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Fast Facts
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| On
the "dangers" to children posed by the "divorce culture"
and alternative families: |
|
 | Children are at vastly greater risk of
abuse and neglect from biological parents than from caregivers or
co-residents unrelated by blood. According to the Third National
Incidence Study on Child Abuse and Neglect (1996), 78% of children who
suffered maltreatment were maltreated by a birth parent.1 |
| While research consistently finds that
children whose parents divorce do seem more likely to suffer
emotional harm than those whose families remain intact (providing there
is an absence of open conflict in the "intact" home) the fact
remains that 75%-80% of children from divorced families experience no
negative effects whatsoever. Furthermore, there continues to be strong
debate concerning the ability of the research to date to identify the
discrete effects of divorce on "average" children as
contrasted to the corollary effects of other circumstances that often
accompany, precede, or follow the divorce itself.2 |
| The average length of a colonial
marriage, principally due to high mortality rates, was less than a dozen
years. One third to one half of all children lost at least one parent
before the age of twenty-one.3 |
| In 1940, one in ten American children
lived with neither biological parent. By the 1990’s, that
figure had fallen to one in twenty five.4 |
| Although courts and lawmakers cannot
compel a married couple to finance their children’s college
education, they can make a divorced parent do so.5 |
| There is real danger in stigmatizing
children in non-traditional families. One study found that teachers
shown videotapes of children in a variety of settings consistently rated
the child’s behavior more negatively when told the child came from a
divorced family than when told the child was from an intact family.6 |
| "Examining a nationally
representative sample of children and adolescents living in four diverse
family structures, we find few statistically significant differences
across family types on measures of socioemotional adjustment and
well-being."7 |
| "[There is] no clear,
consistent, or convincing evidence that alterations in family structure
per se are detrimental to children’s development." [Emphasis in
the original.]8 |
| A 1976 report reviewing six previous
studies of the effects on children of being raised in alternative family
forms (the communal family and multilateral [or group] marriage) showed
no measurable harm and many positive outcomes for such children.9 |
| A 1983 longitudinal study of children
raised in "non-conventional" families in California contrasted
their psychological, educational, and social development with that of a
control group being raised in conventional families. The study found
that 86% of the children from non-conventional families scored above
median grades and test scores.10 The
study also concluded that "they do not appear on the whole to be
suffering significantly from social and emotional problems."11 |
|
| On the "naturalness"
of monogamy and the "nuclear family": |
|
| Regarding the "permanence" of
social constructs such as monogamous marriage: Our species (a generally moderately polygamous primate) migrated from
the African savannah somewhere around 100,000 years ago. This represents
approximately three thousand generations of humans – roughly the
evolutionary equivalent to a day and a half in the life of bacteria.
Aspects of "civilization" such as agriculture, writing, and
metalworking arrived less than three hundred generations ago. Our
brains, and genetic predispositions, remain firmly that of our foraging
ancestors; all the artifices of "civilization," including
lifelong monogamy, are of such fleeting duration as to leave no
meaningful impression on our genetic "hard-wiring."12 |
| Estimates of the incidence of marital
infidelity in the United States range from 20% to 50%.13
One estimate rated the percentage of all Americans who would have an
extramarital affair during their lives as high as 70%!14 |
| One indisputable measure of the
prevalence of infidelity is the consistent finding, aided by DNA
testing, that up to 15% of the children in some urban areas are not
the biological children of the "father of record."15 |
| The "household" of husband,
wife, and biological children is such a recent social construct that
demographers can’t accurately track it before 1940.16 |
| "Before the eighteenth century, no
European language had a term for the mother-father-children
group." [Emphasis added].17 |
| One researcher offered a
"conservative" estimate in 1988 that 2 to3 percent of all U. S.
adults have "swung" (i.e., engaged in consensual sexual
non-exclusivity) at least once, which gives a numerical value of between
3.1 and 4.7 million people, based on the 1990 census figures for
Americans aged 26 and older.18,19
This
number is greater than the 1998 population figures of 29 states! |
|
| On "putting the toothpaste
back into the tube" - the changed reality of families today: |
|
| There has been a 15% increase in
the median age at first marriage (from 23.2 years old to 26.8 years old)
for men, and a 20% increase (from 20.8 years old to 25 years old) for
women, between 1970 and 1997.20 |
| It is estimated that 40% of children in
the United States will, at some point in their childhood, live in a
household where the adults are cohabiting rather than being legally
married.21 |
| Despite claims to the contrary, there is
credible research that suggests that cohabiting partners reap the same
psychological benefits as married partners do.22 |
| Americans are choosing to live alone at
unprecedented rates. In 1998, over 26 million Americans age 15 or older
(over 15 million women and 11 million men) were living alone.23
This represents a huge shift from the past when the majority of
unmarried people lived with blood relatives. To some observers, this
suggests a new form of "kinship" based on intentional
selection rather than accidents of birth, with profound implications for
the future legal and social meaning of "family."24 |
| Nearly half of all U.S. marriages are
remarriages for at least one of the spouses.25 |
| About one out of five U.S. married
couples live with stepchildren.26 |
| The proportion of adults who describe
themselves as "happily married" has fallen from approximately
half in 1973 to less than 40%.27 |
| Cohabitation is increasingly a routine
part of life for Americans. By 1995, over 41% of American women between
the ages of 15 and 44 had cohabited at least once in their lives,28
up from about a third as recently as 1988.29 |
| One consequence of our increased
longevity is the concomitant decline in the proportion of our lives
spent in the parenting role historically seen as so central to marital
harmony. The average U. S. couple that stays together after their
children are grown now faces more than a third of a century with no
other company in the home besides each other.30 |
| A 1995 Harris poll showed 90% agreement
with the statement that society "should value all types of
families."31 |
|
| On the so-called "divorce
culture" in America: |
|
| Contrary to stereotypes, modern divorce
is not primarily a phenomenon of male (or female) "mid-life
crisis." Examining worldwide statistics on divorce reveals that 81%
of all divorces occur before age 45 among women; 74% of all
divorces occur before age 45 among men.32
In the United States, the median age at divorce from a first marriage in
1990 was 33.2 for men and 31.1 for women.33 |
| The monolithic monogamist view that
"easy" divorce is shortening the duration of nuclear families
is belied by the evidence of the past. Just taking into account
shortened lifespans, nuclear families were intact for shorter
periods historically than is true today.34 |
| Americans for Divorce Reform
("Reform" = re-instituting fault-based divorce) approvingly
quotes Iowa State Representative Charles Hurley as saying in 1996,
"The guardrails were taken down in 1970 and a lot of marriages that
would have stayed on the road and maybe bounced off the guardrails have
instead gone over the cliff." Many commentators seem to agree with
this timing for the "no-fault divorce revolution."35
Connecticut, for example, passed a law that allowed divorce for
"any such misconduct as permanently destroys the happiness of the
petitioner and defeats the purpose of the marriage relation." - in
1849.36 |
| The Catholic Church did not finally
codify its ban on divorce until 1563. So, counting from the time of the
birth of Jesus Christ, divorce was permitted, even in the
Catholic Church, for nearly three times as long as it has been
prohibited.37 |
| Marriage was not even considered a
sacrament by the Catholic Church until 1215.38 |
| According to a General Accounting Office
report issued on January 31, 1997, there are no fewer than 1,049
"federal laws in which benefits, rights, and privileges are
contingent on marital status." |
| The United States has had the highest
divorce rate in the world – since 1889.39 |
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