Tag Archives: Marriage

News

New study finds that teens who lose their virginity are more likely to divorce

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The UK Daily Mail reports on a new study that shows that women who lose their virginity as teenagers are more likely to divorce. (H/T Dina, Mysterious C)

Excerpt:

Women who lost their virginity as young teenagers are more likely to divorce – especially if it was unwanted, according to new research.

The University of Iowa study shows that 31 per cent of women who had sex for the first time as teens divorced within five years, and 47 per cent within 10 years.

Among women who delayed sex until adulthood, 15 per cent divorced at five years, compared to 27 per cent at 10 years.

The findings were published in the April issue of the Journal of Marriage and Family.

Author Anthony Paik, associate professor of sociology in the university’s College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, examined the responses of 3,793 married and divorced women to the 2002 National Survey of Family Growth.

The study showed, however, that if a young woman made the choice to lose her virginity as a teenager, there was no direct link to a marital split later in life.

If the sexual act took place before the age of 16 women were shown more likely to divorce, even if it was wanted.

Thirty-one percent of women who lost their virginity during adolescence had premarital sex with multiple partners, compared to 24 per cent of those who waited.

Twenty-nine percent experienced premarital conceptions, versus 15 percent who waited.

One in four women who had sex as a teen had a baby before they were married, compared to only one in ten who waited until adulthood.

Only one per cent of women surveyed said they chose to have sex at age 13 or younger, compared to five per cent at age 14 or 15, and 10 per cent at age 16 or 17.

Forty two per cent reported that their first sexual intercourse before age 18 that was not completely wanted.

Fifty eight per cent of the group waited until age 18 or older to have sex. Of those, 22 per cent said it was unwanted, compared to 21 per cent who said it was wanted.

Researchers concluded sex itself may not increase the probability of divorce, while factors such as a higher number of sexual partners, pregnancy, or out-of-wedlock birth increased the risk for some.

This dovetails nicely with the previous studies that Mysterious C sent me that showed that, for men and women, the more sexual partners you have before marriage, the more unstable your marriage will be. See the related posts for more. If you’re still a virgin, like me, (and I’m in my mid-thirties now, and I’m saving my first kiss for my engagement), then there is nothing wrong with you. If you want a stable marriage, then you don’t have sex before you’re married. There are tons of virgins out there, and there is a huge difference in the quality of romantic relationships when both parties exercise self-control with physical touching.

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Commentary

Do children do better when raised by married fathers?

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A study from the Heritage Foundation explains the roles that married fathers play in raising children.

Excerpt:

As Father’s Day 2011 approaches, it’s a good time to reconsider the evidence as to why. Decades of academic research show that the father’s role in the family has a powerful and long-term impact on the future of the next generation.

In terms of economic well-being, children who grow up in homes where both parents are present are 82 percent less likely to live in poverty. Intact families tend to fare better in a wide range of economic measures; on average they have a higher net worth, higher income, more household assets, and greater savings.

A father’s role goes far beyond that of breadwinner, however, influencing his children’s well-being, behavior, and futures, which can have a profound impact on the health of civil society. Married fathers especially can have life-long influences on their children.

Youths growing up with both a mother and father in the home are less likely to engage in high-risk behavior. They are also less likely to become sexually active or to give birth in high school or outside of marriage. In addition, with both a mom and a dad in the home, adolescents are less likely to be involved with substance abuse such as drug and alcohol use and binge drinking.

The two-parent family, likewise, provides a safeguard against delinquent and anti-social behavior. On average, youths living with both parents are less likely to engage in violent behavior, commit a property crime, or be incarcerated.

In addition, teens with both moms and dads at home tend to fare better on a range of emotional and psychological outcomes: They tend to experience better emotional health and have higher levels of self-esteem and social competence, and they are less likely to experience psychological distress and anxiety.

Given all of the above, it is not surprising that children raised by married fathers tend to have greater academic achievement and higher levels of educational attainment, and they tend to score higher in math and reading in even the earliest grades.

And fathers’ impact goes beyond the effects of family structure. Dads’ involvement and relationship with their children is associated with greater psychological well-being, lower levels of behavioral problems, greater educational attainment, and a decrease in the likelihood of teen substance use.

I removed all the links to their sources, you have to click through to their site for the linked research.

Commentary

At last! Conservative woman blames liberal women for choosing bad men

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The greatest article ever posted on the American Thinker. (H/T Wes Widner)

Excerpt:

The saddest thing about the whole sordid, societally humiliating Weiner affair, is that it highlights once again the morally-schizoid nature of the modern liberal woman.  I’ve known many of these women — a great many — and it never ceases to confound me how smart women can be such ridiculous fools when it comes to choosing men.

On the one hand, liberal women believe wholeheartedly in the idiotic social construct they call, “sexual liberation.”  They pride themselves on losing their virginity, as though that “accomplishment” had ever been above the challenge-scale of an alley cat in heat.

These liberal women I’ve known, having given away their female V-card over and over and over again, all the while scour their host of intimate “trial runs” searching for that mythical, Hollywood-construct, Mr. Right.  This Mr. Right guy, for whom they are searching, is known to them up front as even more sexually-liberated than they, but this little factoid seems not to register in their liberated little heads as they frantically search for the equally mythical family home with the white picket fence, which somehow never gets hit by any of life’s roving tornadoes.  One can almost hear them say in unison, “And they all lived happily ever after.”

[…]Evidently, the liberal woman is capable of the most severe form of psychological denial known to humankind.  Certain that one of the men with whom she has copulated without strings will suddenly morph into a faithfully monogamous creature the minute she can convince one of them to say “I do” in front of a few witnesses, the liberal woman marches blindly down the aisle towards near-certain, adulterous doom.  Yet, no amount of honest reason can dissuade liberal women from this self-destructive, moral myopia.

What other term but “morally schizoid” could possibly describe this blatantly contradictory tendency among liberal women?

Having spent their youth casually throwing their own sexual morality to the winds of fairytale “liberation,” these liberal women still steadfastly cling to the faithfully monogamous ideal for that sometime-later moment when they actually do desire all the traditional things — the husband, the kids, the white picket fence — those pesky female-nature embedded longings, which coincidentally ensure the continuation of the human race.

But these liberal women somehow — in perfect schizoid manner — convince themselves that once married, they will be the gratuitous beneficiaries of the monogamous respect they still desire, but have never once demanded or deserved.  Intuitively, women know that strict monogamy provides the only real security for themselves and their own offspring.  Yet, they continue themselves to spurn the demands of monogamy until the very last minute, believing that fidelity springs forth naturally in miraculous profusion among all “married” humans.  Such pure poppycock can only be explained as a mental disorder.

[…]Any woman, who still believes that males are naturally monogamous and that a wedding ring is anything more than a little band of gold, needs to take a long, hard look at the sham of a marriage on display between Congressman Weiner and his wife of less than one full year.  Afterwards, if said woman still does not see the lifelong value in chastity before marriage and a pair of shredder scissors in the kitchen drawer afterwards, she needs to take a very large bucket of ice cold water and dump it upon her own head.

READ THE WHOLE THING. READ IT!!! NOW!!!!!

I recently provided the male perspective on liberal women’s poor decision-making about men and marriage.

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