FAMILY LAW
SPRING 2010
PROFESSOR COOMBS
HANDOUT
.Table of Contents
DIVERGING FAMILY STRUCTURE...... 1
BREAKING VOWS...... 5
POSIK6
GILL
CONNOR...... 28
WAITE
Noah
ROSEN,
Rosecan
BATISTA
DOIG
WATON...... 50
G.F.C.
G.W.B.
KAZMIERAZAK.
EMBRY.
PEREZ
FLINT
DORTA-DUQUE
VON EIFF
MARCENARO VILLALTA
ABBOTT...... 96
PAYNE,
FINLEY
SAPORTA
PIMM
OVERBEY
POHLMANN
GREGORY
1
Diverging Family Structure
And “Rational” Behavior:
The Decline in Marriage as a Disorder of Choice
Amy L. Wax
UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA
II. The demographic dispersion in family structure
The past fifty years have seen dramatic changes in sexual behavior, patterns of reproduction, and family life. Fewer people are getting married, cohabitation is on the rise, divorce is commonplace, extra-marital sex is pervasive, and out-of-wedlock childbearing has grown steadily for decades.1 These general developments mask important trends well known to professional demographers: the composition of families has diverged dramatically by social class, income, education, and race. This segmentation is the product of three interrelated trends. First, although marriage rates have dropped across the board and people are marrying later, the retreat from marriage is far more pronounced among the less privileged and some minorities, especially blacks. As a general matter, "[t]he higher the level of education, the more likely people [are] to wed, and the less likely they [are] to live together."2 Between 1950 and 2008, according to one estimate, the percentage of 40-year old white female high school dropouts who were married declined by 13%, while the percentage of white female married colleges graduates increased by 16% – a reversal of historic trends.3 For white men, the percentage of married 40-year olds declined twice as fast among high school graduates as among the college educated.4
For blacks the retreat from marriage was more significant and affected every social class. During this period, rates of marriage for college educated black women under 40 decreased by 10 percent, but by 44 percent for high school dropouts; for men, the corresponding declines were 20% and 55%, respectively. Currently, only 65% of black male high school graduates are married by age 40, and marriage rates among black high school dropouts have fallen to half their previous rates over this period.
Likewise, patterns of divorce have shifted decisively. After an initial surge in divorce across the board starting in the 1960s, recent data reveals widening disparities in the risk of divorce by level of education, with divorce rates among college educated white women dropping steadily since 1980, and rising among less educated whites and blacks in all social groups.5 Although the divorce rate among whites in the early part of this decade stood at 47% overall, the rate was 60% for high school dropouts as compared to 36% among college graduates. Although blacks marry less often than other major American groups, they also divorce more frequently, with divorce rates increasing among all educational groups over the past 50 years. About 70% of black women's first marriages now end in divorce, with rates remaining high across the board.6
The drop in marriage rates has fueled a shift to single motherhood, with 40% of all births in 2007 to unmarried women. This figure masks significant sociodemographic disparities, with "the least educated women . . . six times as likely as the most educated women to have a baby outside of marriage."7 Those ratios are primarily the product of a rapid increase in single motherhood among the less-privileged. There has been little change since 1965 in the rate of extra-marital births for women with a college degree or more, with the percentage of children born to unmarried white college educated mothers remaining under 5%.8 The rise in single parent families among blacks has been even more dramatic, with lower marriage rates in this group generating an explosion in extra-marital births. The most recent census figures reveal that about 72% of black children are now born out of wedlock.9 Finally, family disintegration is proceeding apace among Hispanics, with extra-marital births now standing at 45% overall, and the trend towards single parent families accelerating faster than for other racial groups.10
These developments, which have been exhaustively documented by demographers and social scientists, are confirmed by recent data gleaned from the 2006-2007 Current Population Survey (CPS). These are analyzed and summarized in the attached figures.11 As these show, large differences in women's marital and reproductive behavior persist by race and class. White female college graduates are significantly more likely to be married than women from less educated groups.12 Correspondingly, the percentage of never married women among the least-educated (those with no more than 12 years of education) is far higher than for those with a bachelor's degree or more. (See figures a & b). For white women who had children in this period, the ratio of married to single mothers increases dramatically with more years of education. Although married mothers are a significant presence in every group, the contrasts are stark: about half of all white mothers without a high school degree are unmarried, whereas white mothers with a college degree almost always marry before having children. Even in this recent cohort, almost 95% of white mothers who completed college were married at the time of their child's birth. (See figures c & d).
For black women, out-of wedlock childbearing is more evenly distributed by level of education than among whites, with the ratio of single to married women higher for all levels of education (see figures e & f), and the proportion of women giving birth outside of marriage uniformly larger (see figures g & h). In contrast with white women, never-married women are in the majority regardless of level of education, with black high school graduates more likely to be married than women with more or less schooling, and only a small percentage of high school dropouts ever getting married. It is not surprising, then, that giving birth outside of marriage is the most common pattern for all black women except the most educated, with the percentage of extra-marital births well over 50% for women without a college degree. Even among black college graduates, almost a third were unmarried, in contrast with about 7% of similarly educated white mothers – a ratio of almost 5 to 1.
Hispanics likewise have relatively high rates of out of wedlock childbearing, with 45% of births to single mothers.13 Although most Hispanic mothers are currently married, over one-third of Hispanic mothers in 2006-2007 with 12 or fewer years of schooling were single. (See figures I & j). The combination of higher birth rates and lower college attendance rates for Hispanic women has fueled a rapid increase in the rate of extra-marital births in this group.14
The result of these developments is that well-off whites have largely maintained traditional patterns of family, while the less privileged and minorities live in less stable arrangements. (See figures k and l). Fatherless or blended families are relatively uncommon for women who have completed four years of college or more, and the children of white college educated parents are significantly more likely to spend their childhood living continuously with their married biological parents.15 In contrast, only a small percentage of black children are raised by married biological parents.16 As Jonathan Rauch has noted, marriage is now a significant marker as well as a powerful predictor of social inequality. "America's families and children may be splitting into two increasingly divergent and self-perpetuating streams — two social classes, in other words — with marriage as the dividing line." Some children will "grow up in a culture where marriage is taken for granted," whereas others will find themselves "in a culture where marriage is a pipe dream and deadbeat dads and impoverished kid's are the norm."17
Stanford Journal of Civil Rights & Civil Liberties
October, 2009
BREAKING VOWS: MARRIAGE PROMOTION, THE NEW PATRIARCHY, AND THE RETREAT FROM EGALITARIANISM
Kaaryn Gustafson
III. Marriage Promotion and the Infidelity to Egalitarianism
From the 1970s on, feminist reformers turned to law and social policy to transform women's roles in family and the labor market. These reformers sought gender equality not only in the workplace, but also in the home and within marriage. Women's participation in full-time employment dramatically increased Men's participation in home-based caretaking activities also increased, although significant gender gaps in home labor have persisted Divorce laws were liberalized in the second half of the twentieth century. No-fault divorce laws emerged in the 1970s. The changes in law, many feminists argued, gave both husbands and wives more autonomy in making decisions to leave unstable marriages.
Egalitarian political and social movements during the late-twentieth century, however, inspired and kindled several backlash anti-egalitarian movements at the turn of the twenty-first century, many of which have found a coalitional nexus in efforts to direct public opinion and personal practices, to influence government-sponsored programs, and to redefine rights.
In the early years of the twenty-first century, we experienced, perhaps without even noticing, a new ideology of anti-egalitarianism. Rather than following through on the War on Poverty's ideals of racial and economic equality and promoting the women's movement's ideals of gender equality in the home and in the labor market, more recent movements have focused on the narrowing of civil rights to individual rights.
Several cultural and political movements have focused on promoting marriage through social and/or policy and legal reforms. These movements are described below.
A. The New Patriarchy
Over the last two decades, patriarchy has made an ideological comeback. During the mid-1990s, psychologists, religious leaders, and scholars declared that there was a “masculinity crisis.” According to this view, the economic successes of the women's movement had displaced men from their roles as “good providers,” while men themselves were resistant to assuming the role of the “good family man.” While these cultural movements are not thoroughly unified, they all represent efforts to stabilize the now unstable notions of masculinity and empower men. While the factions are not in complete accord, the proponents of the various movements commonly tout the virtues of not only hierarchy generally, but patriarchy specifically. Not only have the men's movements influenced the debates about women's roles in family, work, and society, but they have also influenced social policies and government spending
One effort was the men's movement led by Robert Bly--a movement that included “Wildman Retreats,” where men connected with other men to mourn the loss of both the exuberance of boyhood and the wildness lost as they became civilized men. Another was marked by the Million Man March on October 17, 1995, when African American men gathered in Washington, D.C.; though that gathering seemed only loosely attached to a sustained movement for social change.
Other efforts have been more influential. Some of the men's movement groups have focused on men's roles as husbands and fathers and have encouraged men to get married and stay married. These efforts are largely informed by the political Right, espoused (an appropriate verb) by a number of fundamentalist Christian religious movements, and encouraged by a small group of social scientists. Policymakers and scholars cannot deny the influence of the Fatherhood Responsibility Movement, epitomized by groups such as Promise Keepers. For several years the Promise Keepers held rallies in football stadiums and invited men to make promises to eschew sexual promiscuity and intoxicating substances, and to commit themselves to their families. The rise of this Christianity-centered men's movements is recognized as a reaction to the women's movement and an effort by men to redefine their social and economic roles, and redefine their masculinity, in modern (or post-modern) society.
These movements tend to analyze men's relationships--with each other, with their children, with their partners, with the institutions of work, gender, religion--with little complexity and nuance. Instead, these men's movements tend to approach anxieties about the status of men in American society by fixating on men's roles as fathers and husbands within heterosexual marriage. For some men, this may be affirming; for others, it may be stifling. Rather than interrogating existing gender norms, examining how both men and women might build networks of emotional and material security in a changing world, and revisiting the possibilities of human interaction, the men's movements are, for the most part, retreating to something known--patriarchy--and presenting it as something new.
The new patriarchy and the marriage promotion movement it feeds are not necessarily transformative. In some ways, the movements are regressive. In fact, some of the advocates of reinforcing men's roles as husbands and fathers valorize gendered hierarchy in the home. For example, some social scientists and members of the religious Right have joined forces in arguing that families should be hierarchical groups, with fathers exercising ultimate authority in the home and women and children serving subordinate roles. The religious-based marriage promotion activists specifically advocate patriarchal family structures: families where there is a clear gendered division of wage work and household labor, and where men serve as authority figures in the family. The unequal distribution of labor, however, also means an unequal gender distribution of opportunities should the marriage end.
Sociologist Bradford Wilcox has been examining families and religion for the last several years. He finds that many men have been drawn into the teachings of conservative Christian churches, many of which teach that gender hierarchies within families reflect divine sovereignty Wilcox argues that religious teachings are what have prevented the movement for gender equality from moving into the home lives of married, heterosexual families in the United States.
Wilcox's study of married families and religious beliefs provides some interesting information about conservative Protestant marriages. Perhaps not surprisingly, nearly 60% of the conservative Protestants who responded to the General Social Survey in 1998 believed that “men should be breadwinners and women should be homemakers.” Men in conservative Protestant families spent less time doing household work than less conservative Protestant men Rates of domestic violence were also slightly higher among conservative Protestants, though the data suggests that the higher rates were within families that do not attend church regularly rather than families that actively attended church. It is also notable that paternal use of corporal punishment is more common in these families than in families from other religious backgrounds These facts suggest that gender inequalities are persistent within marriages involving conservative Protestant families--the very families that often associate themselves with pro-marriage movements such as Promise Keepers.
Wilcox's study, though, offers some interesting contradictions. For example, men in conservative Protestant marriages tend to spend more time with their children and are less likely to yell at their children than mainline Protestants. Also, women in religiously conservative marriages work outside the home at about the same rate as women who hold more liberal views. In addition, divorce rates are just as high in conservative Protestant marriages as in other families. Wilcox describes these trends in family--including the ideological commitment to both male authority and men's active and expressive parenting--as “soft patriarchy.” This form of patriarchy can explain these apparent discrepancies in a few ways. First, the ideology of separate spheres and the belief in lifelong marriage is stronger in rhetoric than in practice. Second, men are rarely the sole breadwinners. The economic realities of modern life mean that women often cannot opt out of the wage labor market. As a result, wives in these conservative families are not likely to be completely economically dependent on their husbands. (There is also research to suggest that women's well-being improves when they work outside the home.) Finally, Wilcox concludes that “patriarchy is moving in the direction of being more symbolic than practical.”
Patriarchy is also “soft” in these families because the men are engaging in “emotional work” with and for their families. Wilcox explains that the Christian marriage movement has promoted therapeutic techniques for married adults to address relationship problems and that churches make both literature and relationship counseling available to their members. In a nation where health care is often difficult to obtain or afford, a lot of counseling is provided through religious institutions to which families belong. The religion-based patriarchy movement may be transforming older notions of masculinity by providing space for men to get in touch with their feelings and work through family tensions.