by Scott Stanley
Howard and Reeves unflinchingly declare that there are
substantial advantages for children raised by married parents compared to others.
While I think the notion of “settled science” is conceptually dangerous, this
fact seems broadly recognized.
[i] Howard
and Reeves are particularly interested in two questions: (1) “is it the
marriage itself that matters?
” and
(2) if not, what do we do to help? Their findings show that the association
between marriage and positive child outcomes may be substantially accounted for
by greater income and more engaged parenting among marrieds. Based on this,
they argue that intervention efforts should focus on parenting and not on marriage,
per se.
I respect this logic. My colleagues and I have long argued
that relationship oriented interventions should focus on variables that are
dynamic (i.e., putatively changeable) rather than those that are relatively
static.
[ii]
That may seem obvious, but people sometimes misunderstand why prevention-focused
experts will put more emphasis on variables of lessor predictive power that are
arguably dynamic (e.g., the number of sexual partners) than on variables that account
for more variance but are immutable (e.g., race). Knowledge of static risk
factors is nonetheless also important because it points to where to concentrate
efforts to help people. For example, while there has been a lot of press on the
meager outcomes from recent federal studies on relationship education provided
to couples at lower incomes, there is some good news about who may benefit the
most related to relatively static risk factors.
[iii]
Marriage: a Mere
Commitment Device?
Emily Badger quotes Reeves on the income and parenting engagement points:
"Those two factors taken
together explain most of the better outcomes for the children of married
couples," Reeves says. "Not all. But most. And I think the takeaway
here is not to mistake a commitment device – which marriage is – for an
explanatory device."
The argument is further clarified in this quote from Howard
and Reeves in their
original piece: “Is it marriage itself that matters, or is marriage the visible
expression of other factors, that are the true cause of different outcomes? And
if so, which ones?”
I think this argument shows a serious under-appreciation for
the importance of “visible expressions” of commitment. Signals of commitment are
important across a wide swath of societal life because people will often make
better decisions with clearer information about the level of motivation in
others,
[iv]
and signals about commitment are, arguably, of great importance in the
development and maintenance of romantic and family relationships.
[v] Reeves
seems to be arguing that the signal value of marriage is not as consequential
as behaviors such as parenting, but what that view fails to account for is how marriage
has most typically been a potent signal of commitment with a distinct placement
regarding the sequence and timing of childbearing. At the root of it, what is
signaled by marriage is a commitment comprised of “us with a future.”
[vi] Sure,
reality has very often been messier than the tidy ordering of love, marriage,
and a baby carriage; and many marriages do not go the distance. But marriage is
likely, in some large respect, explanatory regarding child outcomes because
marriage most often is a strong and credible signal of commitment prior to
childbirth.
Put another way, Howard and Reeves seem to focus on child
rearing (parenting) with little emphasis
for the role marriage often plays in sequencing of commitment and child
bearing. I believe that the quality of the
parenting a child will receive is situated in the context of the level of commitment
his or her two parents have to parenting together. Danielle Kurtzleben at
Vox.com
highlighted one key part of this puzzle related to that idea of “together”:
There is a common-sense reason to
why this bump is so great. A pair of mediocre married parents will have way
more time to spend with their kids than even an exceptionally devoted single
dad . . .
Even here, there may be an under-appreciation for how (and
if) the partnership to parent formed in the first place. The fact is that marriage
is associated with a far greater likelihood that a child’s parents will continue
to parent together than other contexts.
[vii] At
one end of a spectrum are parents who married before the child arrived, where
those children have a relatively high likelihood of receiving extensive co-parenting.
At the other end of this spectrum would be children born to parents who had not
developed much, if any, commitment to each other beforehand, much less a
commitment to parent a child together before having one. Those children, on
average, have more of an uphill climb in life, and, as Howard and Reeves note,
economic and social mobility are impacted. Such children are not disadvantaged
because they don’t have a parent who cares, but because they are going to land,
on average, the furthest from having the economic and social capital of two
people pulling together to start them off in life. One can argue that the
benefits of having two committed parents can exist apart from marriage. I agree.
So why would I argue that marriage has special explanatory value regarding child
outcomes?
Back to signals and sequence.
While not always, and perhaps less so now than before,
marriage serves as a strong signal that two people are tacitly committed to
raising a family together. Further, and for more complex reasons than I want to
develop here, signals are the most informative when they are fully under the
control of those sending them—by which I mean, when the behavior has fewer
prior constraints so that it reflects something true about the individual. That
means that signals about commitment are more informative before a child arrives
than after because having a child increases life constraints. When marriage
precedes two people having a child, the question of intention about a shared
long-term time horizon was settled before things got messy with baby drool and
poop. For couples with this foundation already in place, even unplanned and
mistimed children are still landing in a relatively rich context regarding bi-parental
commitment. One can (and should) believe that various socio-economic disadvantages
govern a lot in this big lottery of life, but we should not lose sight of how sequence
plays a consequential and causal role in child outcomes.
We’ve been worrying about these
trends for years, and wondering: Can marriage be restored as the standard way
to raise children? As much as we might welcome a revival, I doubt that it will
happen. The genie is out of the bottle.
I would love for Sawhill to be wrong about marriage, but I share
her pessimism. Further, by arguing for what is needed, Sawhill draws attention
to what is increasingly missing.
What we need instead is a new ethic
of responsible parenthood. If we combine an updated social norm with greater
reliance on the most effective forms of birth control, we can transform
drifters into planners and improve children’s life prospects.
In her book and article, Sawhill focuses a lot of attention
on complex issues related to birth control. I will sidestep that issue for now
to focus on drifting versus planning. This is familiar territory for me and my
colleagues. Whether you think about drifting versus planning or sliding versus deciding,
[viii]
the underlying point is that it matters how and when (and if) intention forms
when it comes to the consequences of life altering transitions such as having a
child. Commitments are decisions, and decisions support the strongest follow-through.
What about Howard and Reeves’ finding about engaged parenting?
They note that “It is plausible that parents who commit to each other through
marriage may also have a stronger joint commitment to raising their children.” That’s
exactly what I believe is being given short shrift in the current discussion. In
fact, I suspect that their parenting variable is partly a proxy for the mutual commitment
to parent that is implicit in marriage.
While I can see plenty of value in efforts to provide more education
about parenting to both couples and single parents, I also believe we need to work
to increase the odds that children are born into high commitment contexts. Such
efforts might include helping people better understand how sliding into having
a child together, in a relationship with an unclear future, leads to worse
outcomes for adults and children. Emphasizing this reality may be unpalatable
to some who worry that such messages can be retroactively stigmatizing for
those who are already downstream from consequential drifting. If so, the
importance of emphasizing this may be as controversial to some as Isabel
Sawhill’s suggestions about birth control are to others. Either way, it does
not reflect how life really works to ignore sequence as we all grapple with solutions.
Marriage is, indeed, fading in front of our eyes, and with
it goes a lot of signal clarity about commitment in the context of sequence. Maybe
those elements can be constructed behaviorally on a broad scale, but we should recognize
the difficulty we face in trying to make up for the loss of something with real
explanatory power.
[i] Sawhill, I. V. (2014). Generation unbound: Drifting into sex and parenthood without marriage. Washington D.C.: Brookings Institution Press.
[ii] e.g., Stanley, S. M. (2001). Making a case for premarital education. Family Relations, 50(3), 272-280.; Markman, H. J., Stanley, S. M., & Blumberg, S. L. (2010). Fighting for your marriage. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. NOTE: It is a separate and challenging matter in social interventions to demonstrate that the variables targeted are the mechanisms of change.
[iii] Who Benefits Most from Family-Strengthening Efforts?
[iv] The seminal paper by Nobel Prize winner Michael Spence is: Spence, A. Michael. (1973). Job Market Signaling. Quarterly Journal of Economics, 87(3), 355-374. In his Nobel award speech, Spence noted that that “the information carried by the signal can be productive itself. This will occur if there is a decision that is made better or with greater efficiency, with better information.” I believe this is relevant to the points I make here (though I make no claim to understanding all of the nuances of Spence’s work).
[v] Rowthorn, R. (2002). Marriage as a signal. In A. W. Dnes and R. Rowthorn (Eds.), The Law and Economics of Marriage and Divorce (pp. 132 - 156). New York: Cambridge University Press.; Nock, S.L. (2009). The Growing Importance of Marriage in America. In H. E. Peters and C. M. Kamp Dush (Eds.), Marriage and Family: Perspectives and Complexities (pp. 302-324). New York: Columbia University Press.; Stanley, S. M., Rhoades, G. K., & Whitton, S. W. (2010). Commitment: Functions,formation, and the securing of romantic attachment. Journal of Family Theory and Review, 2, 243-257.
[vi] Jones, W. H., & Adams, J. M. (1999). Handbook of interpersonal commitment and relationship stability. New York: Plenum.; Stanley, S. M., Rhoades, G. K., & Whitton, S. W. (2010). Commitment: Functions, formation, and the securing of romantic attachment. Journal of Family Theory and Review, 2, 243-257.
[vii] Sawhill, I. V. (2014). Generation unbound: Drifting into sex and parenthood without marriage. Washington D.C.: Brookings Institution Press.
[viii] Stanley,S. M., Rhoades, G. K., & Markman, H. J. (2006). Sliding vs. Deciding:Inertia and the premarital cohabitation effect. Family Relations, 55, 499-509.
