there. To think that every woman is a liberal feminist waiting to gut and castrate all men she comes in contact with is beyond absurd. Stay out of PETA, PRIZM, Amnesty International, and the like, but go to any of the normal, non-insane groups, and you'll realize there are plenty of sane, wonderful chicas on campus.
I do however agree with all of your suggestions, but I think the problem has been overstated in a continuation of the effort to make marriage seem irrelevant and unwanted. This is just some newscasters trying to say "LOOK, married schmucks, you're in the minority." In terms of scale, it's like the doctor preparing to amputate a leg just because you've got an ingrown toenail.
Comment by WolvenBear | November 30, 2006
Does Mr. Roberts consider the so-called “marriage penalty” on working couples a financial benefit? No pro-family government plan is complete unless it calls for the elimination of this monstrosity.
Comment by William Woodford | November 30, 2006