Marriage is Undersold in America
Most high school seniors value "having a good marriage and family life", but for many, this does not become their reality. The odds can be improved by making the benefits of marriage more widely known, and by making more of an effort to share knowledge about how quality intimate relationships work. David Popenoe writes for The National Marriage Project in "The Future of Marriage in America" (2007):
As a first step, the institution of marriage needs to be promoted by all levels of society, particularly the families, the schools, the churches, the non-profit sector, and the government. The great majority of American high school seniors still want to get married, with 82 percent of girls and 70 percent of boys recently saying that "having a good marriage and family life" is "extremely important" to them. These percentages, in fact, represent a slight increase from the late 1970s. [15] But as high schoolers reach young adulthood, when the attraction of cohabitation and careers gains strong currency, making the actual commitment to marriage is not easy. Young people need, therefore, to be made continually aware of the many benefits married life brings, both for themselves and for their children. The empirical evidence is now strong and persuasive that a good marriage enhances personal happiness, economic success, health and longevity. This evidence should become a regular part of our educational programs and our public discourse.
Yet successful marriage promotion requires more than empirical evidence. Marriage has fallen by the wayside, in part, because it receives less and less social recognition and approval. Any norm of behavior requires for its maintenance the continuing support of the community, including active social pressures to uphold it. When social approval and pressures wither, the norm weakens. Today’s young people have been taught through the schools and in their communities a strong message of tolerance for "alternative lifestyles." "Thou shalt not make moral judgments about other people’s family behavior" seems to have become a dominant message in our times. The reason for this is completely understandable; children and young people come from ever more diverse family situations which are not of their own doing, and they should be fully accepted and not be penalized. The problem is that this moral message is carried on into adult life, where it is applied not to children and young people but to adults who do have choices about how they shape their lives. In an effort not to judge much less stigmatize any adult life style, we have all too often become virtually silent about the value and importance of marriage. This silence is extremely damaging to the promotion of a pro-marriage culture.
The widespread promotion of marriage is directed at only half of the problem, however. Getting people to marry is one thing, helping them to stay married is something else entirely. Helping people to stay married is the main focus of an important set of programs known as marriage education. Typically conducted in group settings rather than counseling situations, marriage education programs focus on developing the knowledge, attitudes and skills needed for making a wise marital choice and having a successful marriage. Although marriage education has been around for many decades, it recently has been thrust into the limelight thanks to widespread publicity and government financial assistance.
The importance of marriage education is magnified by the fact that the marital relationship today is so different from what it was in the past. Marriage is now based almost entirely on close friendship and romantic love, mostly stripped of the economic dependencies, legal and religious restrictions, and extended family pressures that have held marriages together for most of human history. Until fairly recent times marriages had little to do with romantic love, sexual passion, or even close friendship; they were functional partnerships in the intense struggle of life. Today, a successful marriage rests almost entirely on how well one gets along, intimately and for the long term, with someone of the opposite sex. The "relationship knowledge" this requires has never been part of formal education, but there is no reason to believe that it can not effectively be taught to married couples and those about to be married, as well as to younger people as part of the high school curriculum. Indeed, the initial empirical evaluations of marriage education programs conclude that they are both well-received and have generally positive outcomes.
Marriage promotion and marriage education are essential steps, but in order fully to rebuild the institution of marriage there would probably have to be a cultural shift of a more fundamental nature. Modern cultures would need to pull back from the now dominant thrust of secular individualism—the excessive pursuit of personal autonomy, immediate gratification, and short-term personal gain—and give greater emphasis to issues of community and social solidarity. This could come about through a growing realization, based on rational self-interest, that our personal happiness and sense of well-being over the long course of life are less affected by the amount of independence, choice, bodily pleasure and wealth we are able to obtain than by the number of stable, long-term and meaningful relationships we have with others. [16] And through a greater recognition of the fact that short-term adult interests can be in conflict with the long-term health and wellbeing of children, and that our children’s welfare has everything to do with the future of our nation.
See also:
Steve and Cokie Roberts Report on Marriage: A Good Idea that Refuses to Die
Steve, who's been the Shapiro Professor of Media and Public Affairs at George Washington University since 1997, says that time and again his students come into his office and ask, "How do you do it?" The students aren't asking how to write a snappy lead or tips on getting an interview with Al Gore. "Popular culture tells them it's naive and foolish to think of having a lifelong devotion to someone. But they have the impulse. I'm not saying marriage is right for all people all the time, but I think it's right for most people, most of the time. To have a partner to go through life with is one of the most elemental human desires, and these kids want to hear it's not a pipe dream, a fiction."
A Response to "marriage is an outdated practice"
We recently had an exchange
with "NOHO Resident" that we would like to highlight. NOHO Resident
asserts that marriage "is becoming an outdated practice more and more
day by day."
We replied:
I'm so glad you raised the issue of marriage being obsolete. This would certainly be news to many children of divorce. Barbara Whitehead presents excellent analyses of this issue in The Atlantic:
The Impact of Internet Pornography on Marriage and the Family: A Review of the ResearchWe replied:
I'm so glad you raised the issue of marriage being obsolete. This would certainly be news to many children of divorce. Barbara Whitehead presents excellent analyses of this issue in The Atlantic:
The Love Family ideology has no theory of permanence or binding obligation. It is oriented to adults' interests and satisfactions because it emphasizes freedom of individual choice. You can pick the one you love and ditch the one you no longer love without a backward glance. That's great for adults, but children don't have the same freedom of choice or the same enthusiasm about moving on. From a child's standpoint the Love Family ideology is inadequate because it offers no basis for permanence in family bonds and commitments. When these bonds are lost, children suffer emotionally, especially in their ability to trust. We've set up a failure-to-commit factor for the next generation.
--Barbara Dafoe Whitehead, "What We Owe", The Atlantic, February 1997 (may require a paid subscription)
According to a growing body of social-scientific evidence, children in families disrupted by divorce and out-of-wedlock birth do worse than children in intact families on several measures of well-being. Children in single-parent families are six times as likely to be poor. They are also likely to stay poor longer. Twenty-two percent of children in one-parent families will experience poverty during childhood for seven years or more, as compared with only two percent of children in two parent families. A 1988 survey by the National Center for Health Statistics found that children in single-parent families are two to three times as likely as children in two-parent families to have emotional and behavioral problems. They are also more likely to drop out of high school, to get pregnant as teenagers, to abuse drugs, and to be in trouble with the law. Compared with children in intact families, children from disrupted families are at a much higher risk for physical or sexual abuse.
Contrary to popular belief, many children do not "bounce back" after divorce or remarriage. Difficulties that are associated with family breakup often persist into adulthood. Children who grow up in single-parent or stepparent families are less successful as adults, particularly in the two domains of life--love and work--that are most essential to happiness. Needless to say, not all children experience such negative effects. However, research shows that many children from disrupted families have a harder time achieving intimacy in a relationship, forming a stable marriage, or even holding a steady job.
--Barbara Dafoe Whitehead, "Dan Quayle Was Right", The Atlantic, April 1993 (may require a paid subscription)
In North American culture, it is most common for people to select a marriage partner according to romantic love as opposed to family arrangement or economic necessity. Research by Roberts (1982), Davis and Todd (1982), Davis (1985), and Bergner (2000) is useful in clarifying what romantic love entails from a social science perspective. They found that romantic love embodies the following characteristics: (a) investment in the well-being of the beloved, (b) respect, (c) admiration, (d) sexual desire, (e) intimacy, (f) commitment, (g) exclusivity, and (h) understanding...
...when there are violations to these characteristics and the violations are sufficient in magnitude, partners will commonly conclude that they are no longer loved as they once were and re-evaluates their place in their partners’ world. As Bergner and Bridges (2002) point out, many women who discover a partner’s intense involvement with pornography engage in just such a reappraisal of their relationship...
Maurer found three common traits that distinguish sexually satisfied couples from unsatisfied couples: (1) acceptance of one’s own sexuality, (2) listening to one’s partner and being aware of a partner’s likes and dislikes, and (3) open and honest communication.
Moreover, according to data from the General Social Survey in 2000 (N = 531), people who report being happily married are 61 percent less likely to report using Internet pornography compared to those who also used the Internet and who had completed the General Social Survey in 2000...
...the following observations were made by [the 350 attendees of the November 2002 meeting of the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers] polled with regard to why the Internet had played a role in divorces that year...56 percent of the divorce cases involved one party having an obsessive interest in pornographic websites...
Whitty (2003) also found that both men and women perceive online sexual activity as an act of betrayal that is as authentic and real as offline acts and that Internet pornography use correlated significantly with emotional infidelity (N = 1,117; 468 males and 649 females)...
A Review of Pornified: How Pornography Is Damaging Our Lives, Our Relationships, and Our Families
Many of Paul's interview subjects said porn use made them more judgmental of their real-life sex partners. One thrice-divorced 34-year-old subject, who had been watching porn since age 10, said that he would break up with any woman who wouldn't give him the kind of pleasure he saw men getting in porn films. If the woman takes too long to reach orgasm, or doesn't enjoy swallowing semen, she's history. (pp.92-93) Other young men said they wanted their girlfriends to be "slutty" and submissive (p.94).
In 2002, a professor at Texas Christian University conducted a survey of straight men who spent an average of five hours a week looking at online porn. The study found that the more porn they watched, the more likely they were to describe women in sexualized and stereotypical ways, and to want women to be subordinate to men...(p.92)
The women Paul interviewed, even those who considered themselves sexually experienced and adventurous, frequently reported problems with their partners' porn use. One woman in her 30s told Paul that she felt cheapened and alienated from her lovers when she noticed them using porn-film moves on her. She could tell when a man was a heavy porn user because he treated her as an object to be viewed, keeping her at an emotional distance. (pp.128-29) Other women said their partners constantly deceived them about how much porn they were watching. Women who made the concession to watch "couples" erotica with their partners felt betrayed and second-rate when they discovered the men were still secretly indulging in hardcore porn. They felt anxious that their men were not sufficiently fulfilled by a relationship with them. (pp.146-47) Just as when a wife discovers her husband's adultery, these women wondered if it was their fault that the men looked elsewhere for sexual satisfaction. (pp. 170-71) Meanwhile, acceptance of porn was a romantic deal-breaker for many of Paul's male subjects; they would rather sacrifice a relationship than kick the habit. (pp.134-35) This is a common symptom of addiction...
Porn also undermines respect for marriage vows. The Zillmann-Bryant study [link] found that only 39% of the massive porn exposure group thought marriage was an important institution, compared with 60% of the control group. "This shouldn't be a surprise: loving wives and faithful husbands rarely feature in a porno. Pornography is the fantasy of permanent and unfettered bachelorhood; married characters who do appear are pursuing sexual adventures on the side. In pornography, partnered life hampers sexual pleasure." (p.141)
Porn use takes away time and energy that a man could be spending on his real partner and family. In psychologist Jennifer P. Schneider's 2000 study of women whose partners were involved in cybersex, 37% of respondents reported that their partners spent less time with the children because of online porn use. (p.155) Other researchers found that watching porn made men less enthusiastic about starting a family at all.
"Spousal Use of Pornography and Its Clinical Significance for Asian-American Women"
Many female participants in the study by Bridges et al. (2003) noted a diminution in their partner's sexual desire for them and believed that their partners had come to prefer the pornographic models to them... They reported a decline in the intimacy of their relationship, a diminished sense of their partner's commitment to them, strong feelings that their partners failed utterly to respect them or understand their emotional distress concerning the pornography, and lastly, a sense that they were living a shameful lie by presenting themselves to others as a loving and committed couple... More often than not, the woman blames herself for losing her partner to his pornographic interest. She believes that if she were a ‘good’ enough woman, she would have been able to keep her husband's attentions and affections and her loss would never have occurred...
Video Presentation: A Content Analysis of 50 of Today's Top Selling Porn Films (explicit language)
Ana Bridges: "...I'm going to begin to talk about what it is that we found after looking at these 304 scenes in these 50 top selling pornographic films. In total in the 304 scenes we coded a total of 3,376 acts of aggression. That ends up averaging...to an aggressive act every minute and a half. The scenes on average contained eleven and a half acts of verbal or physical aggression..."
Bridges: "So how many scenes didn't contain aggression? About 10%..."
Bridges: "...in couples research we know that couples, even couples who fight a lot, as long as there's a lot of good in the relationship, about five times more good than bad, they actually do pretty well.
"Less than 10% of the videos showed any kind of a positive act, and that included kissing... caressing happened maybe twice. Something like a verbal compliment, 'Gosh, you look pretty', not, 'Slut bitch, come over here,' that happened maybe five times in the 304 scenes. So we have a ratio of positive to negative behaviors of 1 to 9, which is not a sustainable, happy relationship."
Porn Use Correlates with Infidelity, Prostitution, Aggression, Rape-Supportive Beliefs
In 2004, researchers also reported in Social Science Quarterly that "Individuals who have had an extramarital affair are 3.18 times more likely to have used Internet pornography than individuals who did not have affairs."
Now on Sale at Amazing.net (explicit language)
Wonderland
This DVD features a story-driven title that mixes drama with hardcore sex. Wonderland tells the story of a man obsessed with his stepdaughter's friend when she visits during Christmas break. Gary sacrifices everything in his traditional suburban existence for a single moment of ecstasy with a femme fatale.
Deviant Housewives
In this world nothing lasts forever and it looks like Kelly Erikson's husband Van needs some space. Kelly decides to invite all her friends going thru the same problems to stay and support each other. But all of Kelly's friends have an empty void in their lives they need filled and it's from a younger man!
Use Em' Abuse Em' and Lose Em' #9
Ride along as we pick up ordinary young women fuck'em senseless and dump'em! It's all good clean fun!
Housewives Unleashed #16
These fine ladies have been locked away in their houses for far too long. With their husbands away on business our housewives need crave and demand satisfaction. The action gets hot and horny the moment their desires are finally unleased..!
Darkside
David and Jennifer have a marriage on the rocks. In desperation they seek out a marriage counselor who proposes a revolutionary new method of therapy. David and Jennifer have free reign to cheat on each other for the next 24 hours. Their sexual inhibitions are set free and their fantasies fulfilled as they visit The Dark Side.
Male Attitudes about Rape Can Be Learned...and Unlearned
The subjects' evaluations of a rape victim after viewing a reenacted rape trial were also affected by the constant exposure to brutality against women. The victim of rape was rated as more worthless and her injury as significantly less severe by those exposed to filmed violence when compared to a control group of men who saw only the rape trial and did not view films. Desensitization to filmed violence on the last day was also significantly correlated with assignment of greater blame to the victim for her own rape...
There is now, however, some evidence that these negative changes in attitudes and perceptions regarding rape and violence against women not only can be eliminated but can be positively changed. Malamuth and Check (1983) found that if male subjects who had participated in such an experiment were later administered a carefully constructed debriefing, they actually would be less accepting of certain rape myths than were control subjects exposed to depictions of intercourse (without a debriefing)... These debriefings consisted of (1) cautioning subjects that the portrayal of the rape they had been exposed to is completely fictitious in nature, (2) educating subjects about the violent nature of rape, (3) pointing out to subjects that rape is illegal and punishable by imprisonment, and (4) dispelling the many rape myths that are perpetrated in the portrayal (e.g., in the majority of rapes, the victim is promiscuous or has a bad reputation, or that many women have an unconscious desire to be raped).
The effectiveness of the debriefing...indicated that even after seven months, subjects' attitudes about sexual violence showed significant positive change compared to the preparticipation levels.
D.A. Clarke: Women Adopting Men's Bad Habits Is Not the Answer
The conflict of values can be represented as a struggle between ethics of excess and moderation...
To accept that the costs borne by strangers in far-off lands make our way of life unaffordable implies that we learn to respect those people and that we become ashamed of living at their expense; to accept that we are responsible for the damage that we do to our soil, water, and air means that we learn to clean up after ourselves; to accept that resources are precious and should not be wasted is to learn that the world is not a consumable, an expendable - and neither are its people. To accept that our way of life is costing too much means accepting less: giving up excess, resolving to live within our means. Shoving off the costs of your behaviour onto others, expecting someone else to clean up your mess, blowing away the household economy with irresponsible spending, treating other people as objects to be used and discarded: are these not some of the traits for which feminists have persistently criticised and confronted men, the habits of privilege and arrogance?
Grabbing all you can while you can get it is an expensive way to live. It may turn out to be an expensive way to die. A generation which took this lesson to heart would be less likely to use up, despise, abuse and discard women and children as sexual toys...
A New Category Debuts: Love and Beauty
Our new category, Love and Beauty, will show how sex, love, relationships and people can be so much more than the narrow, blinkered version that porn offers. Watching porn instead of seeking a loving relationship with a real person is like being given a gorgeous race car that can go 200 miles per hour, only to drive it backwards down the highway at a crawl and scrape it against railings and bridge abutments.
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