Sunday, April 26, 2009
News, In this Issue...

I do, I will, I must

Americans like marriage so much, they do it over and over again.

Nick Vangopoulos

By Diane Loupe

Laura and Rob Petrie epitomize the ideal American marriage. The contented husband works to support the family while the happy wife stays home, prepares the meals and takes care of the children. Seeking this ideal, nine out of 10 Americans will get married at some point in life.

Trouble is, Laura and Rob are fictional, and so is their ideal marriage. They were characters on “The Dick Van Dyke Show,” a prime-time staple of wholesome chic in the 1960s. The show’s namesake portrayed Rob, and Mary Tyler Moore built Laura’s character around the frustrated exclamation, “Oh, Rob!” Today, half of all U.S. marriages end in divorce. The Petrie’s kid, Richie, would likely end up with a stepfather.

The problem isn’t that we don’t like marriage. Americans like marriage so much, they do it over and over again.

“Americans get married and get divorced more than any other country,” says Johns Hopkins University sociologist Andrew Cherlin, author of the new book, “The Marriage-Go-Round.” Marriage is a kind of merit badge of personal happiness, he says. That’s why gay couples are fighting so hard for the right to marry.

“Americans believe in two contradictory ideals,” he says. We are more marriage-oriented than most other Western countries, but we also believe in individualism, or “the importance of living a personally fulfilling life that allows us to grow and develop as individuals,” as Cherlin puts it. The result is the marriage-go-round.

“We evaluate our marriages according to how personally fulfilling we find them,” he writes. “And if we find them lacking, we are more likely to end them. Then, because it’s so important to be partnered, we move in with someone else, and the cycle starts all over again.”

To slow down the cycle a bit, Georgia offers a $35 discount on the price of a marriage license to couples who take at least six hours of premarital counseling before filing for a license. Some county judges and churches won't conduct civil ceremonies if the couple has not received six hours of premarital counseling. 

Although Georgia’s divorce rate is lower than many other states’, in 2000, for every two Georgia couples walking down the aisle, another couple was getting divorced, according to statistics cited by Ted Futris, assistant professor in the University of Georgia’s College of Family & Consumer Sciences. (It’s difficult to compare Georgia’s current divorce rate with the rest of the country, because the legislature in 1996 passed a law that stopped requiring counties to report statistics on divorce and marriage, according to state officials.)

“Lifetime marriage has always been a social creation that needed enforcement from family, religion and law,” Cherlin writes.

“The fact is, you don’t have to get married,” he says. “Half a century ago, you did. You couldn’t be a respectable adult if you weren’t married.” Whereas marriage was once the first step toward being an adult, he explains, now it comes last, after college, buying a house, and, sometimes, having children.

While the marital carousel may be good for divorce lawyers, it’s not great for children. An American child living with married parents is more likely to see his parents split up than a Swedish child living with unmarried parents. One in five American children will have seen two parental partnerships, and one in 12 will have had three changes in parental partnership before they reach their 15th birthday.

“American children see more parents and parents’ partnerships than do children elsewhere,” says Cherlin. “I think most kids can cope, but it does raise the risk of problems. It raises the risk of your kid having behavior problems or not doing as well in school.”

Some children have difficulty adjusting to the changing parental figures in their homes. “They attach, detach and attach again, and may decide not to attach to people subsequently living with them,” says Cherlin. “If you’ve already broken up with your child’s parent, marrying somebody else doesn’t, on average, make life better for your kids.”

 “DIVORCE GETS A BAD NAME”

Other researchers don’t think divorce is as bad for children as most people think.

“I don’t think divorce is inherently bad for children,” says Georgia State sociologist Wendy Simonds. “Culturally, we reluctantly accept divorce. Divorce gets a bad name for kids. Everyone assumes it’s harmful for children.”

What really harms children, she says, are parents who disappear and poverty, often the result of divorce.
“I don’t think children are harmed by divorce as much as they are by the consequences: poverty and a lack of caring parents,” says Simonds. “A high divorce rate with a high repeat marriage rate show that people seriously value happy relationships, not that they are being frivolous.”
Even Cherlin doesn’t advocate single parents swearing off dating for the good of his or her children, though care should be taken in dating.

“A single parent ought to be cautious about bringing partners into the home,” he advises. “Bringing partners into the home and ending partnerships quickly makes it difficult for kids.”

UGA’s Futris thinks more people would stay married if they knew more about what they were getting into.

“I don’t think we should be promoting marriage for marriage’s sake,” he says. Rather, couples should learn what it takes to achieve a stable, satisfying, nonviolent marriage. “Healthy marriages are what help kids.”

Futris also points out that the children of couples who stayed married, despite high levels of conflict, did worse, according to some research, than did children whose parents separated.
Not every kid in a step family is doomed, says Futris. He advocates parenting education after a divorce to help parents understand the impact of the split on their children and how to develop co-parenting strategies that work best for their families.

“It’s a matter of balancing co-parenting style with the nature of the relationship,” says Futris. “It’s not a simple fix, or one-model-fits-all.” SP

For more information on Georgia’s programs to support marriage:
UGA Family Sciences
www.gamarriages.org
The National Stepfamily Resource Center
www.stepfamilies.info