Relationships, marriage, divorce, family values and social policy
Relationships and marriage
Just so that we agree, not too long ago (e.g., in the 1950s and 60s), divorces were much harder to obtain than they are today. Courts were deeply involved in divorce proceedings, not so much because of monetary settlements and child custody issues (these are the two problems requiring court intervention today), but because the court had to hear sufficient reasons that a divorce should be granted. Typically, the divorce actions would begin with claims of infidelity or physical abuse of some type. Such claims would often require proof. Furthermore, there was some embarrassment associated with divorce. Finally, the divorce rate was not as high then as it is now.
I mention all of this because we know that crime rates, teenage birth rates, out-of-wedlock birth rates, single head-of-household families rates, welfare rates, (possibly poorer educational institutions) and so on increased during the late 1960s and 1970s until recently (despite the fact that minority groups were winning many civil-rights battles during the 60s and 70s and despite that fact that President Johnson started his Great Society program in the mid 60s — a social policy that was going to eliminate poverty in the US). We have seen many theories of human behavior and social policy suggestions based on those theories that implicate one or more of these (and other) social “deficiencies” in one or more of the others. For example, lack of proper parenting has been implicated in crime. Teenage birth rates have been implicated in the rise in welfare rates and vice versa (e.g., the ease of obtaining welfare has been said by some to be an incentive for having babies). Herrnstein even argued that part of the problem was a change in demographics. Namely, he suggested that more and more of the US population were coming from poorer larger families. More intelligent people, he argued were choosing not to have any children or were having fewer children. As a result, those children who were being born were generally less intelligent as a group than prior generations. In short, the failure of people to choose properly and carefully those with whom they have babies might be part of the explanation for many of the social problems that some say we currently have.
Regardless of the changes that have or have not taken place in the structure and function of American families, there are many claims that parental behavior towards their children and towards each other (including divorce) can have effects on children as they grow up as well as on how they turn out as adults. If parental actions, even if those actions simply consist of monitoring with whom their children associate (recall the theory that most of the character traits that people develop are the result of genes and the peers that people have during adolescence), determine what people become, then it might be argued that having partial parenting, because of divorce, cannot be a good thing (e.g., Behrman & Quinn, 1994, Grych & Fincham, 1999). Of course, we can examine research that looks at how the children from divorced v. married couples turn out (e.g., Lamb, Sternberg, & Thompson, 1997; Morrison, & Cherlin, 1995). (Remember, it could easily be that children who grow up with parents that fight, cannot get along, are having extra-martial affairs, and so on would do better had their parents gotten divorced, see Jekielek, 1998; Kelly, 1998; Neher & Short, 1998). It is also likely that children from parents who have other behavioral problems, e.g., are violent towards each other, may be adversely affected by the parental behavior (e.g., McNeil & Amato, 1998). Finally, you should be thinking that effects of divorce might well depend on other variables, e.g., the age of the child at when the divorce occurs (e.g., Pagani, Boulerice, Tremblay, & Vitaro, 1997). Although there is considerable argument over the size of the effect on children from divorced parents, a number of researchers have argued that such children have a higher risk of developing some immediate (Houseknecht & Sastry, 1996) and long term problems (but see Evans & Bloom, 1996, for a failure to find significant effects among college students of having parents who were divorced — you should be asking: but who cares about college students? Aren’t they least likely to be the people who would be engaging in crime and other socially deviant actions? Shouldn’t we look at the effects on those who are most likely to be “at risk”?). For example, one recent review of some of the literature (Rodgers, 1996) provides the following list of problem outcomes in later life: poor academic achievement, low self-esteem, psychological distress, delinquency, recidivism, substance use, sexual precocity, adult criminal offending, depression, and suicidal behavior. If we believe that such outcomes are more likely among children of divorced parents, we can wonder whether it might not be a good thing to reduce the incompatibility problems that lead couples to get divorced before they get divorced.
Remember that, in general, a couple that seeks to dissolve their marriage by divorce can be thought of as a couple who did not make very good decisions when they first decided to marry. That is, when people decide to get married, presumably they are making this decision because either one or both believes, at the time, that they will remain together for a long time. Otherwise, why bother to marry? Thus, we can view divorce as the result of poor decision-making (poor mate-selection) at the start of a relationship. How can we improve this decision-making? We know that most relationships begin with “romantic love” (see Rubin, 1970 for a measure of romantic love) but there some indication that men and women begin such relationships with different views of what romantic love is (e.g., Cimbalo, & Novell, 1993). If so, it might not be surprising were we to find that men and women tend to begin relationships expecting different things from them. Still, “being in love,” is a powerful emotion and seems to be highly associated with sexual behavior in a developing relationship. However, there is ample evidence that these strong emotional reactions tend to fade as the relationship ages. This is important, because it raises the possibility that decisions made while people are “in love,” may be based on feelings and information that not predictive of feelings and behavior as the relationship ages. If all of this is true, wouldn’t it be a good idea to help people think rationally about the long term consequences of entering into a relationship that might produce children?
Some claim to have developed measures of the likelihood that couples will remain together. You and your significant other can take a Relationship Test. See how compatible you are according to the researcher who designed the test (but notice that there is a fee to take the full test and this might raise some concerns regarding the motivation of the test designer). This test is designed to measure relationships in the following areas: (a) Realistic Expectations, (b) Personality Issues, (c) Communication, (d) Conflict Resolution, (e) Financial Management, (f) Leisure Activities, (g) Sexual Relationship, (h) Children and Marriage, (i) Family and Friends, (j) Equalitarian Roles, and (k) Religious Orientation. If you have ever participated in “dating services,” you might compare these dimensions to those that they typically measure, e.g., religion, financial matters, active/inactive – athletic/couch potato, interest in and willingness to experiment with sex, and smoking and other habits (e.g., alcohol, etc.). Are these the only ones that you think might be important for couples who are planning to get married? What about political beliefs? What about intellectual and job interests? What about the feeling of being in love?
So not only do we have to worry about whether to test couple’s compatibility, we have to worry, as always, about how to measure the things that we are interested. What is the validity of the measuring instrument? Does it measure what it claims to? Are any validity data collected from relevant samples? Is the data interpreted correctly? Take a look at the data reported by Olson if you are interested and see what you think.
What is the ideal role of the woman and the man in a family with children? Should women with children work? Should men contribute to childcare and if so, how? If women with children do work, what should they do with the children while they are working? In general, do childcare services do as good (or even better) job of rearing children than mothers? Are women better at caring for children than men because they are biologically predisposed to care for children? Before you answer think about the fact that men and women are built differently. Women have breasts from which young children can nurse. Men tend to have more muscle than women and might have been genetically selected (over millions of years of primate development) for fighting and hunting. Might these physical differences be associated with different behavioral predispositions or temperaments that might make them better or worse at childcare? We know that there are many behavioral differences between the genders. (Which gender exemplars tend to commit all of the crimes? Which tend to excel in mathematics? Which tend to be interested in talking about relationships? Which tend to desire long-term commitments before having sexual relationships?) Does it make sense for women spend less time with children and more time engaged in business activities? [We can all agree that education and child development may be an important factor in dealing with various social problems, right? If agree, then does it make sense for mothers, and fathers, to pass so much of parenting and education over to the state? Alternatively, we know that many parents do not do a good job parenting. If so, might the state do a better job?]
What is society’s role in marriage?
What kind of relationship has to exist for relationships to last? As members of society that takes money (in the form of taxes) and uses that money to help the “greater good” of the society, do we care about whether marriages last beyond the years when all children have left the home? That is, one might make the argument that the primary social function of marriage, beyond the benefits that the married couple get themselves, is to take care of children. If children simply dropped from the sky randomly, would society care about marriage? If one of the primary social functions of marriage is to care for children, then why doesn’t the state (remember that the primary beneficiary of inadequate child raising is the rest of the members of society – children who grow up to be poor, to be criminals, to require free health care, and so on are those that cost the rest of us the most money) require that people who are about to get married be assessed for their ability to raise children. After all, I am sure that you would be in favor of assessing and monitoring the ability of schools to educate children. I am sure that you would apply the same ideas to day-care centers. If so, why wouldn’t you apply the same to prospective parents? If a major reason for marriage is the care and raising of children, then why wouldn’t we test the quality of the relationship in this area as well as in the areas Olson seems to care so much about? Is the only relevant issue, how well will these two get along? Some research (Baharudin, & Luster, 1998) suggests for example, that the quality of child’s home environment is related to the intelligence, education-level, and self-esteem of the mothers. Does this mean that we should test couples intelligence or only allow college graduates to get married and have children?
From a different perspective, how far should the state be allowed to enter into “family” business? A recent case highlights one aspect of this very broad issue. A local school system has a “zero-tolerance” drug policy. The police stopped one of the students after school hours driving his car. The police found a trace of pot in the boy’s car. The amount was so small that the police did not even file a citation, much less arrest the boy. However, the police did inform the boy’s school. The boy was suspended from school. Do you think this is a reasonable action on the part of the school? After all, the boy was not in school at the time. In fact, normal school hours of operation were over. Should a school attempt to control the behavior of its students outside of normal school hours? No, you say? Well, don’t school already attempt to control the behavior of students outside of normal school hours? Homework! Teachers set up all sorts of consequences for students the sole purpose of which is to increase the odds that students will do their homework outside of normal school hours. What is the difference between homework and taking drugs or any other behavior?
In many European countries, young children are encouraged to drink a small amount of wine with their meals. Drinking laws are different. In our country, we have laws that say children cannot legally drink. If a child were caught with alcohol in school, “zero-tolerance” schools would suspend such children. However, should schools also suspend children for drinking in the home? Suppose they were drinking without the parent’s knowledge. Suppose the parents knew and thought that it was perfectly OK? One reason the school might give for acting aggressively in these areas is because they would believe that if a child is allowed to drink in the home, that child will be a negative influence on the rest of the children in the school. Thus, they might argue that this is a preventative measure to protect other children. Notice how this argument rests on assumptions about human nature, e.g., that there is an association between drinking at home and drinking at school (or at least influencing other children). Will other children really be influenced? Does behavior in one situation tend to correlate with similar behavior in other situations?
The question of public intervention into families does not stop at the schools. After all, we have social workers in our society. Child protective services agents can remove children from their parents if they believe that the child’s welfare is in danger in the home. Most people think this is a good idea, in general. Remember the film you saw at the beginning of the quarter? Remember that not too long ago children were considered property of parents and had very few, if any, rights. If the state can enter families and remove children, forcibly and against the child’s (as well as the parent’s) wishes, why shouldn’t the state have an interest in the quality of marriage relationship before children are conceived? If you think the state might play some role, then what agencies should play that role and how much of role should those agencies play? For example, if child protective services agencies were going to forcibly remove children from families, wouldn’t you want to know whether the services were making accurate decisions? As always, the services can make two kinds of errors: they can fail to remove children whom they should have removed or they can remove children whom they should not have removed. Shouldn’t the service be evaluated in terms of these two error rates? But, what goes into “should have removed and should not have removed.” How shall we measure who should and should not have been removed? Do we consider only physical injury to the children, for example? If a child is being brutally beaten, then I can understand why we might want to protect that child. But, what should be done about parents who are not involved in their child’s education? Aren’t these parents doing real damage to the child? Might not this child grow up to be a burden on the rest of us if something isn’t done? What about parents who let their children drink wine at dinner? If you think that the state does have an interest in the welfare of children, then why wouldn’t you also agree that marriage relationships should be assessed much more thoroughly and carefully by the state? Why shouldn’t the state require training before people get married, the same way that they require training before people receive drivers’ licenses? Notice that couples do receive marriage licenses! Marriage is not a right in the sense that the state licenses marriages. Currently, one could argue that the state is doing a terrible job, given the divorce rate. Let me know what you think.
On the other hand, marriage, in and of itself, might have beneficial effects. For example, a recent study (Curran, Muthen, and Harford, 1998) reported that marriage might increase the rate of reduction in alcohol consumption with age. Other studies show correlations between being married and death rates, hospitalization rate, and other outcomes of interest. Married people live to an older age, have fewer illnesses, tend to recover faster from illnesses, etc. Such findings have been explained by proposing that marriage offers social support for life’s stressors, supports that tend to mitigate the adverse effects of these stressors on psychological and physical health. Were we to make marriage too difficult, we might give up some of the these social benefits (assuming that marriage is actually causal and/or the social support hypothesis is correct, of course.)
Adoption
Of course we will never prevent mistakes. We can do things to decrease the odds of mistakes to as a low a rate as cost/benefit analyses allow, but mistakes will happen. People will have children who should not. What should society do in such cases? We could punish the parents. Mainland China does this. But punishing the parents might produce problems for the child because our primary punishments in our society are prison (the parent can’t parent in prison) and monetary fines (if the parent has less money so will the child). We could add additional punishments, e.g., shame and social ridicule. These are part of the Chinese punishment system. (This issue shows the conflict that sometimes arises between controlling the behavior of the particular individual who has done something that the rest of society does not want that person to do again and preventing other people from doing it the first time.) Sometimes we argue that the parents simply are unfit, or the parent simply says he or she is unfit, and the child is put up for adoption.
One of the interesting aspects of adoption is that here we don’t seem to mind if the adoption agencies measure and test prospective parents before allowing them to adopt. That is, we want seem to think it is perfectly reasonable to want adoption agencies to select from a pool of perspective parents the pairs who will provide the best homes for the children. But, as always, we can ask whether the adoption agencies are measuring features of the prospective parents that are predictive of the outcomes that the agencies and we care about. As with child protective services we can ask what the error rates of the agencies are. As with child protective services there is the issue of outcome measures. What defines an error? If an adopted child does not go to college is that an error? If the adopted child grows up to be an abusive parent is that an error? What outcome measures should we use? Since other social systems besides adoption exist, e.g., foster care, we need to ask which are better. But what outcome measures should we use? Should SAT scores be included? You get the point. How should we evaluate success?
Sexuality and relationships One of your readings is concerned with an obvious part of most intimate, long-term relationships, namely sexual behavior. In the 1950s and 1960s the primary methods of birth control were condoms, abstinence, and the rhythm method and only one of them was discussed in public. Today several additional methods are available and people seem much more willing to discuss publicly sexual behavior of all types, sizes, and forms. As a consequence, it seems that premarital sexual activity has become more common, although how much of this is simply that the openness of the activity makes in easier to measure now that 40 years ago is unclear. Despite the rise in knowledge about availability of birth control methods and techniques, couples are still producing babies out-of-wedlock (and more so among the “underclass”). The sexual drive is clearly a major one in humans. Sex plays a major role in the early part of most relationships. But, should long-term relationships that might produce children be built primarily on sexual attraction? Olson’s survey clearly raises other aspects of relationships that might important. Should mothers work?
The last 15 to 20 years has seen a major change in the role of women in the home and family, in the workplace, and in schools. More women are attending college than men. More women are working. Women have begun to break the “glass ceiling” in many sectors of the economy. Income differentials between men and women have been substantially reduced. There is no question that these changes have presented women with many options that many may not have had 15 to 20 years ago. Economic independence brings with it the freedom to engage in many different kinds of activities. As with virtually everything else, these changes in social structure have brought with them other consequences. One of them might well be the rate of divorce (because economic independence gives the women the freedom to leave without having to worry where and how they will be able to live — remember that many married women never worked outside of the home in the 1950s and 60s). Another is the rise and use of day care services.
In families in which both the mother and the father work full 40-hour-per-week jobs pre-school age children must be taken care of, somehow, if both of the parents are working. Day-care services have grown in recent years and the issue of whether and what role the government should play in day-care has been raised a number of times. Should day-care be seen in the same manner as public education? That is, virtually all parents have handed over the job of the education of their children to local government agencies. Should we expect the government to do the same for “pre-school” age children? Should all children be “entitled” to quality day-care? If so, what should be taught in day care? What kinds of skills do 0 to 5 year old children learn that must be taught at good quality day care? What about honesty, aggression, generosity, manners, how to treat others, the seeds of religion, self-esteem, racial prejudice, color-naming, same-different judgments, fine motor skills, coloring in the lines, music listening, hard-work ethic, athletic skills, word meanings and grammar, English accent (“dis” and “dat” v. this and that), and so on? To think about it differently, do you believe that much of a child’s “character” depends on the models, the reinforcement schedules, the rules, the standards, and so on with which the child is presented during their first 5 or so years? If so, then isn’t the issue of what happens in day care a very important issue as more and more mothers (and fathers) decide that the mothers will work rather than stay at home? Should the government be involved in social policy that contributes to mothers being away from home during a child’s early years of development? Are children better off being taken care of by experts in day care or by mothers (some of whom might resent not being able to work)?
USA Today ran a recent article describing a study published in the March, 1999 volume of Developmental Psychology, a well-respected journal. The study was meant to compare the impact on children of mothers working or staying at home during a child’s early years. The first author of the study is quoted at the end of the USA Today story as follows: “The message should be that being at home during the early years, or being employed during those years, are both good choices. Both can result in healthy, well-developed children.” In other words, both the news article and the study’s first author (a psychologist) apparently conclude that there is no harm to children of mothers working compared to staying home while the child is growing up. Do you agree? Read the USA news article and then come back here.
It is worth examining the nature of the research that was done in a bit more detail. Let’s look at the independent variable in this research first. Is the working-mother v. stay-at-home-mother variable the same as causal variables that psychologists study in the laboratory? In real sense it is not. Because working v. home was not manipulated, you can be sure that there were many different varieties of each in the study. For example, some stay-at-home moms might have spent less time with their children than some of the working moms. Some working moms might abuse their children. The fact is that at the level of details about how parents actually interact with their children, the variable examined in this study really consists of two distributions of many different parenting “styles.” We have no idea from the study exactly how the parents interacted with their children. It might be for example that working moms spend much more time with their children on the weekends than stay-at-home moms. It might be fathers spend more time with their children if the moms work. The only thing we know is that in one group the mothers worked outside of the home and in the other they did not. (What about the extra money that comes into the family as a result of the mothers work? Might this not provide benefits to the children in that family? Would they be more likely to have a computer, visit interesting and educational places on vacations, live in a neighborhood with a better school, and so on?)
On the dependent variable side, we can see that a number of “measures” and “assessments” were taken of the children. These assessments and measures are virtually all interview and questionnaire-based. That is, no direct observations of how the children played with other children were taken. No archival measures, e.g., number of referrals to the principle, number of times observed fighting, and number of visits to doctor’s offices, were reported. Instead the data consisted many of self- and parental reports in interviews as well as results from some standardized tests. The validity of the conclusions depends heavily on whether the sample of measures captures everything about children that you might think is relevant to examine. For example, did they give a mathematics test (see Muller, 1996, a study suggesting that effect of maternal work on mathematics performance in the 8th grade is really due to whether the child is supervised after school)? Did they test the children for honesty? Did they provide measures of the children’s willingness to “share” with others? Did they test how frequently the children wore their safety helmets when riding bicycles (see Coreil, Wilson, Wood, & Liller, 1998, for a description of a study that showed that children with mothers who worked more than 28 hours a week were less likely to wear bicycle helmets)? Did the test the children for “conservation,” for vocabulary size, and so on? Did they include that empirical fact that children of working mothers are less likely to be breast fed than children of non-working mothers (see Lindberg, 1996)? Note the difference and range of detail that is possible in measures. How much can we trust self-report and interview data? If the measures did not assess everything that we might think is important about child development, then is it fair to conclude that working moms do not produce different outcomes than those that stay at home?
Sampling of different categories and types of behavior is not the only issue of concern. Another is the reliability of the measures. If the measures were not particularly reliable, then we would expect small differences even if the difference in rearing actually produced large real differences among children.
Another key issue concerns the effects of time away on outcome measures. If working moms produce different children than mothers who stay at home, then one should expect to see the effect magnified the longer the mother’s time away from home is. To their credit the authors did examine this issue. However, from the USA Today article, it appears that there was a small effect. The longer the time the mother’s spent away from home, the worse the children’s language development. Although the author claims these effects were small, they were in exactly the direction that one would expect if there were effects of mother absence, namely, the language deficits were bigger, the longer the mother was away. On the other hand, these differences apparently got smaller, although they did not disappear, the older the children.
[Note that if the study is correct in the conclusion that such a "large" difference in child raising practices does not make much difference, couldn't this be taken as evidence in favor of the genetic or inherited view of "character." After all, if this major difference in childhood environment has virtually no effect, then maybe the lack of effect of environment is because genetics determines so much.]
Don’t forget poverty! Don’t forget education!
A recent report by the Center for Policy Initiatives, here in San Diego, concluded that while the unemployment rate is down (to 4.7%) in San Diego, as it has done Nationwide, from the 1980s, and while the economy seems to churning along, the “underclass” is not doing as well. For example, apartment rentals now cost people in San Diego about 40% of their incomes. This is up from 30% in the 1980s. Poorer people tend to be renters. Single mothers tend to be renters. Although the per capita GNP increased about 32% from 1980 to 1997, the median income for workers increased only 13% during the same period. In addition, minority women have not done nearly as well in this economy, the report claims. For example, Latina women actually are earning less inflation corrected dollars now! In addition, about 19% of the area’s population lives below the poverty line while in 1980 it was only about 11%. In short, although the college educated have been doing better, the underclass might actually be doing worse. That is, the gap between the haves and the have-nots might be widening. If all of this is accurate, we must once again wonder what the direction of the causal arrows are among all of these “social life-style” variables. Can we isolate one or a few of them as the “root causes” or should we simply think of things like intelligence, race, sexual precocity, violence in the family (see the cycle of violence revisited), divorce, family size, ethnic background, poverty, education level, criminal activity and so on as a “portfolio of correlated factors” that tend to cluster together (see NIJ research report for examples). What are the consequences of the different views?
If we think there are one or two “root causes,” it is likely that we design social policies that focus one of these at a time. Thus, Herrnstein and Murry put the blame on intelligence. Others put the blame on poverty (e.g., Phillips, Brooks-Gunn, Duncan, Klebanov, & Crane, 1998). Others blame sexual precocity. Still others claim the problem is that we no longer revere the institution of marriage. Unless the particular “root cause” that is being pushed really is the root cause, the policy will, in all likelihood fail. It will only focus on a small percentage of the overlapping behavioral problems that are more frequent among members of the “underclass.”
One could argue that the key root causes are intelligence and education, especially in a society that is becoming increasing complex. Poor marriage choices might be reduced if people were trained to make better choices. Family planning and birth control education might help reduce out-of-wedlock births. Better education might make criminal activity less necessary because money would be available from legitimate work. Poverty would be lowered because better-educated people get better jobs (see Johnson and Neal, 1998, for a discussion of the causes of the Black-White gap in annual income).
But if all people cannot be equally good software engineers, then we might have to adjust our educational systems to track people into those money making careers for which they are intellectually capable. We might have to use standardized testing procedures that are imperfect to select those who work with their hands and those who will work with their minds.
Still, although such root cause explanations might sound reasonable, we have yet to design social policies at the detailed levels necessary to determine whether they will work. For example, we have not set up behavioral requirements for parenting that might be necessary if we are to ensure that all kindergarteners enter school equally well versed in language, thinking, social skills, and love of learning necessary to do well in school. We have not specified what good teaching really is and whether the only way to educate everyone to “their potential” to is provide each student with individualized instruction. And so on.
If we think that these social behaviors are merely part of an entire package of co-occurring problems, we will have to design social policies that take them all into account simultaneously. Such will not be an easy task. But at least we won’t waste time with less complex policies that will not work or will only have small effects because so many other aspects of “the problem” are ignored.
The first place to start designing such policies is to come to agreement about how to measure what we think might be important aspects of human social behavior. How should we measure crime? How will we know whether teachers are teaching in way that will have an effect on poverty, on crime, on out-of-wedlock births, on divorce, and so on unless we can agree how to measure these?
The second thing to keep in mind is that unless we have such measures of all of the possible items in the portfolio, any social policy that is tried might have adverse negative consequences on those areas that are not being measured. This is exactly the argument that has been used to explain why the attempt to help the poor by building large-scale urban public housing projects failed. People used a simple explanatory model that focused primarily on poverty and housing.
I find it very interesting that we require children to spend a great deal of their time learning mathematical skills that only a small proportion of them will use on a daily basis, e.g., trigonometry (cosines, tangents, etc.), but provide almost no education in the social skills that most of us are or will be required to use on a daily basis, e.g., choosing mates, raising children, negotiating (rather than fighting), evaluating risk, and so on. It is also interesting that if one wanted to teach mathematics that more people might use, the topics to teach are applied probability and statistics and not advanced calculus.
Credit:ivythesis.typepad.com
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