Changes in Family and Opportunity in Our Society: Three Media Stories

Kay Hymowitz, Brad Wilcox, and Kelleen Kaye wrote a thoughtful piece that appeared on March 15^th in the Wall Street Journal. Their article, entitled The New Unmarried Moms, talks about the fact that childbearing is now exploding among unmarrieds in their 20s.

If you read my blog regularly, you know that there is a constant, running argument about the chicken and egg dynamics between family structure, family stability, commitment between two parents, and economic opportunities and outcomes. If you have not already seen their piece, I encourage you to read it because it is an excellent example of putting all these variables in one place, with a considered analysis of how they intersect.

If you want to go further on these themes, there was an excellent presentation at The Brookings Institute on March 20^th. This too, I highly recommend for those you who are interested in these societal trends and thoughtful discussions about them. There are two presentations, both under the theme Knot Yet (here and here), and they include noted experts and commentators: Ron Haskins (moderating), David Lapp, Brad Wilcox, Isabel Sawhill, Andrew Cherlin, Jared Bernstein, Ross Douthat, and Jamelle Bouie. 

And finally, I want to recommend a third, recent article the media, entitled Study of Men’s Falling Income Cites Single Parents in the New York Times on March 20^th. This one focuses on the economic plight of men in the context of family trends. Among the major points raised by Binyamin Appelbaum in this article is that “the economic struggles of male workers are both a cause and an effect of the breakdown of traditional households.” The piece is related to a growing concern about the place of men in all of the societal changes. One of the important points Applebaum makes is that, for those at the advantaged part of the spectrum, women have gotten the message that education is crucial for getting and keeping good jobs, but men do not seem to be seeing or taking the same opportunities.

It is very concerning that a growing number of men not to have an important place in either economic or family roles. Advances made by women are terrific, but something of great importance is simultaneously happening to men who are economic (and family wise) disadvantaged.

There you have it: Three, recent, important doses of information about important family and economic trends. I encourage you to take in all three sources if you have the time and the interest. 

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Small Correction & Clarification Related to Earlier Post RE Matthew Johnson's Paper

For any of you following the rather detailed discussion about the impacts of relationship education services as tested in the large, federal studies here in the U.S., I just made the following correction to that long blog post on 3-11-2013.

The correction is this:


Correction/Clarification added 3-23-12:  In looking deeper into the technical report for BSF at 36 months, Mathematica did test for moderation by African American identification in the overall BSF pooled sample at 36 months, as they did at 15 months. But they did not test for this moderation by site at 36 months. Matt Johnson had implied that this moderation became null at 36 months when it had been significant at 15 months. As applied to the full sample, Johnson is correct. As applied to the Oklahoma site, my assertion that this was not tested is correct (Rob Wood, personal communication, 7-25-2012).  As has been clear here and elsewhere, I have focused on the Oklahoma site within the BSF study because of their much greater delivery of services to the intended participants compared to the other 7 sites. At 15 months, moderation by African American identification was tested and found to be very strong in the Oklahoma site, with African American couples benefitting the most. But on the question as to if this moderation maintained or not in the only site with evidence of an important lasting impact at 36 months (and if it holds or not for the family stability finding), we do not know the answer because, to the best of my knowledge, it has not yet been tested.

The entire post with links to all of the articles has been updated with the clarifying note above, and remains at this download link for readers here who are deeply interested in this subject. There are no other changes to the document. 

Stigma and Shame: A Campaign in New York Sparks Discussion

You might think this post is going to be about giant, sugary drinks and controversies over the (attempted) ban on them in New York City. Well, that is not the only campaign going on that has sparked interesting discussions about the role, and potential limits, of stigma and shame in campaigns to change human behavior.

Here’ the skinny. New York City has had an ad campaign going with “Posters in thousands of bus shelters and subways show tiny tots bewailing the bad news about teen pregnancy.” The quote is from the first piece I happened to read about this, which is an article by Heather MacDonald in the City Journal.

Here are two examples of what the messages on the posters say:

“Because you had me as a teen, I’m twice as likely not to graduate high school.”

“Honestly Mom ... chances are he won’t stay with you. What happens to me?”

I will provide links to several fascinating articles on this campaign (pro and con and mixed/complicated). If you are interested in these themes, you will find these pieces very interesting.

For starters, here is the link to MacDonald’s piece.

One of the interesting points that MacDonald highlights is what she calls the growing stigma about stigma. She points out that, “For millennia, humans relied on social disapproval to reduce behavior that produced disproportionate costs to individuals and the community.” Whatever your beliefs on the effectiveness of stigma, it seems to me obviously true that it is less acceptable these days to discourage some types of behavior by social disapproval—shame and stigma. I say “some types” because it should be equally obvious that it is growing in acceptability to try to discourage other types of behavior by social disapproval. Maybe the use of social disapproval is not changing much at all in aggregate, just what themes those efforts get attached to these days.

The other point MacDonald brings to the forefront is the ongoing debate in social science and policy circles about causality between poverty and disadvantage and responsibility or control over personal behavior. This argument is a big deal.

In one piece about this in the New York Times, Kate Taylor quotes Haydee Morales of Planned Parenthood of New York City as saying the following (link here):

“Hurting and shaming communities is not what’s going to bring teen pregnancy rates down,” she added.
She said that the campaign’s message — that teenage pregnancy leads to poverty — was backward.
“It’s not teen pregnancies that cause poverty, but poverty that causes teen pregnancy,” she said.

Another piece in a New York Times, by Motoko Rich (linked here), also emphasizes the side of the argument that poverty determines behavior. He quotes an economist named Phillip B. Levine as saying, “Teenage childbearing is ‘a symptom, not a cause’ of poverty and economic immobility.” Levine is second author of a recent study (with Melissa S. Kearney) in which they find that poverty plays a complex role in teen pregnancy based on if teens live in areas of high income inequality or lower inequality. They suggest that higher income inequality contributes to greater teen childbearing.

MacDonald is challenging the view that poverty determines teenage pregnancy with little room for the role of personal responsibility. This causality conundrum is fast becoming an age-old argument among thinkers about all sorts of family patterns associated with higher risks for difficulties in life. Why does the argument matter? Because how you come down in your view of such things will determine what levers you think could be pulled of should be pulled to make a difference. Can an individual, despite great disadvantages, make different choices and improve her (or his) odds of good outcomes or is it the case that little can be done by an individual because the only changes that matter are ones that reduce economic disparities?

In another media piece, Keli Goff takes the position that the ad campaign is needed, and raises the issue of why stigmatizing campaigns are considered fine for some things and not for others. Her piece can be found, here. I do not know anything about Keli Goff and her general beliefs, though she appears to me to be a liberal challenging other liberal’s in their criticism of the New York campaign. For example, while Planned Parenthood has come out against the campaign in New York, Goff writes:

“I just wonder if the women of privilege running Planned Parenthood, which has struggled with diversity in the past, realize that children born in poor communities deserve the same opportunities their kids do -- which means not just randomly distributing birth control but actually giving poor women the same information, incentives and life goals that women who grow up in privilege often take for granted. That includes providing accurate information about why when you choose to become a parent matters.”

Now the part I wanted to call the most attention to in Goff’s piece is the part about the influence of TV on behavior, where she wrote:

“Considering that one of the most widely covered reality-TV trainwrecks -- second only to the Kardashians -- was the star of a show called Teen Mom, I would think that Planned Parenthood has more pressing media concerns than stopping an anti-teen-pregnancy campaign, but apparently not. The show Teen Mom and other reality shows, such as 16 and Pregnant, are perfect examples of why this campaign is needed.”

She goes on to voice a strong concern about the impact on teens of shows where teenagers become famous for becoming pregnant. (She makes some interesting observations about the Kardashians, also.) I generally, strongly agree with this position that television shows are not helping on any number of social trends. But what’s fascinating about this Teen Mom show example is that it’s really not clear if the effect would be to inspire other teenagers to become parents or discourage it. That’s a great question (well, to me, anyway).

One scholar I am in regular dialogue with, Sarah Halpern-Meekin, had what I thought was a very important observation on these issues. She noted that reality shows like “Teen Moms” may have a more positive impact than we’d guess because they could impact the awareness of teens about the downside of teenage births. Such shows can depict, pretty graphically, the difficulties that having a child as a teen bring to one’s life. So, while others have criticized shows like “Teen Moms,” Halpern-Meekin adds an important insight to the whole discussion about what messages may be most effective in helping teens. While there is a reasonable concern that such shows may encourage something that places teens at higher risk for difficult lives (and their children), showing some of the difficulties may well have a preventive effect, for some. She is suggesting, whether intentioned or not, such shows could discourage teen pregnancy, and maybe more effectively than the harsher approach taken in the poster campaign in New York.  Further, she noted that there is really very little research on what types of messages—and delivered how and by who—are truly most effective to warn young people of risks in various pathways of life.

This is the type of question I find most interesting in all of this. What's the best type of message delivery if there is an effective message to be delivered? Some of these other questions are important but they represent chronic, deep arguments about individual choices and the context of poverty. There are some people who seem to be arguing that teenage pregnancy and parenting may not even be a big deal. I’m not very interested in that argument because it seems manifestly silly. I also don’t buy the idea that poverty and other types of disadvantage mean there is no role for individual choice and behavior in determining what happens in life. (See my link on the left side about science, selection effects, and determinism if you want a Big Gulp dose of that discussion. Or just click here. Warning: it's a lot to digest.)

I fully believe that poverty greatly limits the choices an individual can make, but to accept the idea that the individual can do nothing goes too far. Some people get dealt a very tough hand in life, and where true, the chances of getting a good outcome are lower. No question. But that does not mean the individual’s behavior does not matter, and some people seem to want to argue exactly this. A little change at a couple of key moments could make a much larger difference in the life of someone with poor options than the same change would make for others.

This whole dust-up about the New York campaign raises many great questions about the complex goo of social challenges. It would be great to see more effective strategies being tried, tested, and fielded for changing the arc of opportunity for those in poverty. But I also want to know all we can know about what strategies might be most effective for educating individuals, like teens, about things that help them play whatever hands they’ve been dealt in a way that improves their own odds in life. And that includes wanting to know, by solid research, what types of messages and delivery systems teens would actually be most responsive to in affecting risk behavior.

Does Relationship/Marriage Education Work with Participants who have Low Incomes and/or with Minority Participants?

Note to usual readers of my blog. On 3-11-13, I posted an unusually long blog entry regarding an ongoing discussion among researchers and policy experts about the usefulness and impacts of relationship education services provided to couples who are economically disadvantaged or to couples of color. A colleague who is also a couple/marital researcher, Matthew Johnson, wrote a piece published last year (2012) in the American Psychologist wherein he suggested that the results of two large federal studies demonstrated that relationship education efforts were ineffective. He suggested that this may have been due, in part, to many of the couples in the studies having characteristics different from couples who have been studied more heavily in this field. Johnson made a reasonable call for more research to inform the field in working with couples who are disadvantaged. However, a number of researchers (including me) took issue with other suggestions and points made by Johnson. While we agreed with the wisdom in the call for more research, we took issue with aspects of Johnson's arguments. For example, we suggested that there was growing evidence that such relationship education interventions may be as--or even more--effective with the very couples Johnson suggested were not benefiting because of inadequate research. 

The long post that I wrote on all of this is now included in a document that can be downloaded. The document includes the links to Johnson's original paper, the comment by a number of other researchers (including me) on his paper, and a reply by Johnson to our comment. The document also includes a link to a very helpful chapter on the subject by Alan Hawkins. My post on all of this is long and technical, and I have now moved it from the main stream of blog entries here to the document that you can download here.

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Family Stability and Relationship Education Services: A Comment on Cherlin’s Critique

Andrew Cherlin, a sociologist studying families, published an opinion in Bloomberg on 12-25-12, entitled Do Unmarried Poor Have Bad Values or Bad Jobs?  In it, he writes several things I will comment on here.  In the piece, he says: 

“A large U.S. government-funded experiment to encourage low-income parents to marry, a legacy of the George W. Bush administration’s Healthy Marriage Initiative, has just fallen flat. Even if you were a skeptic all along of the wisdom of the government promoting marriage, as I was, this isn’t good news. For the children of these unmarried couples, it is bad news: It portends years of unstable, complicated home lives. The apparent failure of marriage promotion makes the task of finding other ways to help them even more urgent.”

To his point about family instability, I can only say, “Too right.” (Not as in too right or too left but as in very correct.) He covers various points about the costs of family instability to society in his piece, and he notes that children in the U.S. whose parents are married have far more likelihood of family stability than parents of children who cohabit. I have increasingly emphasized family instability because it is a very big deal (see my piece on The Perfect Storm).  As Cherlin writes in his piece, “I also am convinced that children do best in stable family environments and that repeated parental breakups and ‘repartnering’ can be harmful to them.” He is so “onboard” with understanding this societal issue that, before I take issue with his piece, I will first recommend his book, The Marriage-Go-Round (I will even link that to Amazon. Wish my critics would give links to books I’ve written or co-authored!). 

I am bothered by two points in Cherlin’s piece, and I want to give you the other side. 

First, Cherlin contextualizes the type of service being tested as “government promoting marriage.”  He gives a brief history of these efforts that were, over the past 10 years, particularly encouraged by the Bush administration. All such programs stemmed from the welfare reform law of 1996 in which President Clinton and the Republican congress followed through on Clinton’s campaign vow to end welfare as we knew it. Under the foundational principles of the welfare reform act of 1996, states were encouraged to try to increase the formation and stability of two parent families. Few states attempted anything of the like, and the Bush administration subsequently provided funding and grants to increase these efforts.  Some of these types of efforts have been continued under the Obama administration as well. And whatever else you may think of such efforts, I can tell you that a type of service that is historically simply not available to low income families became possible under such initiatives.  

I do not like seeing such efforts described as “promoting marriage.” Cherlin’s piece implies that many of the government supported efforts in this area, of the last decade, focused on the values of low income individuals about marriage. That’s not only not true about programs, it’s not true about the values people already hold. We’ve known well, and for well over a decade, that the very poor are less likely to marry for reasons other than not valuing marriage. In fact, they tend to value it more than others (for example, see Kathy Edin and Maria Kefalas’ book, Promises I Can Keep). 

Here’s my beef, and it’s a large burger with fries and a Coke.  I see this term “marriage promotion” fairly often in journal articles and policy discussions and I think it mischaracterizes what most of these efforts have been about. You would be hard pressed to find any substantial push on those receiving such services to go and get married, as if doing so would magically solve their problems in life. Cherlin rightly describes some of the services (though a bit narrowly I think) as ‘“relationship skills” programs to improve communication, avoid conflict and build trust.’ Such services are not generally new—though there is much new in the services devised to meet the needs of the economically disadvantaged. 

Cherlin goes on to emphasize the interplay between the economy, structural changes in the job market, and the current level of family instability and non-marriage among the economically disadvantaged. These are important, valid points. For an excellent piece on this theme from earlier this year, see the article in the New York Times by Jason DeParle, entitled Two Classes, Divided by ‘I Do’ (also, see earlier blog entry I wrote on this point.)

Economics, relationship quality, and relationship commitment all play dramatic roles in what is unfolding in understanding family instability. And do not forget what I keep coming back to. One of the main reasons why children of unmarried couples, especially those at lower incomes, are much more likely to experience family instability is not that their biological parents are worse parents than marrieds—unmarried couples are simply far less likely to be having a child in the context of an already settled, mutual commitment to the future. The important policy matter is that these couples are much more vulnerable, on average, than other couples.

My second point has to do with the findings of the large, federally funded study that Cherlin discusses. See his piece for more details. The study is called The Building Strong Families Study (BSF).  What Cherlin describes is quite accurate; what he leaves out is too important to have been left out. 

First off, I should point out that this large study (BSF) tested one of the most expensive models of the recent government efforts, and with a particularly challenging population: couples having a child who are economically disadvantaged and who are not married. The rate of family instability for these groups is very high. Here is what is not mentioned in Cherlin’s piece that I think is worth you knowing about.  

This large study included 8 sites, nationally. In only one of these 8 sites did most couple receive any substantial amount of the planned services. In Oklahoma’s Family Expectations Program, a combination of cutting-edge efforts to reduce barriers to participation, reinforcements for attending, and quality of the services led to exceptional attendance. Attendance was dismal across the rest of the sites. And, if you follow any media and opinion pieces on this study (and related issues), you are almost always only being told about the findings averaged across the sites. Only the Oklahoma site had solid results on many dimensions of relationship quality at the 15 months assessment. 

As for the past and recent (3 years out) outcomes, As Cherlin notes in his piece, “Only the Oklahoma site showed some positive effects.” But what is not mentioned is that the Oklahoma site was the only one where there was a statistically significant impact on an important outcome at the 3 year point: in the program group, 49% of the families had lived together continuously since the birth of the child whereas, for the control group, 41% of the families had remained together in this way.

What were we talking about here? Oh yes, family instability. 

I need to explain this, as you might think that 49% compared to 41% does not sound like much of a big deal. That difference in 8 percentage points at three years out amounts to a 20% increase in the likelihood of these families continuously living together if they were in the program group.  And this is a finding on a core measure of family wellbeing (stability). It also reflects something that is rare in large, rigorous studies of government programs. What’s rare? The fact that this impact is statistically significant, it is large, and it is relevant.  You might think this happens all the time in studies of government programs, but I am using the word “rare” deliberately, here. There is an almost unbelievably weak record of lasting impacts in studies of most government supported programs to achieve specific effects. Take jobs training as just one example. The record of effectiveness is quite poor; and I do not mean, by this, to argue against such services.  The dismal evidence means that such programs need to be made more effective than they now are—if possible. [Want to check me out on this? Start here, in this fairly recent GAO report. Try searching for the paragraph that begins with “Little is known” and read that and go from there in your studying of evidence in government programs, if you like. There is no shortage of information on the internet.]

Now, back to this 8% difference in family stability. This finding suggests that if you put 1000 low income, unmarried couples through this program, 80 families (80 two parent families) will be together three years later that otherwise would not have been. As Cherlin notes, this particular type of program is expensive, averaging $11,000 per couple. Much of the services initiated in the past 10 years or as part of the federal initiatives cost far less. Further, these more expensive programs could very likely come down in cost through further testing and refinement. Even if that cost remained that high, consider this math that assumes no improvements in cost efficiencies: 1000 couples treated times $ 11,000 equals total program cost. Divide that product by the 80 families still together who otherwise would not be. That means it cost $ 137,500.00 per family for that stability (and this assumes no other benefits to anyone). That sounds like an awful lot of money, but you don’t have to have be around government family policy discussions very long to suspect that the impacts of early family instability for children have lifetime costs to society well exceeding that amount. And that can be considered a starting point to work from, not the end of that adventure in government policy and programs.  

So, what’s my point? It’s twofold.  Many of the efforts of the last 10 years to increase family stability (and, yes, in marriage where possible) have been routinely mischaracterized. Whatever else is true or not, one of the things that happened these past 10 years is that a type of service usually not remotely available to low income couples became more widely available to them. And there is body of evidence that such strategies are generally effective (click here for more information). In this particular, large government study just reaching the 3 year point (BSF), there was an unusual, statistically significant, long-term result on one of the most important outcomes in this field—and within the only site that got a substantial number of couples into the intervention. I am far from Pollyannaish about all this, but this is worth thinking more about. You are not going to see this point made in most reports on the study because, like as Andrew Cherlin admirably confessed about his own views in his piece, most family policy experts have been skeptics of such efforts. There is something to build on in these findings. 




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Disclaimer:  I try to be very above board, so here is my disclaimer. You should know that my colleague Howard Markman and I developed a program for couples called PREP which was adapted by Pam Jordan (Becoming Parents), and that was a core part of the total program delivered in Oklahoma. I receive income from PREP. Further, I have been a long-time adviser for the efforts in Oklahoma. Like Andrew Cherlin, I am pretty skeptical of many things in my field. But I clearly see this area of work  as the “glass half full” and not the “glass all empty.” But do not take the word of either of us.  You can check any of these assertions for yourself in numerous reports and pieces on the web. But please set your expectations to start with by looking for compelling evidence of lasting impact for most government programs. Otherwise, you can too easily have an unfair standard of comparison for programs such as the one this piece focuses on.

Divorce. Is the answer shorter time commitments in marriage?

My colleague Howard Markman came across this piece in the New York Times from September: Till Death, or 20 Years, Do Us Part. The piece begins noting the urban legend that Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes had a five-year contract on their marriage. Beyond that, the article is interesting for quoting from a number of scholars who study families as the author grapples with the feasibility of life-long marriages. The hook is the idea that people might be better off committing to a shorter time commitments in marriage than life.

I wrote about the idea of two-year marriage licenses last year (you can find that entry here). In this more recent New York Times piece, the discussion is serious even if the possibility of the idea becoming popular is low. At least, I think the possibility is low because, no matter what else is true, people really do want lifelong love—it’s just the getting there that is the difficult part.

A truly large number of people who marry will divorce (currently projected at around 40 to 45% or so).  The NYTs piece also notes the work of sociologist Susan Brown at Bowling Green State University who finds that the divorce rate is taking off among those 50 and up. We are living longer and longer, with the question being asked by many as to if it’s really possible to be compatible with someone for that long.

Reforming the nature of the commitment, some argue, might destigmatize divorce and reduce its negative impacts.

Robert Emery is a psychologist and family researcher who studies the impact of divorce on children.  He makes a great observation about commitment in the piece in the Times. To quote: “Dr. Emery favors a candid, apolitical reckoning: an acknowledgment that marriage is not a sexfest with a flawless best friend but something that takes enormous investment. And that can pay off. Lifelong coupling, he says, bestows great benefits, including longer lives for men (“They’re being nagged by a partner with selfish interest in their long-term health”).”

Emery is right on point about the potential benefit of committing to the whole nine yards. But he and many others quoted in the article are also grappling with the reality that many people become disillusioned in their marriages, and dissolution is a prime cause of, well, dissolution. Ironically, this is perhaps the greatest reason that time-limited marital commitments are not all that likely to catch on in a big way. People want the illusion.  But not all who desire the illusion understand the role of the enormous investment Emery talks about. The illusion without the investment is delusion.

As a society, the much bigger issue going on while we talk about the fragility of marriage is the growing trend toward non-marriage.  Increasingly, couples are not only not committing for life, they are not committing for even a few years. This has very important social consequences, particularly as more and more couples who have not vetted commitment together have children. It's not hard to have children. It's a lot harder to raise children together, and what's hard with commitment is crazy impossible without it. I’ve suggested these trends toward childbearing in low commitment contexts are setting our society up for a "perfect storm."  I could be wrong. But I'd bet I’m not.

Ironically, while I’d not advocate for adjustable term marriages, I can see one advantage of the practice. I will quote from my earlier piece about the proposal in Mexico for 2 year renewable marriages that came up last year.

Imagine a couple we’ll call Lucy and Ricky. They are planning their wedding. Their wedding is a week or two away and it’s time to go down to the town hall and get their wedding license. They get to the desk and talk to the clerk and ask for a license. The clerk says, “no problem. Just fill out this form and give me a check for the fee.” The clerk points to a section in the middle of the form and says, “Also, you have to check one of these boxes, here, to indicate if you want the renewable-term marriage or not, and if you do, what term you are choosing.”

Lucy starts to fill out the card, and she gets to the term election section. She starts to mark the “non-renewing” box (which, ironically, means perpetually renewing), and Ricky says, “hold on a second. Let’s talk about if we should go for a 5 year or 2 year term. That’s an interesting idea and there must be some advantages.”

Ricky and Lucy are now going to have a special moment. Let’s call it a somewhat late stage DTR. (Define the relationship.) As you might imagine, in their case, it becomes their last serious conversation about a future together.

There are many situations that turn out terribly in marriages for one or both partners. For some, there was not a realistic way to see that coming. For others, the pathway that ends so painfully started with poor decisions at the start of the relationship in terms of things like how quickly one or both partners got on the path that was not wise in terms of making a good match as partners. In fact, as I’ve often noted, it’s not so often poor decisions as it is transitions without decisions--transitions that make it harder to go back up the path and make a different choice. Having serious talks between two individuals who have become attracted, at key moments, can increase the odds that each individual will end up with a mate where the type of life-long investment Emery noted is not crazy. The DTR concept can be applied at many transition points; it does not have to pertain to merely talking early on about if a relationship is really forming.

If you are not married and want to be, your best bet isn’t going to be a short-term marriage contract. (And I've never--yet--met someone at that stage of a relationship who seriously wants to think short-term.) Your best bet will be based on being careful about who you select in a mate. Compared to the paths people are increasingly likely to take, this means going slower, sliding less, and having a few DTRs about the big things, such as life goals about children and careers or where to live and world views and beliefs. You can talk to this other person about such things, and if talking about such things threatens to wreck the relationship, the odds probably were not so great that it was going to go the distance in the first place.  I'm not talking about killing love and attraction, I'm talking about defining the type of future you want to have, and seeing if you are on the same page about it.

Does Television Romance Buzz Kill Commitment in Marriage?

I came across a really fascinating study last week. Usually, I see all sorts of interesting studies and they roll across my desk and off it onto the floor. This creates quite a mess of research—and research can be quite messy as is. Anyway, I most often just take in the headline or the summary, but I don’t have or take the time to read further. Not this one. I wanted to read more.

Jeremy Osborn is a researcher in Communication Studies at Albion College in Michigan. He just published this study that’s gotten a lot of buzz across the internet, and it’s entitled: When TV and Marriage Meet: A Social Exchange Analysis of the Impact of Television Viewing on Marital Satisfaction and Commitment.  You can get a very nice summary of it here, and you can sample some of the media around it here.

The headline is this: People who consume more television, and especially if they believe in the romantic portrayals on TV, tend to have weaker commitment dynamics in their marriages. People believing more strongly in the portrayals of romantic themes also reported being less dedicated to their partners and rated their sense of the quality of alternatives to their present relationship as higher. The amount of TV one viewed was not nearly as related to marital commitment as the degree of belief about the romantic themes. One aspect of commitment measured here is what I call dedication, which reflects one’s sense that he or she wants to be with the partner, is more willing to invest in having a future together, sees the relationship more as an “us” than me/you, and would tend to protect that relationship when attracted to others.

Osborn also measured the quality of alternatives, which speaks to a very basic issue in commitment theory—that one is constrained to be more committed with their present partner if their perceptions of the alternatives suggest that the alternatives are less good. In other words, if you think you have pretty high quality alternatives, and you get pretty unhappy with your mate, you may just be more likely to bolt because you believe that you could get a better deal elsewhere. That may or may not be true, as many people find out to their surprise, but as a constraint, the perception of how good your alternatives are initially will trump the reality around if you were to act on being unhappy.

So, people who watch more TV and tend to believe in what they see about romantic relationships are likely to have weaker dedication commitment to their partners and are more likely to think they can do better, or at least, not so bad, if they were to leave.

What about unhappiness itself? Well, Osborn found that these television patterns were not related to marital satisfaction. That’s really kind of interesting, and this is one of the things that is very nice about Osborn’s study. He looked at both commitment variables and things like marital satisfaction, and the TV viewing impacts appear to be more linked to commitment than satisfaction.  Had he not looked at commitment, his reported finding would be, for the most part, that the TV viewing and beliefs had little impact on marriage when they might be having a serious impact on commitment within marriages. 

Caveat time: As Osborn notes, his study is cross-sectional, and some of the most interesting questions here are chicken and egg. No yoke. He can’t really tease out if people who are more likely to believe unrealistic romantic themes are simply more drawn already to such things on TV, and also more likely to have trouble making commitments because they are just people who tilt romantic and have more trouble committing to one partner without keeping an eye on how much better it might be with someone else. Very likely, the stuff cuts both ways. And, of course, TV is always serving up the notion (whichever way you want to think, causally here), that there’s something better out there than what you have now. Just think cell phones for a minute. Wait, I’m behind the times.  Smart Phones. (By the way, one can have a super smart phone and still be pretty dense in love and relationships.)