Why Families Matter
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| Sun, 05-23-2004 - 12:48pm |
http://www.washtimes.com/commentary/20040522-102508-1736r.htm
By Patrick F. Fagan
The breakdown in marriage over the last 50 years carries a cost: America has evolved from being a culture of belonging to being a culture of rejection, and its children are paying the price.
National survey data repeatedly show the most positive outcomes are in those families where the parents have always belonged to each other and to their children: the intact married family. These families are less likely to live in poverty, less likely to depend on welfare and less likely to grapple with addictions to drugs and alcohol, among other problems.
Take yearly income. The federal government's 2001 Survey of Consumer Finances shows the annual salary for a never-divorced, intact family is $54,000. (The step-family with parents on their second marriage trails close behind at $50,000). But for a family that's divorced, that figure is cut by more than half: $23,000. And for those who have never married, it's cut by more than half again: $9,400.
A host of other social indicators also underscore the importance of the intact married family. Grade point average is one: The federal government's National Longitudinal Survey of Adolescent Health shows that for teenagers in a married family, it's 2.98 (out of a possible 4.0); for those in divorced families, it's 2.64. Children in single-parent homes are more than 4 times likelier than those in married families to be expelled from school. And those in nonmarital homes are almost twice as likely to report being depressed.
It's not just the families who suffer. Government budgets grow when marriages fail or when parents reject each other. Picking up the pieces becomes the work not only of the fragmented family but all the taxpayers and the whole society.
Worse, the number of victims has skyrocketed. For every 100 children born in 1950, 12 became part of a broken family — four were born out of wedlock and eight saw their parents divorce. By 2000, there was a fivefold increase: For every 100 children born, 60 became part a broken family — 33 born out of wedlock and 27 the product of divorce.
Mind you, no responsible researcher would stipulate all children who come from married families have no problems or that those from single-parent homes are guaranteed to fail; we're talking about trends here. After all, rejection and indifference do the damage, and that can happen in the intact family, too.
Still, if, in a well-intentioned effort to spare the feelings of those around us, we ignore these trends, we do so at our peril. The data show when fathers and mothers belong to each other in marriage, their children thrive — and the more they belong to each other, the better off their children are. But when parents are indifferent or walk away from or reject each other, their children don't thrive as much — and many wilt a lot.
Society also suffers with more gangs, more assaults, more violence against women and children, more sexual abuse of women and children, and much bigger bills for jails, increased need for health care, supplemental education, addiction programs, foster care, homelessness programs and on and on. Expanding all these social program budgets is directly linked to the breakdown in marriage.
Changing this will require a huge amount of work. We need to set about restoring conditions that will again grow a culture of belonging, with all the ingredients that go into such a culture: courtship, marriage, worship and communities of families that form neighborhoods that are nice places to come home to: neighborhoods in which romance, courtship and marriage are normal and frequent.
The data also show regular church attendance makes a difference. That shouldn't surprise us: George Washington in his Farewell Speech to the Nation noted that Americans need to be a people of worship if this experiment in freedom is to work. There is much in the scientific literature that points toward religious practice as a great preserver and fosterer of marriage and family strengths.
The challenge before this great nation's leaders is to bring America back to a culture of belonging rather than a culture of rejection; to being a country where people and families belong to each other and especially fathers belong first to the mothers of their children and mothers belong first to the fathers.
Parents belonging to each other. That's what children need more than anything else this nation can give them.
Patrick F. Fagan is the William H.G. FitzGerald research fellow in family and cultural issues at the Heritage Foundation.

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Thank you, Marysback!
Jim
the intact married family
I have always felt that children were better off in an "Intact" family - except when it is destructive.
When we become parents we must always think of our childrens welfare.
I come from a broken family, my parents never should have married - very destructive on both sides. I have seen what happens when it is done incorrectly.
Your children are lucky indeed to have a parent who thought enough of herself to protect them from a unstable environment.
Your right, not all (if any) families live the "Cleaver Lifestyle." I do like to watch it on occasion, though - I get a complete kick out of "Junes" impecably coiffed hair & "uniform".
Sanguineprincess
:)
Jim
And I said that a "two parent family" is the ideal as well...however, human beings are fallible.
Dylan Klebold & Eric Harris were both from 2 parent House holds were they not??
I wish people who are so quick to judge would remember there are exceptions to EVERY situation.
This story appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle - Sept. 2000.
"You may feel as if you grew up on a desert island, far from the mysterious world of lasting romantic love.
You may believe that even if you do fall in love, you are destined to jinx the relationship, or be abandoned, or be terribly hurt.
You may fear conflict and change and have a tough time separating from your parents, even though you left home years ago.
A new book, based on a lengthy study, argues that emotional complications like these are common among adult children of divorced parents -- and that they may not be fully evident until decades after the breakup.
"The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce,'' by Marin County psychologist Judith Wallerstein, San Francisco State University psychology professor Julia M. Lewis and New York Times science correspondent Sandra Blakeslee, is based on a 25-year examination of the lives of 93 Marin County adults.
Wallerstein, founder of the Center for the Family in Transition in Corte Madera, began examining this group in 1971, when they were children and adolescents. Now they are between the ages of 28 and 43.
Initially, researchers expected that the study findings would be different -- that the most stressful time for the children would come right after the divorce.
Instead, they found that post-divorce difficulties become most severe when the children of divorced parents reach adulthood, as their search for lasting commitment moves to center stage.
"They are terrified because they are convinced they are going to fail,'' said Wallerstein in a telephone interview from Massachusetts, where she was on tour promoting the book. "They don't know how to choose. They make bad choices. They divorce a lot.''
"It breaks their hearts,'' she said. ``They don't take marriage lightly, but they don't know how to do it.'' Many of the study participants said that seriously searching for a life partner felt like going through their parents' divorce all over again.
The findings are not without critics. Some experts question how many of the problems Wallerstein identifies can be truly attributed to divorce and not to other causes such as poor parenting skills.
"There are a lot of other family processes associated with divorce, like the extent to which parents support or undermine each other,'' said Gayla Margolin, a professor of psychology at the University of Southern California, who studies the effects of marital conflict on children.
Others question the reliability of a study based on such a narrow sample, or say the effect of divorce is not as wrenching as the study concludes.
Mavis Hetherington, a sociology professor emeritus at the University of Virginia who also studies divorce, said her studies have shown that although children of divorced parents do have more problems, the majority of them function well.
"Judy really views divorce as a terminal disease. That's just not true. When kids move into a happier family situation with a competent, caring, firm parent they do better than they do in a nasty family situation,'' Hetherington told the Associated Press.
The book's researchers say they are not opposed to divorce. Indeed, they argue that children raised in highly dysfunctional marriages were no better off -- and sometimes worse off -- than children of divorced parents.
Rather, what the study shows is that parents, society and the courts need to pay closer attention to the consequences of divorce on children, said Lewis, who began working with Wallerstein about 10 years into the study.
For example, none of the child- support arrangements made by the divorcing parents included provisions to pay for the children's college educations, and few of the young people in the study received money for college from their fathers, many of whom were wealthy professionals.
"One of the main findings of the book is that what makes adults happier isn't necessarily what makes kids happier. That, I think, is hard for a lot of adults to swallow,'' Lewis said.
Although some of the divorced parents in the study did go on to lead happier lives, that did not translate into happier lives for the children, Lewis said.
"If you're in a middling marriage where it could go either way, you have to look at the quality of the parenting,'' she said. "If you're both pretty good parents and you're putting the kids first, then you work harder to save that marriage. That's really what we're trying to get across.''
Today, a quarter of Americans ages 18 to 44 are children of divorced parents, and Wallerstein said her latest book is meant primarily for these people, who may be struggling with problems they do not even know are related to divorce.
Wallerstein found that these otherwise well-functioning adults must fight to overcome such feelings as a fear of loss because of childhood anxiety about abandonment or fear of conflict because it leads to emotional explosions.
The study, based on extensive individual interviews, also found that adult children of divorced parents are more likely to become addicted to drugs and alcohol in adolescence, and they seldom match their parents' educational and economic achievements by the time they reach their 20s.
Their adolescence lasted longer, the study found, because the children were so preoccupied with their parents. For example, Wallerstein said, many girls end up fearing success, thinking: "How can I have a happy life when my mother or father has been unhappy?''
On the positive side, the researchers found that the adult children of divorced parents are survivors.
The same experiences that hindered relationships helped in the workplace. The study participants were very good at getting along with difficult people, Wallerstein said. And with mothers who often said one thing and fathers who said another, the grown children also became adept at making up their own minds.
The study also compared the adults from divorced families to 44 adults from intact families.
Children of intact marriages took strength from their parents' decision to stay together, the researchers found, even though the marriage may have had conflict and unhappiness similar to those of families that broke up.
"In intact marriages, the young people had a much different childhood -- this is what startled me,'' Wallerstein said. "I couldn't get them to stop talking about their play. . . . I realized that children in divorced families never mentioned play. They all said that `the day my parents divorced was the day my childhood ended.'
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A landmark study on the long-term effects of divorce by Marin County psychologist Judith Wallerstein followed 93 children of divorce over 25 years. Among the study's findings:
-- Children of divorce were far more likely than children of intact families to marry before age 25 -- 50 percent versus 11 percent.
-- The failure rate of these early marriages was 57 percent for children of divorce, 11 percent for children of intact families.
-- Among the adult children of divorce, 38 percent had children. Among adult children from intact families, 61 percent had children.
-- The use of drugs and alcohol before age 14 among the children of divorce was 25 percent, while among children of intact families it was 9 percent.
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Interesting article, thanks for posting it.
However, 93 is a very small sample to base findings on.
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