Institute for Family Studies

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Media revelation: Two-parent homes are good for children. Religion questions, anyone?

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Media revelation: Two-parent homes are good for children. Religion questions, anyone?

The past two weeks have produced a boomlet in scholarly and journalistic revelations of facts that establish heavy disadvantages afflicting children not raised by two parents, who are more prevalent in the United States than any other nation.

This is a controversial topic and has all kinds of links to debates about religion, morality and culture.

Consider this from a lengthy New York Times op-ed Sept. 20, with this explosive headline: “The Explosive Rise of Single-Parent Families Is Not a Good Thing.”

The evidence is overwhelming: Children from single-parent homes have more behavioral problems, are more likely to get in trouble in school or with the law, achieve lower levels of education and tend to earn lower incomes in adulthood. Boys from homes without dads present are particularly prone to getting in trouble. …

This article, by University of Maryland economist Melissa S. Kearney, was based on her new book “The Two-Parent Privilege: How Americans Stopped Getting Married and Started Falling Behind” (University of Chicago Press). The Religion Guy has yet to read this book, which has won media praise as “important,” “compelling” and “a great service,” with a “top scholar” offering “reams of evidence.”

By coincidence, the same day the book was released, University of Virginia sociologist W. Bradford Wilcox and three Institute for Family Studies colleagues posted a piece (.pdf here) headlined “Do Two Parents Matter More Than Ever?” Their answer: Yes. It’s the latest such documentation from the Institute and the university’s National Marriage Project, which Wilcox directs. (Note: these social scientists are not saying spouses should remain in physically or emotionally dangerous marriages.)

These writings do not center on religious arguments or sources, but Christian, Jewish, Muslim and other clergy, and members of their congregations, will respond: “Duh!”


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News hooks abound: How will religious faith shape the 'birth dearth,' and vice versa?

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News hooks abound: How will religious faith shape the 'birth dearth,' and vice versa?

Two January headlines a week apart signal that the past generation’s “population explosion” worries have reversed.

Observers fretted as China announced its population began to shrink last year as its birth rate reached a record low. Japan’s Prime Minister Fumio Kishida warned parliament that a declining birth rate means the rapidly aging nation is “on the verge of whether we can continue to function as a society.”

Then last Saturday a New York Times op-ed asserted that unfair burdens on wives and mothers created a “birth strike” and “marriage strike” that are “killing South Korea.” The nation has posted the world’s lowest fertility rate the past three years and deaths now outnumber births.

Such realities provoked the ever-interesting Times columnist Ross Douthat to ask whether “the defining challenge of the 21st Century” will be climate change decried by so many analysts or, instead, the globe’s accumulating “birth dearth” a.k.a. “baby bust” or “population implosion.”

The second trend could well undercut societies’ “dynamism and innovation” and pit “a swollen retired population” against the “overburdened young,” he warned, while listing geopolitical factors in the coming “age of demographic decadence.”

Attention newsroom managers: This is an apt time for media to consider U.S.-focused big-think pieces on how religious communities are shaping population trends and, vice versa, how those trends affect religion.

Pro-procreation government programs appear to have limited impact in boosting birth rates, which instead reflect cultural values regarding marriage and children, and complex individual decision-making. . Articles might examine related abortion policy.

Traditionally, all religions cherish children and favor reproduction, notably in the case of the Catholic Church, as The Guy discussed here a year ago (though today there’s little difference in fertility between U.S. Catholics and Protestants). On the other side of that equation, there’s universal acknowledgment that married couples raising children have been a pivotal constituency drawn to religious involvement.


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Faith, family, dating and the looming marriage crisis in America (Part I)

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Faith, family, dating and the looming marriage crisis in America (Part I)

For decades, viewers have enjoyed the Japanese reality-TV series "Old Enough!" in which preschool children venture into the streets alone to run errands for their parents.

What if American women asked their live-in boyfriends to stop playing videogames, leave their couches and run errands? In the Saturday Night Life sketch "Old Enough! Longterm Boyfriends!" guest host Selena Gomez asked her helpless boyfriend of three years, played by cast member Mikey Day, to buy her eyeliner and two shallots.

This man-baby ends up in tears with a big bag of onions and "a blush palette for African-American women." The frustrated girlfriend says she may need a mid-morning glass of wine.

There was wisdom in that comedy, for pastors willing to see it, said sociologist W. Bradford Wilcox, director of the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia.

"There's a whole class of young men who are not flourishing personally and professionally. … The systems have broken down that help raise up attractive, successful men. Churches used to be one of those support systems," he said, reached by telephone.

"The future of the church runs through solid marriages and happy families. The churches that find ways to help men and women prepare for marriage and then encourage them to start families are the churches that will have a future."

The crisis is larger than lonely, under-employed and Internet-addicted men. Rising numbers of young women are anxious, depressed and even choosing self-harm and suicide.

The coronavirus pandemic made things worse, but researchers were already seeing danger signs, noted San Diego State psychology professor Jean Twenge, in a recent Institute for Family Studies essay.


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Reading between lines of recent surveys: Is the worst of the Sexual Revolution over?

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THE QUESTION:

“Is the Worst of the Sexual Revolution Over?”

THE RELIGION GUY’S ANSWER:

The New York Times ran a feature last month about teens wearing shirts that proclaim “Virginity Rocks.” This fad did not originate with those Christian “True Love Waits” crusaders but a YouTube personality who professed a “tongue in cheek” attitude but said he’s happy if teens advocate abstinence, and some actually do take the slogan seriously.

A dog-eared maxim in our business says “dog bites man” isn’t news but “man bites dog” is. Likewise, this fashion curiosity is newsworthy because so many young Americans think the opposite. And yet we encounter the question above, which was the headline of a recent article for thedispatch.com by David French, who has emerged as among the more interesting weekly commentators on modern morals and religion.

French’s article sidesteps two major aspects of the “sexual revolution,” legalized same-sex relationships, which are broadly accepted but remain central to unresolved religious-liberty disputes, and transgender or “non-binary” causes that are more contested.

His focus instead is on heterosexual principles in the heritage of all great world religions that have been challenged in the U.S. by easy divorce, rising promiscuity and cohabitation, and resulting single motherhood. Hefty majorities found those practices “morally acceptable” in Gallup’s annual values survey for 2019. (Adultery, by contrast, was still judged to be immoral by 89 percent of Americans.)

The headline’s use of “worst” conveys French’s view that the revolution has been unfortunate, and we’ll see more about that below.


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CBS offers a love song on 'polyamory,' which is not that religious thing called 'polygamy'

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Not that long ago, I asked a media-savvy friend to quickly name the first thing he thought of when he heard the word “polygamy.” As you would expect from someone here in the Bible Belt, he responded: “Mormons.”

The guy was being honest. He knew that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints long ago changed its stance on that issue. But that was still what he thought of, first. It was a religion thing.

Then I asked him to do the same thing with this term: “polyamory.” Just as quickly, he responded: “NPR.”

Well, that has been a logical choice in the past. Now, reporters who follow updates on the Sexual Revolution can look to CBSN Originals for the latest one-sided coverage on that topic. Oh, and this new feature — “Not just ‘one big orgy’: Fighting the stigma of consensual non-monogamy” — avoids any religious questions that might be linked to love, sex, marriage and family life (other than hints at conservatives with hangups).

The big idea: There are lots of ordinary Americans who have been forced to hide in closets because they want to love who they love, while creating new kinds of families without fear of legal and cultural complications. They need government recognition.

That sort of sounds like three- or four-person marriages, but CBS never really goes THERE. Check out this passage:

It is illegal in all 50 states to be married to more than one person — which is known as polygamy, not polyamory. Polyamorous people who try different kinds of arrangements — such as a married couple with steady outside partners — run into their own legal problems. 

There is no legal framework for polyamorous families to share finances, custody of children or the rights and responsibilities that come with marriage. Likewise, there are no legal protections against people facing discrimination for being in a non-monogamous relationship.

So the “legal framework” goal is civil unions of some kind, as opposed to marriage?


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What a shocker: Republicans have sex more often than Democrats (religion ghost alert)

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It doesn't take a graduate degree in family-life studies or anything like that to be able to spot the religion ghost in this week's think piece.

In fact, author Nicholas H. Wolfinger of the Institute for Family Studies finally points it out, over half way through this short piece on the institute's website. The headline: "Sex in Red and Blue America."

Frankly, I thought the headline on this one would attract some press coverage, especially since it (a) is about sex, (b) is framed in terms of politics and (c) it's a perfect topic for those trendy lifestyles and features sections that seem to run ANYTHING that pushes buttons about (a) and (b).

So I have kept this think piece stashed away for a few weeks, figuring that I would eventually see mainstream news coverage of some of the hot-button material in it.

Guess what? I haven't seen anything. Have you? Ready for some of the steamy details? Here is a solid slice of core info:

... Republicans have more sex than Democrats and cheat less on their spouses. Political independents have sex even more often than Republicans but cheat at the same rate Democrats do. Republican sexual frequency is entirely explained by the fact that they’re more likely to be married than are Democrats. On the other hand, there’s no obvious explanation for the partisan difference in adultery.

Really now? Can anyone thing of some rather obvious statistical differences between people in red-state, flyover country and the power elites who are at the heart of the modern Democratic party?

At the center of the study is lots of data -- 25 years worth -- from the omnibus General Social Survey. The question isn't perfect, but it's blunt: “About how often did you have sex during the last 12 months?” Yes, that has lots of loopholes. Just ask Bill Clinton.

So why are the Republicans and red-zip-code people having sex more often than the folks whose lives get made into steamy novels, movies and pop songs?

Hint: It's time to start looking for religion-news ghosts.


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