Archive: Dec 2014

CCF circulated many useful briefing reports this year– covering issues ranging from hooking up to Civil Rights to research methodology. Here are the five most talked about pieces—as measured by media impact:

• Kristi Williams’ January report, “Promoting marriage among single mothers: An ineffective weapon in the war on poverty?“, explains that giving women the education and resources to prevent unintended pregnancies may be the best approach to alleviating poverty. The report was part of the online symposium, “50th Anniversary of the War on Poverty: Have we snatched defeat from the jaws of victory?,” and it was covered by other media more than 15 times–including The New York Times, The Huffington Post, and Time.
• Arielle Kuperberg asked “Does Premarital Cohabitation Raise Your Risk of Divorce?” in a March report: the answer was “no.” Kuperberg found that it is the lower ages and maturity levels of individuals in a couple who move in together that puts both cohabiting and married couples at risk for splitting up. The report was covered by at least 37 media sources, including The Atlantic, Shape,Live Science,Glamour,Fox News, The Today Show, The Huffington Post, Time, and Yahoo News.
• Sarah Damaske’s May report, “Really? Work Lowers People’s Stress Levels,” suggests how family-friendly work policies may reduce work-family conflict without forcing men and women to choose between the two. Using biomarkers, Damaske observed that people tend to be less stressed at work and that opting out of work has negative long-term consequences for mental and physical health. Damaske’s report was cited by 35 media outlets including Time, MSNBC, Today, The Wall Street Journal, National Public Radio, and The New York Times.
• Sharon Sassler’s July “Is the Glass Half Empty, or Three-Quarters Full?“ found that couples who split housework equally have sex at least as often—and with as much satisfaction—as those who stick to traditional divisions of household labor. The Huffington Post coverage of Sassler’s report was liked 47,000 times on Facebook, and her report was cited at least 14 times by other media outlets including Live Science, Slate, Philadelphia Magazine, and Salon, and internationally by Yahoo News India. The symposium from which Sassler’s report came, “After a Puzzling Pause, the Gender Revolution Continues,” received twelve more media citations.
• Philip Cohen’s September briefing report, “Family Diversity is the New Normal for America’s Children,” details family diversity today, leading to the conclusion that there is no single “normal” family structure. Though long and persistently imagined as the norm, the traditional male-breadwinner family arrangement now comprises only 22 percent of children’s families. Cohen’s report reminded readers that policy must change accordingly. Cohen’s brief was cited by more than 30 media sources, including The Washington Post, U.S. News, Fox & Friends, The National Catholic Reporter, Live Science, and The New York Times.

In addition to these widely covered pieces, over the course of 2014, at least 27 CCF experts provided media with updated perspectives on research through interviews, news articles, and opinion pieces, on topics ranging from politics to pop culture. In working toward CCF’s mission to increase public knowledge about family diversity and change, these combined efforts led to more than 250 media citations. This makes a difference! From my vantage point as CCF’s public affairs intern, I am eager to see how CCF will continue to reach forward towards transforming dialogue in 2015.

Braxton Jones is a senior sociology major at Framingham State University (MA) and a CCF Public Affairs Intern.

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 not only ushered in stronger federal protections for racial and ethnic minorities and women, but also for religious minorities. Antipathy toward Catholics and Jews in the US was a persistent and prevalent theme through much of American history. It was common for these groups to be labeled “un-American” and even categorized as “non-white.” Members of these religions were often discriminated against in hiring and in admission to institutions of higher learning (this was especially common for Jewish applicants) and excluded from many neighborhoods, clubs, and political positions. From the late 19^th through the mid-20^th century, organized hate groups, most notably the Ku Klux Klan, used the threat of violence to intimidate not only African-Americans but Jews and Catholics as well.

After World War II, these restrictions and prejudices eased somewhat. By 1955 the now-classic essay Protestant Catholic Jew could proclaim that although these three religions were the primary sources of identity in America, they were now “alternative ways of being an American” rather than two of them being seen as Un-American.

Still, anti-Semitism and anti-Catholicism persisted. In the 1960s, some commentators worried that President Kennedy, a Catholic, would take orders from the Pope. In the 1970s, President Richard Nixon was recorded making several anti-Semitic comments. And even today nativist hate groups continue to perpetuate centuries-old hostilities against Catholic and Jewish Americans. But the Civil Rights Act did give these minorities protection against outright exclusion and discrimination, and other religious minorities have also looked to it for security as the American religious landscape has diversified. more...

American families are diversifying in ways that are more complicated than ever, creating distinct patterns in different parts of the country and subgroups of the population. That’s why policy-makers and community leaders need detailed, locally-specific census data about family formation, marriage trends, divorce, and widowhood. This information is essential in order to accurately assess everything from population growth patterns to the special educational and social needs of different neighborhoods. Yet the Census Bureau has announced plans to cut from the American Community Survey several questions that provide such crucial information to researchers, planners, journalists, and the general public.

The questions to be cut include:

In the past 12 months did this person get—Married?

In the past 12 months did this person get—Widowed

In the past 12 months did this person get—Divorced?

Times Married—How many times has this person been married?

In what year did this person last get married?

What is the American Community Survey?

The American Community Survey (ACS) is the large Census Bureau survey that replaced the “long form” of the decennial census in the 2000s. It uses a sophisticated rotating geographic sampling design to gather information for households at all levels of geographic detail – even down to small neighborhoods. Administering the survey is expensive, but cutting these questions to save money in the short run will cost America dearly in the long run.

Why we need the ACS to keep these questions:

1. Believe it or not, there is no national count of marriages and divorces. In 1996, the government stopped collecting detailed national data on legal marriages and divorces. Now the government produces simple counts of marriages and divorces, but without any accompanying information about age of marriage, marriage duration, or number of remarriages. Furthermore, the figures they produce exclude six states (California, Georgia, Hawaii, Minnesota, Louisiana, and Indiana) that together account for 20 percent of divorces.

The ACS is the only reliable source of national, state, and city data on the frequency of marriage, divorce, widowhood, and remarriage. It provides data that is vital for estimating the impact of socioeconomic trends and social policies on marriage rates and on married and unmarried households.

2. The ACS is the only source of data that can measure marriage and divorce patterns in smaller sections of the population, such as particular states and cities, minority groups, and gay and lesbian couples. Asian Americans, for instance, are now a relatively small section of the population, but they are the fastest growing racial-ethnic group. Don’t we need to know what kind of family trends are occurring in this group?

Some things we can learn with the ACS data – and only with ACS data:

How divorce rates for “millennials” vary in the top 25 metropolitan areas: Surely it’s worth knowing that divorce rates range from 3.9 per 100 married people in Portland to just 1.4 in New York City. Other ACS data can help us understand what factors may account for this.

How divorce rates differ for 15 different Asian national-origin groups: Generalizations about “the” Asian population obscure the fact that Thais and Cambodians have much higher divorce rates than Indians and Pakistanis.

How the recession affected divorce rates: The recession appeared to have slowed some divorces in its initial years. This was followed by an uptick in divorces in 2012. But the 2013 divorce rate (just made available) shows a sharp drop in 2013. This drop has yet to be explained, which is why we need continuing detailed data from the ACS about the socioeconomic and cultural factors and local variations that may be involved.

How marriage histories for men and women differ by education level: Married college graduates are much more likely than those with less education to be in their first marriages.

Marriage rates for people with different disabilities (by race/ethnicity): Having a disability reduces the chance that a person will marry. The overall first-marriage rate for people aged 18-49 is 71.8 per 1,000. For people with disabilities, it’s 41.1. But marriage rates vary by the type of disability, and also by race, regardless of disability type.

Detroit’s catastrophic demographic situation: Without the ACS we would not fully grasp the especially high divorce and early widowhood rates, falling population, educational failure, and unemployment that comprise the urban crisis there.

If we lose this kind of data, our ability to forecast future trends, anticipate potential problems, and understand our own families and local communities will be severely compromised. And that’s what might happen unless researchers and concerned citizens tell the government we need this kind of information to continue being collected. The government has given the public until the end of December to make its views known.

Information about the planned cuts to the American Community Survey is here: https://www.federalregister.gov/articles/2014/10/31/2014-25912/proposed-information-collection-comment-request-the-american-community-survey-content-review-results.

This briefing paper was prepared for the Council on Contemporary Families by Philip Cohen, Professor of Sociology, University of Maryland.

The gendered mystique that still poses barriers to African-American women in their personal and public lives is perhaps best described as an “unfeminine mystique” – the idea that they have characteristics and embrace lifestyles that are outside the boundaries of “real” womanhood. This “unfeminine mystique” has plagued African-American women for more than 200 years. more...