In this issue:
IPPF and Parents’ Rights
News in Brief
Top Ten Myths of Divorce
Teenage Pregnancy Strategies
Review of The ‘M’ Word
IPPF and Parents’ Rights
The International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF) has always been a slippery organisation to pin down. To all intents and purposes it functions as part of the United Nations and has developed to a high degree the art of wrapping up in officialese concepts which most people would find repugnant – hoping that we won’t notice. Even the most outrageous statements – like the call for family planning associations to break the law, and the demand for abortion for children of 10 upwards which appeared in The Human Right to Family Planning (1984) – are excused on the grounds that they appeared in a ‘consultative’ document. However the mask slipped recently when IPPF’s European Network sent out a rallying call to its members, alerting them to the dangers posed by ‘right-wing groups’ who oppose ‘children’s rights’ and make the outrageous demand that parents should know what is happening to their children!
‘Right-wing governments and groups are attempting to insert language in the outcome document [of the September UN Special Session on Children] that would strengthen parental authority and control to the detriment of established children’s rights’, the document claims. Nothing could illustrate more neatly the peculiar concept of ‘children’s rights’ which sees parents as the enemy, to be subverted. ‘Once again, the right wing is promoting the concept of the “ideal” family as the nuclear family based on a man and a woman united by marriage and their children – despite the fact that the nuclear family is not the norm in many parts of the world, and the fact that many families are neither safe, particularly for young girls, nor models of gender equality’.
This statement betrays a gross ignorance of the research which shows the family based on marriage to be the safest environment for children. The peculiar view that the nuclear family is not the norm makes one wish that these people would venture outside the plush hotels in which they hold their international gatherings to meet some real people. Even in countries like our own, where family breakdown has gone very far indeed, the majority of households are headed by a married couple.
Copies of our factsheet The Facts Behind IPPF are still available. Please send two first class stamps.
News in Brief
The Crown Prosecution Service has banned its 6,000 employees from using the word ‘spouse’. In future, those working at the organisation responsible for bringing all criminal prosecutions will have to refer to ‘partners’ and ‘friends’ whenever they invite a colleague to a social event. Using the term ‘spouse’ assumes someone is married and leaves homosexuals feeling excluded, claimed a rulebook designed to eliminate discrimination. Steve Doughty, The Daily Mail, 20 July 2001
Despite having a conviction for possessing child pornography, former Bay City Roller Derek Longmuir has been permitted to continue working as a nurse. The Professional Conduct Committee of the United Kingdom Central Council for Nursing Midwifery and Health Visiting ruled that while Mr Longmuir’s actions were “regarded as unprofessional conduct” they did not warrant the removal of his name from the nursing register. After five years, any reference to his caution will be removed from the nursing register altogether (The Glasgow Herald, 9 October 2001). While such people are treated with clemency, the authorities continue to deal ruthlessly with teachers who are alleged to have laid so much as a finger on a defiant child, and parents increasingly live in fear of state intrusion for the use of mild physical correction. Are we really reaching the point where those with a sexual interest in children are treated with more tolerance than loving parents and caring teachers?
An Australian archbishop was attacked this week for suggesting that divorcing couples could be taxed to cover the social costs of family breakup. Archbishop George Pell of Sydney said divorcees could be fined for harming society in the same way as large corporations are fined for damaging the environment. Luke Coppen, The Catholic Herald, 31 August 2001
Words of Wisdom from the National Marriage Project
The National Marriage Project -an American nonpartisan, nonsectarian and interdisciplinary institute located at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey -seeks to inform and influence the public debate on marriage. The project reports on trends in marriage, divorce, cohabitation, teen attitudes, fragile families and child centredness using reliable social science data.
The following fact sheet, reproduced here with permission, uses the latest social science findings to illuminate pitfalls in some of the most widely accepted misinformation about divorce. Whilst the relevant facts and figures are drawn from American data, the situation is quite similar here in the UK. For further information and to download free copies of other publications, please visit The National Marriage Project website at http://marriage.rutgers.edu
Top Ten Myths of Divorce
David Popenoe
1. Half of all marriages end in divorce.
That may have been the case several decades ago, but the divorce rate has been dropping since the early 1980s. If today’s divorce rate continues unchanged into the future, the chances that a marriage contracted this year will end in divorce before one partner dies has been estimated to be between 40 and 45 percent. [1]
2. Because people learn from their bad experiences, second marriages tend to be more successful than first marriages.
Although many people who divorce have successful subsequent marriages, the divorce rate of remarriages is in fact higher than that of first marriages. [2]
3. Living together before marriage is a good way to reduce the chances of eventually divorcing.
Many studies have found that those who live together before marriage have a considerably higher chance of eventually divorcing. The reasons for this are not well understood. In part, the type of people who are willing to cohabit may also be those who are more willing to divorce. There is some evidence that the act of cohabitation itself generates attitudes in people that are more conducive to divorce, for example the attitude that relationships are temporary and easily can be ended. [3 ]
4. Divorce may cause problems for many of the children who are affected by it, but by and large these problems are not long lasting and the children recover relatively quickly.
Divorce increases the risk of interpersonal problems in children. There is evidence, both from small qualitative studies and from large-scale, long-term empirical studies, that many of these problems are long lasting. In fact, they may even become worse in adulthood. [4]
5. Having a child together will help a couple to improve their marital satisfaction and prevent a divorce.
Many studies have shown that the most stressful time in a marriage is after the first child is born. Couples who have a child together have a slightly decreased risk of divorce compared to couples without children, but the decreased risk is far less than it used to be when parents with marital problems were more likely to stay together ‘for the sake of the children.’ [5]
6. Following divorce, the woman’s standard of living plummets by seventy-three percent while that of the man’s improves by forty-two percent.
This dramatic inequity, one of the most widely publicized statistics from the social sciences, was later found to be based on a faulty calculation. A reanalysis of the data determined that the woman’s loss was twenty seven percent while the man’s gain was ten percent. Irrespective of the magnitude of the differences, the gender gap is real and seems not to have narrowed much in recent decades. [6]
7. When parents don’t get along, children are better off if their parents divorce than if they stay together.
A recent large-scale, long-term study suggests otherwise. While it found that parents’ marital unhappiness and discord have a broad negative impact on virtually every dimension of their children’s well-being, so does the fact of going through a divorce. In examining the negative impacts on children more closely, the study discovered that it was only the children in very high conflict homes who benefited from the conflict removal that divorce may bring. In lower-conflict marriages that end in divorce-and the study found that perhaps as many as two thirds of the divorces were of this type-the situation of the children was made much worse following a divorce. Based on the findings of this study, therefore, except in the minority of high-conflict marriages it is better for the children if their parents stay together and work out their problems than if they divorce. [7]
8. Because they are more cautious in entering marital relationships and also have a strong determination to avoid the possibility of divorce, children who grow up in a home broken by divorce tend to have as much success in their own marriages as those from intact homes.
Marriages of the children of divorce actually have a much higher rate of divorce than the marriages of children from intact families. A major reason for this, according to a recent study, is that children learn about marital commitment or permanence by observing their parents. In the children of divorce, the sense of commitment to a lifelong marriage has been undermined. [8]
9. Following divorce, the children involved are better off in stepfamilies than in single-parent families.
The evidence suggests that stepfamilies are no improvement over single-parent families, even though typically income levels are higher and there is a father figure in the home. Stepfamilies tend to have their own set of problems, including interpersonal conflicts with new parent figures and a very high risk of family breakup. [9]
10. Being very unhappy at certain points in a marriage is a good sign that the marriage will eventually end in divorce.
All marriages have their ups and downs. Recent research using a large national sample found that eighty-six percent of people who were unhappily married in the late 1980s, and stayed with the marriage, indicated when interviewed five years later that they were happier. Indeed, three-fifths of the formerly unhappily married couples rated their marriages as either ‘very happy’ or ‘quite happy.’ [10]
Additional Myths
It is usually men who initiate divorce proceedings.
Two-thirds of all divorces are initiated by women. One recent study found that many of the reasons for this have to do with the nature of our divorce laws. For example, in most U.S. states women have a good chance of receiving custody of their children. Because women more strongly want to keep their children with them, in states where there is a presumption of shared custody with the husband the percentage of women who initiate divorces is much lower.11 Also, the higher rate of women initiators is probably due to the fact that men are more likely to be ‘badly behaved.’ Husbands, for example, are more likely than wives to have problems with drinking, drug abuse, and infidelity.
Sources
[1] Joshua R. Goldstein, ‘The Leveling of Divorce in the United States’ Demography 36 (1999): 409-414; Arthur J. Norton and Louisa F. Miller, Marriage, Divorce and Remarriage in the 1990s (Washington, DC: U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1992) Robert Schoen and Nicola Standish, ‘The Retrenchment of Marriage: Results from the Marital Status Life Tables for the United States, 1995’ Unpublished manuscript, Department of Sociology, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA.
[2] Joshua R. Goldstein, ‘The Leveling of Divorce in the United States’ Demography 36 (1999): 409-414; Andrew Cherlin, Marriage, Divorce, Remarriage (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992)
[3] Alfred DeMaris and K. Vaninadha Rao, ‘Premartial Cohabitation and Marital Instability in the United States: A Reassessment’ Journal of Marriage and the Family 54 (1992): 178-190; Pamela J. Smock, ‘Cohabitation in the United States’ Annual Review of Sociology 26 (2000)
[4] Judith Wallerstein, Julia M. Lewis and Sandra Blakeslee, The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce (New York: Hyperion, 2000); Andrew J. Cherlin, P. Lindsay Chase-Landsdale, and Christine McRae, ‘Effects of Parental Divorce on Mental Health Throughout the Life Course’ American Sociological Review 63 (1998): 239-249; Paul R. Amato and Alan Booth, A Generation at Risk (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997)
[5] Tim B. Heaton, ‘Marital Stability Throughout the Child-rearing Years’ Demography 27 (1990): 55-63; Linda Waite and Lee A. Lillard, ‘Children and Marital Disruption’ American Journal of Sociology 96 (1991): 930-953; Carolyn Pape Cowan and Philip A. Cowan, When Partners Become Parents: The Big Life Change for Couples (New York: Basic Books, 1992)
[6] Leonore J. Weitzman, ‘The Economics of Divorce: Social and Economic Consequences of Property, Alimony, and Child Support Awards’ UCLA Law Review 28 (August, 1981): 1251; Richard R. Peterson, ‘A Re-Evaluation of the Economic Consequences of Divorce’ American Sociological Review 61 (June, 1996): 528-536; Pamela J. Smock, ‘The Economic Costs of Marital Disruption for Young Women over the Past Two Decades’ Demography 30 (August, 1993): 353-371
[7] Paul R. Amato and Alan Booth, A Generation at Risk (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997)
[8] Paul R. Amato, ‘What Children Learn From Divorce’ Population Today, (Washington, DC: Population Reference Bureau, January 2001); Nicholas H. Wolfinger, ‘Beyond the Intergenerational Transmission of Divorce’ Journal of Family Issues 21-8 (2000): 1061-1086
[9] Sara McLanahan and Gary Sandefur, Growing Up With a Single Parent (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994); Alan Booth and Judy Dunn (eds.), Stepfamilies: Who Benefits? Who Does Not? (Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 1994)
[10] Unpublished research by Linda J. Waite, cited in Linda J. Waite and Maggie Gallagher, The Case for Marriage (New York: Doubleday, 2000): 148
[11] Margaret F. Brinig and Douglas A. Allen, ‘”These Boots Are Made For Walking”: Why Most Divorce Filers Are Women’ American Law and Economics Review 2-1 (2000): 126-169
Teenage Pregnancy Strategies
The government has set up a Teenage Pregnancy Unit (TPU) to deal with this increasingly worrying social problem, and the Unit has asked all local authorities to produce strategies for their areas. These strategies have two aims: firstly, to reduce the rate of teenage pregnancy and, secondly, to deal with the problems surrounding the ‘social exclusion’ of teenage mothers. We are currently reviewing a sample of these strategies with a view to producing a report. The first aim of the strategies has received little attention: reducing pregnancy rates is simply a matter of more sex education and more contraception for teenagers – the failed recipe of the last thirty years. However a great deal of creative thought has gone into the second aim, leading to calls for more housing, special education and training, childcare etc. Most of these strategies are uncosted, and represent little more than wish-lists, but there is obvious scope here for local authority empire building, as we saw at the end of the 1980s with AIDS. Furthermore, there seems to be no awareness that the second aim could cancel out the first, by making teenage pregnancy a more desirable lifestyle choice. We need help to read through these strategies. If you can spare the time to report on one or two, please let us know.
Review of The ‘M’ Word
Is marriage outdated? Doomed to failure? Something you do last? Not according to Care for Education, who have produced a new video to help educate 14-16 year olds about marriage. The ‘M’ Word is a six-part video addressing some popular myths about marriage. It is accompanied by an extensive teacher’s guide designed to build upon and develop key themes including: Why marriage?, Finding your true self, Growing love in marriage, Communication and relationship skills for life and marriage, and Commitment in marriage.
The ‘M’ Word video and teacher’s guide package is just one resource in a forthcoming series designed to help teachers talk to children about marriage. Other resources include The Early Years, a set of story books aimed at two- to four-year-olds; Growing Up Together, a CD Rom and video for five- to ten-year-olds; and What is Marriage?, a set of educational games for nine- to thirteen-year-olds.
Marriage is now a required part of the Personal, Social and Health Education (PSHE) curriculum. The Government’s Sex and Relationship Education Guidance requires that schools teach pupils ‘about the nature and importance of marriage for family life and bringing up children.’ To accomplish this task, schools need good quality materials which can be used in many different environments-both faith-based and secular. The emphasis must be on building for the future relationships of young people without stigmatising those who do not come from families with two married parents. In a practical sense, teachers need materials that are flexible and fit into their school’s sex education policy as well as the time allotted for marriage in PSHE. Perhaps most importantly, teachers need materials that are attractive to children as well as informative and inspiring. These are demanding criteria, and The ‘M’ Word fits the bill on all counts.