Laurie DeRose and W. Bradford Wilcox write,
By showing that cohabiting families are more unstable, even among the highly educated in Europe and the United States, our research suggests family instability is not only about socioeconomic forces. As Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry observed in response to our findings on cohabitation, education, and family instability, “The point about educational status, in particular, is important: The vaguely pseudo-Marxist idea that our family and life outcomes are entirely driven by economics is not credible; values, norms, and institutions also matter.” And, at least today, the values and norms associated with the institution of marriage remain clearly and powerfully tied to family stability. That’s why, as marriage becomes less likely to anchor the adult life course across the globe, growing numbers of children may be thrown into increasingly turbulent family waters.
As the authors point out, one cannot necessarily interpret their findings as a simple causal model running from choice of cohabitation to instability. I would add that, at least in the U.S., the rate of marriage is much higher among the affluent.
One key difference between marriage and cohabitation is that marriage generally requires a conscious, deliberate commitment. Cohabitation is often, hey, whatever.
Cohabitation starts long before the “hey, whatever” moment that prompts the formal changing of address.
Big Bang Theory had an early episode that centered on Leonard being oblivious to the fact that his girlfriend was in fact living with him. It’s pretty funny and relatable.
This is a good observation, especially of Europe, where its more common but I’ve never reviewed this kind of data controlled for education before. Nearly everything you see on these issues fails to control for socioeconomic variables, which makes it pretty useless.
Marriage is fundamental, but I don’t see much of a libertarian plan for it. Most libertarian ideas seem to weaken it, and cohabitation is defiantly the more libertarian affiliated option (why tie yourself down, you have to be free, keep your options open).
“why tie yourself down, you have to be free, keep your options open”
I think you are right that this is the general libertarian view, but it is also a terribly basis to raise a family.
The result, I would think, would be that any libertarian that did get married while otherwise entertaining such a view would be sending a strong signal that they intended to establish a stable structure for raising a family, rather than any sort of “keep my options open” deal.
That could lead to the unusual premise that libertarians could come around to supporting a stronger, more traditional understanding of marriage, so long as other things like cohabitation remained legal options.
But to do that they’d have to give up flexibility in the definition of marriage, which they have tended to argue is very stretchy indeed.
I’ve seen several places (and in bizarre contexts, like motor racing) that cohabitation is more common among certain groups in Europe because of greater difficulty of divorce, prenups aren’t enforceable, and similar sorts of constraints.
So, I *speculate*, that structures which allow errors in marriage to be corrected will make marriage more appealing.
(Vaguely similar to the point that in countries where it is very difficult to fire someone, it also becomes very very difficult to get hired…)
Perhaps more appealing in the ways that cohabitation are appealing, but certainly less like a marriage.
“…this curious confirmation of the old French economist’s cynical reason for marriage that it is an institution made necessary by property, and designed for its protection and preservation alone.”
That is from an article published in 1887. The article is thought provoking in many areas tying private property, marriage (status of women), and personal liberty into dependencies. The rise and fall of restrictions on divorce and marriage is interesting as well as the variation across the states.
Cohabitation does not bring in the protections that marriage affords the rights to property and custody of children.
“Therefore, without prejudice against any one proposed reform, it is impossible not to end, if not with the deduction, at least with the suggestion – that (for some reason which we will not now attempt to fathom) the three institutions – of private property, of marriage, and of personal liberty from State control – are so inseparably bound together that neither one may fall without the other two.”
The Ethics of Democracy by F.J. Stimson. Scribner’s Magazine (1887)
http://www.archive.org/stream/scribnersmag01editmiss#page/n671/mode/2up
Several points:
1) In terms of marriage, when I grew in the 1970s it was the educated college couples getting more divorces not the working class. I think this is less assortative mating and more of the age of first marriage has increased from ~22 in 1960 to ~29 in 2010. Actually this increase in age and assortative mating is probably both correlated as most personality set by ~25 so people are more likely to choose a more like person. (I was married at 27 with the most alike girlfriend I ever had.)
2) What are the conservatives doing for the working class to get married? I measure what rich people truly support by the money and time they spend on it. So they could support more local institutions for WWC but it appears they don’t. Red states generally (I know Utah) have worse single parenthood numbers. I see a whole of lot Ross Douthat and AEI lamenting the poors don’t go to church instead of action.
3) We forgot how much marriage and parenthood was enforced on young people. My guess the big change was the pill and acceptance of birth control which vastly slowed down the parenthood and forced shotgun marriages. My guess is young people at 22 without birth control found themselves married to the wrong person. (Thinking about myself this might have happened without birth control.)
Red State/Blue State is pretty useless as a metric. All your measuring is the poor/rich split in behavior. One can find worse behavior in poor urban blue areas.
Once you control for socioeconomics, conservative attitudes and beliefs are strongly associated with better life outcomes vis-a-vis genetic peers (people with the same IQ, etc). It’s simply the case that there is a stronger confounding genetic variable that liberals use to confuse that issue.
In my experience, and what data I’ve seen, conservatives are more involved in social society across the socioeconomic spectrum. The conservative impulse is fundamentally about social connections, while the liberal attitude is fundamentally about atomistic individualism.
In my experience, and what data I’ve seen, conservatives are more involved in social society across the socioeconomic spectrum. The conservative impulse is fundamentally about social connections, while the liberal attitude is fundamentally about atomistic individualism.
OK…and yes the Blue/Red state division is fairly arbitary as the Red/Blue map is really changing. (Really what is Ohio, Iowa and Wisconsin?) The cases of Utah and Texas are show the Red state model working just as the examples of Washington & Massachusetts show the Blue State model working. Many SF Bay counties have divorce rates of ~10%! Several other points:
1) The rate of teen pregnancy of African- & Latino-Americans is falling faster than White-Americans. I suspect if you correct for income levels, I bet teen pregnancy of minorities is very close to white teens.
2) Something has changed in rural WWC America. The latest drug epidemic is the first one in my lifetime to be focused on white communities. It was always hitting the minority communities in years past.
3) If social connections are so important to ‘Red’ states why are they working with their poorer citizens? They can work more with local churches to improve the poorer members of their community. If California is so ‘individualistic’ there really is a lot interest in providing health to the poorer members of society.
Anyway, I thought it was libertarians that atomistic individualism and the Democrats are still the Party of WJC/Obama.
SF has low divorce because they have a low marriage rate and everyones at the top of the socioeconomic ladder. One of the secrets to low divorce rate is low fertility rate. You can’t fuck up what you never try in the first place.
And again, the question is comparing people of equal socioeconomic background.
1) Out of wedlock birth is these communities is horrendous and significantly higher then whites. I don’t know what the current second derivative is, but its not the headline here.
2) Yes, and you’ll note this was a legal drug epidemic, so its got little to do with the War on Drugs. As someone who works right at the center of the drug industry, I consider this something produced, marketed, and pushed by the professional class on the WWC.
3) Conservative people are more involved with their churches and do more charity work. This is born out in statistics.
For all the discussion of assortative mating, remember the divorce rate is 10% lower than it was in 1979. So it might not be the worst thing here.
One problem with “no rules”, “no judgment”, and “whatever makes you feel good” as de facto social policies is it’s much easier to screw up your life than it once was _and_ much harder to know that you are screwing up, particularly if you aren’t quite intelligent.
And nowadays the consequences of screwing up are severe, and inescapable, as once you’re in any of the many “I screwed up” databases, you will never escape them. Nearly all jobs that pay anything will look you up in those databases before you’re hired.
At least religion and social disapproval gave fairly strong heuristics for what screwing up looked like, so the not-so-intelligent could avoid them more easily than now.
Raising kids outside of a stable family is a big screw-up, both for the parents and for the kids. It can be “worked past” if the parents are at least middle-class and intelligent, but is a disaster for the poor and not-so-intelligent.