marriage

Love is (color) blind.The New York Times reports that a new Pew Research Study finds that interracial marriage has reached record highs in the U.S.

Intermarriage among Asian, black, Hispanic and white people now accounts for a record 1 in 6 new marriages in the United States. Tellingly, blacks and whites remain the least-common variety of interracial pairing. Still, black-white unions make up 1 in 60 new marriages today, compared with fewer than 1 in 1,000 back when Barack Obama’s parents wed a half-century ago.

Of all 3.8 million adults who married in 2008, 31 percent of Asians, 26 percent of Hispanic people, 16 percent of blacks and 9 percent of whites married a person whose race or ethnicity was different from their own. Those were all record highs.

Such trends may be detrimental to the marriage prospects of black women:

More and more black men are marrying women of other races. In fact, more than 1 in 5 black men who wed (22 percent) married a nonblack woman in 2008. This compares with about 9 percent of black women, and represents a significant increase for black men — from 15.7 percent in 2000 and 7.9 percent in 1980.

Sociologists said the rate of black men marrying women of other races further reduces the already-shrunken pool of potential partners for black women seeking a black husband.

“When you add in the prison population,” said Prof. Steven Ruggles, director of the Minnesota Population Center, “it pretty well explains the extraordinarily low marriage rates of black women.”

“The continuing imbalance in the rates for black men and black women could be making it even harder for black women to find a husband,” said Prof. Andrew J. Cherlin, director of the population center at Johns Hopkins University.

What do these trends mean for the children?

How children of the expanding share of mixed marriages identify themselves — and how they are identified by the rest of society — could blur a benchmark that the nation will approach within a few decades when American Indian, Asian, black and Hispanic Americans and people of mixed race become a majority of the population.

Still, the “blending” of America could be overstated, especially given the relatively low rate of black-white intermarriage compared with other groups, and continuing racial perceptions and divisions, according to some sociologists.

“Children of white-Asian and white-Hispanic parents will have no problems calling themselves white, if that’s their choice,” said Andrew Hacker, a political scientist at Queens College of the City University of New York and the author of a book about race.

“But offspring of black and another ethnic parent won’t have that option,” Professor Hacker said. “They’ll be black because that’s the way they’re seen. Barack Obama, Tiger Woods, Halle Berry, have all known that. Will that change? Don’t hold your breath.”

Currently, heterosexual couples who live together before marriage and those who don’t have about the same chance of marital success, reports USA Today:

The report, by the National Center for Health Statistics, is based on the National Survey of Family Growth, a sample of almost 13,000. It provides the most detailed data on cohabitation of men and women to date.

Past research — using decades-old data — found significantly higher divorce rates for cohabitors, defined as “not married but living together with a partner of the opposite sex.” But now, in an era when about two-thirds of couples who marry live together first, a different picture is emerging in which there are few differences between those who cohabit and those who don’t.

Sociologists weigh in on the findings:

Sociologist Pamela Smock of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor considers the data definitive. “On the basis of these numbers, there is not a negative effect of cohabitation on marriages, plain and simple,” she says.

Paul Amato, a sociologist at Pennsylvania State University, says the new data suggest that “maybe the effect of premarital cohabitation is becoming less of a problem than it was in the past. If it becomes normative now, maybe it’s not such a big deal.”

However, according to the study’s co-author, Bill Mosher:

“There’s a real difference in the types of cohabitations out there.  We can show that now with these national data.”

The data show that those who live together after making plans to marry or getting engaged have about the same chances of divorcing as couples who never cohabited before marriage. But those who move in together before making any clear decision to marry appear to have an increased risk of divorce.

Additionally:

Andrew Cherlin, a sociologist at Johns Hopkins University, says the report may quell fears of cohabitation “as a long-term substitute for marriage,” as in some European countries.  “American cohabitors either marry or break up in a few years,” he says.

MSNBC also joined the fray this week in reporting on cohabitation.  Check it out here for more fabulous sociological commentary on shacking up.

match.com - Make Love Happen

The Herald-Sun picked up on forthcoming research about the popularity of internet dating:

“We estimate that about 18 percent — almost 1 in 5 — of those who are single and have access to the Internet have used Internet dating,” said Rebecca Tippett, a doctoral student at Duke and one of the three authors of “The Social Demography of Internet Dating in the United States.”

Analyzing a national survey of 3,215 adults, the sociologists discuss what contributes to this phenomenon:

Some of those factors are demographic, she [Tippett] said, “like the rising age of first marriage, the increased divorce rate and the fact that people are geographically more mobile.”

In years past, you’d go to school, then get a permanent job and live in that same town, “and that’s where’d you find a mate,” Tippett said. “But people are moving more now, they’re not getting married at 22 and they are removed from their traditional social networks for mate selection. When those things are changing, it’s more common for the way to find a partner to change as well.”

The paper also attributed part of what it called “phenomenal growth” to social change that has made Internet dating “more acceptable [especially for women].”

Finding a partner through intermediaries, of course, isn’t new, Tippett pointed out, but “technology has made it much easier.”

“For most people, what Internet dating has done is make more information available,” she said. “You can see a picture, you can e-mail, you can instant message. You’re able to interact and pre-screen.”

But,

[The researchers] also pointed out that the growth is uneven, and that a digital divide still exists, hypothesizing that “Internet daters will be disproportionally white, possess high education and income, and live in urban/suburban areas.”

115.365 - Porn for Women: VacuumingDoes a rise in women’s earning power have benefits to marriage beyond economic stability?  In an attempt to address this question, a recent New York Times article summarized some of the recent social scientific evidence on the rise of working women:

Last week, a report from the Pew Research Center about what it called “the rise of wives” revived the debate. Based on a study of Census data, Pew found that in nearly a third of marriages, the wife is better educated than her husband. And though men, over all, still earn more than women, wives are now the primary breadwinner in 22 percent of couples, up from 7 percent in 1970.

While the changing economic roles of husbands and wives may take some getting used to, the shift has had a surprising effect on marital stability. Over all, the evidence shows that the shifts within marriages — men taking on more housework and women earning more outside the home — have had a positive effect, contributing to lower divorce rates and happier unions.

The article points to demographic and sociological evidence that suggests greater marital stability and egalitarianism when a woman is more economically independent:

While it’s widely believed that a woman’s financial independence increases her risk for divorce, divorce rates in the United States tell a different story: they have fallen as women have made economic gains. The rate peaked at 23 divorces per 1,000 couples in the late 1970s, but has since dropped to fewer than 17 divorces per 1,000 couples. Today, the statistics show that typically, the more economic independence and education a woman gains, the more likely she is to stay married. And in states where fewer wives have paid jobs, divorce rates tend to be higher, according to a 2009 report from the Center for American Progress.

Sociologists and economists say that financially independent women can be more selective in marrying, and they also have more negotiating power within the marriage. But it’s not just women who win. The net result tends to be a marriage that is more fair and equitable to husbands and wives.

The changes are not without their challenges. “With women taking on more earning and men taking on more caring, there’s a lot of shifting and juggling,” said Andrea Doucet, a sociology professor at Carleton University in Ottawa. Her study, the Bread and Roses Project, tracks couples in the United States and Canada in which women are the primary breadwinners. But the dynamic is “not as easy as you’d think it would be,” she said. “You can’t just reverse the genders.”

Men, for instance, sometimes have a hard time adjusting to a woman’s equal or greater earning power. Women, meanwhile, struggle with giving up their power at home and controlling tasks like how to dress the children or load the dishwasher.

Highlighting additional sociological evidence:

Kristen W. Springer, a sociologist at Rutgers, has found that among men in their 50s, having a wife who earns more money is associated with poorer health. Among the highest earning couples in her study, a husband who earns less than his wife is 60 percent less likely to be in good health compared with men who earn more than their wives.

And despite the sweeping economic changes in marriage over the last 40 years, all is not equal. Even among dual-earning couples, women still do about two-thirds of the housework, on average, according to the University of Wisconsin National Survey of Families and Households. But men do contribute far more than they used to. Studies show that since the 1960s, men’s contributions to housework have doubled, while the amount of time spent caring for children has tripled.

And the blurring of traditional gender roles appears to have a positive effect. Lynn Prince Cooke, a sociology professor at the University of Kent in England, has found that American couples who share employment and housework responsibilities are less likely to divorce compared with couples where the man is the sole breadwinner.

The Santa Barbara Independent reports:

In 2004, demonstrations and protests in favor of marriage equality were observed by civil rights activists and same-sex couples across the United States. These acts were largely spurred by the mayor of San Francisco, Gavin Newsom, and his act of defiance in ordering the County Clerk to issue marriage licenses, against California’s Defense of Marriage Act. This was seen as a sign of things to come by many optimistic activists until 2008 when Proposition 8 banned gay marriage in California.

The story draws on Verta Taylor and colleagues’ study in the American Sociological Review:

In the article, Taylor alludes to the pivotal role of the 2004 protests and shows the likely historical significance by saying: “The San Francisco weddings served as a public and dramatic tactic to claim basic civil rights for gay and lesbian people … Our research shows that the month-long wedding protest sparked other forms of political actions, including legal challenges and the formation of social movement organizations that ignited a statewide campaign for marriage equality in California.”

Check out abstracts from the December 2009 issue of the American Sociological Review.

Divorce Cakes a_006The Christian Science Monitor recently reported on shifting trends in divorce rates during the Great Recession:

The divorce rate fell 4 percent in 2008 to 16.9 divorces per 1,000 married women, according to Census Bureau data. It had previously been on an upward path, rising from 16.4 divorces per 1,000 married women in 2005 to 17.5 in 2007.

The economy may play a role in this decline:

“Many couples may be rediscovering the long-standing sociological truth that marriage is one of society’s best social insurance plans,” said W. Bradford Wilcox, a sociology professor and director of the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia, in a new report on the state of US marital unions.

Some couples may be staying together only temporarily. If past trends are any guide, some of the decline in the divorce rate may be due to couples delaying divorce because they cannot afford it, or need the resources of an estranged spouse.

But others may be rediscovering why they got married in the first place. Recession reminds them that marriage can be more than an emotional relationship. It is also an economic partnership and social safety net, points out the National Marriage Project report, “The State of Our Unions 2009”.

“There’s nothing like the loss of a job, an imminent foreclosure, or a shrinking 401(k) to [help spouses] gain new appreciation for a wife’s job, a husband’s commitment to pay down debt, or the in-laws’ willingness to help out with childcare or a rent-free place to live,” according to the report.

You Shall Go To The Ball ...The San Jose Mercury News reports that unemployed husbands are picking up work around the house.

An estimated 2 million wives are now the sole breadwinners in families across America, since more men than women have been laid off in this recession, according to the Center for American Progress. Experts say that unemployed husbands probably are taking on more of the housework and child care duties — for now. But they don’t expect that temporary change to stick around if men find work again.

A sociologist weighs in on the trend:

“When men make more money, they can buy out of housework in a way women cannot,” says Constance Gager, a sociologist in the Department of Family and Child Studies at New Jersey’s Montclair State University.

Gager, who has studied the division of labor in families, says that while men have taken on more housework and child-rearing over the years, women typically still do two-thirds of it, including diaper-changing, bathing the kids, preparing meals and shuttling children to activities. Men tend to play with children or participate in athletic games.

However…

“I think the complicated question is: Do women want men to take over these burdens? It’s also the case that women feel a kind of propriety relationship to those tasks,” says Katherine Newman, professor of sociology and public affairs at Princeton University.

Rings

Yesterday’s Telegraph (UK) ran a story about divorce trends in the UK, which don’t seem to follow the convention of the seven-year-itch.

The paper reports on new patterns in the UK:

While the old saying refers to couples separating after getting the “seven year itch”, the Office of National Statistics figures appear to suggest that in Britain that is slightly longer.

Of the 144,220 couples who divorced in 2007, the average length of a marriage in Britain was 11.7 years, the figures showed.

The divorce rate is at its lowest level since 1981, with experts putting it down to the fact that fewer people are getting married.

The figures came as a study claimed marriage should be viewed as an “economic partnership”, where relationships failed during times of emotional and economic decline.

One scholar notes:

Malcolm Brynin, co-author of Changing Relationships, a new Economic and Social Research Council book based on five years of research into family life, said the costs and benefits of a relationship were “more fluid than in the past”.

“People come together and stay together only when this is to their individual advantage,” he told The Sunday Times.

But the sociologist adds…

However, sociologist Frank Furedi, professor of sociology at Kent University and author of Paranoid Parenting, said: “When you get married, if you make this kind of statistical calculation saying, ‘Well, I’m getting married, the chances are we’ll only get to 11 years’, the whole ritual becomes entirely pointless.

“If you adopt the idea, we might as well give up on the concept of durable relationships altogether.”

Read more.

Today United Press International is running a story on new research – presented at this weekend’s American Sociological Association annual meeting -from sociologist Hannah Brueckner of Yale University, which suggests that fewer highly educated black women in the U.S. are marrying and starting families.

UPI reports, with the author’s commentary:

“In the past nearly four decades, black women have made great gains in higher education rates, yet these gains appear to have come increasingly at the cost of marriage and family,” Brueckner said.

The study on family formation and marriage longitudinal trends in the specified demographic found the marriage gap between highly educated black and white women increased dramatically between the 1970s and recent years.

In the 1970s the gap was 9 percent, while that gap rose to 21 percent in 2000-2007. Brueckner said the growing divide may be due to a lack of acceptable partners for highly educated black women.

“They are less likely than black men to marry outside their race, and, compared to whites and black men, they are least likely to marry a college-educated spouse,” she suggested.

Read more.

green arrowThe BCC World Service Business Desk ran a story several days ago featuring an interview with Johns Hopkins University sociologist Andrew Cherlin. The discussion centered on how ordinary people are changed by the current global economic recession. Cherlin’s work suggests that although one might think that hard economic times would take a more severe toll on marriages, leading to more divorce, this is not the case. Instead, Cherlin explains, divorce is on the decline in our current recession, a trend mirroring the last significant rise in unemployment.

LISTEN TO THE INTERVIEW.