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Saturday, September 04, 2004
IS THERE SOMETHING ABOUT MARY? Beliefnet editor Stephen Waldman asks, "Why wasn't she at the podium with the rest of her family?" His short post is worth reading, if for no other reason that he doesn't use the term "family values" ironically, which 90% of other writers would have. From Juneau, Alaska: A new Healthy Marriage initiative started by the state Department of Health and Social Services is offering $500,000 in grant money to community- and faith-based organizations for programs and services designed to help and encourage healthy marriages and two-parent families. Friday, September 03, 2004
RE: Tom's post on miniskirts: Any woman with a four-month old who is wearing miniskirts is just showing off. She knows that every woman who's had a baby takes a look, sizes up the age of the baby, and thinks to herself, "Darnit, she got back in shape so fast, why can't I?" ROTTEN MARRIAGE ADVICE : Someone writes in to Dr Joyce Brothers: My wife and I have been married 14 years. We have two wonderful kids, a nice house -- the perfect life, it would seem. Our problem sounds like a cliche -- but we just don't seem to love each other anymore. We do things together; we're friendly to each other; we hardly ever argue. But the passion and the deep feelings of love are totally missing. It's like we're reasonably compatible roommates, but not lovers anymore. Our sex life is mostly a distant memory, and when we do make love, it's almost embarrassing -- like having sex with a friend. And while we're considerate of each other, sharing all the household chores and parenting duties, we just don't seem to care beyond being polite. Is it possible to rekindle the spark we once had? Her reply? ...Sometimes the kind of marriage that lacks passion is the hardest to save, as both parties become more and more isolated or turn to friends or lovers for the feeling of intimacy they have lost. But if you both agree the marriage is worth it, you might find that some sexual stimulation will kick-start your romance. There are medications on the market now for both men and women that should help a lagging sex life. If that helps, you're halfway home. How pathetic. First there is the ridiculous, despairing claim that the marriage that "lacks passion" is the "hardest to save." Really? Wouldn't the marriage in which people have said and done awful things to each other be much, much harder to save? Then there is the shrugging "if you both agree the marriage is worth it" segue, as though she's basically washing her hands of any opinion in the matter (what else are advice columnists supposed to do but share their opinion?) Then, worst of all, the incredibly lame advice -- take some pills and see if that jazzes up your sex life. This advice is also medically questionable -- aren't these new prescriptions intended for people with sexual dysfunction, not for those who just have a "lagging sex life"? Here's a couple with children who respect each other and have figured out how to share their parenting and household duties without fighting (a lot of us could learn from them). They've just gotten stuck in the same old routines of child and home management and forgotten to focus on themselves now and then. This is basically a "dog bites man" story in the marriage business. Hey, Dr. Brothers! You've been an "expert" for a long time and it appears you've gotten lazy. Take some time to learn something new, and start with learning about all the great ideas and resources out there for couples who just can't seem to find their passion anymore. Start by going to Smartmarriages . "LOVE": I just learned from a friend that many young evangelical Christians will only say they're "in love" once they're sure it's forever. In other words, saying, "I love you" is like a promise ring, almost equivalent to proposing. While the first time someone busts out the "l-word" is significant in any relationship, this takes it to a whole 'nother level. In the endeavor to be knowledgeable about important issues of the day, I just read an article on miniskirts in today's NY Times. But it's relevant! Nicole Leone, 31, usually has her 4-month-old son in a stroller with her when she travels by subway, so she has learned the art of the one-handed tug-and-sit. Thursday, September 02, 2004
"Jacqueline Tomlins petitioned the Family Court to have her legal Canadian marriage to her partner Sarah validated in Australia , but she didn't bank on the Government amending the law to prevent it. Now she wants to know why." "Websites that reunite and reignite old lovers are helping push up England's divorce rates, according to a UK-based counselling service on Wednesday." MOTHERLESSNESS? Trish Wilson at her blog, XXBlog , comments on my post, below, in which I criticize Parenting Magazine for publishing one line about one study, with no citation, which claimed to find that there is no difference between children of single parents and those of married parents in terms of educational achievement and behavior problems -- and headed the finding by saying it was "one less thing to worry about." Wilson responds with a mess of study citations which she claims refute that there is a real fatherlessness problem in our society and she leads with a confusing intro: It's true that most children from single and divorced homes (read: living with mom) do just as well as children from intact homes. The children who do not do as well and who have behavior problems are the ones being raised by a single father. It is motherlessness, not "fatherlessness," that leads to problems. Huh? At this point, exactly how widespread is the problem of "motherlessness"? In her response to several people who commented on her post Wilson says something equally inscrutable. Noting that several people seemed to be saying she thought fathers don't matter, she writes: "The facts don't negate the importance of fathers. They show that the idea that children are harmed by "fatherlessness" is meaningless." OK, so fathers matter, but it doesn't matter if children don't have a father. I'll have to meditate on that one for a while. Wednesday, September 01, 2004
This is a bit off-topic for us, but having written my undergraduate thesis on romantic love and marriage in Pride and Prejudice, I am incapable of resisting any opportunity to say something about Jane Austen. The Washington Post recently ran an article about Austen's renewed popularity in the past few years. The article follows all the familiar lines: Austen is the "great-great-grandmother of 'chick lit'" (yuck, yuck, yuck, someone needs to read Northanger Abbey). Women think Colin Firth is really hot (okay, that one's true). Austen was an incredibly "subversive" writer whose work should be read primarily for its political commentary. This comment, from University of Pennsylvania professor Michael Gamer, particularly irked me: "One of the things appealing about the novels is that they get at the predicament young heterosexual women face when they live in an age that frankly penalizes any real radical pbehavior," Gamer says. "So her heroines are, for the most part, smart women who are often compelled to spit tacks at the folly around them, but don't really have a lot of options except to change from within."There is a tendency among some Austen scholarship to dismiss what Austen has to say about character and the difficult road to virtue in favor of prying from her work a comprehensive critique of the aristocratic, patriarchal world her novels sort-of take place in, which frankly I find demeaning to Austen's achievements. Grumble. On the other hand, the article does make one point that is rare to see in comparisons of Austen to contemporary chick-lit: But what's usually lost in the reinvention is Austen's ability to resolve a courtship filled with excitement and witty repartee into a union that seems less a marriage than a merging of two well-matched minds. As Minow points out, Elizabeth enlightens her Darcy and vice versa, and the same goes for Emma and her Mr. Knightley. But when Bridget [Jones] gets her Mr. Darcy or "Shopaholic's" Becky Bloomwood lands her Luke Brandon (well-off, attractive, solid, in a serious financial-sector job), it comes because the men love them despite all their foolishness and frippery. It is a love of acceptance, and, in some ways, even salvation.While I don't really get this distinction that's made between "marriage" and "a merging of two well-matched minds," this is otherwise strikes me as right on. My thoughts on this topic from last fall can be found here. Libertarian blogger Megan McArdle discovers that marriage matters: Thus, Bush's marriage promotion initiative, which I confess, I was much more skeptical about before I did the research and saw just how powerful an effect having kids out of wedlock has on the lives of both mothers and children. To cite just one statistic, a Brookings report estimates that if families currently in poverty got married before they had children, it would cut the poverty rate from 13% to 9.5%. Welfare benefits would have to more than triple before they could achieve a similar reduction. I still don't think that the marriage promotion initiative is going to work, but I appreciate the motive more than I did.Welcome to the marriage movement, Ms. McArdle! The Marriage Movement: A Statement of Principles is a good place to start for information about the history of the movement and the efforts being made in different fields. There's a lot more going on here than most people realize. In fact, for all the ranting we hear about social conservatives trying to use government to force everyone to get married (except the gays!), most of the work being done today to renew our marriage culture is taking place in the private sector by people from all over the political spectrum. There's plenty of room for libertarians, too. Barry of Alas, A Blog responds to my post on marriage and domestic violence. I don't really object to much in Barry's post, but then, I don't think I equated correlation with causation or anything. Of course marrying an abusive man won't "cure" him, and I didn't say so. I'm just against the bizarre characterization of marriage as an institution that is inherently dangerous to women; Barry's against the characterization of cohabitaiton as a type of relationship that is inherently dangerous to women. I think that's fair enough. What we can (I hope) both agree on is that it is totally unhelpful to feed fears that one's perfectly normal, nonviolent husband could secretly be plotting bloody murder. There are, in fact, as Barry points out, many warning signs for potential violence, including overly controlling behavior, drug and alcohol abuse, and inability to manage anger. Increasing public awareness of those warning signs would be a good thing; running stories that aim to frighten women by saying, basically, "Do you really know your husband? Laci Peterson thought she did and look how she ended up" are not. On the playground with my daughter and some other little kids, one girl is swinging and says to another, swinging beside her, "Hey, we're married!" Curious, I asked her what she meant. "See," she said, "we're swinging together," and indeed their two swings were moving back and forth in tandem. I never heard "married" used that way on the playground before. Is this common? It's very cute. At Cornell, a faculty member makes the case against SSM. He uses an interesting term, calling marriage a "pre-constitutional" issue. If he means that marriage is in part a natural institution, present in all societies and predating governments, I think he's right. That's why it's true to say that governments cannot create (or legitimately abolish) marriage, any more than governments can create (or legitimately abolish) human rights -- both are prior to and ultimately over governments, not subservient to them. But at the same time, marriage is not merely a natural institution. It is also in part a legal institution in which governments have a long-standing and (I think) legitimate interest. And so in that sense I think calling it "pre-constitutional" is misleading. One trend in modern societies is for governments to try to reshape institutions, even natural institutions, according to the regnant values of the polity. Thus, if the primary values of the polity are, say, inclusion and tolerance, the push is for all social institutions, even those whose origins and purposes are pre-constitutional, to change in order to reflect those values. Whether or not this is a good trend is ... a longer discussion. I'll just say for now that I have my doubts, at least in the case of marriage. From the Republican convention in NYC: Protesters jeered and chanted "Missouri is a hate state" Tuesday as delegates of one of the first states to pass a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage headed to dinner. Tuesday, August 31, 2004
We'd been having technical problems on the site recently. Apologies for the scarcity of posts (and my messy posts on Friday -- I wasn't able to get back in to edit them). We're working now to improve the site so that it will be more reliable. This cartoon, by Pulitzer prize winning cartoonist Ann Telnaes, makes me so angry I can't blog. The shear dishonesty of it makes me seethe. Just for good measure, once again, here's some accurate info about the Healthy Marriage Initiative, which will not force women to marry abusive men. Following close on the heals of the A&E special "Fatal Fathers," a Washington Post article last week declared it the "Summer of the Bad Husband," mostly based on the current media obsession with the Laci Peterson and Lori Hacking cases. It's enough to haunt the dreams of a duiful wife with one too many heart-pounding questions:In case you haven't gotten the picture yet, the story also quotes Susan Martin, who wants you to be afraid of your husband: "This is an age-old problem," says Susan Martin, a criminal defense attorney in Colorado... "More bad things happen in family units. The people we should fear are the people we love most -- husbands, spouses, meighbors. If you become victimized, chances are it's going to be someone in the family."Now, while it's true that you're more likely to be the victim of a violent crime perpetrated by a family member than a total stranger, it is not at all true that husbands as a class are more violent than, say, live-in boyfriends. Ms. Martin doesn't tell us that fact, though, and neither does anyone else in the article. Rather, all men are painted as potential aggressors: Since Ms. Pirro has been prosecuting domestic violence cases for decades, she must know that most domestic violence happens in households where the couple is not married. You'd think that since we're so concerned with helping women avoid becoming victims of domestic violence you might want to mention that, but no. Of course, children are also at much greater risk of abuse when there is an unrelated male living in their home, another absent fact which might have been relevant to this article, which does note that "the bad huband, more often than not, has been touched himself by some kind of domestic violence." Domestic violence is a serious problem in this country, regardless of the marital status of the victim. But feeding the myth that marriage is an inherently dangerous place for women is not the way to be serious about fighting domestic violence. |
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