ENDEAVOUR FORUM NEWSLETTER No. 135, AUGUST 2009

 

 

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THE MARRIAGE ADVANTAGE

 

BABETTE FRANCIS

 

A number of studies show that marriage has advantages for couples and their children, so why do governments pretend cohabitation is as good? Below two Family Research Abstracts collated by The Howard Centre, Rockford, Illinois, USA. Email: howard@profam.org

Benefits to Children

Children living with married parents do better than children living with single or cohabiting parents. Virtually all sociologists acknowledge this simple truth. However, under the ubiquitous campus pressures to be politically correct, many social scientists try very hard to explain away this marital advantage as an artifact of socioeconomic characteristics other than marital status per se.

Both the advantage children experience by living with married parents and the urge progressive scholars feel to explain away that advantage are on full display in a study of children's economic well-being recently published in the Journal of Marriage and Family by sociologists at Bowling Green State University, USA.

Scrutinizing nationally representative data collected in 1999 from 42,000 households, the Bowling Green researchers outline a familiar and predictable pattern of marital advantage: Children living with married biological parents enjoy a decided economic advantage over those living with cohabiting biological parents, with single mothers, with married-couple stepfamilies, and with cohabiting stepfamilies. The official poverty level for children living with married biological parents runs less than 8%, compared with 23% for children living with cohabiting biological parents, 43% for those living with single mothers, 10% for those living with married stepfamilies, and 19% for those living with cohabiting stepfamilies. A similar pattern emerges in data for food and housing insecurity.

By using multivariable statistical analyses, the authors of the new study establish that for their overall sample "child and parent characteristics account for at least 70% of the difference in the well-being of children living in married and cohabiting two biological parent families." The researchers consequently use such analyses to assert that "the benefits of marriage may be a result of parents' education and race and ethnic group rather than marriage per se." This assertion no doubt serves the authors' ideological interests, since the political correctness of the modern university militates against belief in the social benefits of "marriage per se."

But the data compel the authors to admit that "marriage per se" apparently confers some benefits that even multivariable analyses cannot account for. For instance, when looking at the data for black children, the authors concede that "the marital status gap in housing insecurity is not explained by the covariates in the [statistical] model." Similarly, in multivariable analyses of the data of white children, the researchers find that "the marital advantage persists when considering a reduction in food and housing security." Such findings force the researchers to concede The Marriage Advantage Babette Francis that "among white children, there sometimes is a marriage advantage that cannot be accounted for by their parents' socioeconomic characteristics." For politically correct academics, such concessions can be quite painful.

(Source: Wendy D. Manning and Susan Brown, "Children's Economic Well-Being in Married and Cohabiting Parent Families," Journal of Marriage and Family 68 [2006]: 345-362.)

Long Life for Women

Exercise regularly, eat a balanced diet, receive regular medical examinations, avoid tobacco - most American women know much of what they must do to ensure a long life. However, the life-prolonging effects of a once-central American social institution have escaped the notice of many otherwise knowledgeable women - and this largely because of the misguided activism (ironically enough) of feminists! Though denigrated by feminists as a professional and personal hindrance, wedlock continues to add years to the lives of women who make successful marital unions.

The life-protecting effects of marriage stand out clearly in a study by a team of epidemiologists from the University of Pittsburgh and the University of California, San Francisco. Examining six-year cardiovascular (CVD) and allcause mortality rates for 7,524 white women age 65 or older, the Pittsburgh and San Francisco analysts looked especially for those social circumstances that predicted or prevented death. To that end, they ran a series of statistical analyses correlating mortality rates with marital status and with Social Network scores derived from a survey inventory of family and friendship relationships. In these analyses, "both higher social network scores and marriage at study baseline were potent predictors of lower total and CVD mortality across follow-up." Underscoring the strength of the linkage between favorable social circumstances and lower mortality rates, the researchers stress that "these benefits were largely independent of demographic variables, pre-existing disease, and other psychosocial measures."

Though the researchers admit that the "mechanisms" that confer longer life on those in more favorable social circumstances remain "poorly understood," they point to research suggesting that strong social ties foster "reduced blood pressure," less pathological "neuroendocrine reactivity under stressful circumstances," and "increased resistance to cold infections."

Progressive modern thinkers might want to suppose that social networks with friends will yield the same, if not superior life-prolonging health effects as marriage. But the authors of the new study report that "in this sample, marital status - and not social network scores - was the most consistent predictor of subsequent mortality, and marriage explained most - but not all - of the mortality relationships with social network scores." So do insurance companies charge the members of the anti-wedlock National Organization for Women higher premiums?

(Source: Thomas Rutledge et al., "Social Networks & Marital Status Predict Mortality in Older Women: Prospective Evidence from the Study of Osteoporotic Fractures," Psychosomatic Medicine 65 [2003]: 688-694.)

 

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