Middle Class Getting Socked; Divore Rate Dipping?

The Great Recession, as they now call it, continues to bash the middle class and adversely affect family well being. A recent piece by Judith Warner in the NY Times, is as usual, excellent. Some of the highlights:

"Economists may assert that we’re in the early stages of a recovery, but surveys continue to show that the impact of the Great Recession on American families is deep, widespread and grim. A Pew Research poll published last month indicated that more than half of all adults in the U.S. labor force had experienced some “work-related hardship” — a period of unemployment, a pay cut, a reduction in work hours or an involuntary move to part-time employment — since the recession began in December 2007."

"The poor are getting poorer, and the rich, despite stock-market setbacks, are still comparatively rich. The most devastating losses in household wealth over the past two years have been suffered by the middle class. And families are fraying at the seams. The Pew poll showed nearly half of people who had been unemployed for more than six months saying their family relationships had become strained, and a New York Times/CBS poll of unemployed adults last winter found about 40 percent saying they believed their joblessness was causing behavioral change in their children."

"Parents who have jobs are working longer hours than ever. Mothers are taking shorter maternity leaves. The birth rate is on the decline. The divorce rate is declining, too — it’s too expensive for people to break up their households — but that’s not necessarily a family-friendly thing, as a report from the Council on Contemporary Families noted in April: “We know from the experience of the Great Depression of the 1930s that divorce rates can fall while family conflict and domestic violence rates rise.”

Endnote: Our President has much on his plate. I hope (and pray) that he keeps the astronomical unemployment rate at the very top of his domestic agenda until this nightmare is in our rear-view mirror.

Avoid Divorce: Marry an Agricultural Engineer

True love may be the key to a long and happy marriage – but being a dentist or an agricultural engineer helps, too, according to new research.

A paper that correlates occupations with divorce and separation rates, to be published in the Journal of Police and Criminal Psychology (author: great name for a Journal) reveals that those employed in extrovert and stressful jobs are highly likely to divorce, as are those who work in the caring professions.

Dancers, choreographers and bartenders have around a 40% chance of experiencing a relationship breakdown. But also at high risk are nurses, psychiatrists and those who help the elderly and disabled. Conversely, agricultural engineers, optometrists, dentists, clergymen and podiatrists are all in occupations which carry a 2-7% chance of family breakdown.

It's all described in a recent article in The Observer based in the U.K.

Divorces Are Delayed as Real Estate Values Plummet

John Leland's interesting piece in today's NY Times is titled, "Breaking Up is Harder to Do After Housing Fall."

Click here to read the article which describes how some couples are delaying divorce and staying together because there is so little equity remaining in their house to divide up.

Here is the letter I wrote to the editor of the NY Times:
What a fascinating silver lining in the “crashing real estate market”, that couples will think twice or thrice about their divorce plans. I’m not happy about diminished real estate, but I’d be happy (for the affected children especially) if the 50% divorce rate came down a notch.

Prayer Shawl Envelops Me in Warm Memories of Family by Dr. Alan Singer

June is the time for weddings and this essay which the Home News printed on 06/20/07 is as personal as it gets. I describe the custom of using a Talis (prayer shawl) as a Chupa (wedding canopy).

June is the most popular month for weddings. Over the centuries, a custom evolved in Jewish communities to use a prayer shawl (tallis) as a wedding canopy (chupa). My in-laws gave me one shawl for weekdays and one for Sabbath. I attached my Sabbath shawl to the ceiling of our wedding canopy, knowing that the Sabbath and holidays would provide the best time for connection with family and tradition, like our wedding did. During our 30 years of marriage, I noticed my shawl getting a bit tattered and yellowed. Today's consumer culture would likely suggest that I purchase a new model. That won't happen, because I like the warmth and recollections of the real article.

The daily blessing on the shawl refers to protection and elevation. Until our wedding, it was my parents who were responsible to protect and elevate me; after that, it would be my wife.
My shawl surrounds me with memories. It reminds me of who stood under our canopy and witnessed our vows of commitment, especially my parents (of blessed memory) and the decades of watching their marriage.

My parents weren't keen on saying "I love you" in public to each other. But I remember them demonstrating it in little ways. The daily hello/goodbye kiss was important, as was the good-morning/night kiss. Dad checked on Mom's car daily: tires, oil, and wiper fluid; everything had to be safe. Mom would buy Dad record albums of opera music and tape it so he could listen in his car.

I marveled at how, despite their different upbringings, they enjoyed many activities together. Dad, a mechanical engineer, loved skiing, boating, and raising orchids. Mom, a teacher and pianist, was raised in the Midwest surrounded by fine arts and activism. Opera night in South Florida was a revered time that my parents enjoyed together in their front-row seats.
Mom was more emotional; Dad was more physical. She loved to read; he loved to build and repair things. Only after I was married, did I realize that their marriage didn't last despite their differences; rather it thrived because of them.

Concerning parenting skills, they were of one mind. That consistency has been a model for how my wife and I raise our four children. When I broke a rule and needed disciplining, I would receive a deep-voiced reprimand from my father, "Your mother and I do not approve of how you acted."

As a child, I was sad when a good friend and his mother left their home on my block and moved into the tall building on Parkview Point. That's when I first heard the d-word — divorce. That was in the '60s, when the divorce rate in the United States began to soar. I wondered how a family problem or argument could be so severe that parents would divorce, but then came the night of the flying dishes.

My father decided to help his friend Milton in a run for City Council in Miami Beach. For three weeks, he never came home until after midnight when everyone was asleep. Our family dinners continued, but it was Mom and her boys; we hardly saw Dad. (It's interesting that my parents knew the importance of the family dinner ritual back then.) My mother was fed up. She could not endure raising three sons by herself, so things got nasty. One night we awoke to the sound of Mom smashing dishes and yelling at Dad. My father convinced her to stop her tantrum by promising to resign from Milton's political campaign. Our house was quiet again, although in a state of disorder.

I couldn't sleep that night because I assumed the d-word was next and we would be moving to Parkview Point. But the next morning, Dad brought Mom coffee and checked the fluids in her car. He took his morning bike ride with his best friend Milton and resigned from his campaign. He apologized to Mom, kissed her goodbye and went to work. That day I learned what forgiveness means in a marriage.

These are some of the warm memories that envelop me as I wear the prayer shawl that was our wedding canopy. Five years ago, one of the fringes of my shawl tore off, rendering it unsuitable for use. I could have disposed of it but I realized that when something precious breaks, you don't toss it, you fix it. That's one more lesson my prayer shawl taught me about marriage. This column is dedicated to my son Noam and his new bride Rachel.

"Be Counted" columnist Dr. Alan Singer blogs at http://www.familythinking.com/ He is a marriage therapist in Highland Park and can be reached at DrAlanSinger@aol.com

Lifestyles, Child Rearing Differ Based on Politics by Dr. Alan Singer

Here is an essay I wrote in the Home News Tribune on 12/20/06 regarding the 2006 Elections. To see this essay on the SmartMarriages website click here.

Red States have higher divorce rates? Blue states have smaller families? Read on if that sounds intriguing.....

Consider two unusual political trends relating to marriage and children. Red states have higher divorce rates than democratic states and blue states have smaller families than republicans. What's behind these trends?

Divorce first: Wouldn't you think that California, the "left" side of the country with its free-spirited open-mindedness and "splitsville" movie stars, has a high divorce rate? Conversely, shouldn't Bible belt states like Arkansas and Mississippi, with their family values, have low divorce rates? Wrong on both accounts.

California has one of the lowest divorce rates and Mississippi and Arkansas two of the highest (Census Bureau). Pam Belluck of the New York Times observed: "The lowest divorce rates are largely in the blue states: the Northeast and the Upper Midwest. And the state with the lowest divorce rate (5.7 divorces per 1,000 married people) was Massachusetts, home to John Kerry and the Kennedys."

"The higher the educational level, higher the occupational level, higher the income, the less likely you are to divorce," said William V. D'Antonio, a sociologist at the Catholic University of America, noting that Massachusetts has the highest rate of high school and college completion. Kids who drop out of high school and get married very quickly suffer from the strains of not being emotionally mature and not having the income to help weather the difficulties of marriage," Belluck wrote.

I ran this question by several experts in the field. Dr. David Popenoe, of the National Marriage Project at Rutgers University, reiterated, "The more educated people found in the blue states have lower divorce rates and also lower fertility rates; for less educated people, it is the reverse."

Dr. William Doherty, professor of family social science at the University of Minnesota suggests, "The main issue for republicans and conservatives and evangelical Christians is that the discrepancy between their self-appraisals as the family values folks and the fact that being in those groups does not seem to convey any benefits for marital stability."
My thinking is that divorce is not an exclusively conservative nemesis and democrats have no reason to be smug. With the U.S. divorce rate hovering at 50 percent, we all have reason for serious concern.

"Larger social forces that fragment our marriages have far greater power than the teachings of conservative (or liberal) faith communities," Doherty said.
Atlanta psychiatrist Frank Pittman, from his 47 years of treating marriages, explains: "We know that Southern Baptists have the highest rate of divorce of any Christian group, perhaps because they believe that lusting in your heart is as big a deal as doing it in public. The more conservative that people are, the less tolerant they are of human frailties, their own or those of others."

Pittman concludes, "Marriage, to last, requires two imperfect people with compassion for one another's struggles and conservatives can't always do that."
Liberal baby blues is a different matter. David Brooks of the New York Times observed that birthrates are falling in Western Europe and many regions of the United States. People are marrying later and having fewer children. "You can see surprising political correlations," he said. "Bush (in 2004) carried the 19 states with the highest fertility rates. Kerry won the 16 states with the lowest rates."

Arthur Brooks of the Wall Street Journal emphasized, "Liberals have a big baby problem: They're not having enough of them, they haven't for a long time, and their pool of potential new voters is suffering as a result."

According to the 2004 General Social Survey, if you picked 100 unrelated politically liberal adults at random, you would find that they had between them 147 children. If you picked 100 conservatives, you would find 208 kids. That's a fertility gap of 41 percent.
What are some factors that influence family size? Philip Longman of USA Today shed some light on this: "In the USA, 47 percent of people who attend church weekly say their ideal family size is three or more children. By contrast, 27 percent of those who seldom attend church want that many kids.'

Religious observance is a good predictor of ideal family size as well as income, education and family-of-origin family size. Should liberals try to persuade each other to have more children for the sake of their ideology? Procreate for the cause? I don't think so. Many governments enduring declines in fertility institute pronatalist policies. Incentives may include child allowances, birth grants and paid maternity leave, and are meant to increase family size. While these policies do not guarantee that family size will increase, they are a guarantee of treating families in a manner that makes child-rearing less of a financial burden, which is a welcome benefit. Governments often want to increase family size to ensure that there are enough soldiers for a formidable army and enough workers to pay taxes for programs that sustain the elderly such as Social Security. I don't see families having significantly more children for the sake of the Motherland or for an ideology such as liberalism.

From my two decades of research in family size and more practically speaking, as the father of four children, I can say with full confidence: The primary reason a couple should have a (another) child is because they want to love, cherish and care for that child, not for the sake of any cause or ideology.

Dr. Alan Singer is a marriage therapist in Highland Park and can be reached at DrAlanSinger@aol.com

Having Faith in Marriage Should Not Mix in Religion by Dr. Alan Singer

Here is my article that the Home News Tribune published on December 24, 2003. In it, I discuss the divorce rate and the impact, positive and negative, of religious groups which promote marriage.

Americans have become less likely to marry and fewer of those who do marry have marriages they consider to be very happy. The American divorce rate today is more than twice that of 1960. The desire of teenagers for a long-term marriage has increased, especially for boys, but girls have become more pessimistic about ever being able to have such a marriage.

It has become a little depressing to regularly hear these statistics about family life in America today. But there has also been a growing enthusiasm for strengthening marriage here in New Jersey and throughout the United States. The creativity and energy of these new groups is enough to turn depression into optimism.

In fact, thousands of delegates gather each summer under the auspices of the Coalition for Marriage, Family, and Couples Education (CMFCE) for the annual SmartMarriages Conference. Experts speak, ideas are exchanged and copious books and tapes are sold. The members of this interest group are convinced that family breakdown can be reduced through education and information.

One such gathering, the New Jersey Healthy Marriages Summit, took place recently in East Windsor and was sponsored by the New Jerseyan's for Healthy Marriages, Children and Families Coalition (NJ-HMCF). One of the highlights of the daylong conference was hearing professor David Popenoe of Rutgers University discuss the trends mentioned above. A well-known expert in this field, he is the co-director of the National Marriage Project. The participants in this summit, numbering more than 100, learned from plenary speakers and shared their experiences in workshops so that they could go back to their own organizations and hopefully put these ideas into action. Even healthy marriages need plenty of nurturing, and that is also part of the skills that participants gain from attending these conferences.

However, I had one major concern. Unlike the national SmartMarriages conference, the New Jersey summit had a very strong emphasis on religion. A coalition, by definition, is a temporary union for a common purpose. I worried, with a session titled "Interfaith Perspectives on Marriage," that the focus of the conference had shifted from helping individuals to sustain healthy relationships, to describing how the major faiths view marriage and family life. That would be fine if the conference were called The Interfaith Gathering for Healthy Marriages -- but it was not. An "ideas exchange," with presenters describing various programs of congregations, is much different (and I believe more useful) than a platform for elucidating theology and doctrine. Session leaders such as Mike and Harriet McManus and I have little in common when it comes to religion, but yet I learned a great deal from them when we sat together at lunch and discussed their new mentoring program for couples.

My primary concern is that individuals who have no religious affiliation whatsoever will distance themselves from this terrific effort and its foundation of solid social scientific data. It will be an "easy out" for the religiously unaffiliated who might perceive the marriage movement as a group of religious fanatics.

The stated mission of NJ-HMCF is "to help all individuals and couples to develop the skills and knowledge necessary to form and sustain healthy relationships that will lead to healthy marriages and families." With this inclusive mission statement and ambitious goals such as "to reduce the overall divorce rate in New Jersey," there is much to be gained by not excluding any individuals or having them feel uncomfortable because of their different or nonexistent religious beliefs. Furthermore, I have observed that marriages can do just fine with out any religious observance whatsoever. On the other hand, for example, a marriage cannot thrive if there is no trust between spouses.

The strength of this coalition comes from the unity of purpose that individuals of vastly different backgrounds bring to the table. Participants are invigorated as members of this coalition and bring back the positive energy to their own individual organizations, be they secular or religious.
This seems to me, to be the best framework for making a dent in, better yet, reversing these negative trends that so adversely affect family life in America. Besides, as an observant Jew, I don't want to be the one to organize the New Jersey Atheists For Healthy Marriage, because my wife would kill me.