Polemics

Most Americans think cohabitation leads to a stable marriage, but what does the data say?

1 Comment
Men who cohabitate are not certain that the relationship is permanent
Men who cohabitate are not certain that the relationship is permanent

If there’s one thing that ought to lead people to Christianity, it’s the proven ability of the Christian moral rules to guide believers away from the sins that destroy them. A lot of modern “Christians” have reduced Christianity to being about their feelings and their community, while allowing the culture to determine their goals and moral boundaries. But that won’t protect them from danger.

Cohabitation describes the situation of a couple moving into the same home and being sexually active, but without any legally-recognized commitment. It’s extremely popular among young people today, and even Christians.

Consider this article from The Federalist about cohabitation:

A new Pew Research Center study shows Americans both cohabitate (“live with an unmarried partner”) and find cohabitation acceptable more than before.

[…]More young adults have cohabited than have married. Pew’s analysis in the summer of 2019 of the National Survey of Family Growth found that, for the first time ever, the percentage of American adults aged 18-44 who have ever cohabited with a partner (59 percent) exceeded the percentage of those who have ever married (50 percent).

I thought this was very interesting, especially for the Christian parents and pastors who imagine that their lovely pious daughters all have a Christian worldview just because they sing in the church choir:

Just 14 percent hold a view consistent with a biblical sexual ethic, that cohabitation with an unmarried romantic partner outside of marriage is “never acceptable.”

Just to be clear, in my life I’ve met about 6 non-Christian men who cohabitated with women, and every single one of them cohabitated with a Christian-raised woman. That should tell you what young women are being told about relationships in their homes and churches about sex and marriage. “Do whatever you want”.

So what purpose does cohabitation serve?

A majority of Americans (69 percent) say that “it is acceptable for an unmarried couple to live together even if they don’t plan to get married.” They may assume that they can decrease their chances of a bad marriage and increase their chances of a good one by giving the relationship a cohabitation “test run.”

[…]A plurality of Americans believe cohabitating before marriage yields more successful unions. Nearly half of Americans (48 percent) believe that couples who live together before marriage “have a better chance of having a successful marriage.” This view is even more prevalent among young adults aged 18-29 (63 percent).

Another 38 percent of all Americans say cohabitation “doesn’t make much difference” on marital success. Only 13 percent of Americans believe cohabiting couples have “a worse chance” of having a successful marriage.

[…]Most Americans believe cohabitating couples raise children just as well as married couples. Pew also surveyed people’s opinions about cohabiting couples raising children, and 59 percent of Americans declared that cohabiting couples “can raise children just as well as married couples.” Again, the younger respondents were most likely to have a favorable view of cohabitation: among adults aged 18 to 49, 67 percent agreed cohabiting couples do just as well, while 32 percent said: “Married couples do a better job raising children.”

Yes, cohabitation is seen as a test run, and it’s supposed to make stable marriage more likely and not be harmful to children at all.

But why think that a test run should be part of getting married? After all, when I buy a parrot from the pet store, I don’t expect to later return that parrot. Why not? Because I am not buying the parrot to enhance MY life. I am buying the parrot to make a commitment to care for the parrot. Whether the parrot fulfills any of my needs is irrelevant to me. I want the bird in my house so that I can decide what it eats, what it drinks, and invest myself into making it happy, according to its birdish nature. This is because I think that parrots have value in and of themselves, and they deserve a certain quality of life. When I buy the parrot, I am guaranteeing a permanent commitment to the bird to provide for its needs, physical and emotional. And that commitment carries forward to the time (now) when the bird is elderly, and can’t even fly up to his cage or down to the floor. He calls for me, and I go over and pick him up and move him. That’s commitment.

Cohabitation, on the other hand, is the practice of saying to another human being: “I am going to try you out as an entertaining commodity in my home, but if you don’t fulfill my needs then I’m going to send you right back.” That’s not a commitment. That’s self indulgence. It’s defining a relationship as entertainment that is designed to meet my needs and make me happy. And that’s because the concept of commitment in relationships is not presented to young people at any time in their lives. Not from parents. Not in churches. Not in the secular left culture as a whole. Everything is a consumer good designed for the purpose of entertainment – including people. It was only the Christian worldview that had a view of people as creatures made by God for eternal life, so that marriage was about guarding the other person’s faith, and building them up to achieve all the things that God wanted them to achieve for his purposes.

But does cohabitation really work to create stable relationships? After all, anyone can find a partner when they’re young and pretty. The real question is whether that partner will stick around when you’re old and ugly and can’t be as “fun” as you used to be.

Here’s a recent (2018) study on cohabitation and stability:

A new study published in the Journal of Marriage and Family finds that the “premarital cohabitation effect” lives on, despite what you’ve likely heard. The premarital cohabitation effect is the finding that those who live together prior to marriage are more likely, not less, to struggle in marriage.

[…]Michael Rosenfeld and Katharina Roesler’s new findings suggest that there remains an increased risk for divorce for those living together prior to marriage, and that prior studies suggesting the effect has gone away had a bias toward short versus longer-term effects. They find that living together before marriage is associated with lower odds of divorce in the first year of marriage, but increases the odds of divorce in all other years tested, and this finding holds across decades of data.

Strategy advice to those who debate this issue: just be aware that Team Secular Leftist is using papers that have short-range samples, which don’t show the instability problem, because they deliberately cherry-pick recently married couples.

And what about children raised in cohabitating relationships?

While Americans are optimistic about the ability of cohabiting couples to raise children, a study published by the American College of Pediatricians in 2014 reported that children whose parents cohabit face a higher risk of: “premature birth, school failure, lower education, more poverty during childhood and lower incomes as adults, more incarceration and behavior problems, single parenthood, medical neglect and chronic health problems both medical and psychiatric, more substance, alcohol and tobacco abuse, and child abuse,” and that “a child conceived by a cohabiting woman is at 10 times higher risk of abortion compared to one conceived in marriage.”

I’m just going to be blunt here. The majority of young people are progressives, and they vote for candidates who believe in abortion through all nine months of pregnancy, and even after birth. Why? Because they don’t want to have their right to seek happiness impacted by the needs of other people. Progressives believe that children, if they exist at all, should enhance the lives of their adult owners. No one should be surprised that people who think that killing inconvenient children is moral are willing to inflict other bad outcomes on them by raising them in an unstable cohabitation environment.

News

American father loses parental rights after ex-wife announces their child is transgender

6 Comments

A while back, I blogged about a case in Canada, where a father was imprisoned for objecting to the forced transgendering of his child by the schools, hospitals, lawyers and judges. The people pushing for the transgendering were all feminists and LGBT activists. That case was quite disturbing, and I was wondering when this would come to America. Then I found an article by Abigail Shrier in City Journal.

The father, Ted, is a senior software engineer with Apple. He is comfortable living in San Francisco. His wife Christine is an executive at BlackRock, the firm that is always buying up people’s houses and then renting them out. They also champion ESG, which is a social credit system for businesses, that leads to socialism.

Things started to go wrong for Ted when his wife moved to the East coast with the two boys for family reasons:

Ted was then fully preoccupied with a grueling six-week project for Apple… On a Saturday in August 2019, shortly after returning from upstate New York with the boys, Christine walked into Ted’s home office and announced both that she was leaving and that their son Drew was transgender… Christine walked out, taking the kids to stay with her at a neighbor’s house.

Most women who go along with transgendering do so because they want their children to like them, and they want to be seen as compassionate and tolerant by their peers.

But the father did research on the risks to his child:

While trying to keep an open mind about Drew’s gender, Ted was adamant to the judge that he did not want Drew to begin medical transition. In the 312 days since he had last seen his boy, Ted had done a lot of research on medical transition and gender dysphoria. He begged the court to consider research that suggested puberty blockers could impair cognition and diminish bone density. He knew that Drew, if administered puberty blockers along with estrogen, would be at high risk of permanent infertility. He wasn’t even sure that his son had gender dysphoria. He wanted to see his son—and he wanted this bullet train to slow down.

The San Francisco judge awarded full custody of Drew to his wife:

On June 24, 2020… Judge Joni Hiramoto granted Christine sole legal custody of Drew on a temporary basis and approved the shared legal and physical custody arrangement of their younger son. She assured Ted that her order was not yet permanent. Judge Hiramoto had decided to order the appointment of a minor’s counsel to investigate how the boys were faring before making any permanent decisions. She already had the perfect person in mind. “I actually know of one who was previously appointed by the court, by a different judge, on a case involving children that were allegedly transgender,” she said. That minor’s counsel was attorney Daniel Harkins.

Harkins decided that Ted’s hesitance to drug therapy and sex change surgery was a sign that Ted was not a fit parent:

Based on the lengthy minor’s counsel report, Harkins gave Ted’s parenting a failing grade: “Father has not been accepting of [Drew’s] status as transgender. He has been quite clear that he does not accept that [Drew] is in fact transgender.”

[…]Harkins’s judgment was swift and ironclad: mom should retain full legal custody on a permanent basis and provide Ted updates, at her discretion, regarding matters that affect Drew’s health, education, and welfare. Drew would commence hormone therapy, as directed by USCF. Judge Hiramoto made all this official. The only right that Ted seems to have retained is the power to prevent Drew from undergoing “any gender identity related surgery” before he turns 18, absent agreement of both parties.

Without Ted’s knowledge or permission, Drew got a puberty-blocking implant, and Ted had to pay:

In October 2021, Ted was stunned by a $209,820.34 charge on his insurance statement. When he wrote to Christine, she confirmed that a puberty-blocking implant had been inserted in Drew’s arm months earlier and that Drew had begun a course of cross-sex hormones. The combination—if not soon stopped—would likely sterilize Drew. No one had asked Ted’s permission for the procedure or even informed Ted of what had been done.

This part is interesting, especially for men who are considering marriage and having children today.

Read it carefully:

Ted responded to this news with a flurry of e-mails to Christine’s attorney. He told Christine’s lawyer that the medical procedure was in violation of a court order, and Christine was risking being held in contempt of court. A day later, Christine’s lawyer filed a request for a Domestic Violence Restraining Order against Ted, alleging that he had spoken to his ex-wife “menacingly” at their younger son’s football games. Ted was served with the temporary restraining order; California law now required him to relinquish all his firearms within 24 hours or potentially face felony charges. He quickly complied.

Ted was informed about the long-term consequences of the decision, because he had looked at evidence. But how did his ex-wife respond to his evidence? By charging him with domestic violence. Not actual violence, but just words of disagreement which caused her to feel unhappy.

Ted made the decision to let people at his Silicon Valley company know what was happening in a company Slack channel. Slack is software used to allow employees to communicate with each other in a chat format. People in the channel were offended, and reported him to Human Resources:

Ted joined the Apple Slack channel devoted to “trans kid parenting” and shared his outrage and concern about his son’s medical transition and the risks involved. The other members chastised him and reported Ted to “Employee Relations,” known everywhere else as “HR.” Ted now worries for his job.

The details of Ted’s divorce were not revealed in the article, but if he is supposed to pay child support and alimony to his wife, and he lost his job, he probably would still have come up with the same amount of money, or go to prison for not paying his debts. That’s how the divorce courts work.

And here is how the story ended for with Harkins:

Within just a few months, the court would definitively end Ted’s parental relationship. He would have no right to see Drew, no right to talk to him, no right to demand that Drew attend therapy with him, and absolutely no right to stop a medical transition already planned by the Child and Adolescent Gender Center of UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital.

And now I want to say something about what this means to me as a Christian man, who is frequently urged to go to church and get married and have children by church-attending women and pastors.

The denial of male headship

The overriding of male leadership of the home that you saw from the judge and the attorney is universal… even among conservative evangelical Christian women who claim to be social conservatives. One evangelical Christian social conservative woman told me that “Masculinity means that men use their strength to protect and provide for women”. Another one told me that male headship does not exist in the Bible, and that men have no authority in marriages – only responsibilities. She also said that when women divorce, it is ALWAYS the fault of their husbands for not meeting the wife’s emotional needs.

Even many evangelical Christian socially conservative women don’t think that men have a distinct role to confront evil, protect their children, or lead their homes. They would side with the divorcing wife and the female judge against the mean, excluding, judgmental, father Ted. They would say that men’s role in marriage is to be compassionate, tolerant, and to make their wives happy.

Marriage and child-bearing exposes you to the state

To Christian men who are considering marriage and child-raising, you need to choose women who form their views on morality, policy, etc. through reason and evidence. If she isn’t interested in truth, then understand that her views will be formed by her feelings and peer-approval. You will not be able to change her mind by appealing to reason and evidence. Look for women who have the demonstrated ability to defend their theological and moral views against the secular left culture. For example, the issue of male headship in marriage. Otherwise, you can expect the treatment that Ted got at the hands of his ex-wife, the judge, etc. Divorce is a nightmare for men. The feminist state will overpower you. You will lose your freedom, your savings and your children. You will become a slave.

Read 2 Tim 2:4 and consider whether you want to use your freedom and finances to serve God, or whether you want to be controlled by the secular left state. As a Christian man, you already have a Boss. A woman’s role is to help you serve your Boss. Beware of women who want to take the place of your Boss. Beware of women who think that marriage is about you making them happy. Beware of women who scorn your moral leadership. Beware of women who demand that you show compassion, tolerance and approval for whatever is popular in the secular left culture.

News

Can relationships succeed independently of the efforts of the people involved?

Leave a comment

A few years ago, I blogged about the soul mate / fairy tale view of marriage, which I think is the dominant view of marriage among young people today – even among Christians. This view of marriage basically says that there is a person in the world out there who will match up so perfectly with each one of us that we will have to expend no effort and perform no actions and take responsibility for nothing in order for the relationship to work. it will just work on its own!

I’ve decided to link to this recent article by Matt Walsh which is on that same topic.

He writes:

The disease is the fanciful, unrealistic, fictionalized perceptions that both males and females harbor about marriage.

For example, think of the glamorization of the “mysterious” and “damaged” guy from the “wrong side of the tracks.” Hollywood makes him seem alluring and sexy, but forgets to mention that most of the time, in the real world, that dude probably has herpes, a coke habit, and a criminal record.

Still, that bit of propaganda is nothing compared to the underlying misconception that so many of us carry around consciously or subconsciously, because we’ve seen it on TV and in the movies, and read it in books a million times since childhood: namely, that there is just one person out there for us. Our soul mate. Our Mr. or Mrs. Right. The person we are “meant to be with.”

Matt thinks this view of relationships is not realistic:

I didn’t marry my wife because she’s The One, she’s The One because I married her. Until we were married, she was one, I was one, and we were both one of many. I didn’t marry The One, I married this one, and the two of us became one. I didn’t marry her because I was “meant to be with her,” I married her because that was my choice, and it was her choice, and the Sacrament of marriage is that choice. I married her because I love her — I chose to love her — and I chose to live the rest of my life in service to her. We were not following a script, we chose to write our own, and it’s a story that contains more love and happiness than any romantic fable ever conjured up by Hollywood.

Indeed, marriage is a decision, not the inevitable result of unseen forces outside of our control. When we got married, the pastor asked us if we had “come here freely.” If I had said, “well, not really, you see destiny drew us together,” that would have brought the evening to an abrupt and unpleasant end. Marriage has to be a free choice or it is not a marriage. That’s a beautiful thing, really.

God gave us Free Will. It is His greatest gift to us because without it, nothing is possible. Love is not possible without Will. If we cannot choose to love, then we cannot love. God did not program us like robots to be compatible with only one other machine. He created us as individuals, endowed with the incredible, unprecedented power to choose. And with that choice, we are to go out and find a partner, and make that partner our soul mate.

That’s what we do. We make our spouses into our soul mates by marrying them. We don’t simply recognize that they are soul mates and then just sort of symbolically consecrate that recognition through what would then be an effectively meaningless marriage sacrament. Instead, we find another unique, dynamic, wholly individualized human being, and we make the monumental, supernatural decision to bind ourselves to them for eternity.

It’s a bold and risky move, no matter how you look at it. It’s important to recognize this, not so that you can run away like a petrified little puppy and never tie the knot with anyone, but so that you can go into marriage knowing, at least to some extent, what you’re really doing. This person wasn’t made for you. It wasn’t “designed” to be. There will be some parts of your relationship that are incongruous and conflicting. It won’t all click together like a set of Legos, as you might expect if you think this coupling was fated in the stars.

It’s funny that people get divorced and often cite “irreconcilable differences.” Well what did they think was going to happen? Did they think every difference would be reconcilable? Did they think every bit of contention between them could be perfectly and permanently solved?

Finally, regarding his own marriage:

There were literally millions of things that either of us could have done. An innumerable multitude of possible outcomes, but this was our outcome because we chose it. Not because we were destined or predetermined, not because it was “meant to happen,” but because we chose it. That, to me, is much more romantic than getting pulled along by fate until the two of us inevitably collide and all that was written in our horoscopes passively comes to unavoidable fruition.

We are the protagonists of our love story, not the spectators.

I see this problem everywhere, even with Christian women who have been raised as Disney princesses. I was just told by one last week that she will marry when she meets “the right man” – the man who will require her to do nothing. This magical relationship will require no communication, no working through disagreements, no problem solving, no compromise, no effort, no self-sacrifice of any kind. it will just “work”, without any growing up by anyone. Two unemployed people with degrees in English can have a fine marriage, I suppose, traveling the world and skydiving every Tuesday.

I think that when problems arise between two people who are largely compatible, the right thing to do is to engage and solve the problems. Yes, work isn’t required in pop culture notions of romance, but those things don’t reflect the real world anyway. In the real world, actions to solve a problem count for more than words that avoid the problem. Engineering principles and self-sacrificial attitude are infinitely more useful in a relationship than all the pop culture descriptions of ideal men and ideal women and ideal relationships combined.

By the way, the best book on this problem is Dr. Laura’s “The Proper Care and Feeding of Husbands”, which clearly sets out how a woman’s choices influence her husband’s ability to perform well. The myth of the mind-reading “right man” is also debunked.