Values Clash: Marriage vs Individualism - 4/14/09

[Smartmarriages]

>From Random House: interview with Andrew Cherlin author of The Marriage-
Go-Round  - 4/2009   Order the book here:
http://www.smartmarriages.com/app/Media.Booklist


Q: What led you to write THE MARRIAGE-GO-ROUND?

A: I had the sense that American marriage and family life differed
fundamentally from the other Western countries‹Western Europe, Canada,
Australia, New Zealand‹in a way no one was writing about. Some observers
have focused on changes in marriage, others on divorce, and others on
non-marital births. But I realized that you have to look at the whole
picture‹all of these aspects together‹to appreciate what was happening. We
have more marriages and remarriages, more divorces, and more short-term
cohabiting (living together) relationships than the other countries. Put
them together and you have more turnover, more movement in and out of
relationships than anywhere else. As a result, Americans have more spouses
and live-in partners over the course of their lives than do people in any
other Western country. We step on and off the carousel of marriages and
partnerships faster than anywhere else.


Q: You were already well versed in the subject of marriage in America, as
you have been studying families and public policy for much of your career.
Did any of your discoveries surprise you as you wrote THE MARRIAGE-GO-ROUND?

A: I knew that our divorce rate was higher than in other countries, but I
didn¹t realize how much higher than even in supposedly vanguard countries
such as Sweden. One statistic that stunned me: take two children, one
growing up with married parents in the United States, and one growing up
with unmarried parents in Sweden‹which child has the higher likelihood of
seeing his parents¹ relationship break up? Answer: the American kid, because
children living with married parents in the United States have a higher
probability of experiencing a break-up than do children living with
unmarried parents in Sweden. That¹s how high our break-up rates are.


Q: One of the main trends THE MARRIAGE-GO-ROUND discusses is that Americans
have more long-term partners than the rest of the western world. Why do you
think this is?

A: I think the reason is the nature of American culture, which is unlike the
culture of any other country when it comes to marriage and personal life.
Americans believe in two contradictory ideals. The first is the importance
of marriage: we are more marriage-oriented than most other Western
countries. The second is the importance of living a personally fulfilling
life that allows us to grow and develop as individuals‹call it
individualism. Now, you can find other countries that place a high value on
marriage, such as Italy where most children are born to married couples and
there are fewer cohabiting relationships. And you can find countries that
place a high value on individualism, such as Sweden. But only in the United
States do you find both. So we marry in large numbers‹we have a higher
marriage rate than most countries. But we evaluate our marriages according
to how personally fulfilling we find them. And if we find them lacking, we
are more likely to end them. Then, because it¹s so important to be
partnered, we move in with someone else, and the cycle starts all over
again.
Also, we start and end cohabiting relationships at an even higher rate. If
you are living with someone outside of marriage, and you are personally
unhappy, you are supposed to end the relationship. Our cohabiting
relationships are shorter than in any other country. It¹s not as though some
Americans value marriage and others value individualism. Rather, we carry
both ideals in our heads and switch between them without even realizing it.
These ideals have been part of American culture since the colonial era. The
early New England settlers believed that marriage was the center of civil
society; but they also believed in individual initiative and, unlike the
Church of England or the Catholic Church, they allowed divorce.


Q: When single parents have multiple relationships, what effect does the
repeated coupling, breaking up, and re-coupling have on their children?

A: American children face much more movement of parents and parent-figures
in and out of their households than do children anywhere else. Take children
who see three different fathers, stepfathers, and/or mother¹s boyfriends in
their homes by the time they are fifteen. The percentage of American
children who live with that many partners is 8 percent, which is three times
as high as the next highest country (Sweden at 2.6 percent). In Canada and
many European countries, less than 1 percent of children experience that
much family turnover. Most children can cope with this much movement of
people in and out of their homes, but some of them can¹t. They show more
behavior problems, such as being disobedient or, for older children,
skipping school. Not only can it be difficult for a child to deal with a
parent moving out of the home, but it can also be difficult to deal with the
mother¹s new boyfriend moving into the home. The new man may take some of
the mother¹s attention away from the child, and he may not invest much time
and effort in caring for the child. We know that children living with
remarried parents do not have a higher level of well-being than do children
in single-parent families, despite the presence of a second adult. And
children residing with a parent who is just cohabiting with a partner may
have the lowest well-being of all.
In other words, the lack of stability, the number of transitions they have
to adjust to, may not be good for kids. I would guess that children who live
with a single parent who quickly re-partners but soon ends the partnership
are often worse off than children who live with a single parent who remains
single.


Q: Single parents now abound. Some women now choose to become mothers
without mates; more still find themselves raising their children alone as
their partners opt out of parenting (or take a much smaller role.) It¹s well
known that about half of all couples who marry end up divorcing. Is marriage
still practical or necessary? Why is it still so common?

Fifty years ago you had to be married to be a respectable adult in the
United States. Today, marriage is optional‹you can get most of your
emotional and economic needs by living with partner‹and single parents can
also get by. But oddly enough, marriage is, if anything, more important than
ever to people as a symbol of having made it in life‹of having a successful
personal life. Most young Americans still want to get married, but they do
it only when all the other steps to adulthood are in place‹when they have
completed their education, when they and their partners have jobs, when they
have saved up enough for a down payment on a house, or even have had
children together. Marriage used to be the first step into adulthood, but
now it is the last. It¹s the capstone of personal life‹the final brick put
in after all the others are in place.
So marriage is still important, but in a different way than in the past.
It¹s a symbol of personal achievement‹the ultimate merit badge, the marriage
badge.


Q: Why is same-sex marriage so debated in the United States? How does this
compare to other countries?

A: Same-sex marriage has been more of a battleground in the United States
than in most other countries because marriage is more important to Americans
than to people in other countries. Same-sex marriage is sometimes portrayed
as a legal rights issue‹the right to file taxes together, visit partners in
the hospital, etc. Those rights are important, but that¹s not the main
issue. If the fight were only about legal rights, then civil unions would be
sufficient. They are not sufficient to gay and lesbian activists in the
United States because of the great prestige of marriage. The real issue is
symbolic: who gets to wear the marriage badge. In some European countries,
gay and lesbian activists are asking instead: why, at this late date, should
we buy into the oppressive, archaic institution of marriage? But in the
United States many advocates say that only a marriage ring guarantees
first-class citizenship. And they are right, because marriage matters more
here than elsewhere.


Q: How has globalization (and the resulting shifts in employment in the US)
affected family life and marriage? What (if any) effects do you anticipate
as a result of the current economic meltdown?

A: Globalization has caused the loss of the kinds of jobs that a person
could do without a college education, such as working on the assembly line
at a factory. As a result, fewer young non-college educated men feel that
they have the kind of decent-paying steady jobs that could help support a
family. They are less likely to think that they have the earning power to
get married, and their girlfriends agree with them. What we have seen, then,
is a decline of marriage among blue-collar Americans and the rise of
two-parent, cohabiting relationships where the partners have children
together but are postponing marriage. These partnerships have a high risk of
breakin up. I think that¹s why we see more multiple partnerships among the
working class than among any other group. Blue collar men and women are
still trying to marry, to live the American dream, so they start more
partnerships, and eventually enter into more marriages, but many of these
relationships fail.
The current recession is only going to make this problem worse. Unemployment
rates have risen the most for younger workers because firms can more easily
let them go. As the job market for young, blue-collar workers crumbles, we
will see less marriage and more cohabitation.


Q: It appears the Obama administration hasn¹t decided whether they¹ll
continue the $5 million media campaign to promote marriage. Are they sending
the right message and ultimately improving family life?

A: Marriage is important. But ³get married² should not be our sole message
to Americans. We should spend less time promoting marriage and more time
supporting stable caregiving in children¹s lives. The two are not the same.
Let me explain: I agree that it makes sense to help young unmarried couples
who have just had a child together get married if that is their goal. But it
makes less sense to encourage a single mother to remarry because she
probably won¹t marry the father of her children‹who she has already broken
up with‹but rather some other man. We know that the new stepfamily that
would be formed would not improve the lives of children. And if that family
breaks up, the children would be forced to adjust to yet another change in
their households. So I urge us to supplement the ³get married² message with
another message: ³slow down.² See the traffic light of singlehood as yellow
rather than green. Don¹t rush into having children with a
boyfriend/girlfriend or a partner you¹ve recently started living with. If
you are already single and raising children, choose your next live-in
partner or spouse carefully. Introduce your partner gradually to your kids;
and don¹t try to make him an instant parent.


Q: Why is this message to ³slow down² so important when it comes to
relationships and longterm partnerships?

A: Because I am convinced that it would be in the best interest of American
children. Most children are resilient and can adjust to what life brings
them. Most will do OK if they face a series of exits and entrances of adults
into their households. But having three or four changes in who is living
with you seems to raise the risk of unwanted effects such as behavior
problems. If it were your child, you might not want to raise that risk, even
if it¹s still likely that your child would do all right. That¹s why I think
the ³slow down² message is important.
 
 
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