The cost of family breakdown to the country has shot up by more than £10 billion a year since 2009, a study found yesterday.
It put the price to taxpayers in 2015 of clearing up the damage after families fail and looking after the separated adults and children at £47.31 billion.
The bill takes in the cost of benefits, health and social care, housing, policing and the courts, and the price of failure in the education system of children hurt by divorce or the parting of their parents.
The Relationships Foundation think tank said that the money spent because of family breakdown amounts to three per cent of the economic product of the country and each taxpayer will have to contribute £1,546.
The bill has risen from £37.03 billion since the costs were first calculated in 2009. Over the past year alone, despite falling costs for policing, vandalism and disciplinary problems in schools attributable to family breakdown, the cost has risen by £1.55 billion.
Now the further along we go into the sexual revolution, the more the rules slip off and the more the costs go up. But don’t try to tell any secular leftists that marriage is necessary to keep government small and tax bills low – they are so committed to “anything goes” moral relativism when it comes to sex that no restrictions of any kind are acceptable to them.
Divorce and out-of-wedlock childbearing cost U.S. taxpayers more than $112 billion a year, according to a study commissioned by four groups advocating more government action to bolster marriages.
Sponsors say the study is the first of its kind and hope it will prompt lawmakers to invest more money in programs aimed at strengthening marriages. Two experts not connected to the study said such programs are of dubious merit and suggested that other investments — notably job creation — would be more effective in aiding all types of needy families.
There have been previous attempts to calculate the cost of divorce in America. But the sponsors of the new study, being released Tuesday, said theirs is the first to gauge the broader cost of “family fragmentation” — both divorce and unwed childbearing.
The study was conducted by Georgia State University economist Ben Scafidi. His work was sponsored by four groups who consider themselves part of a nationwide “marriage movement” — the New York-based Institute for American Values, the Institute for Marriage and Public Policy, Families Northwest of Redmond, Wash., and the Georgia Family Council, an ally of the conservative ministry Focus on the Family.
[…]Scafidi’s calculations were based on the assumption that households headed by a single female have relatively high poverty rates, leading to higher spending on welfare, health care, criminal justice and education for those raised in the disadvantaged homes. The $112 billion estimate includes the cost of federal, state and local government programs, and lost tax revenue at all levels of government.
Now I blog a lot about the kinds of behaviors that cause marriages to break down – all of which are pushed by radical feminists. We have the sexual revolution, recreational premarital sex, no fault divorce, single mother welfare, and so on – all of these things make it easier for people to break up and harder for them to see relationships as self-sacrificial and permanent. Opening the door to gay marriage is just another redefinition that will remove marital norms like permanence and exclusivity. The more unstable marriage is, the more it creates expensive litigation. The more children grow up without fathers and/or mothers, the more we have to pay in social programs.
Time for students to learn all about drunken immoral pre-marital sex, thanks to your tax dollars.
Let’s start with the College Fix‘s report on the “Sex Ed Warrior Queen”.
They write:
When Megan Andelloux comes to campus, no object is off-limits for being sexualized – including a genitalia-themed puppet.
The clinical sexologist and former Planned Parenthood educator, known professionally as “Oh Megan” and a self-described “Sex Ed Warrior Queen,” encouraged Vanderbilt University students to masturbate in their seats even as she spoke during an interactive sex workshop Tuesday on campus.
“Want to Be Brilliant in Bed?” was sponsored by the Margaret Cuninggim Women’s Center…
She led a workshop at the University of Tennessee last year that described an orgasm as a “political act,” as The College Fix reported.
[…]Andelloux did not shy away from graphic details or descriptions of “sexual adventures” throughout her workshop.
[…]Andelloux also expertly demonstrated how to put on a condom using only her mouth, according to a female student who stayed for the entire two-hour workshop and asked not to be named.
Very important to note sexualizing college students is a “political act” sponsored by the Women’s Center. That’s where this stuff comes from – feminists. And this is what universities do with their money – it’s not to teach you how to program in Java or C#, it’s to make you accept the left’s view of sexuality and reproduction.
Next up, Campus Reform reports on feminism at the University of Utah.
They write:
Students at the University of Utah can win a year’s supply of birth control, including pills or a vasectomy, this week during Sex Week events.
According to a promotional flyer from the public school, U of U’s Center for Student Wellness, Students for Choice, and Planned Parenthood have partnered for this year’s Sex Week, beginning on Feb., 9.
“The more events you attend, the more chances you’ll have to win a year’s supply of the birth control or STD protection of your choice,” the flyer reads.
The flyer says that the birth control options are limited to those offered at Planned Parenthood, which are: 365 condoms, a 12-month supply of pills, one Intrauterine Device (IUD), four Depo-Provera shots, one diaphragm, one vasectomy, 12 NuvaRings, 52 OrthoEvra patches, one Implanon, or information on fertility awareness methods.
The events include a wellness fair, panel discussions, and a showing of “ Obvious Child,” a movie about a young woman who chooses to get an abortion.
[…]Katie Stiel, program manager at the Center for Student Wellness, told Fox 13 that Students for Choice “went through the appropriate channels” to get funding for the events and it would not be removed from campus or cancelled.
Note that Christian clubs and pro-life clubs are being de-funded and disbanded by student governments, but using taxpayer dollars for this is no problem!
Last one is actually not about Sex Week, it’s about feminism magazines.
True confession: Until last week, I had never read Cosmopolitan magazine. I actually kind of like fashion magazines, as a genre: The more spacey-eyed, pouting women in $900 shoes slumping against helicopters parked on yachts the better, I always say! That said, I tend to shrink from those fuschia-flecked, scantily clad drugstore nightmare sheets that screech at me to “HAVE BREAK THE BED SEX!!” when I’m just trying to mind my own business and buy some freaking dental floss.
The genius of Cosmo, of course—and, I suspect, the reason it’s the most popular magazine for young women in America—is that it will breezily suggest 131 creative ways to WEAR NOTHING BUT THAT FREAKING DENTAL FLOSS whilst you DRIVE YOUR MAN BATTY IN THE BOUDOIR. So with Sex Week arriving at the Federalist, I decided to enter uncharted territory. I would not only read Cosmo, but I would try its sex tips!
Here is her conversation with her husband:
ME: Here’s one. [Reads headline aloud.] “I Basted My Boyfriend Like a Sexy Thanksgiving Turkey!”
I did garner some male feedback on Cosmo’s rather earnest and disturbing sex-advice column.
HIM: Um.
ME: “I Took My Boyfriend to A Dominatrix!”
HIM: Nope. [Refrains from making eye contact, which is puzzling, as I did not just order a fancy and intimidating Cotes Du Rhone.]
ME: “I Covered Myself in Food For Sex!”
HIM: [Looking up.] Hey, didn’t George Constanza do that once on “Seinfeld”? No, no, wait. He just wanted to eat a sandwich while having sex.
[LONG PAUSE.]
HIM: This is getting ridiculous.
ME: “I Tried All the Sex From ‘Fifty Shades of Grey’ in 1 Weekend!”
HIM: Who are these people?
That article made me laugh.
If you’re a young marriage-minded man of some means, and your heart is set on marriage and children, you will have to search far and wide to find a young, unmarried woman who desires the same. Young unmarried women don’t want marriage and children, they want free birth control and kinky sex. It’s “adventurous” and marriage with children is “boring”.
[T]wo recently published studies call into question the validity of testing sexual chemistry early in dating.
My colleagues and I published the first study a few years ago in the American Psychological Association’s Journal of Family Psychology. This study involved a national sample of 2,035 married individuals who participated in the popular online couple assessment survey called “RELATE.” We found that the longer a dating couple waits to have sex, the better their relationship is after marriage. In fact, couples who wait until marriage to have sex report higher relationship satisfaction (20% higher), better communication patterns (12% better), less consideration of divorce (22% lower), and better sexual quality (15% better) than those who started having sex early in their dating (see Figure 2). For couples in between—those that became sexually involved later in their dating, but prior to marriage—the benefits were about half as strong.
[…]These patterns were statistically significant even when controlling for a variety of other variables such as respondents’ number of prior sexual partners, education levels, religiosity, and relationship length.
The second study, by Sharon Sassler and her colleagues at Cornell University, also found that rapid sexual involvement has adverse long-term implications for relationship quality. Using data from the Marital and Relationship Survey, which provides information on nearly 600 low- to moderate-income couples living with minor children, their study examined the tempo of sexual intimacy and subsequent relationship quality in a sample of married and cohabiting men and women. Their analyses also suggest that delaying sexual involvement is associated with higher relationship quality across several dimensions.
They discovered that the negative association between sexual timing and relationship quality is largely driven by a link between early sex and cohabitation. Specifically, sexual involvement early in a romantic relationship is associated with an increased likelihood of moving more quickly into living together, which in turn is associated with lower relationship quality. This finding supports Norval Glenn’s hypothesis that sexual involvement may lead to unhealthy emotional entanglements that make ending a bad relationship difficult. As Sassler and her colleagues concluded, “Adequate time is required for romantic relationships to develop in a healthy way. In contrast, relationships that move too quickly, without adequate discussion of the goals and long-term desires of each partner, may be insufficiently committed and therefore result in relationship distress, especially if one partner is more committed than the other” (p. 710).
The rest of the post talks about two reasons why this works: improved partner selection and prioritizing communication and commitment. Improved partner selection occurs because you haven’t committed too much too soon (sexually) and you have time to let things play out to see if you really fit with the other person. And if you take sex off the table, then you have to use other means in order to build emotional intimacy – communication, service, support, etc.
That’s two studies, and there’s a third. Dina sent me this article from the UK Daily Mail about a new study showing the importance of chastity for relationship quality and stability.
Excerpt:
New couples who jump into bed together on the first date do not last as long in relationships as those who wait a new study has revealed.
Using a sample of almost 11,000 unmarried people, Brigham Young University discovered a direct correlation between the length and strength of a partnership and the amount of time they took to have first have sex.
The study showed that those who waited to initiate sexual intimacy were found to have longer and more positive outcomes in their relationships while those who couldn’t help themselves reported that their dalliances struggled to last more than two years.
‘Results suggested that waiting to initiate sexual intimacy in unmarried relationships was generally associated with positive outcomes,’ said the report authored published by the U.S. National Library of Medicine National Institutes of Health.
‘This effect was strongly moderated by relationship length, with individuals who reported early sexual initiation reporting increasingly lower outcomes in relationships of longer than two years.’
The study examined four sexual-timing patterns: Having sex prior to dating, initiating sex on the first date or shortly after, having sex after a few weeks of dating, and sexual abstinence.
Each one of these fields yielded different results in relationship satisfaction, stability and communication in dating situations.
Here’s another recent study that shows that if a woman has more than her husband as a premarital sex partner, her risk of divorce increases.
His findings:
Using nationally representative data from the 1995 National Survey of Family Growth, I estimate the association between intimate premarital relationships (premarital sex and premarital cohabitation) and subsequent marital dissolution. I extend previous research by considering relationship histories pertaining to both premarital sex and premarital cohabitation. I find that premarital sex or premarital cohabitation that is limited to a woman’s husband is not associated with an elevated risk of marital disruption.However, women who have more than one intimate premarital relationship have an increased risk of marital dissolution.
Data from the 1988 US National Survey of Family Growth (NSFG) were utilized to assess the impact of premarital sexual activity on subsequent marital stability. Among white NSFG subjects first married in 1965-85, virgin brides were significantly less to have become separated or divorced (25%) than women who had not been virgins at marriage (35%).
[…]The lower risk of divorce on the part of white women with no premarital sexual experience persisted even after numerous intervening and background variables were controlled.
8 To the unmarried and the widows I say that it is good for them to stay single as I am.
9 But if they cannot exercise self-control, they should marry. For it is better to marry than to burn with passion.
The idea of “burning” here has to do with sexual desire. Here Paul tells all unmarried people that if they cannot control their sexual desires, they need to get married. Why? Because Paul assumes that one cannot fulfill this sexual desire outside of the marital bed. While Paul would love for them to remain single (1 Cor. 7:7), he believes that sex outside of marriage is a destructive sin and cannot be used as a gratifying release of our sexual passions.
If you’re going to talk to a young person about sex, it’s a good idea to use these studies to explain what you lose by having sex too early in the relationship. Although they may respond with anecdotes to refute studies, studies are important because they represent LOTS of data points, not just one or two cherry-picked cases. My view on all this is the Bible’s view – no sex before marriage. But when talking to people about this issue, I find it useful to have evidence ready in order to be convincing in every way possible.
WINTERY KNIGHT 