Addendum on Prior Post Regarding Marriage and Cohabitation

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If you have not yet read the prior note (below), please do so—if you are looking for my chief thoughts on the journal article by Musick and Bumpass. Here, I have a little addendum. In addition to the major points below, it’s also worth keeping in mind that the outcome variables that Musick and Bumpass focused on are related to individual wellbeing; that is to say, variables such as global happiness, self-esteem, and depression. The work is not focusing on relationship quality differences or similarities between marrieds and cohabiters, but how the transition into marriage or cohabitation affects how an individual feels as an individual in the relatively earlier years of such relationships.

Embedded in my major point about children is this very point issue. The focus of the analyses that they conducted—which, I’ll reiterate, seem reasonable to me—is on individual wellbeing. There is a related issue in research that focuses on how the transition to parenthood affects couples. That issue is simply this. Even in that area, where much research does focus on relationship quality, I have a feeling something is missing. What is missing, often in our field, is an assessment of something one might call family happiness and contentment, which goes beyond relationship quality per se, and certainly beyond individual happiness as often conceptualized. This is important, because, like the issue of what advantages children in life, there may be other really important things in all such research that are either not being analyzed or not even being measured.

Now, if you have not read the post below yet, please do. If you want to read more about the whole issue of a concept of family happiness relative to individual or couple happiness, see one of my earlier blog entries HERE, which is one of my favorite all time entries.

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Is Marriage Irrelevant?

I’ve been pre-occupied with some projects and travel, so it’s taken me awhile to swing back to this article about marriage being overrated that I noted in my prior post. I have now carefully read the paper and have some observations to share.

THE RESEARCH IS SOLID

The paper by Musick and Bumpass is well executed. The methods are clear and represent a strong approach to answering the hypotheses the authors set out to address. The researchers are solid and respected, and the paper is about as clear as it can be given the complex nature of the sample and the decisions the authors made in how to use it. The most important thing these scholars did that is different from many prior studies is that they looked at changes within individuals as they moved into either marriage or cohabitation rather than comparing people who are either in one or the other groups already. The latter type of analysis exaggerates the differences found in such studies compared to what these authors did in examining how transition into one or the other (or both) affected the individuals.

There are some important weaknesses in this study, noted by the authors. First, they had to include in the category of “single,” people who could have been in very substantial, high quality, dating relationships but who were not living together. They could not form a really clear contrast for what “single” means, therefore. Also, the data set is quite old now for addressing questions on contemporary relationship patterns (nearly 20 years so). Maybe the most important weakness here is that the before and after relationship transition measurements on these individuals were captured around 6 years apart. There are a lot of interesting things that happen in six years in romantic relationships, including break-ups and how those affect what you are measuring as effects at the second time point. These issues create complexities I will not go into further, but these do create challenges in addressing the hypotheses. Overall, though, I have no major quibbles with the methods, analyses, and, within some boundaries, the conclusions.

THE CONCLUSIONS SEEM SOUND, BUT ARE THEY SURPRISING?

You likely caught the sarcasm in the title of my last posting. That’s not directed at this study, per se, but at the type of headlines the study led to around the world. While I believe the findings are sound, the factoid in the headline is anything but—and such headlines foster ignorance about important aspects of life. I was recently in London, and people there where very well aware of this study and the conclusion in the fast-food type of headlines this study generated. In fact, one of the more clear and concise reports on the study had one of the most unfortunate and misleading headlines: “Marriage is overrated and health and happiness benefits for wedded couples are a MYTH.”

Headlines such as this are digested and overgeneralized in the mind of the average person, contributing to a growing belief among those in the next generation that marriage really does not matter. What does this study actually show? In a nutshell:

1. Quoting from the abstract: “The effects of marriage and cohabitation are found to be similar across a range of measures tapping psychological well-being, health, and social ties.”
2. The strongest, positive effects of moving into marriage or a cohabiting relationship are early on and dissipate within a few years.
3. Moving into cohabiting compared to marriage was associated with increases, on average, in self-esteem.
4. Contrary to some suggestions in past literature about marriage, movement into either cohabitation or marriage was associated with reduced contact with friends and family.

Here is the “so what?” point. Keep in mind the nature of the headlines that this study garnered. The headlines were everywhere and they “educated” millions of young people that marriage provides few benefits over cohabiting. Yet, what the results actually showed is that being in love, and moving closer to a partner—physically, and presumably emotionally—is typically associated with gains personal wellbeing. And, at least in the relative short-run, these effects are similar for cohabitation and marriage. Is that surprising when viewed in that light? Being in love and feeling connected to another is usually associated with increases in one’s personal sense of wellbeing. This is a lot different, though, from the headlined inference that marriage may be irrelevant.

THE GLARING OMISSION (at least in media discussions)

What’s missing? I did not see this issue raised, much less discussed, anywhere in the journal article itself or in any media story related to it: Does the status of a couple’s relationship matter for family stability? Does it matter at all for children?

As it happens, in the time between my last post and this one, the New York Times broke a story about the fact that most births to women under 30 in the US are now to unmarried mothers. This story by Jason DeParle and Sabrina Tavernise, published on February 17th, puts much of this entire discussion in perspective. (DeParle is a highly respected chronicler of poverty and families in America. I encourage you to read that article after finishing this.)

The fact is that a child born to married parents is much more likely to be raised by his or her two parents than a child born to cohabiting parents. For example, a baby born to cohabiting parents is about five times more likely than a baby born to married parents to experience the dissolution of his or her parents relationship by age two (research by Child Trends presented in Galston’s 2008 report, The Changing Twenties). Data presented last year, by Sheela Kennedy and Larry Bumpass at the 2011 Population Association meeting, suggested that, by age 12, a child born to cohabiting parents was roughly 2.5 times more likely to experience the dissolution of his or her parent’s relationship than a child born to married parents. (See also the recent review by Smock and Greenland (2010) in the Journal of Marriage and Family, and a paper by Manning, Smock, and Majumbar, 2004, in Population Research and Policy Review).

For the elegance of simplicity, you cannot beat this one liner by one of the most respected scholars in the study of fragile families, Sara McLanahan, in a forthcoming chapter: “Martial status at birth is a reasonably good proxy for whether children will grow up in a stable household.” (McLanahan, in press)

I will repeat what I wrote about in earlier posts about cohabitation and marriage: Such findings do not mean that married people are better parents or even better able to be good parents. What these findings really mean is that a couple who has married before having children is more likely to have settled their intentions to be a family and be committed to one another for the long-term. Does that guarantee they make it? Of course it does not. But marriage does provide a clearer, more settled foundation for family life. This is, itself, important because so many studies show that children who are raised by their own two parents have, on average, a leg up in life.

So, here’s the real issue at the heart of the media flash about the study by Musick and Bumpass. It gave a strong, consistent impression that marriage really does not have benefits over cohabitation. Whether it does or doesn’t for adults, and on what type of outcomes, and in what circumstances, are interesting academic questions and fodder for social debates. (I would argue that, because of how marriage can be used to clarify commitment, it is also likely to provide a stronger foundation for long-term benefits for adults in comparison to cohabitation.) The really obvious omission from the media discussions is how marriage and cohabitation figure in the stability and early development of children. Marriage seems to matter a great deal in child outcomes. Maybe marriage is not “overrated” as a context for bearing and raising children. The individual wellbeing of adults is important, but it’s not the only thing that matters in evaluating marriage.

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Apparently, Marriage No Longer Matters

Hello folks. I’m off to a very busy beginning of 2012 and have not had time to write a new posting for 2012. However, I’m not oblivious to news of the day/week, and as many of you know who are interested in relationship issues, a new study came out that got a massive amount of press with one of these types of headlines:

“Marriage is Overrated”
“Marriage, Cohabitation Provide Similar Health Benefits”
“Few Well-being Advantages to Marriage”
“Getting Married May Not be Better than Living Together”

You get the idea. The study getting all this attention was published by the Journal of Marriage and Family in the upcoming, Feb edition. The authors are solid researchers: Kelly Musick at Cornell and Larry Bumpass at the University of Wisconsin. I cannot give people access to the actual journal article but I can steer you to the website for the journal and abstract of this paper (here). [If you do not have library access to journals, there are often earlier versions of such papers online, when the authors are sociologists (more common practice among them than psychologists like me). There is an earlier version of this paper as a working paper online. It may have important differences from the published version. It’s here.]

I have not had a chance to read this paper yet so I cannot tell you what I think about the methods, sample, and conclusions. But since many who read this blog will know I do have some biases in beliefs about benefits of marriage, I will, of course, have some opinion. Therefore, for now, before I can get to reviewing the paper enough to tell you what I think, go ahead and explore the news articles and abstract for the paper (or the whole article if you have access to journal articles) and we’ll all catch up in thinking more about it. It’s clearly an article that caught a major media buzz. For the moment, I will note that people do not always make the best relationship decisions when seriously buzzed, so think carefully about it! People can disagree about lots of things related to families, marriage, and cohabitation, but no one is very likely to argue that thinking about what you are doing in your own relationships is a smart thing to do.

What do you think of the finding? When do you think this is true and not true (that there are no particularly benefits for individuals regarding marriage or cohabitation)? Is there something left out of the discussions of these findings? (There might not be or there might be. I’ve not looked into it all enough to say what I think yet.)

I hope all of you are off to a great year here in 2012! Back to you soon on this new study.

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Through a Portal in Time

In my last post, I noted the suggestion made by some to have marriage licenses with certain terms, wherein couples would need to renew their marriage licenses periodically. While this is not yet the law anywhere as far as I know, it is functionally the type of committed romantic relationship many people have these days. Most people want to marry and most people will. But ever greater, large numbers of couples will not marry but will live together and raise a family together, before or without marriage. Perhaps unknown between the partners, each may be periodically be re-making their commitment to the other, internally. There are some people who believe this is the way it should be, even at an almost day-to-day level. To some, it’s a romantic ideal that means each partner is there again, each new day, because he or she chose to be. “I’m here with you and you with me, and we can both see from this that we love and live on together.”

That process, or something like it, is part of marriage as well other relationships. Periodically, people committed to any person, project, or thing will internally reset their sense of commitment—especially if the path taken has included challenging times. I mean, by that, gut check times where you may need to remind yourself that “I committed to this and I believe in this, and I’m going to give it my best.” Unless you have a perfectly blissful union (married or not), and you’ve had no significant challenges, you understand this dynamic. It’s part of what actually builds meaningful, lasting love in a world where relationships are made up of imperfect people.

What does the word “portal” means to you. Perhaps you think of a walking through a tunnel. Maybe you imagine walking through a field-level tunnel of a stadium, like you see in big football games sometimes, emerging into the light of the stadium, and to the cheers of the crowd. Perhaps you are a sci-fi fan, and you think about change-in-place portals (Beam me up, Scottie) or change-in-time portals (H. G. Wells’ time machine). I’m focusing here on change-in-me portals.

Whatever comes to your mind, portals have this characteristic: They are a way of transitioning from one place to another. In some instances, they are the actual pathway and in some instances they are, metaphorically, the pathway. A wedding is a metaphorical portal into a new life.

While we (our research team) do not have quantitative data on this, we have heard numerous cohabiters who are marrying comment that they are not quite sure what they are going to do to make the transition more of a, well, transition. Those that espouse this want the change from not-married to married to be really clear but it ends up feeling sort of blurry. I wish I could tell you how many people struggle with this and what most who do end up doing about it. Maybe I’ll have that data in the future. Of course, there are, I am sure, a great many others who do not worry about this.

I think many people, though, deeply desire for major life transitions to be actually transformative. They want what goes into the portal to come out the other end something different; something fuller and richer and more founded.

How does this concept apply to the renewable marriage license idea? The renewable marriage license idea fairly screams out that there is not anything like a permanent transition going on. I like to be very realistic, and I know that the transition into marriage is very much not a permanent transition for many. Many will be transitioning out of that marriage one day. Some, like Kim Kardashian and Kris Humphries, transition out in a matter of days. But, I’ll also say this. Because of the nature of commitment, the sense that it is intended to be permanent is really where a lot of the power lies in going through the portal into marriage.

Slowly but steadily, particularly among those who do not graduate from college, marriage is disappearing. Sometimes that is partly because of a diminished sense that marriage matters. Sometimes it’s because of a difficulty in achieving the conditions one feels are necessary to make a marriage work; for example, having a job.

Back to the main point. I believe that the reason why wedding rituals are common around the world (even if weakening today) is that they function as portals through which two people enter and two people exit, but different from when they entered. Two separate identities enter the portal and three identities come out the other side—you, me, and us. Psychologically, this transformation may have happened far earlier, or for some, it happens most powerfully because of the ritual of a wedding. For others, there is no big ritual to see but something happens inside, maybe along the way to the justice of the peace. Let me amplify that a moment. I’ve heard some people say their transition into marriage was more special and meaningful because of wedding with all the rituals. I’ve heard others, however, say that the very reason going to a justice of the peace was most meaningful was because they avoided all the stress and pomp of the wedding industry. And, just to be clear, I am sure there are couples where the inner transition happens and they never marry or do not marry for a long time to come. But I also think that the whole idea of marriage—and all the ways it happens—is really founded on making the inward change an outward act.

For some, there is no transformation with whatever transition is happening. (That’s close to one of the core applications of the principle of sliding versus deciding.) In some instances—maybe in a lot of instances these days—one or both partner avoid anything like a portal taking them from one place to another because one or both know that they are not interested in a life altering transition—at least not with this partner. Maybe the transitional object of their desire will come along in the future.

The nature of major commitments in life is to be transformative. I don’t mean magical, but I do mean symbolic of the inner process of becoming something more than two. So, in the case of love of this sort in life, the deepest desire many have is for transformation that adds something. In contrast, think about a meat grinder. It’s a transition alright, and things do change from going in one end to coming out the other. But what comes out is also nothing more and nothing less than what went in, albeit in a different looking form.

Next time, some more thoughts focused on the nature of rituals and transformation.

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Bid Adieu or Renew? Thoughts on Renewable Marriage Licenses

It seems like so many things are renewable. If I do not call Verizon and instruct them otherwise, my mobile plan will automatically renew whenever my current contract is up. My subscription to PC Magazine will renew, also, but only if I send in the little card with a check. With my mobile plan, inertia leads to renewing in that I do not have to act and do something for renewal to occur. It’s automatic. I have to act for it not to renew. In the second case, my PC Magazine subscription will only renew if I send in a check demonstrating my end of commitment to the ongoing relationship. The first type of renewal is what I like to call “inertialized.” The second type is “electable,” as in there being a process of re-election.

Both of these examples portray a commitment process. A choice point came and went, noticed or not, and one path or another was taken, and one left behind. In one case, I passively continue on the same path and, in another, I actively re-up.

What about commitment in marriage? Which is it? Inertialized renewable or elected renewable? This is an interesting question.

This might become a very real question couples marrying in Mexico City face in the near future.

Some assemblymen in Mexico City have proposed that marriage licenses be renewable, sort of like drivers’ licenses. A colleague of mine at DU, Rachel Miller, sent me the link to the story which you can click on here. So, here’s the idea. When you marry, you choose how frequently you want your marriage license to come up for renewal. The minimum is every two years. So, if you so choose, on your anniversary in every other year you not only celebrate but you decide all over again whether you have some “still do” in your “I Do.”

Before you call me crazy for even saying someone is thinking about this, read this quote from the Reuters story:

“The proposal is, when the two-year period is up, if the relationship is not stable or harmonious, the contract simply ends,” Leonoel Luna, the Mexico City assemblyman who co-authored the bill, told Reuters. “You wouldn’t have to go through the torturous process of divorce.”

The assemblyman suggests that the great value in this idea is that a marriage that is not fairing so well could end without the ugly or difficult process of divorce. I’ll come back to that in an upcoming post. I think the idea is actually commonly believed and I’ll explain why.

Back to renewable marriage licenses. I have some practical questions. I wonder if you could send out invitations, asking others to attend your renewal decision ceremony. Imagine your friends and family proudly standing around you as you sign the card, pay a fee, and put the renewal card in an envelope to go out in tomorrow’s mail. How could you even sleep through that night? What if it gets lost in the mail? And another thing. Can you get registered for gifts somewhere for a renewal? I also wonder if people would be a lot nicer to their mate as renewals approached, especially if they were uncertain that the renewal they hope for would be a slam dunk.

A little more seriously, I have a few thoughts and I also have a keyboard, so here they come.

Here begins the “duh” or “no kidding” paragraph, but these points are always worth mentioning lest another think one is not in touch with reality. Marriages do not always work out, and for any number of reasons. Some marriages should never have come about in the first place. Worst of all, some marriages are dangerous and damaging. Yet, in general, the whole reason that marriage does work and offers advantages in life (many advantages, on average) is because the commitment is considered to be once and for all. It is this idea that is the core of what marriage is about. Here are a few advantages of settled commitment:

1. You don’t burn a lot of energy re-deciding, periodically, if you are in or out. Deciding takes a lot of energy away from other things like building a better life together.

2. You don’t burn a lot of energy re-wondering, periodically, if your partner is in or out. The whole reason (I believe) that commitment is so important in lasting love in the first place is because it settles anxieties about whether or not there is a future together.

3. Having a strong sense of “us with a future” changes behavior in positive ways. Research demonstrates this in countless studies. People invest when there is a future. People sacrifice when there is a future. People don’t get as upset about small (and sometimes large) problems in the present when there is a sense that “we are here for each other despite our imperfections and annoying habits.” While a settled sense of a future together doesn’t (and shouldn’t) make abuse or infidelity tolerable, it otherwise does wonders for making it okay for you each to be human.

Having said those things, I can imagine one way in which this type of policy could lower the odds of divorce for some people.

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.

Here’s my point for today. Temporary commitment is not compatible with a relationship that most people choose in the belief and hope of permanence. If the commitment is temporary, it just is, but we shouldn’t expect the benefits that come with the expectation of permanence to follow from a temporary permit.


I will stay with this theme in the next post or two because there are some more angles to explore that are interesting (or fun) or both. Can you commit to reading just one more blog entry? Two? I’m not asking for a lifetime commitment here.

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Government Funding and Questions of Impact with Relationship Education

This is another one of those posts that leans on the heavier side related to policies. Some of you brave souls stuck it out through my posts on selection and science and free will (scroll down to the entry "Did you Decide to Read This" and work your way up if you are interested). In that chain, I got involved in some of the dust up on sociologist Philip Cohen's site about marriage and cohabitation. We're onto another topic now.

Philip Cohen recently wrote about the expenditure of federal and state funds on programs to strengthen relationships between unmarried parents, marriages, and fatherhood. He raised strong concerns about what that money was buying us as a culture. These are reasonable questions. At any rate, I could not help but weigh in. So, if you are interested, see his entry here. The link seems to take you to the bottom of the page, where my long comment was on the day I made this entry. Scroll up to see his comments that led to mine. Important stuff to read and consider if it's an area you are interested in it.

Next up, lighter side again. Something interesting about marriage licenses.

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A Fascinating Site I Just Came Across

Hello folks. It’s been awhile for a new post because I’ve been attending again to family business (moving my mom to Denver from Florida).

I hope to have a new post up within the next week or so. However, I do have something of substance to share. I just found this great blog by a group of social psychologists. Their blog is at a site called “Science of Relationships.” The blog is excellent. Most of their entries are similar to some of the edgier ones of mine. The write concisely and very well about various emerging findings, and they cover a lot of interesting ground. The site is also exceptionally well organized by categories, if you like to browse. They cover the findings of many interesting studies.

For those of you who follow my work and are more on the conservative side, just note that they are not, so you’ll get a different cultural flavor on some things there than you might get from me. Anyway, their work is fun and provocative and I recommend the site to you. You would not lack for great discussion starters with students or other groups by looking through their site.

More from me soon.

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