A recently released report prepared by The National Marriage Project under the direction of W. Bradford Wilcox is full of very interesting data about sex, marriage, and family life in contemporary America, some of which we’ll be ventilating in a forthcoming issue of First Things.
One appendix, however, caught my attention, because it helped me understand why my experience is so out of whack with a commonly reiterated statistic.
We’ve all heard that the national divorce rate is nearly 50 percent, which means that nearly half of all marriages will end in divorce. OK, but if that’s the case, then why do I know so few people my age who are divorced?
Well, one answer is that in comparison to my parents generation, fewer are married. Another answer is that the returns aren’t yet in, which is to say that some marriages will break up later in life.
But Wilcox offers the most significant explanation. It turns out that getting divorced is like getting lung cancer. There are risk factors. So, if you make over $50,000 annually, then you’re 30 percent less likely to get divorce. Have a college degree? 25 percent less likely. Haven’t gotten pregnant or had children before getting married? 24 percent less likely. Religious? Fourteen percent less likely. Parents still married? Fourteen percent less likely.
Those are some pretty significant factors, so much so that if you’ve got a college degree, a decently paying job, haven’t been knocked up, your parents are still married, and you go to church, then you’re not at all likely to get divorced. That, I suppose, explains why so few of my friends have been divorced, certainly far fewer than 50 percent.
In any event, as the report as a whole makes clear, there seems to be a virtuous circle at work for those who are lucky in our society. Educational levels, economic success, and family stability reinforce each other. It’s not something we didn’t already know, but it’s useful to be reminded.
And it’s also useful to be reminded of something else: The sexual revolution, like most revolutions (all revolutions?) has ended up benefiting the people on the top at the expense of the people on the bottom. Bourgeois Americans have judiciously incorporated sexual freedom into their lives, retaining to a great degree the stabilizing institution of marriage. Not so the folks in the middle and on the bottom, many of whom are undone by the collapse of older moral strictures.
I’ve long been baffled by progressives. They make the observation, largely true, that increased economic freedom since the Reagan years has disproportionately benefited those who are most capable of taking advantage of new opportunities in the marketplace—that is to say the well-educated and well-disciplined bourgeoisie. But these same progressives line up to trash traditional morality, ignoring the fact that the same holds for sexual freedom.
No, not the same but worse. It’s not at all clear that investment banker bonuses diminish the earning power of coal miners or janitors. But it is clear, I think, that the sexual liberties that can be gently folded into upper-middle class life wreck havoc on working class communities.
That’s why I think that a Catholic commitment to what’s known as “the preferential option for the poor”—a proper commitment, I might add—would seem to require a fairly strict social conservatism when it comes to sex, marriage, and the family.
January 14th, 2011 | 9:36 am
Another academic attempt to make divorce and family dissolution a MATERIALIST problem is not only unimaginative but misguided.
The great Robert Bork stated in his seminal book, “Slouching to Gomarrah”:
Of all the destructive movements to emerge from the 60′s……Feminsim was the most destructive because it did the most to destroy the family.”
American culture has become nihilistic.
And most nihilists(if not all) are materialist determinists…..like our author here.
The real discussion on divorce revolves a culture’s suicidal impulse to destroy itself.
But for the truly superficial…….this article will do.
January 14th, 2011 | 9:44 am
Mr. Reno: I remember your vivid writing about this in “Among the Ruins” and I have never forgotten your assessment that the wealthy, educated people who want their sexual freedom have many resources to combat the inevitable consequences. You wrote something to the effect that, even if it takes a lot of therapy, legal fees, prescriptions, tutoring, and other intervention, it’s okay (according to these folks) because “the kids still get into Harvard.”
A friend of mine just asserted on another blog that it doesn’t matter if people marry or not, as long as they are committed to raising their children together, and that it doesn’t matter if they are the same gender (because gender roles have shifted in the last 50 years). It is sheer wishful thinking to say these things, which are completely unsupported by any evidence. But he will not believe it. And my friend sends his children to expensive private schools while his wife stays home to raise them.
January 14th, 2011 | 10:03 am
[...] comments Divorce and Statistics – First Things blogger R.R. Reno highlights some thoughts you probably already knew, but have [...]
January 14th, 2011 | 10:08 am
Daniel, I’m unclear as to who you think is a materialist determinist here — are you accusing Reno of this or the authors of the paper he cites? Because Reno is certainly not a materialist.
January 14th, 2011 | 10:23 am
I was just ticking off in my mind all of my positive factors. Okay, college degree, good job, go to church, parents married until they died…and I concluded that my marriage is unlikely to end in divorce. I congratulated myself…until I remembered it’s my second marriage. :^(
January 14th, 2011 | 12:00 pm
Contra Bork, most women don’t work outside the home because they are feminists. They work outside the home because their husbands don’t make enough money to support the family. And men started making less money when unions lost their clout, and companies began shipping jobs overseas.
It’s the economic policies of those who support what they call “free enterprise” that is driving the income inequality that is the greatest factor in the erosion of marriage.
January 14th, 2011 | 12:04 pm
Daniel, to observe a material reality and its effects is not the same thing as being a materialist. It has always been true and will always be true that material wealth superficially protects individuals from some of the effects of spiritual decline. Even the book of Proverbs has something to say about that.
January 14th, 2011 | 12:26 pm
Maybe I’m misreading Reno. If he’s making the case that people who are in reality divorced but spared the legal status of divorce through greater resources…….OK…….resources allow them the avoid the legal status of divorce while being divorced in spirit.
Pentamom’s point about material wealth shielding people from the EFFECTS of spiritual decline is an observation. But spiritual decline is spiritual decline whether you feel the effects or not.(which may be Reno’s point….and kudos if it is.)
Michael’s point about the motivation for working outside the home I’m sure is valid in many cases but not all.
Again………these are materialist arguments on a moral issue.
I subscribe to a somewhat Confucian ideal on this issue. Families should adjust their lifestyle down if the mother wants to stay home.
It can be done……..or at least explored.
And Bork’s points on feminism go far beyond working mothers.
January 14th, 2011 | 7:48 pm
Michael, unions lost their clout because they lost their moral authority.
They lost their moral authority because they misspent it.
The inability to separate a need from a want has been the bane of pretty much every great left wing idea of the 20th century – including not only unions (that can currently prevent a company from firing a known thief, but cannot make companies enforce safety regs – and don’t appear particularly interested in trying).
Feminism had moral authority and legitimacy when it attacked the real powerlessness of women. It went over the line, and instead of arguing for what is fair, it started coming up with justifications for why it could ignore real and legitimate issues – going beyond fairness to actually demand more than what is actually fair.
These things kill relationships.
Relationships – especially ones that involve sharing of resources and responsibilities – have institutions that evolve for the purpose of regulating what is fair. Liberals did very well when they focused on justice. They lost power – and, not coincidentally, marriages and unions both started failing – when liberals went beyond justice and into a pattern of targeting the supposedly “most powerful” member of the arrangement and opposing anything that granted him power – in essence, demanding that the heads of businesses and the heads of families continue to honor all the obligations that go with their positions, but without getting any of the resources (including emotional resources such as respect for authority).
The real problem is one of misdiagnosis.
January 14th, 2011 | 10:19 pm
I am not sure why Daniel is having such a hard time understanding this article.
I don’t think G.K. Chesterton was a materialist, and a hundred years ago he predicted what is happening now: easy divorce, he said, would end up hurting the poor far more than the well-to-do. I remember reading the book when I was a teenager 40 years ago and I didn’t see his point; but he was right.
The well-to-do are often cushioned from the consequences of their own bad behavior. A poor man’s drinking may cost him his job and he ends up in the gutter. Whereas a rich man can continue to live comfortably and send his children to good schools.
Moreover, the poor have greater economic worries, and therefore more stress on their marriages. To say that moral and material factors can interact with each other to produce “vicious cycles” for the poor and the opposite for the well-off is not a very hard idea to understand. Anyone who has been paying attention for the last fifty years or so should be able to see many of the ways in which this happens.
January 15th, 2011 | 10:20 am
I understand completely what’s being said here.
What I find superficial and misguided are attempts to discuss moral arguments from materialist perspectives. The motivation for this is nearly always some appeal to “social justice” or other socialist redistributive policies. Socialists and Communists make these determinist, materialist arguments to further their cause.
This article basically comes down to……”It’s better to have money so you can come out of the cold and not freeze.”
Really?
So again…….let’s address one of the most signifigant moral issues of our time from a superficial…….SELF OBVIOUS perspective.
Let’s change direction and get something besides political correctness from this.
The Confucian pinciple of the family would say that a poor family should cooperate and work together to make their various contributions(however meager) so as to increase the possibility of a decent level of subsistence.
I think there’s moral power there.
On the other hand……we in the West have people making arguments that all of our social dissolution is the result of poverty or discrimination or sexism…….or whatever.
When black America was much poorer and deprived than now………their illegitimate pregnancy rates, and divorce rates were much lower than now.
And literacy was way higher then.
Why?
Because then they subscribed to something much more like the Confucian principle than the modern materialist arguments they hold now.
If Reno is not making the materialist argument……..more power to him.
But for those highlighting this issue for the purposes of advancing redistributive arguments which have demonstrably failed for decades……………..you are misguided.
Spiritual decline is the issue………and whether resources shield you temporarily from the effects………..you will have to square accounts eventually.
January 17th, 2011 | 10:10 am
[...] Google Reader, Joel shared a post from First Thoughts. R.R. Reno, looking over statistics from the National Marriage Project, writes “educational levels, [...]
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