WHAT is the sound of an awkward silence on Facebook? If you have to ask, then you probably don't have friends like James Gower and Ashley Andrews, high school sweethearts from Spring, Tex., who are both 22 and engaged to be married this May.

Mr. Gower, a master of the passive-aggressive status update, lobbed this one in January: "How is it my birthday is only one day, but my woman's last a whole damn week?"

Ms. Andrews, seemingly not one to watch a ball go by, took a full swing with this comment: "GET OVER IT!!! UGH!!!!!!"

Mr. Gower replied by calling his fiancée a name that can't be printed here, until the exchange became the social networking equivalent of shattered china at a dinner party.

Eventually, Skyler Hurt, 22, a friend and a bridesmaid, intervened: "Hey, you guys know we can still see this right ...?" ...

But some marriage experts say that taking your disagreements to Facebook, even jokingly, is nothing to LOL about. Instead, the urge to make private disagreements public represents a gradual but significant degradation of our regard for marriage.

"From the Victorian era through the 1950s, marriage was viewed as the source of all safety from a predatory world," said Michael Vincent Miller, a psychologist and the author of the book "Intimate Terrorism: The Crisis of Love in an Age of Disillusion." Striving for that ideal, he said, meant keeping your disagreements private, "to keep a public face of harmony."

But as the counterculture of the 1960s and 1970s ushered in a new openness among married couples, "that ideal of marriage began to pass away," he said. Soon, the idea that lovers should present a united front at all times came to seem quaint or even naïve, particularly to a generation raised on Oprah and Jerry Springer.

Labels: culture, Marriage

posted by Imapp Staff at 1:15 PM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

The extended family is making something of a comeback, thanks to delayed marriage, immigration, and recession-induced job losses and foreclosures that have forced people to double-up under one roof, an analysis of census figures has found.

“The Waltons are back,” said Paul Taylor, executive vice president of the Pew Research Center, which conducted the analysis.

Multigenerational families, which accounted for 25 percent of the population in 1940 but only 12 percent by 1980, inched up to 16 percent in 2008, according to the analysis.

The analysis also found that the proportion of people 65 and older who live alone, which had been rising steeply for nearly a century — from 6 percent in 1900 to 29 percent in 1990 — declined slightly, to 27 percent.

At the same time, the share of older people living in multigenerational families, which plummeted to 17 percent in 1980 from 57 percent in 1900, rose to 20 percent. ...

The shift appears to have been accelerated by the recession. In 2008, at the beginning of the recession and the latest year for which figures are available, 2.6 million more Americans lived in a multigenerational household than did the year before.

Labels: culture, economics, extended family, grandparents, race

posted by Eve at 12:08 AM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

They weren't looking to make a political statement or to be pioneers of gender liberation. Each just wanted a familiar, decent roommate rather than a stranger after their original roommates left to study abroad.

That's how Pitzer College sophomores Kayla Eland, female, and Lindon Pronto, male, began sharing a room this semester on Holden Hall's second floor. They are not a couple and neither is gay. They are just compatible roommates in a new, sometimes controversial, dormitory option known as gender-neutral housing that is gaining support at some colleges in California and across the nation. ...

Although the number of participants remains small, gender-neutral housing has gained attention as the final step in the integration of student housing.

In the 1970s, many U.S. colleges moved from having only single-sex dormitories to providing coed residence halls, with male and female students typically housed on alternating floors or wings. Then came coed hallways and bathrooms, further shocking traditionalists. Now, some colleges allow undergraduates of opposite sexes to share a room.

Pitzer, which began its program in the fall of 2008, is among about 50 U.S. schools with the housing choice, according to Jeffrey Chang, who co-founded the National Student Genderblind Campaign in 2006 to encourage gender-mixed rooms. Participating schools include UC Riverside, UC Berkeley, Stanford, Cornell, Dartmouth, Sarah Lawrence, Haverford, Wesleyan and the University of Michigan.

College officials say the movement began mainly as a way to accommodate gay, bisexual and transgender students who may feel more comfortable living with a member of the opposite sex. Most schools say they discourage couples from participating, citing emotional and logistical problems of breakups. Officials say most heterosexuals in the programs are platonic friends. ...

Parents cannot veto such a decision at Harvey Mudd, but Gerbick asks students to discuss it with their families ahead of time. He also asks applicants whether they are romantically involved; all of this year's participants said no. But if they were, the school could not forbid them from rooming together.

"If we are going into a post-gender world, then the regulation of private behavior is just not practical," he said.

Labels: culture, gay/straight differences, gender, heteronormativity, heterosexual couples, universities

posted by Eve at 4:07 PM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

A fertility clinic is raffling a human egg in London to promote its new “baby profiling” service, which circumvents British IVF (in vitro fertilisation) laws.

The winner will be able to pick the egg donor by racial background, upbringing and education. Payment for profit is illegal in Britain, but the £13,000 of free IVF treatment will be provided in America.

The raffle, to be held on Wednesday, is to promote a tie-up between the Bridge Centre, a fertility clinic in London, and the Genetics and IVF Institute (GIVF) in Fairfax, Virginia. ...

In Britain, donors have to agree to be identified and contacted by any resulting offspring when they reach the age of 18.

Payments are restricted to a maximum fee of £250 for expenses, and as a result donors are in extremely short supply.

One of the first Britons to use the US service is Celia, a 38-year-old married businesswoman from the Midlands, who received two donor eggs in America at Christmas. Last week the prospective mother underwent a three-month scan that confirmed the twin pregnancy, which has cost her a total of £13,000, is progressing normally.

Her donor was a 27-year-old, whose eggs have produced four babies and three pregnancies, including Celia’s twins.

“I wanted someone who looked a bit like me as an adult, but the main consideration was the quality of her eggs,” said Celia. “This woman produces 30 at a time, and they were split between me and another woman, otherwise the cost of donation would have been double the £9,000 we actually paid.”

“I don’t want anyone to know these babies are not mine. Not my family or any of my friends. We don’t intend to tell the children, either.”

Labels: Artificial Reproductive Technology, culture, donor conception, United Kingdom, Virginia

posted by Eve at 4:00 PM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

Norrie May-Welby, 48, was born a man but had a sex change operation in 1990, at the age of 28.

After becoming unhappy as a woman, May-Welby decided to become a “neuter”. The 48-year-old is now officially recognised as a person of no specific gender. ...

The UK’s Gender Trust welcomed the case. A spokesman said: “Many people like the idea of being genderless.”

Labels: culture, gender, transgender issues, United Kingdom

posted by Eve at 3:57 PM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

I’ve been blogging long enough and have witnessed enough scandals that it’s pretty hard to take my breath away anymore.

Well, “Sex Positive Week” at (Jesuit-founded, Catholic) Georgetown University did.

Folks, looking at what activities this week included, it’s pretty clear we’re not even on planet earth anymore. I can’t write about what they talked about, because I don’t want Google to blacklist my blog as pornographic.

Last year (yes, they’ve done it before) coincided with the first week of Lent. ...

Catholic News Agency notes that similar events are taking place at (Jesuit) Loyala University of Chicago and (Jesuit) Seattle University.

Labels: Catholic Church, culture, premarital sex, religion, sex, universities

posted by Eve at 3:34 PM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

...American Catholics are seeking annulments — the church's declaration that a marriage was invalid — in large numbers. Whether, like Erickson, they're hoping it helps them heal after a divorce, or allows them to get remarried in the church, annulments are in demand, and the church in the United States is granting them.

The St. Louis Archdiocese granted nine out of 10 requests for an annulment last year. American Catholics make up about 6 percent of the global church, but according to the most recent Vatican statistics available, the church in the United States granted 60 percent of the world's annulments in 2006.

Pope Benedict XVI has indicated that he believes that's too many, and some Vatican watchers say the church may decrease the number of annulments granted to divorced Catholics.

In a speech in January to the Roman Rota, the Vatican's highest appellate court, Pope Benedict XVI reiterated the church's teaching on invalidating Catholic marriages, emphasizing the need to balance "justice" and "charity." He also cautioned church tribunals against allowing the growing civil divorce rate to dictate the number of annulments — called decrees of nullity, in church parlance — they grant.

Even after a Catholic couple gets a divorce, the church still considers the marriage valid. An annulment is a tribunal's declaration that a marriage was never valid to begin with, that there was a hidden impediment or "defect of consent" that kept the marriage from being legitimate.

Labels: annulments, Catholic Church, culture, divorce, religion

posted by Eve at 2:44 PM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

On the first day same-sex weddings were held in the District, Dustin Rhodes could barely stomach the outpouring of matrimonial enthusiasm: the joyful couples exchanging vows in front of family, friends and colleagues, with all the flowers, cake and flash photography that come with the show.

"It's so personally revolting to me," said Rhodes, 36, who has been in a committed relationship with a man for 13 years.

"I'd rather see marriage abolished than see me married," he said as he ate lunch in a Columbia Heights cafe with his partner, Bray Creech. "The materialism of it, what I perceive as kind of a narcissism. Like all the money and decoration. . . . I have no interest in having a performance, which to me is what weddings are."

Creech, 33, got a faraway look on his face. "I would do it," he said, with a little smile of resignation that comes with years of losing the same argument. "You get all those gifts; that would be so nice. I have no problem with the performance part of it."

Many same-sex couples who rushed to make history this week by marrying in the District cited reasons such as spousal benefits, inheritance and hospital visitation rights, and greater societal legitimacy. But for some couples, the option to legally marry has raised a thorny issue -- to wed or not -- that had long remained safely in the realm of the hypothetical. For those who can't agree on whether to tie the knot, the new horizons have stirred up old conflicts. ...

As with heterosexual couples, the reasons for one same-sex partner balking are myriad. Some simply aren't ready to commit; others refuse to consider marrying until the right is extended nationwide and includes federal benefits. Some say that although they committed to their partners long ago in their hearts, they oppose the idea of marriage as an institution -- especially because it is one that so often collapses. ...

"There's a whole segment of the [gay] community for whom the marriage equality bit seems way too heteronormative," mimicking conventional heterosexual practices, said Suzanne Scott, director of women and gender studies at George Mason University. "Some would even argue that marriage is an outdated norm based on archaic rules."

Like immigrants who once sought to become Americanized and now embrace their ethnic roots, Scott said, many gays and lesbians embrace their differentness but also feel torn because they value the benefits that come with marriage. ...

"Marriage for me presents an opportunity for approval, social approval," said the Frederick woman, who has never married but whose 54-year-old partner lost faith in the institution after a heterosexual marriage. "And I shouldn't care after all I've been through, but I do, I do care. I'm tired of being marginalized."

Labels: culture, DC, gay couples, gay marriage, gay/straight differences, heteronormativity, Marriage

posted by Eve at 2:37 PM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

...We could have predicted these results. The US family system, which once differed little by class or region, has become a marker of race, culture, and religion. A new “blue” family paradigm has handsomely rewarded those who invest in women’s as well as men’s education and defer childbearing until the couple is better established. These families, concentrated in urban areas and the coasts, have seen their divorce rates fall back to the level of the 1960s, incomes rise, and nonmarital births remain rare. With later marriage has also come greater stability and less divorce. ...

These factors reflect class and cultural differences, but all of our research suggests that the great recession is likely to make things worse. The hallmark of what we have termed the blue family paradigm is training for autonomy.

With a more extended transition to adulthood, better educated youth also need greater flexibility – to navigate their developing sexuality; to switch jobs, cities, and specialties; and to renegotiate family and career responsibilities. In hard times, dual careers provide a cushion, and flexibility about gender and work roles makes it easier to trade off child care and employment.

Hard times, however, also increase calls for a return to more fixed and traditional values. The fact that traditional families are flailing often persuades them that a return to traditional values is that much more critical. In today’s world, however, almost all of the traditional nostrums have proved counterproductive.

Missing from this debate is recognition of the bankruptcy of traditionalist family values as policy for the postindustrial era. We are entirely sympathetic with those inclined to lock up their daughters from puberty until marriage, but we do recognize that the societies abroad most insistent on policing women’s virtue are locked into cycles of poverty. ...

The solution? As we outline in great detail in our book “Red Families v. Blue Families,” there are three critical steps we can take: (1) promote access to contraception – within marriage as well as outside it; (2) develop a greater ability to combine not only work and family, but family and education; and (3) make sure the next generation stays in school, learns the skills to be employed, and cultivates values that can adapt to the future.

Labels: abortion, abstinence, conservatism, contraception, culture, divorce, economics, liberalism, Marriage, poverty

posted by Eve at 2:30 PM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

Many people say the institution of marriage has taken a back seat to a lifestyle of "anything goes."

Some Dallas community leaders and faith-based groups have joined a national campaign to combat that trend in black families and communities through the eighth annual Black Marriage Day celebrations March 26-28.

Most Dallas-area activities are free and open to people who are married, courting or engaged. The events aim to promote and strengthen marriage by touting its benefits in seminars, film festivals, vow renewals and celebrations.

Sponsors include Anthem Strong Families, Muhammad Mosque No. 48, some churches and the Wedded Bliss Foundation of Washington, D.C.

During a ceremony from 5:30 to 7 p.m. March 26 in Dallas City Hall's Flag Room, both a newlywed and a longer-married couple will be announced and inducted into a Marriage Hall of Fame. Past inductees will be featured in an exhibition that will tour around Dallas. A documentary film also will be shown. ...

Wedded Bliss Foundation founder Nisa Muhammad agreed, saying in promotional materials that "much of what we hear about marriage in the black community is a blues song. ... We want to replace that blues song with a love song of joy."

Labels: Christianity, culture, divorce, Islam, Marriage, race, religion, Texas

posted by Eve at 7:18 PM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

Blake Spears and Lanz Lowen have been together for over 34 years. They told me that they still have great sex, contradicting the common belief that sexual interest inevitably wanes in a long-term relationship. How do they do it? “One reason,” Lanz said, “is that we’ve been in an open relationship from the very beginning. If we hadn’t been open, we wouldn’t have been able to grow individually or as a couple.” But, they write, this was a journey they took “without a roadmap… Information about how couples navigate this terrain is surprisingly lacking. We were curious about the experience of others and assumed many long-term couples might offer valuable perspectives and hard-earned lessons.”

So, a few years back, they decided to use their combined training and experience in research and psychology to do an independent, in-depth study of other long-term open gay male relationships. ....

The study includes a summary of previous research on non-monogamy, in which the authors report that “Most research shows that approximately two-thirds of long-term male couples who have been together for five years or more are honestly non-monogamous,” and that “Multiple studies have found no differences in relationship quality or satisfaction between samples of sexually exclusive and non-exclusive male couples.”

Despite those findings, they had a hard time recruiting participants. They had no trouble finding non-monogamous couples, but relatively few who wanted to talk about it. One man who chose to participate said “Having an open relationship feels like a funny way of being in the closet again. Family and friends expect that we’re monogamous, and we don’t tell them we’re not. It’s like a secret….In our community and society, it feels like something huge isn’t being talked about or studied or understood.”

Labels: culture, gay couples, men, open relationships

posted by Eve at 6:59 PM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

More social science research findings regarding Catholic colleges and universities are being reported and discussed. The focus has been on an article in the peer-reviewed Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion called, “‘Hooking Up’ at College: Does Religion Make a Difference?”

The study concluded that Catholic women attending non-Catholic and Catholic colleges “display roughly a 72 percent increase in the odds of ‘hooking up’ compared to those women with no religious affiliation” (p. 544). The study also finds that women [Catholic and non-Catholic] at Catholic colleges and universities “are almost four times as likely to have participated in ‘hooking up’ compared to women in secular schools” (p. 544). Thus, there are results regarding Catholic women at all colleges and for all women at Catholic colleges and universities.

There are some important methodological issues to consider:

* A “hook up” is very widely defined as “when a girl and a guy get together for a physical encounter and don’ necessarily expect anything further” (p. 540). As the authors caution, “‘Hooking up’ may refer to a broad range of physical acts ranging from kissing to sexual intercourse” (p. 548). It is difficult to know just what respondents are reporting in responding “yes.” ...

* Thus, there are only interviews with 39 Catholic women attending Catholic colleges in the study. A conservative estimate of the number of Catholic women attending Catholic college at the time is 85,000. The margin of sampling error for 39 interviews generalizing to a population of 85,000 is +/- 15.7 percentage points.
* Furthermore, these large margins of error are compounded by the small number of Catholic colleges these women attended at the institutional level. ...

The authors have made no mistakes—what they have produced is rather standard practice in academic social science survey research (although I would have strongly recommended controlling for household income which is related to college enrollment and choice). They have identified a compelling statistical association in the data. Rightfully, they note the limitations of the exploratory analysis and welcome additional research. This is what is needed. Replication with a larger sample would tell us if this is an anomaly of small sample size or a real effect (for both religious identity and college affiliation).

Labels: Catholic Church, culture, hooking up, premarital sex, universities

posted by Eve at 10:10 PM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

Just read an interview with Jeff Bridges. ...32 years later he’s still married, with three kids. What’s the secret?

JB: Not getting a divorce. If you’re married you’ll have tough times and you draw a line, then if your partner crosses that line you say: ‘Well is that it?’ or: ‘Am I going to enlarge my concept of what love is?”

Labels: culture, divorce, Marriage

posted by Imapp Staff at 3:57 PM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

Marriage remains a perennially popular institution—otherwise why would same-sex couples be clamoring to share in it?—and yet after the first bloom of love fades, marriage faces an inherent problem. You have to hammer out a life with another person who may not find it particularly easy to hammer out a life with you. Many couples work out what to do on their own. But what should clashing couples do?

Marriage counseling became a popular answer to that question after marital referees first appeared in the U.S. in the 1930s. As Rebecca L. Davis notes in "More Perfect Unions," a history of marriage counseling and the "American search for marital bliss," the Depression was a ripe time for troubled couples to begin looking for outside help. Economic upheaval destabilized many marriages. Americans increasingly were turning to social-welfare agencies for assistance with a multitude of problems, and the rising popularity of psychoanalysis promised that the sources of emotional troubles were simply hidden and awaiting discovery. "Specialists such as social workers, physicians, sociologists and eugenicists," Ms. Davis writes, "believed that they could perform the roles that village elders, parents or clergy might have filled in the past, shepherding youth to suitable matches and mediating their conflicts."

Counseling for couples gradually grew to be an entrenched social phenomenon. The American Association of Marriage and Family Therapists, founded in 1942 with 35 members, now has "approximately twenty-four thousand members; many times that number of professionals are licensed marriage and family therapists." Marriage counseling may be popular, in part, because it appeals to Americans' can-do spirit: Ms. Davis quotes an expert who says that counseling's message boils down to this: "There is an alternative to staying in a bad marriage or divorcing, and the alternative is to improve it." Ms. Davis, an assistant professor of history at the University of Delaware, deems it a "uniquely American obsession" to "hope that with enough effort and the right guidance, more perfect marital unions are within each couple's and the nation's reach.

Labels: culture, divorce, Marriage, marriage counseling

posted by Eve at 10:02 PM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

Julie Klausner has slept with a lot of losers and perverts, she tells us in her funny, trenchant new collection of essays I Don't Care About Your Band. She is not permanently wounded by these encounters and yet she feels bad. And then she feels bad about feeling bad. "When you cry about things not working out, you're crying not only because a guy you slept with now doesn't seem to care you're alive," Klausner writes, "but also because you're ashamed of yourself for crying."

Why would she be ashamed? After all, Klausner is a feminist who doesn't believe there is anything wrong with casual sex. But she's not the only recent memoirist with regrets. Hephzibah Anderson had such deep ones that she decided to abstain from what she calls "penetrative sex" for a whole 12 months. "A tiny bit of me can't help judging myself, nor, presumably, can those women who consistently shave their own tallies in sex surveys," she writes in her memoir Chastened (out in the United States in June), which chronicles this self-imposed dry spell. "Liberated women that we are, we'll blame Victorian morality and its outmoded, repressive mores—we'll blame ourselves for succumbing and we'll deny our feelings."

From whence this confusing, shame-feedback loop? Compelling research shows that hooking up is not psychologically damaging, and only purity-ring-clutching evangelicals believe that it's wrong to have sex before marriage. Feminist Web sites advise that is it our "feminist duty to 1) seek pleasure and feel entitled to it and 2) to make the world a more orgasmic place for other women." And yet there seems to be something else at play in the culture that's making Klausner and Anderson regretful, some new wave of anti-orgasmic sexual conservatism that makes you hate yourself for what you did last night. ...

At the start of this decade, we have thoroughly internalized these recent conservative cultural messages about the importance of marriage: "73 percent of women born between 1977 and 1989 place a high priority on marriage," writes Hannah Seligson in the Wall Street Journal. If what Gen Y wants is marriage, then it follows that feelings about sex would be more complicated—and in some cases, deeply judgmental. A Princeton freshman wrote an op-ed last week about why her friend should not be allowed to claim rape after a night of highly inebriated sex, the implicit message being that she should not have been having inebriated sex in the first place. A poll taken last month in London showed that women were less likely to forgive a rape victim than men were.

Labels: culture, feminism, Marriage, sex, women

posted by Eve at 11:33 AM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

In the 29th and final "Barbara Walters Oscars Special," Mo'Nique opened up to Walters about her almost-four-year marriage to childhood friend Sidney Hicks.

Mo'Nique said it is an open marriage, which she defined for Walters as "no secrets."

"Open means, you know what, let me tell you my every secret, my fantasies, my thoughts, so that way, there are no surprises," Mo'Nique said.

When asked by Walters if the couple had sex outside of the marriage, Mo'Nique said: "Let me say this: I have not had sex outside of my marriage with Sidney. Could I have sex outside of my marriage with Sidney? Yes. Could Sid have sex outside of his marriage with me? Yes. That's not a deal-breaker."

Labels: adultery, culture, Marriage

posted by Eve at 7:21 PM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

Couples who live together before they get married are less likely to stay married, a new study has found. But their chances improve if they were already engaged when they began living together.

The likelihood that a marriage would last for a decade or more decreased by six percentage points if the couple had cohabited first, the study found.

The study of men and women ages 15 to 44 was done by the National Center for Health Statistics using data from the National Survey of Family Growth conducted in 2002. The authors define cohabitation as people who live with a sexual partner of the opposite sex.

“From the perspective of many young adults, marrying without living together first seems quite foolish,” said Prof. Pamela J. Smock, a research professor at the Population Studies Center at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. “Just because some academic studies have shown that living together may increase the chance of divorce somewhat, young adults themselves don’t believe that.”

The authors found that the proportion of women in their late 30s who had ever cohabited had doubled in 15 years, to 61 percent. ...

The survey found that about 28 percent of men and women had cohabitated before their first marriage and that about 7 percent lived together and never married. About 23 percent of women and 18 percent of men married without having lived together.

Labels: cohabitation, culture, Marriage, out-of-wedlock births

posted by Eve at 2:26 PM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

The kids are calling it “Two Teachers, One Chair,” and it has all the makings of a YouTube hit.

But school administrators and parents are hard pressed to find humour in a graphic lap dance caught on video between two teachers at a spirit rally at Churchill High School in Winnipeg last week.

The two teachers, one of whom was identified by students as phys-ed instructor Chrystie Fitchner, have been sent home without pay after the spirit dance before 100 students as young as 13 years old. The identity of the male teacher could not be confirmed. Efforts to reach Ms. Fitchner Tuesday night were unsuccessful.

The whole routine has since been distributed on the Internet, thanks to the footage captured on a student's cellphone camera. The Winnipeg School Division is investigating. ...

The female teacher threw her head back and thrust her one leg out as the male teacher continued to dance over her. There was butt-slapping and further gyration. Then the man dipped his head down between her legs and simulated oral sex.

Labels: Canada, culture, schools, sex

posted by Eve at 2:10 AM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

Teenage pregnancies have fallen to their lowest rate in over 20 years, annual statistics published today show.

The 2008 ONS conception statistics show that, despite a slight rise in 2007, the action from the Government's teenage pregnancy strategy has led to a decline in pregnancies among under 16 and 18 year olds.

The statistics also show:

- The rate of under 16 year olds falling pregnant decreased by 5.7 per cent between 2007 and 2008.
- Since 1998 there has been a 13.3 per cent reduction in the number of under 18s conceiving, and encouraging reductions in more than 120 local authorities and at every age range.
- England's under-18 conception rate for final quarter 2008 was 5.4 per cent lower than the same quarter 2007 and is the lowest fourth quarter rate since 1993, showing promise for the 2009 data due next year.

Coinciding with the statistics and to further the progress made in recent years, Children's Minister Dawn Primarolo and Public Health Minister Gillian Merron today launched Teenage Pregnancy Strategy: Beyond 2010. This action plan outlines new measures to tackle the root causes of teenage pregnancy, building on the successes of the last 10 years.

A new scheme to pilot one-to-one sexual health and contraception consultations for 16 year olds along with more support for parents, increasing help for teachers and improving school-based health services are among the announcements being made today.

Labels: contraception, culture, out-of-wedlock births, sex education, teenage pregnancy, United Kingdom

posted by Eve at 1:39 AM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

Sexist pet peeve: the persistent myth that women are all privately obsessed with producing tiny widdle babies. Working to debunk that assumption is a recent National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy study [PDF] which surveyed thousands of young Americans, aged 18 to 29, about their thoughts and perceptions about pregnancy. Guess which group is more likely to be “pleased” at an unplanned pregnancy? It’s not the one with the silently weeping ovaries.

In order to gauge the “surprise fetus” reaction, NCPTUP researchers first isolated survey respondents who claimed it was “very important or somewhat important for them to avoid pregnancy right now.” Then, researchers asked them how they would feel about an unplanned pregnancy:

If you found out today that (you were/your partner was) pregnant, how would you feel: Very upset, a little upset, a little pleased, very pleased, wouldn’t care.

Results: Staggeringly gendered! Forty-three percent of young men responded that they would be “a little pleased” or “very pleased” by the news; only 20 percent of women answered the same. Men also proved more comfortable with an unplanned pregnancy at an earlier age: Thirty-four percent of men 18-19 said they would be pleased. By the time they reach age 20-24, 42 percent of men said they would be pleased. And over 50 percent of men aged 25-29 would be pleased by the news. Remember: this is only among men who deemed it “important” that a pregnancy not occur at this junction.

Meanwhile, the percentage of women who would be “pleased” by an unplanned pregnancy stays steady at a low 16 percent all the way from age 18 to 24. By the time women reach the 25-29 age range, the percentage of “pleased” women soars to 29 percent. Despite the jump, women in their late 20s still lag behind their male counterparts by 22 percentage points. I don’t know: Perhaps our joy is muted by the fact that unexpected pregnancies tend to put us ladies out a touch.

Labels: culture, gender differences, heterosexual couples, men, pregnancy, women

posted by Eve at 1:33 AM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

The Sex and the City movie was not the only big event in the public conversation about women and marriage last spring. For the thinking woman, the vapid romance flick likely took a backseat to the real head scratcher: Lori Gottlieb's controversial essay, "Marry Him! The case for settling for Mr. Good Enough", published in the Atlantic in March.

Don't wait for true love, Gottlieb argued--not if you are a woman in your 30s and you want to have a family. Romantic passion is not as important as a second pair of hands for diaper-changing and meal preparation. A single mom in her early 40s who got pregnant by artificial insemination, Gottlieb has earned some street cred on the subject.

If I had read her essay five years ago, I would have been scornful. Now, I'm 31 and a lot more sympathetic. I'm no longer able to write her off as one of those bitter marriage-crazed women I was sure I'd never be.

Gottlieb gets a lot right about what it's like to be a heterosexual, middle-class, single woman in her 30s, and how different it is from being a heterosexual, middle-class single woman in her 20s. What took me by surprise is the extent to which the change is palpable, even for women like me, who haven't been planning their dream wedding since girlhood; who are in fact ambivalent about babies and marriage. ...

Meanwhile, it's not just the woman who gets older, but her parents too. Younger women can readily laugh off hints about grandkids, but as the years pile on and the parents' health grows less robust, it sinks in that they won't be around forever. Their desire to know their grandkids becomes more poignant.

Labels: children, culture, Marriage, women

posted by Eve at 1:28 AM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

It was not so long ago, when singer Billy Joel's chiding plea to "Come Out, Virginia" resonated with thousands of young people born into the Sexual Revolution, many of them reveling in American society's defiance of the Catholic Church and traditional sexual mores.

According to a new study, Virginia may not be so reluctant anymore.

Researchers from Mississippi State University considered a survey of 1,000 college students nationwide and were surprised to find that "women attending colleges and universities affiliated with the Catholic Church are almost four times as likely to have participated in 'hooking up' compared to women at secular schools."

Labels: Catholic Church, culture, hooking up, religion, universities

posted by Eve at 1:05 AM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

Even the Yale College Dean’s Office is interested in Yale’s sex scene.

With the overhaul of its Web site this coming summer, the Dean’s Office will post a new student-generated essay collection under the title “sex@yale.” The site will include 500- to 1,000-word essays by current undergraduates, allowing them to reflect anonymously on their sexual experiences at Yale and their impressions of the sexual culture here.

The Web site will not be password protected, so anyone can read it, said Melanie Boyd, director of undergraduate studies in Women’s Gender & Sexuality Studies and the new special advisor to the dean of Yale College on gender issues. ...

Student organizers said the initiative will attempt to change Yale’s sex culture and overturn the perception that it is dominated by casual hook-ups. But Gottesdiener was careful to emphasize that the initiative is not against hook-ups per se; rather, it will elaborate on it by showing that sexual encounters at Yale go far beyond the hook-up scene, she said.

Boyd added that the content of the site will reflect core values of consent, desire and “being thoughtful.”

Labels: culture, hooking up, sex, universities

posted by Eve at 9:07 PM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

Women have outpaced men in acquiring education for a few decades now, with 185 women earning college degrees at age 22 for every 100 men, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. And more women are now employed because men are more likely to work in industries that are declining or cyclical. An essay by Don Peck in The Atlantic reported that in November nearly a fifth of all men between the ages of 25 and 54 did not have jobs, the highest figure since 1948.

How might these changes affect decisions to marry? Should women alter their expectations of what a husband brings to a marriage?

* Betsey Stevenson, economist, University of Pennsylvania
* Stephanie Coontz, historian, Evergreen State College
* Barbara Dafoe Whitehead, Institute for American Values
* Helen Fisher, biological anthropologist, Rutgers University

Labels: culture, heterosexual couples, Marriage, men, women

posted by Eve at 12:15 AM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

...Single black women with college degrees outnumber single black men with college degrees almost 3 to 1 in major urban areas such as Washington, according to a 2008 population survey by the U.S. Census Bureau. Given those numbers, any economist would advise them to start looking elsewhere.

It's Econ 101 for the single, educated black woman.

"Black women are in market failure," says writer Karyn Langhorne Folan. "The solution is to find a new market for your commodity. And in this case, we are the commodity and the new market is men of other races."

Folan is the author of "Don't Bring Home a White Boy: And Other Notions That Keep Black Women From Dating Out," published this month by Karen Hunter, an imprint of Pocket Books. In encouraging black women to date and marry interracially, the book has joined a broadening debate in recent years fueled by the blogosphere, the entertainment industry and comments by prominent African Americans.

Labels: culture, Marriage, race

posted by Eve at 12:09 AM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

Now that Valentine’s Day is safely around the corner and all the romantic breezes have blown out to sea, let’s take a cold, hard look at Lori Gottlieb, the marriage maven of the post-Sex and the City era. Savvy enough to publish a book about marriage in time for V-Day and reap the subsequent media blitz, Gottlieb has suffered from poorer timing in her love life. Two years ago, she lamented her ill-advised dating strategy in The Atlantic: Rather than “settle for” (read: marry) one of her numerous boyfriends during her twenties or thirties, she kept holding out for “something better,” convinced she had not yet met her “soul mate.” But still alone at age 40, with a sperm-donated baby and no husband prospects on her horizon, Gottlieb doubted the wisdom of her choice. “Marrying Mr. Good Enough might be an equally viable option, especially if you’re looking for a stable, reliable life companion,” she wrote. “Madame Bovary might not see it that way, but if she’d remained single, I’ll bet she would have been even more depressed than she was while living with her "tedious but caring" husband.

Now she’s spun the article into one of those books whose argument doesn’t go much further than the title: Marry Him: The Case for Settling for Mr. Good Enough. Women today, Gottlieb explains, have unrealistic expectations of the qualities they want in a mate, bringing a checklist 30 items long to the dating table and automatically excluding anyone who doesn’t perfectly conform. (He’s blond; she prefers tall, dark, and handsome. Next!) If you really want to get married, she writes, you should stop looking for qualities immediately attractive in a boyfriend—passion, intensity, brilliance—and open your mind to men who on the surface might be less scintillating but in the long run would make better partners.

... To suggest that the Bovary marriage might have had a happier ending if Emma had just readjusted her expectations is like saying Werther could have been cured by a little Prozac.

Labels: culture, Marriage, men, women

posted by Eve at 12:04 AM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

The onslaught of megaselling relationship books like Elizabeth Gilbert's "Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace With Marriage," which sits at No. 9 on the New York Times nonfiction bestseller list for the week of Feb 19, and Lori Gottlieb's "Marry Him: The Case for Settling for Mr. Good Enough," which is at No. 18, might lead you to believe that female commitment-phobes and uberpicky daters are the modern obstacles to relationships and marriage.

Yet a 2007 poll by Meredith, a research and marketing company, found that 73% of women born between 1977 and 1989 place a high priority on marriage. That sounds right to me. It's an attitude that surfaced again and again in the interviews I conducted with young women for a book project on the long-term unmarried relationship. Unlike our boomer and hippie mothers who broke the rules of the '50s, my generation is marriage-minded. But society's messages to young women are so mixed that the path to that goal has been obscured and, at times, blocked. Those of us in our 20s and 30s know that dating—and getting into a relationship that leads to marriage—is at turns ambiguous, arduous, perplexing and often heartbreaking. ...

The more pressing dating issue for young women today is not that they are skeptical about marriage or too choosy, but that their potential spouses are in less of a hurry to tie the knot than they are. A 2005 poll, "Coming of Age in America," which surveyed 18- to 24-year-olds, found that women had the edge on eagerness: 55% said they would like to be married in the next five years, compared with only 42% of men.

Labels: committed relationships, culture, dating, gender differences, heterosexual couples, Marriage, men, women

posted by Eve at 11:56 PM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

"Be fruitful and multiply," God instructed Adam and Eve, and men and women have heeded those words ever since. But over the years, God's creatures have become sophisticated enough to rewrite the rules of being fruitful, and most of the new rules don't sit well with leaders of the Roman Catholic Church. ...

The bishops are sympathetic. When Rigali was archbishop of St. Louis, he celebrated a Mass for infertile couples, and the current St. Louis archbishop, Robert Carlson, did the same recently. But many Catholic couples suffering through the heartache of infertility think that the church contributes to their pain by erecting roadblocks to medically assisted pregnancy.

At the meeting in Baltimore, the bishops approved a document on reproductive medical advances, "Life-giving Love in an Age of Technology." The document says: "The church has compassion for couples suffering from infertility and wants to be of real help to them. At the same time, some 'reproductive technologies' are not morally legitimate ways to solve those problems."

Church teaching says technology used to facilitate or support marital conjugation and conception is fine, but any other technology is not. Church teaching allows tests and treatment for low sperm count or problems with ovulation. But artificial insemination, even using the husband's sperm, is prohibited.

"Children have a right to be conceived by the act that expresses and embodies their parents' self-giving love," the U.S. bishops say. "Morally responsible medicine can assist this act but should never substitute for it."

According to a 2002 study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 7.4 percent of married women of childbearing age were infertile. About 1 percent had tried artificial insemination as a means of becoming pregnant; about four times as many had tried ovulation drugs. According to the American Society for Reproductive Medicine, 85 to 90 percent of infertility cases are treated with drug therapy or surgical procedures; less than 3 percent required assisted reproductive technologies.

Labels: Artificial Reproductive Technology, Catholic Church, culture, infertility, religion

posted by Eve at 12:43 AM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

...Are Catholic colleges undermining the faith? Or are they an effective if leaky levee against the growing tide of secularism? The study, "Catholicism on Campus," was released on Jan. 31 by the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA), at Georgetown University, which compiled the data from national surveys of more than 14,000 students at nearly 150 U.S. colleges and universities. Students were surveyed as freshmen in 2004 and then in 2007 as juniors.

The upshot is that while college-age students at all schools tend to move away from Catholic practices and beliefs, Catholic students at Catholic colleges are less likely to drift than Catholics at non-Catholic schools. ...

Yet nearly a third of Catholic students at Catholic schools were less likely to attend Mass--the baseline of Catholic practice—than they had been before arriving on campus, and just 7% said they were more likely. And the church teachings to which these students at Catholic colleges adhere most strongly are those that, in a sociopolitical context, would be called "liberal." For example, 21% of Catholic students at Catholic schools moved away from the church's teaching against capital punishment, while 31% moved closer to the church's position--a significantly higher shift in that direction than from Catholic students at non-Catholic schools, where it's almost a wash. ...

By contrast, on issues of personal sexual morality generally considered "conservative," students show the furthest drift from Catholic teachings over their college years.

For example, a significant number of all college-age Catholics tended to shift toward a more permissive view of abortion, with 31% of those at Catholic schools saying they were more supportive of legal abortion after their time on a Catholic campus and only 16% saying they had moved closer to the church's teaching. Catholic students' shift away from church teaching on legal abortion was slightly greater at non-Catholic schools. Overall, 56% of Catholic juniors at Catholic colleges say they disagree "strongly" or "somewhat" that "abortion should be legal." On the question of same-sex marriage, 39% of Catholic students at Catholic colleges distanced themselves from the church's opposition and only 16% moved toward that stance—a net change nearly as high as at other universities. By their junior year, only one in three Catholics at Catholic schools disagree "somewhat" or "strongly" that same-sex couples should have the right to marry.

Labels: abortion, Catholic Church, culture, gay marriage, religion, universities

posted by Eve at 5:46 PM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

Julianne Moore and Annette Bening team up in "The Kids Are All Right" in which they play a long-term lesbian couple whose lives are turned upside down when their two teenage children contact their biological father. ...

Jules (Moore) and Nic (Bening) are trying to be good parents. The wealthy couple are proud of their daughter Joni's academic achievements and struggle to keep an open mind when they think their son Laser may be gay.

When they inadvertently discover Laser has contacted his biological father, the women feel threatened, but gradually warm to the handsome, laid-back epitome of California cool variously referred to as "the donor" and "the spermster."

Things turn sour, however, when Jules starts to fall for Paul (Mark Ruffalo) and control freak Nic begins to suspect.

Labels: culture, donor conception, Fathers, gay parenting

posted by Eve at 12:28 AM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

Labels: culture, Marriage

posted by Eve at 12:15 AM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

Featuring Nick Herbert, MP, Shadow Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, Conservative Party, United Kingdom; Andrew Sullivan, The Daily Dish Blog, The Atlantic; and Maggie Gallagher, President, National Organization for Marriage.

Labels: Andrew Sullivan, conservatism, culture, gay marriage, Maggie Gallagher, United Kingdom

posted by Eve at 9:27 PM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

Most nights, Matt Bullen's 7-year-old son sleeps at home with his mom and dad, except for the nights when he sleeps at his dad's girlfriend's house. The arrangement works well because his mom's boyfriend lives there, too. Actually, his mom's boyfriend is married to his dad's girlfriend. Confused? Don't worry, that's just par for the course in polyamorist households. ...

"I don't think it's any different than raising [kids] in a monogamous family," says Robyn Trask, Managing Director of Loving More, a polyamorous magazine and nonprofit organization based in Colorado. "You just have to really talk and communicate with your kids, which is important anyway." Trask raised three kids in a polyamorous household. When her oldest son was 10, she broke the news to him that she and his father had other lovers, expecting it to be a difficult conversation. To her surprise, he rolled with it.

"I explained that we had an open relationship, and that that didn't mean [his father and I] didn't love each other very much," she says. "I asked him how he felt about it, and he said, 'That's kind of cool.'" Now 22, her son identifies as poly and currently has two girlfriends.

For Trask's kids, growing up poly meant they had a large network of aunt- and uncle-like figures to call on. "We have more adults that we can lean on, who can be there for us," says Trask. "That kind of extended family, where there's an intimacy, is really nice."

The unusual family setup does have its drawbacks. Poly kids have to deal with judgmental peers, hiding their true family structure from friends, and the sudden absence of parental figures they have come to love and trust (if their biological parents break up with the boyfriend or girlfriend du jour).

Labels: children, culture, family structure, parenting, polyamory

posted by Eve at 8:34 PM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

In november 2009, one of the uglier fruits of the current practice of seeding mothers into the American military burst briefly onto the national stage. Ordered to Afghanistan from Hunter Army Airfield in Georgia, an Army cook named Alexis Hutchinson refused to go. A 21-year-old single mother, she explained that there was no one to care for her infant son because initial plans to leave him with her own mother had fallen through.

What happened next should disturb anyone who has so far succeeded in ignoring the fact that the United States now sends soldier-mothers off to war. Specialist Hutchinson was arrested and threatened with court martial and her son was temporarily placed in foster care — because, as the Fort Stewart spokesman explained, the 30-day extension that she had been granted was “plenty of time” to find some other babysitter for that ten-month-old while the only parent seemingly present in his life went off to Afghanistan. ...

According to an October report issued by the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, 30,000 single mothers have served in those two war zones as of March 2009. That is 30,000< mothers forced to choose, as Hutchinson’s lawyer has put it, between their children and their service careers — a dilemma captured perfectly in a photograph that appeared alongside news accounts of the case. It showed what once would have seemed an unthinkable representation of Madonna and child: Spc. Hutchinson, a female soldier, cradling her baby in classic maternal pose.

Once, pregnancy itself was automatically grounds for discharge from the services. Today it is not. Now pregnant soldiers can request such a discharge, and commanders usually must grant it, but many mothers choose to stay. As to maternity leave, the services generally offer new mothers six weeks beginning the day they leave the hospital. After that they can receive deployment deferrals of anywhere from four months (Air Force) to six months (Army, Marines) to 12 (Navy). Note that of all these, only the Navy offers a deferral that even meets the American Academy of Pediatric’s guideline for breastfeeding, 12 months. Bear in mind too that current deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan, at 15< months in length, are longer than any of these deferrals.

Labels: culture, motherhood, single parenting

posted by Eve at 8:22 PM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

Gays are our utopian heroes. Many things changed in the twentieth century. No change was more momentous and utopian than that men could choose men for love objects, and women choose women, to remake the sexual household. If the household organization of three thousand years of recorded history could be altered simply in the interest of what people wanted, in the interest of desire, then anything could be changed.

Traditional society choked this down—some more progressive parts of it did, anyway—by attributing same-sex love to brain chemistry, or a gay gene, and an eternal sexual identity that must be rigid and ineluctable. It hypothesized three millennia of men and women who must have been closeted, before they had such wonderfully enlightened friends and neighbors as we are. Only in this restricted way could society understand homosexuality without gayness threatening to reveal more new choices.

The utopians among us held our peace. It seemed impossible to stay in view of the rest of traditional society, the reactionary and hostile parts, and make our argument to fellow progressives that gay reorganization might be better than the old heterosexuality, and not just a neutral object for tolerance—that liberation from the heterosexual family was something we all could wish for, and that it needn't stop where it has. Then, because such a large part of the gay community publicly seemed to prefer the necessitarian, "eternal" framework, finding it the best way to make sense of individuals' own experiences, and to justify them to family and friends, we utopian straights—bystanders, well-wishers, but dilettantes—had another good reason to keep quiet. ...

Social utopianism has long focused on the reorganization of households, but has rarely accomplished much. Straight utopians argued for free love, free divorce, unorthodox childrearing and communal parenthood, and got divorce, followed by more imprisoning marriages, followed by more divorce. Because the home has seemed to be at the origin of economics (the word comes from the Greek oikos, household, and household management, oikonomia), a revision of the home, say one based on non-reproductivity and made by equals of the same sex, could ground a wider egalitarianism. Because the family, as the crucible of personality for children, seems to be the origin of violence, hierarchy, and tyranny—in the old descending triad of dominance: man-woman-child—a revision of the family, such that children could look forward to forming their own future households on different models, could gain new principles of power for society.

Labels: abortion, beyond marriage, culture, fam, feminism, gay marriage, gay/straight differences

posted by Eve at 10:35 PM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

2009 has been a landmark year for marriage equality advocates. In April, Iowa legalized marriage for same-sex couples. Vermont and New Hampshire soon followed suit, as did Maine—if only to have residents vote to repeal the right in November. The news did not stop there. In the same month, a narrow majority in Washington chose to grant same-sex couples the state-sanctioned benefits of marriage, but not the title. ¶ These developments, along with a host of individual triumphs and setbacks, sparked intense debates that echoed through the halls of Columbia Law School. Discussions were particularly pointed within the Center for Gender and Sexuality Law, which offers the only curriculum of its kind at any law school in the country. ¶ Taking note of the variety of well-reasoned arguments, Columbia Law School Magazine approached four professors of varying backgrounds with an idea: They would document their thoughts on marriage for same-sex couples in a series of back-and-forth emails—no moderator, no referee. The scholars could drive the free-flowing conversation in any direction and expand on any thoughts that they found particularly compelling. ¶ In addition to Professors Suzanne B. Goldberg and Katherine M. Franke, the directors of the Center for Gender and Sexuality Law, the Magazine invited constitutional law and public opinion expert Nathaniel Persily to join the conversation, as well as Professor Elizabeth F. Emens, a noted scholar on discrimination and marriage. Each approached the issue with a unique perspective shaped by their legal expertise and differing experiences. Together, they discussed the future of marriage for same-sex couples in America. An edited version of the conversation follows.

Katherine Franke: Some have argued that marriage rights for lesbian and gay couples is the preeminent civil rights issue of this era. A long shot even five years ago (and a productive wedge issue for the Republicans in the 2004 presidential election), we’ve seen the tide turn in the last couple years such that the injustice of the issue has become more apparent to a larger section of the American people. To be honest, I didn’t see it coming quite so quickly. Did any of you?

Nathaniel Persily: The rapid and radical shifts in attitudes toward same-sex marriage since 2003 may possibly be unprecedented among so-called “moral values” issues that deal with family, sexuality, or intimacy. Let me begin by discussing the state of American public opinion on same-sex marriage. If present trends continue—and that is not a big “if”—a majority of Americans within five years will support the right of gays and lesbians to marry. ...

Suzanne Goldberg: But I would have to disagree, somewhat, with Katherine’s characterization of marriage as the issue for up-and-coming activists, and Nate’s data likewise confirms that marriage, though important, is not the sole, or even the top, priority for many LGBT people today. It is no doubt true that many are embracing marriage as one of the important civil rights issues of the moment—perhaps with good reason, in that it is one of the few areas in which inequality is written formally into law. But at the same time, we have seen tremendous attention to the pervasive violence that continues against lesbians, gay men, bisexuals, and especially transgender individuals, as well as significant activism for antidiscrimination laws and against another major area of formal inequality—the military.

Nathaniel Persily: It should also be noted that gays, while much more supportive of marriage equality than heterosexuals, have not been uniform in their support.

As of 2004, for example, when faced with three options—marriage, civil unions, and no legal recognition—half of those who called themselves gay, lesbian, or bisexual said “they should be allowed to legally marry,” 31 percent said “they should be allowed to form civil unions but not marry,” and 17 percent said “there should be no legal recognition of their relationships.” I suspect the preference for marriage has grown by between 10 and 20 percentage points since then (as it has with the population in general), but the 2004 poll gives a sense of the diversity of views within the gay community, as well. ...

Katherine Franke: But liberty and equality aren’t the only rights being argued in the marriage cases. In many of them, the primary argument being made is that exclusion from marriage creates a dignity harm by refusing to acknowledge that same-sex unions are entitled to the same dignity and respect as different-sex unions. Yet to do so is to take for granted that marriage is something sacred, something to be honored, and something that dignifies those who earn its blessings. But doesn’t it, at the same time, risk implying that there is something undignified about a sexual relationship outside of marriage?

Suzanne Goldberg: To me, the dignity claim is rhetorically powerful because of its connection to equality: When we, as a society, deny some people equal access to state-sponsored institutions, whether marriage or anything else, we, in effect, treat the denied group as less worthy than the others. At the same time, Katherine’s question illustrates the tremendous power that government regulation has to sanction, or not, individual choices about intimate relationships.

Labels: beyond marriage, culture, discrimination law, gay marriage, Marriage, polygamy

posted by Eve at 10:27 PM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

Two Iowa legislators are getting heat from the gay community. The lawmakers want to remove protection to lesbians, gay and transgender students from the Safe Schools Law, in and effort to reverse the Iowa's Supreme Court decision to legalize same-sex marriage. ...

Last April, one of the reasons the Iowa Supreme Court pointed to for legalizing same sex marriage, were bills like the Safe Schools Act, which protects gay and lesbian students. He wants to take out the wording in the Safe Schools Act, and all Iowa legislation, so lawmakers can debate same sex marriage on the floor. ...

"People smeared paint on my locker and pushed me in the hallway and I've been made fun of for who I am. Why would lawmakers want that to continue? Why wouldn't they want to protect me and better my education and time in my community?" says gay Stephen Boatwright.

Rep. Schultz admits the bill won't go anywhere, but that's not the point. He hopes it will renew the efforts to make same sex marriage illegal here in Iowa, and start a debate on the house floor sometime this session.

Labels: adolescence, children, culture, gay marriage, Iowa, religion, schools

posted by Eve at 12:56 AM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

A total of 232,990 couples wed in 2008, down 1% on the year before, Office for National Statistics figures showed.

For every 1,000 adult men, 21.8 married in 2008, compared with 22.4 in 2007. For women aged over 16 it was 19.6 per 1,000, down from 20.2 the year before.

The Church of England said marriage was now seen as the crown of a relationship rather than a gateway to adulthood. ...

The think tank Civitas said that despite the drop in marriage rates, more than 60% of young unmarried parents surveyed in 2007 actually wanted to marry.

It said young people wanted certain things in place before saying "I do", with the top three being a partner to whom they wanted to commit, financial stability and home ownership.

A spokesperson said: "The question is, will people who want to marry succeed in doing so? Or are high rates of unmarried parenting indicators of thwarted aspirations?"

Resolution, a group of family lawyers, said the legal benefits of tying the knot should be extended to cohabiting but unmarried couples.

Labels: cohabitation, culture, Marriage, United Kingdom

posted by Eve at 2:11 AM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

Labels: culture

posted by Eve at 8:39 PM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

...North Carolina, with a student body that is nearly 60 percent female, is just one of many large universities that at times feel eerily like women’s colleges. Women have represented about 57 percent of enrollments at American colleges since at least 2000, according to a recent report by the American Council on Education. Researchers there cite several reasons: women tend to have higher grades; men tend to drop out in disproportionate numbers; and female enrollment skews higher among older students, low-income students, and black and Hispanic students. ...

Students interviewed here said they believed their mating rituals reflected those of college students anywhere. But many of them — men and women alike — said that the lopsided population tends to skew behavior.

“A lot of my friends will meet someone and go home for the night and just hope for the best the next morning,” Ms. Lynch said. “They’ll text them and say: ‘I had a great time. Want to hang out next week?’ And they don’t respond.”

Even worse, “Girls feel pressured to do more than they’re comfortable with, to lock it down,” Ms. Lynch said.

As for a man’s cheating, “that’s a thing that girls let slide, because you have to,” said Emily Kennard, a junior at North Carolina. “If you don’t let it slide, you don’t have a boyfriend.”

Labels: culture, gender, heterosexual couples, hooking up, men, universities, women

posted by Eve at 11:22 AM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

...In Dr. Jemmott’s research, only about a third of the students who participated in a weekend abstinence-only class started having sex within the next 24 months, compared with about half who were randomly assigned instead to general health information classes, or classes teaching only safer sex. Among those assigned to comprehensive sex-education classes, covering both abstinence and safer sex, about 42 percent began having sex.

Dr. Jemmott’s research followed 662 African-American students at urban middle schools, who were paid $20 a session to attend the classes, plus follow-up and evaluation sessions. The abstinence-only classes covered HIV, abstinence and ways to resist the pressure to have sex.

“Because African-Americans tend to have a higher rate of early sexual initiation than others, we thought that within two years, a reasonable number would start having sex,” Dr. Jemmott said. “If we went younger, we couldn’t show that intervention works.”

The research, published in the Archives of Pediatric & Adolescent Medicine, appears just as the Obama administration is eliminating federal financing for abstinence-only programs, and starting a pregnancy-prevention initiative that will finance programs that have been shown in scientific studies to be effective. ...

Ms. Brown noted that the abstinence-only classes in the Jemmott study centered on people with an average age of 12 and that unlike the federally supported abstinence programs now in use, did not advocate abstinence until marriage.

The classes also did not portray sex negatively or suggest that condoms are ineffective, and contained only medically accurate information. Dr. Jemmott’s abstinence-only course was designed for the research, and is not in current use in schools.

Labels: abstinence, culture, sex

posted by Eve at 9:01 AM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

...How does marriage benefit children? The answer is not that marriage confers general respectability or practical benefits. If that were true, then children in remarried families would do better than children with unmarried parents. And they don't, on average.

Marriage benefits children to the extent that it keeps the child's own mother and father in a permanent, not-too-high-conflict union. ...

I do not think same-sex marriage will serve child well-being in any appreciable way, and I don't think there is much sign that that is the goal. The gay community is by and large supporting same-sex marriage as a right, not as a norm at all. Relatively few same-sex couples enter same-sex marriages [PDF] and the dissolution rates (at least in Sweden, where we have hard data) are extraordinarily high (roughly 50 percent higher for gay men, 100 percent higher for lesbian couples [PDF]).

Labels: culture, gay marriage, gay parenting, gay/straight differences, Maggie Gallagher, Marriage

posted by Eve at 12:11 AM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

Liberals hated almost everything about George W. Bush’s presidency, but they harbored a particular animus toward a minor domestic policy priority: abstinence-based sex education. The abstinence effort accounted for about a hundred million dollars in a trillion-dollar budget, but in the eyes of many critics it was Bushism at its worst — contemptuous of experts, careless about public health and captive to religious conservatism.

So last week’s news that teenage birthrates inched upward late in the Bush era, after 15 years of steady decline, was greeted with a grim sort of satisfaction. Bloggers pounced; activists claimed vindication. On CBS News, Katie Couric used the occasion to lecture viewers about the perils of telling kids only about abstinence, and ignoring contraception. The new numbers, declared the president of Planned Parenthood, make it “crystal clear that abstinence-only sex education for teenagers does not work.”

In reality, the numbers show no such thing. Abstinence financing increased under Bush, but the federal government has been funneling money to pro-chastity initiatives since early in Bill Clinton’s presidency. If you blame abstinence programs for a year’s worth of bad news, you’d also have to give them credit for more than a decade’s worth of progress.

More likely, neither blame nor credit is appropriate. The evidence suggests that many abstinence-only programs have little impact on teenage sexual behavior, just as their critics long insisted. But most sex education programs of any kind have an ambiguous effect, at best, on whether and how teens have sex. The abstinence-based courses that social conservatives champion produce unimpressive results — but so do the contraceptive-oriented programs that liberals tend to favor. ...

None of this renders the abstinence-versus-contraception debate pointless. But we should understand it more as a battle over community values than as an argument about public policy. Luker describes it, aptly, as a conflict between the “naturalist” and “sacralist” approaches to sex — between parents in Berkeley, say, who don’t want their kids being taught that premarital intercourse is something to feel ashamed about and parents in Alabama who don’t want their kids being lectured about the health benefits of masturbation.

Labels: abstinence, culture, premarital sex, sex

posted by Eve at 12:07 AM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

When Rio and Ray married in 2008, the Bay Area women omitted two words from their wedding vows: fidelity and monogamy.

“I take it as a gift that someone will be that open and honest and sharing with me,” said Rio, using the word “open” to describe their marriage.

Love brought the middle-age couple together — they wed during California’s brief legal window for same-sex marriage. But they knew from the beginning that their bond would be forged on their own terms, including what they call “play” with other women.

As the trial phase of the constitutional battle to overturn the Proposition 8 ban on same-sex marriage concludes in federal court, gay nuptials are portrayed by opponents as an effort to rewrite the traditional rules of matrimony. Quietly, outside of the news media and courtroom spotlight, many gay couples are doing just that, according to groundbreaking new research.

A study to be released next month is offering a rare glimpse inside gay relationships and reveals that monogamy is not a central feature for many. Some gay men and lesbians argue that, as a result, they have stronger, longer-lasting and more honest relationships. And while that may sound counterintuitive, some experts say boundary-challenging gay relationships represent an evolution in marriage — one that might point the way for the survival of the institution.

New research at San Francisco State University reveals just how common open relationships are among gay men and lesbians in the Bay Area. The Gay Couples Study has followed 556 male couples for three years — about 50 percent of those surveyed have sex outside their relationships, with the knowledge and approval of their partners.

That consent is key. “With straight people, it’s called affairs or cheating,” said Colleen Hoff, the study’s principal investigator, “but with gay people it does not have such negative connotations.”

The study also found open gay couples just as happy in their relationships as pairs in sexually exclusive unions, Dr. Hoff said. A different study, published in 1985, concluded that open gay relationships actually lasted longer.

None of this is news in the gay community, but few will speak publicly about it. Of the dozen people in open relationships contacted for this column, no one would agree to use his or her full name, citing privacy concerns. They also worried that discussing the subject could undermine the legal fight for same-sex marriage.

Labels: culture, gay marriage, gay/straight differences, open relationships

posted by Eve at 12:38 AM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

An image from a TV ad for gay marriage, reproduced in the January 18 New Yorker, provides a Rorschach test for reactions to America’s ongoing revolution in family structure. Two men in black suits stand shoulder-to-shoulder in a group of people, looking into each other’s eyes. In their arms are two newborns in white baby clothes and blankets. Though it’s not immediately apparent from the photo, the men are at a baptism for their infants. The ad, still being test-marketed, is called “Family Values,” and is intended to emphasize the “conventionality of gay couples,” explains The New Yorker.

If your reaction to the image is: “Where’s the mother(s)?” you may not yet be fully on board the “conventionality” bandwagon. If your reaction to the foregoing question, however, is: “Why does it matter?” then you are keeping pace with the revolution. “Why does it matter?” may ultimately prove the more appropriate response, but no one should pretend that it represents anything other than a radical revision of the traditional relationship between parents and children — one whose consequences no one can predict.

Every time a homosexual couple conceives a child, there is another parent offstage somewhere whose sperm or egg has allowed conception to occur (and, in the case of male homosexuals, whose womb has allowed gestation to occur). In some homosexual families, that parent will be involved in his child’s life; in others, he will remain completely anonymous and unknown. Parental identity and responsibility for children in a homosexual family do not flow from biology; they result from choice and intent. To the extent that a gay couple wants to retain the traditional number of parents in the home, it must exclude one biological parent from inclusion in the family unit. To the extent that a gay couple wants to preserve the traditional connection between that biological parent and his offspring, however, the adult side of the family becomes more of a non-traditional threesome. ...

These are not easy questions. The deprivation to gays from not being able to put the official, public stamp of legitimacy on their love is large. If one were confident that gay marriage would have at most a negligible effect on the ongoing dissolution of the traditional family, I would see no reason to oppose it. And fertility technology is hardly the only source of stress on families; heterosexual adults have been wreaking havoc on the two-parent family for the last five decades in their quest for maximal freedom and choice. The self-interested assumption behind that havoc has been that what’s good for adults must be good for children: If adults want flexibility in their living arrangements, then children will benefit from it, as well. Perhaps children are as infinitely malleable as it would be convenient for them to be. But if it turns out that they thrive best with stability in their lives and that the traditional family evolved to provide that stability, then our breezy jettisoning of child-rearing traditions may not be such a boon for children.

The facile libertarian argument that gay marriage is a trivial matter that affects only the parties involved is astoundingly blind to the complexity of human institutions and to the web of sometimes imperceptible meanings and practices that compose them. Equally specious is the central theme in attorney Theodore Olson’s legal challenge to California’s Proposition 8: that only religious belief or animus towards gays could explain someone’s hesitation regarding gay marriage. Anyone with the slightest appreciation for the Burkean understanding of tradition will feel the disquieting burden of his ignorance in this massive act of social reengineering, even if he ultimately decides that the benefits to gays from gay marriage outweigh the risks of the unknown.

Labels: Artificial Reproductive Technology, culture, donor conception, gay marriage, gay parenting, single parenting

posted by Eve at 12:27 AM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

It is evident that neither side of the fight over same-sex marriage is prepared to yield. This is unfortunate. Far too many individuals who strive for recognition of their committed relationship are being accused of undermining society; far too many individuals who genuinely care about marriage are being accused of bigotry. ...

At one time, determining the role of government in marriage might have been easy. In years gone by and based on the mores of the time, people could envision government fostering long-term, heterosexual marriages for the purposes of promoting a stable environment for offspring. The Maine statute on marriage states that Maine “has a compelling interest to nurture and promote the unique institution of traditional monogamous marriage in the support of harmonious families and the physical and mental health of children.”

However noble and worthy the sentiment, numerous heterosexual marriages end in divorce. Quite appropriately, there are no punitive measures for unwed mothers. Even government social assistance is not geared toward ensuring the stated interest of promoting heterosexual marriage and may actually encourage single parentage. In many respects, heterosexual couples have done a great deal to weaken the justification for government’s role in marriage. And yet, the current debate is whether to extend that role to same-sex couples. Citizens are caught in battle over a governmental status designation that may no longer have a meaningful function.

Is there a way to resolve the dispute? While at first blush the solution may appear radical, the answer seems quite clear — marriage should no longer be a governmental function. All couples, heterosexual and homosexual, should register as under the current Maine statute for domestic partners. This would allow couples, whether heterosexual or of the same sex, to obtain the benefits of health insurance, inheritance, hospital visitation, etc.

Labels: beyond marriage, culture, gay marriage

posted by Eve at 12:21 AM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

Labels: abortion, culture, France

posted by Eve at 8:26 PM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

Beagy Zielinski is a German-born 28-year-old stylist who moved to New York to study fashion in 1995 and stayed. Just before Christmas, she broke up with her blue-collar boyfriend, who repaired Navy ships.

“He was extremely insecure about my career and how successful I am,” Ms. Zielinski said.

An analysis of census data to be released Tuesday by the Pew Research Center found that she and countless women like her are victims of a role reversal that is profoundly affecting the pool of potential marriage partners.

“Men now are increasingly likely to marry wives with more education and income than they have, and the reverse is true for women,” said Paul Fucito, spokesman for the Pew Center. “In recent decades, with the rise of well-paid working wives, the economic gains of marriage have been a greater benefit for men.”

The analysis examines Americans 30 to 44 years old, the first generation in which more women than men have college degrees. Women’s earnings have been increasing faster than men’s since the 1970s. ...

The education and income gap has grown even more in the latest recession, when men held about three in four of the jobs that were lost. The Census Bureau said Friday that among married couples with children, only the wife worked in 7 percent of the households last year, compared with 5 percent in 2007. The percentage rose to 12 percent from 9 percent for blacks, among whom the education and income gap by gender has typically been even greater.

“I’m not married, I would like to be married, and my friends are all in a similar situation,” said Dr. Rajalla Prewitt, a 38-year-old psychiatrist in New Jersey. “We’re having difficulty finding someone where there’s a meeting of the minds, where we can have the same goals and values.”

“Particularly, African-American men who are educated want a traditional home where they are the breadwinner,” said Dr. Prewitt, who is a black woman.

Labels: culture, gender differences, Marriage, men, race, women

posted by Eve at 4:39 PM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

...But then my eyes lowered and I became transfixed by the sight of the boy’s tiny pink fingers gripping his father’s huge, workman-like fist. And I almost wanted to burst into song.

I think my life changed at that moment.

That’s love, folks. Simple really. A proud dad, an adored little boy and a beautiful display of dependence and responsibility. It was the epiphany I had needed and I emerged with a dashing new haircut and a desire to procreate.

Gays have children these days, of course they do, and not always to accessorise an outfit. Some gay couples adopt; others follow twisting paths to biological parenthood, often quite expensively, with the involvement of test tubes and cash changing hands. It is, really, a sort of snook to the system of nature. Shooting for the net without the chore of running with the ball. It’s just not for me.

And lately I have, almost imperceptibly, been laying the groundwork to make parenthood happen in the old-fashioned way. I have been flirting with someone at my local pub, thinking about her at odd times, making excuses to call her and wondering if she likes me. It’s rather strange.

This will come as a shock to — among others — my male former partner of ten years, gay pals from my former media career, my rabidly heterosexual chums in the aviation industry and, not least, my family (who rather hoped I was going through a phase — albeit for about 20 years). Well, it’s come as a shock to me, too.

I once attended the nuptials of a gay male friend to a girl with whom he had unexpectedly fallen head over heels in love. It was a curious affair: the wedding party was peopled with his ex-lovers — including me, the best man and even the vicar. There is a risk that a wedding guest list of mine could have the same casting issues.

Labels: culture, Fathers, homosexuality, United Kingdom

posted by Imapp Staff at 3:48 PM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

In a matter of seconds 27 years ago in a crowded New York City hotel ballroom, David Moffitt's parents went from total strangers to an engaged couple after being divinely matched by Unification Church founder the Rev. Sun Myung Moon. It was the 1980s, when thousands of young people like them ditched their educations, careers and families to live out of vans, sell flowers at airports and follow a Korean who calls himself a messiah.

Flash-forward to a Bowie living room on a recent weeknight, when Moffitt and a few dozen other "blessed children" of Moon-arranged mass weddings were discussing something perhaps as revolutionary: going mainstream.

"Our parents' generation were much more all-out. . . . You could say they were fighting a war," said Moffitt, a 24-year-old University of Maryland junior who works part time as a personal trainer. "Our generation is more focused on happiness and prosperity, going to college, getting jobs. It's important to be part of the culture. If you're above the culture, you can't change the world."

Their quest for a less-radical version of their faith comes during great uncertainty and change within the Unification Church. With Moon turning 90 in February, how the movement will survive beyond him is unclear. Moon's children are at odds over how to run the church's business empire, including the money-losing Washington Times, which laid off 40 percent of its staff this past week.

For church members, figuring out how to stabilize the movement has a feeling of urgency, particularly for Moffitt and others his age. Church officials estimate there are 21,000 active Unificationists in this country, including 7,500 blessed children, who members believe were born free of original sin and have a special spiritual status. A significant number of blessed children live in the Washington area, long a hub for Moon businesses and church lobbyists.

The church's future lies with this second generation, who were born into a religion some view as a bizarre cult. Their own beliefs run the gamut from those eager to follow in their parents' footsteps to those who haven't attended a Unification worship service for years.

Labels: arranged marriage, culture, DC, Marriage, religion, Unification Church

posted by Eve at 12:21 AM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

New Hampshire performed its first gay marriages this past week. New Jersey lawmakers vote on gay marriage today. Even so, advocates are shifting strategy to focus on having same-sex relationships legally recognized in other forms.

The reason: Despite those victories for gay rights, the end of 2009 saw momentum on the marriage issue stall.

Two states rejected same-sex marriage, reflecting the fact that most Americans do not support it, says John Green, a political science professor at the University of Akron. No other state is actively considering legislation.

As a result, Green says, advocates will push for states to grant civil unions or domestic partnerships, which allow similar rights to those of married couples. Americans are more likely to support those relationships, he says.

An August survey by the Pew Research Center found that 53% of Americans oppose allowing gay men and lesbians to marry legally, but 57% favor allowing them to enter into civil unions, arrangements that give them many of the same rights.

"By picking away a little bit by little bit, advocates hope to create a trend and shift public opinion, as people see it's not as pernicious as they may have thought," Green says. "The ultimate goal is same-sex marriage."

Labels: civil unions, culture, domestic partnership, gay marriage

posted by Eve at 2:53 PM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

...Still, law professors Adam Candeub and Mae Kuykendall are arguing that what worked for the Ferschkes and other couples should be able to work for anyone, gay or straight.

The two Michigan State University professors argue that no couple should have to be physically present to be married and that any two adults should have the freedom to take advantage of another state's marriage laws, whether or not the pair resides in that state.

How exactly? With the help of the Internet, in what Candeub and Kuykendall are dubbing "e-marriage."

"Building on deeply rooted but overlooked precedent in both ancient and modern law concerning marriage by proxy, telephone, and mail, we propose `e-marriage,"' Candeub and Kuykendall write in their proposal, "E-Marriage: Breaking the Marriage Monopoly" for the Social Science Research Network.

Candeub and Kuykendall contend that "e-marriage" could help extricate states from the controversy surrounding same-sex marriage.

With "e-marriage," an Alabama gay couple, for example, could easily take advantage of Vermont's same-sex marriage laws though Alabama itself wouldn't necessarily recognize that marriage.

"Every type of e-marriage will not be enforceable everywhere," Candeub and Kuykendall write. "We argue, however, that marriage satisfies a unique human need for socially sanctioned commitment, which a simple contract cannot satisfy ... E-marriage can more efficiently distribute the `status good' of marriage, even if it cannot provide a legally enforceable relationship in every state."

Labels: culture, gay marriage, Marriage

posted by Eve at 2:43 PM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

Regardless of their politics, Americans owe Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins gratitude for this: that their 23-year relationship unraveled, and ended, far from the public eye.

The couple separated over the summer, and apparently no fire hydrants were harmed in the process, no emergency medical technicians were summoned. It was late December before word of the break-up trickled out to the tabloids, and two weeks later the actors are still not talking, except to confirm through a publicist that they split. ...

Capisce, we do. Ms. Sarandon, whose seemingly golden "domestic partnership" with Mr. Robbins was the stuff of Hollywood legend, is desirous of preserving marriages on screen, but not so much in real life. She famously declined to wed Mr. Robbins, the father of her two sons, because she worried such a stuffy and archaic ritual might harm their relationship.

"I won't marry because I am too afraid of taking him for granted, or him taking me for granted," she once said. "Maybe it will be a good excuse for a party when I am 80."

Of course, many married people have a good excuse for a party when they're about 80--they're called golden anniversaries, and they're great. A pinnacle of married life, the 50th-anniversary party is a joyous celebration of love, perseverance and forbearance, virtues no less noble because they are lightly enforced by the state. The marriage certificate, surrendered at a divorce hearing, does not guarantee a happy union, but neither does the absence of one, as Ms. Sarandon learned.

Labels: culture, divorce, domestic partnership, Marriage

posted by Eve at 2:38 PM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

Jay Sekora isn’t actively looking for an additional relationship, but he admits to occasionally checking a dating site to see who’s out there. Sekora’s girlfriend, Mare, who does not want her last name used here for professional reasons, said she is not pursuing anyone, either, but is “open and welcoming to what might come along.” In the three-plus years they have been together, a few other people have come along, like the woman whom Sekora, a 43-year-old systems administrator from Quincy, met online and dated briefly until she moved away. There was also a male-male couple that Mare and Sekora, who identifies as bisexual, dated for several months as a couple. Other than that, it has been the two of them. Well, sort of. ...

It’s complicated, as the poly catch phrase goes. It’s also still surprisingly closeted. Nonetheless, Valerie White, executive director of Sexual Freedom Legal Defense and Education Fund in Sharon, says we are ahead of the curve in Massachusetts, particularly compared with the South, where teachers have lost their jobs and parents have lost their children for being poly. But she notes there is no push in the poly movement to legalize these relationships, largely because there’s no infrastructure for it. “It was easy to legalize gay marriage. All you had to do was change bride and groom to person A and person B. But we don’t know what multi-partnered marriage looks like,” White says.

“The gay struggle is a larger struggle, and as poly people we don’t have to be political,” says Amoroso, who, like many poly people, does see the need for a clearer legal recognition of relationships that aren’t marriages. (If one of his partners were to fall ill, for example, he would want legal visitation rights.) ...

Then there are the kids, who in this case, according to Alan, understand as much about their parents’ lifestyle as they want to. The two boys have attended several Boston Pride Parades, and they know and interact with their parents’ partners as they would with any other close adult friends. But the Wexelblats have not yet explained the specifics of their lifestyle to their sons. “Kids deal well with things they think are normal,” says Alan. “To the degree that we can help them be comfortable with this, then they will treat it as normal. That’s the theory, anyway.”

That theory is starting to get support from research. In 2006, Elisabeth Sheff, an assistant professor of sociology at Georgia State University who had been collecting data on poly families since 1996, launched the first long-term study of children raised in such families. While her findings are not yet conclusive, Sheff says her initial generalization is that kids raised in poly families have access to many resources, such as help with homework, rides when needed, and the additional emotional support and attention that comes from having other, nonparental adults in their lives. Sheff adds, however, that “kids in poly families also sometimes feel extremely upset when their parents’ partners leave, if it means the end of the relationship between the kid and the ex-partner.” She says that poly families often pass as mundane, blended families from divorce and remarriage and therefore easily fly below the radar.

Labels: culture, parenting, polyamory

posted by Eve at 10:33 PM EMAIL SHARE PRINT