More on Marriage Index/ Mice & Men/ Arranged Marriages - 10/24/09

Sat Oct 24 12:51:01 EDT 2009

- MARRIAGE IN THE US LOSING STRENGTH, REPORT SAYS
- OF MICE AND MEN
- LOOKING FOR SUCCESSFUL ARRANGED MARRIAGES

#############################
- MARRIAGE IN THE US LOSING STRENGTH, REPORT SAYS
The Washington Post
Ellen McCarthy
Oct 24, 2009 

WASHINGTON - The institution of marriage in the United States has steadily
declined in strength over the past four decades, according to a report
released last month by a panel of scholars and advocates.

THE U.S. MARRIAGE INDEX, the brainchild of David Blankenhorn, president of
the Institute for American Values, seeks to quantify the health of marriage
in the United States in the same way economists use leading indicators to
parse the state of the country's economy.

"We're just proposing a way of numerically capturing these trends so that
people can see them," he says.

The index combined five statistics - the percentage of adults ages 20 to 54
who are married, the percentage of adults who reported being a "very happy"
with their marriages, the percentage of first marriages intact, the
percentage of births to married parents and the percentage of children
living with their own married parents - to reach a composite score
illustrating the state of America's nuptial unions. In 1970, that score
totaled 76.2; by 2008, it had dropped to 60.3.

Almost 90 percent of children were born to married parents in 1970; last
year, it was 60 percent. Of adults ages 20 to 54, 78.6 percent were married
in 1970, compared with 57.2 percent in 2008. The portion of first marriages
that remained intact dropped from 77.4 percent in 1970 to 61.2 percent last
year.

Blankenhorn says the index was born partly out of his frustration with the
difficulty of talking publicly about the subject of marriage.

"There's a lot of genuine opinion out there that really marriage is
something that we ought to leave to people's private decision-making and
it's not society's business to get into," he concedes. "You're going into
their bedroom. You're going into their private lifestyle choices. You're
going into situations you can't possibly understand."

Blankenhorn takes issue with that stance largely because marriage has such a
significant impact on children. He points to statistics showing that kids
who grow up in homes where their parents are married to each other are, on
average, less likely to live in poverty, to have emotional or behavioral
problems, to engage in premature sexual activity, to use drugs or commit
suicide.

"Every single pathology or problem or difficulty a child can experience -
every single one - growing up outside of a married-couple home elevates the
risk," he says.

Blankenhorn's hope is that the index, a collaborative effort by 15
academics, researchers and policy experts intended for release every other
year, will become a bellwether signaling the direction marriage is headed in
the United States and that it will galvanize concern and support for the
institution.

"It's impossible, really, to make progress unless you have some shared
understanding," he says. "There's no disagreement among us about high rates
of unemployment - nobody runs around saying it's fine to have 20 percent of
us unemployed. But we really are not at that level of agreement about
marriage."

Blankenhorn says increases in divorce and in out-of-wedlock childbirth are
the two factors that contributed most to the decline in the health of
marriage in the past half century. The index includes 101 suggestions to
strengthen marriage in America, written by Blankenhorn and collaborator
Linda Malone-Colon of Hampton University in Virginia. Among them: creating
community-based marriage-mentoring programs and encouraging government
funding of marriage education.

"All we're saying here is: Can we just think about that for a minute?" he
says.

This article online:
http://tinyurl.com/yzyzk3r

The Marriage Index:
http://www.americanvalues.org/

#####################################

- OF MICE AND MEN

Fathers Shape Sons' Paternal Behavior
October 21, 2009

HOW A FATHER CARES FOR HIS YOUNG IS SHAPED BY THE CARE HE RECEIVED AS AN
INFANT, according to new animal research presented at the Neuroscience 2009
Show in Chicago. The findings highlight the importance of early-life
experiences in shaping adult behaviors.

"A strong body of evidence shows that behavioral environment during
development is a key factor in shaping maternal behavior, but very little is
known about whether similar mechanisms exist for males," says Erin Gleason
at the Univ. of Wisconsin-Madison, who led the study in the laboratory of
Catherine Marler. "Our results suggest this may, in fact, be the case."
Gleason and her colleagues studied California mice, one of the few mammalian
species to exhibit paternal behaviors. In these mice, castration reduces
fathering behaviors. The researchers observed the paternal behaviors of
adult male mice raised by castrated fathers. They found that intact mice
raised by deficient fathers grew up to be deficient fathers themselves.
"Our results suggest that early behavioral environment, and in particular
the paternal care received during development, may shape the amount and
quality of paternal behaviors expressed by mammalian fathers, perhaps
including humans," says Gleason.

This research was supported by the Animal Behavior Society and the National
Science Foundation <http://nsf.gov/> .
Source: Univ. of Wisconsin-Madison <http://www.wisc.edu/> , and the Society
for Neuroscience <http://sfn.org/>

###################################
- LOOKING FOR SUCCESSFUL ARRANGED MARRIAGES

I'm looking for couples of different cultures and backgrounds who are in
successful arranged marriages for both an article and book on this topic for
an article for Scientific American Mind.
Robert Epstein
repstein at post.harvard.edu  (Repstein "at" post.harvard.edu)

###########################

This is a moderated list. All submissions are read by Diane Sollee. Please
indicate if your comment is NOT to be shared with the list.  PLEASE include
your email address and/or url as part of your signature. With thousands of
subscribers, not all comments can be shared.

Also realize that opinions expressed on this list are not necessarily shared
by members of the Coalition.

To SUBSCRIBE, UNSUBSCRIBE, or Change your subscription address,
visit: http://www.smartmarriages.com/app/Newsletter.Subscribe

To read all past posts to the listserv, visit the Archive at:
http://lists101.his.com/pipermail/smartmarriages/

14th Annual Smart Marriages® Conference, The Shingle Creek Resort Hotel,
Orlando, Florida, July 6-12, 2010 (General Conference July 8-11)
Pre-Conference Training Institutes July 6-8
Post-Conference Training Institutes July 12-13
Up to 70 Hrs CE

Shingle Creek: http://www.rosenshinglecreek.com/

For Conference information and Presenter & Exhibit applications:
http://www.smartmarriages.com/conferencedetails.html

List your program and resources on the Directory of Classes at
http://www.smartmarriages.com/directory_browse.html

Order conference audio & video CD/DVD/MP3s: 800-241-7785 or
http://www.iPlaybackSmartMarriages.com

Coalition for Marriage, Family and Couples Education, LLC (CMFCE)
Diane Sollee, Director
5310 Belt Rd NW, Washington, DC 20015-1961
http://www.smartmarriages.com
202-362-3332

FAIR USE NOTICE: This e-newsletter/site contains copyrighted material the
use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright
owner. We make such material available in our efforts to advance
understanding of marriage, family, couples, divorce, legislation, family
breakdown, etc. We understand this constitutes a 'fair use' of such material
as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with
Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed
without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the
included information for research and educational purposes. For more
information: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml. If you wish to
use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go
beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.