Tag Archives: Divorce

News

New study: marriage and church attendance help kids finish high school

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From the Marriage & Religion Research Institute. (I grabbed the PDF in case it disappears)

Excerpt:

The 1997 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth shows that students who now worship weekly and who grew up with two married parents are most likely to have received a high school degree.

Examining current religious attendance and structure of family of origin, 93 percent of students who grew up in intact married families and who attend weekly religious services have received a high school degree. Only 68 percent of students from all other family structures who never attend religious services received a high school degree. Eighty-nine percent of those who never worship but grew up in intact families and 81 percent of those who attend religious services weekly but come from other family structures received high school degrees.

Examining current religious attendance only, 87 percent of students who attend weekly religious services received a high school degree. In contrast, only 70 percent of those who never worship received a high school degree. Between these two extremes are those who attend at least monthly (81 percent) and those who attend less than monthly (76 percent).

Examining structure of family of origin, 91 percent of individuals who grew up with married biological parents received a high school degree. They are followed by those who grew up in a married stepfamily (80 percent), those who grew up with a single, divorced parent (76 percent), those who grew up in a cohabiting stepfamily (68 percent), those who grew up with an always-single parent (63 percent), and those who grew up in an intact cohabiting family (60 percent).

See the original article for footnotes, including links to other studies that confirm this finding.

The reason why this matters is because finishing high school is very important in order for people to avoid being poor.

Black economist Walter Williams explains.

Excerpt:

Avoiding long-term poverty is not rocket science. First, graduate from high school. Second, get married before you have children, and stay married. Third, work at any kind of job, even one that starts out paying the minimum wage. And, finally, avoid engaging in criminal behavior.

If you graduate from high school today with a B or C average, in most places in our country there’s a low-cost or financially assisted post-high-school education program available to increase your skills.

Most jobs start with wages higher than the minimum wage, which is currently $5.15. A man and his wife, even earning the minimum wage, would earn $21,000 annually. According to the Bureau of Census, in 2003, the poverty threshold for one person was $9,393, for a two-person household it was $12,015, and for a family of four it was $18,810. Taking a minimum-wage job is no great shakes, but it produces an income higher than the Bureau of Census’ poverty threshold. Plus, having a job in the first place increases one’s prospects for a better job.

Finishing high school is a major factor to prevent poverty, but research shows that the greatest preventer of child poverty (and child abuse) is marriage. Marriage stability also increases with regular church attendance. So, church attendance promotes both the completion of high school as well as the stability of marriage. Therefore, regular church attendance prevents poverty by helping two of the causes of poverty-avoidance.

Now… should we expect the secular left to promote church attendance based on this evidence? I think not.

One other point. The more marriage declines, the more children are raised without fathers, which makes it much less likely that children will accept the faith of their parents, leading to lower church attendance for the children of these fatherless homes. It’s a vicious cycle. The policies of the left that undermine marriage stability, like sex education, taxpayer-funded abortion, no-fault divorce and single motherhood welfare, actually cause the decline in church attendance that drives marriage rates and high school graduation rates down.

News

New study finds that unmarried women can harm their children by dating

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Marriage proponent Maggie Gallagher writing in Human Events.

Excerpt:

Marriage matters, but why?

For more than 20 years, social scientists have consistently found that children do better raised by their mothers and fathers united by marriage.

For most of that time policymakers have focused on the problem of “father absence,” and it is a real problem. Very few boys and girls have involved, loving, supportive fathers if the man that made them is not married to their mama.

But a new crop of research is challenging the idea that the main or only problem with the decline of marriage is the absence of fathers. An equally big or even bigger problem may be the churning romantic lives of unmarried and divorced mothers.

[…]It’s not just cohabitation that puts children at risk; it’s dating instability as well. Even after controlling for the parent’s marital status at birth, maternal age, race, immigrant status, parents’ education, poverty, gender and low birth weight, the researchers conclude:

“We found that both types of partnership instability (coresidential and dating) are associated with lower verbal ability, more externalizing problems and more social problems, and that coresidential instability is associated with attention problems. Our study is the first to provide strong empirical evidence that dating transitions are similar to marital and cohabiting transitions in terms of their association with children’s school readiness.”

The dating lives of mothers who are not married when their children are born are particularly tumultuous as the researchers note:

“Half of children born to unmarried parents experience three or more changes by age 5. … These findings suggest that children born into alternative family forms are at a significantly higher risk for both academic and behavioral problems at school entry.”

This is an issue that I have long been interested in having observed the effects of this problem firsthand with my friends whose parents were going through divorces. In fact, this situation is even touched on in Shakespeare’s play Hamlet, when Hamlet’s mother remarries very soon and throws Hamlet’s world into turmoil.

News

Where are all the good men and why aren’t men marrying?

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Captain Capitalism responded to an article on that topic, explaining why men aren’t giving women what they want.

Excerpt from his massive bullet-point list:

  • Did you hear of this “divorce fad” going around? Apparently men get to pay out the majority of the time be it alimony or child support.
  • Did you hear about this “divorce fad” going around? Apparently 65% of the time it’s women who initiate divorce.
  • Kids cost around $500,000 each to raise. given employment prospects we can’t afford that. Much rather buy a boat or frankly work all that much less.
  • Hey, you hear about this federal budget deficit and debt? Apparently we elected this guy “Barack Obama” and a bunch of democrats into office who are now mortgaging the future. This means our expenses in the future will be higher. Well, of course us “foolish, immature, pooping, farting boys” were too “immature” to vote for him like you wise women, but then again we’re too busy flinging poo at each other to ponder the future macro-economic ramifications of a collapsing dollar.
  • Hey, you hear about this social security medicare thing? Apparently enough “smart wise women” disproportionately kept voting for democrats to essentially have those immature 20 something men pay for the livelihood for these aging people. This added expense on our futures make’s it that much harder economically to commit to a wife and children.
  • Hey, you hear about this “welfare state” “medicaid” thing? Apparently enough “smart wise women” disproportionately over the years voted in enough democrats to essentially replace the role of fathers with government programs making fathers not only unnecessary, but an increasingly risky and unrewarding proposition, not to mention, making it easier for women to just up and leave their husbands, because well, “they needed to find themselves” and the government will take care of the kids while they go pursue their EPL fantasy.
  • Hey, did you hear about this “welfare state” thing? Apparently because we’ve now outsourced bringing up children to the government and have to create government jobs for all the “sociology majors” and “education majors”and “communications majors” our tax bill will go through the roof. Oh! Wait!!! No it doesn’t! I forgot! I’m a guy! I can live on very little, work a crappy job, work part time, live in a crappy apartment with my buds and STILL have enough disposable income to play video games and buy booze.

Remember that 77% of young, unmarried women voted for Obama (70% of unmarried women, but 77% of young unmarried women). And research shows that women consistently vote for bigger and bigger government, more wealth redistribution for the “poor”, and more intrusion into the family by the state. More government means higher taxes, and that makes it harder for men to have the authority in the home that comes from being the principle provider.

Not only that, but you have problems like no-fault divorce and biased domestic violence laws. Not to mention how feminism in the schools have left men earning fewer and fewer degrees, so that men lose the lion’s share of jobs during recessions. Women also lobbied Barack Obama to make sure that the stimulus was slanted towards preserving women’s jobs. I’ve merely touched on a few of the incentives against marriage. I could list even more factors, such as the easy availability of hook-up sex – why should men commit to the wife when they can get the sex for free?

What to make of all these facts? Well, men don’t like paying more in taxes and getting less liberty. It makes it harder for us to justify marriage rationally. We want to get married, but when we run the numbers, we see red, not black. Men can either afford marriage and family or government social programs, but we cannot afford both. We can either be husbands and fathers, or we can pay for welfare checks and social programs that replace men, for women who don’t want to have to deal with relating to a man.

I think the problem of men not wanting to marry is caused by women actually believing feminism – that men and women are identical. Once you believe that, there is no special role that men are supposed to play, and no way to distinguish a man who fills that role from one who doesn’t. According to feminism, which most young women believe, men aren’t meant to be providers, protectors or moral/spiritual leaders. Chastity is out. A boring, good-paying job is out. Morality is out. Sobriety is out. Apologetics and theology are out.

What’s in? Being good-looking, inoffensive, and entertaining. Women are not selecting responsible men because they think that the men can be changed to be responsible, through sex, or maybe through nagging, and eventually through the threat of losing all his money and custody of his children. Men aren’t stupid. They’ve noticed that responsibility and morality are out, and they’re acting like clowns because that’s what women prefer when getting drunk and hooking up, the Duke University student and her report on all the men she slept with – they were graded by physical attractiveness, sexual technique, popularity and athletic ability.

Many women today accept feminism, with its strong emphasis on selfishness and career advancement. Those women end up wasting their 20s on their careers and only pursue men who are attractive and entertaining. They aren’t looking to settle down with a protector/provider/moral leader/spiritual leader. They don’t want anyone to judge them or lead them. (Just try offering a woman a book on apologetics, and you’ll see what I mean). By the time they hit 35 and decide to get married, all the men are cautious. Men want to get married to women in their early 20s. What is the point of marrying a 35-year old woman who has lost her looks and her fertility? What is the value proposition for a man at that time? Plus, two decades of binge drinking, partying and hook-ups are not good preparations for creating a helpful, loving wife. Men are not stupid. We know the difference between a bitter, cynical harpy and chaste, loving princess.

Men do what women expect them to do in order to get sex. Just read the peer-reviewed studies on hooking up. If women don’t select men who can do specific things as husbands and fathers, then men won’t prepare themselves to do specific things. If they are already getting sex for playing the fool, then why should they do more than play the fool? If women obsessed over Paul Ryan and William Lane Craig, then that’s what men would aspire to. They don’t, and so men don’t. Mature men intimidate women with their strong opinions, moral judgments, and exclusive theological claims. Much better to have an immature man who is shallow and politically correct.

There is a way for women to get what they want from men, but they actually have to engage in conversations with men and find out what men want from women. And what men want from a marriage. What they want from children. What they want from government. What they want from schools. What they want from the workplace. What they want from the church. You can’t take away everything men need to marry and then expect them to marry. Nagging, belittling, withholding sex and controlling are not incentives for men to marry. Every time you break a man down, that is one less husband and father candidate. And eventually, the money flow dries up for the sperm-banks and social programs that substitute for men. What will women do then?

For myself, I am NOT on the same track as secular men (video games, alcohol, girlfriends and TV). I’m earning and saving to support Christian scholars and apologetics events in churches and universities. That’s my role right now until women destroy feminism with their own hands. Marriage is only good for me if it is good for God. And I need to be convinced that it will be good for God by whoever is applying for the job. I would like to see the reasons why I should marry in a woman’s moral decisions, her studying of difficult apologetic topics, and her political and economic conservatism. I would like to see that she understands men and marriage and understands how marriage and parenting can serve God, if done in an unselfish, moral and disciplined way. No pursuing happiness. No reducing moral obligations to “legalism”.

Making one woman feel happy with a diamond ring and an expensive wedding is not a good choice for me when I could spend a lot less money sponsoring a stack of debates over my lifetime on Christian topics, in front of hundreds of thousands of university students, or even in churches. There are ways that marriage could be a good deal for God, but I want to see the value proposition for marriage before I sign up. So far, most women seem to resent the idea that marriage should be have to be proven good for God. They resent being asked questions that test their authenticity and capabilities as Christians. But everything we do is for God, don’t I have a right to ask what is in it for him? I think a lot of Christian men are asking that question. What’s in it for God? In fact, Paul recommends the single life in 1 Cor 7 precisely because of the dampening effect that ineffective Christian women have on men. Most Christian women refuse to “woman up” and learn how to be a good wife and mother – so why should a man choose that?

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