Bad, bad teacher!

I watched the movie Bad Teacher on DVD. A few thoughts:

- The movie is laugh-out-loud funny. Even watching it alone, as I did. Cameron Diaz's portrayal of a shameless goldigger / deadbeat middle school teacher barely phoning it in subverts all the education movie clichés about caring teachers that challenge and motivate their students.  Instead, Diaz’s Elizabeth Halsey spends the first semester showing these movies while she sleeps at her desk.

She finally finds her niche though:

Bad Teacher (2011) – “I love Chase Reuben Rossi!”

The following year (SPOILER ALERT) she becomes the school guidance counselor, with all the school’s nerds lining up outside her office, presumably seeking similar transformation.

- The movie is politically incorrect, an observation Steve made in his reviews.  The old-money SNAG* (Justin Timberlake) that Diaz seeks to ensnare is, like most SWPLs, a dilettante in diversity, holding up his taste in ethnic food as a bold political statement; this is subtly mocked by Jason Siegel’s cynical gym teacher.  Diaz’s vanquished rival is ultimately sent to “bring my zany energy to the underprivileged students at Malcolm X Middle School.”  The audience doesn’t even need to have explained to them the implications.

- The movie is dirty.  Diaz emits a steady stream of vulgarity as in the clip above, plus there are a couple of truly cringe-inducing sexual situations (if you can call them that).

- The movie is, at a philosophical level, a little disturbing.  Diaz is lazy, promiscuous and conniving; a liar, a thief and a cheat.  With the exception of the scene above (and even this is obviously not without its moral downside) she shows absolutely no redeeming qualities whatsoever . . . and yet she is the character we are asked to root for!  On comic value alone we are expected to cheer as she blackmails silence from the bureaucrat from whom she steals the state’s standardized test and then frames fellow teacher Amy Squirrel (Lucy Punch) for her own drug use.  What makes this worse is that Amy is a inspirational and successful teacher whose students routinely outscore the entire school on that standardized test.  Now, Amy’s sing-song, affected pedagogical style is easily recognizable from my own childhood, and the comic effect comes from seeing her use that style – probably more appropriate to a lower elementary school context in any case –  in her adult interactions as well.  Still, she (and Justin for that matter) clearly try really hard at being good at what they do, so why are we supposed to hate her and love Diaz?  The movie never really explains this.

* Is SNAG still a separate personality type from emo?  Or maybe I’m dating myself; I haven’t heard it used since the ‘90s.

Does Family Background Matter?

While I was getting prepped for dental work the other day, the dental technician began to make what I thought would be the usual make-the-patient-comfortable pre-op chit-chat.  I wasn’t especially interested in this – something about the technician seemed a little . . . off – but I couldn’t exactly ignore her.

“Are you married?” she asked.

“Yes,” I replied.

“Do you have any children?”

“Yes.”

“How many?”

“Two.”

“How old are they?”

“Six and ten.”

“Wow, you’re just getting started!”

Really?  “They’re at their grandparents this week, and frankly I’m enjoying the break.”

“Yeah, sending my children to my parents house wasn’t really an option for me.”

I really, really wanted to let this go by; unfortunately, the dentist had arrived.

“What’s the problem?  They managed to raise you okay,” he piped up.

“Well, my father was a pedophile.  That’s why I left home as young as I did.”

Sweet!  Baby!  Gherkins!  In which ring of hell did you learn chairside patter?

Now, on the one hand, I inferred that the technician was married with children of her own, and of course I wish her every happiness.  But leaving aside the fact that I thought she was weird, this kind of claim, delivered in that way and in those circumstances, said nothing good about her even were we to take it at face value.  Goodness knows what kind of evil lurked in her genes, let alone the mental scars she bore personally.  I rather doubt that she enjoys even the average chance at domestic stability.

But I don’t recall giving much weight to that kind of thing back when I was single.  Given where I sought relationships, I had applied a filter for religion and probably education and class, but otherwise my criteria were:  (1) does she meet my attractiveness threshold and (2) does she give me the time of day.  I was mainly lucky (or rather, providentially blessed) to have fallen in with a girl from a quality family and with so many personal qualities I didn’t think to care about.

The dental technician, as it happened, was nowhere near my attractiveness threshold, but let’s consider Amy Adams’ character in the movie Sunshine Cleaning.  Now, at 34 (when the movie was made), Adams looks as cute as a button, but let’s also look at her character’s history:

• Her mother committed suicide.  That’s a “family history of mental and emotional instability.”
• Her father has a spotty employment record, characterized by small-time get-rich-quick schemes operating close to the line of legality.
• While she probably doesn’t meet the technical definition of “slut”, she’s spent her adult romantic life having an adulterous affair with the ex-high-school-quarterback she dated in high school.  As Roissy would say, she chose “five minutes of alpha.”
• In the mean time, she hasn’t done much with her life except having an illegitimate son by (presumably) the married ex-quarterback.  I don’t put much stock in women having careers, but to reach the age of 34 (or whatever her age is supposed to be in the movie) without college or a career or a husband is kind of loserish.

In a fit of self-awareness, she quits the adultery and resolves to turn her life around.  It’s easy to see her gracing her romantic attention on a “nice guy”/beta under these circumstances.  But does her resolution mean that she becomes a good LTR bet for the beta?

Frankly, I think not, at least not in real life.  On the other hand, a girl who looked and acted like Amy Adams would be impossible for a still-single version of me to turn down, regardless of her unfavorable background.

On a third hand, it was just a movie.  In real life, perhaps women with that kind of past don’t really have the disposition that Adams projects in movies.  Perhaps, to the extent it mattered, a bad history would assert itself in other incompatibilities of personality such that I wouldn’t really have to consciously take the history into account.

Thoughts?

The Older Son’s Burden

To recap:

¹¹Jesus continued: "There was a man who had two sons. ¹²The younger one said to his father, 'Father, give me my share of the estate.' So he divided his property between them.

¹³"Not long after that, the younger son got together all he had, set off for a distant country and there squandered his wealth in wild living. ¹⁴After he had spent everything, there was a severe famine in that whole country, and he began to be in need. ¹⁵So he went and hired himself out to a citizen of that country, who sent him to his fields to feed pigs. ¹⁶He longed to fill his stomach with the pods that the pigs were eating, but no one gave him anything.

¹⁷"When he came to his senses, he said, 'How many of my father's hired men have food to spare, and here I am starving to death! ¹⁸I will set out and go back to my father and say to him: Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. ¹⁹I am no longer worthy to be called your son; make me like one of your hired men.' ²⁰So he got up and went to his father.
      "But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him; he ran to his son, threw his arms around him and kissed him.

²¹"The son said to him, 'Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son.^[a]'

²²"But the father said to his servants, 'Quick! Bring the best robe and put it on him. Put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. ²³Bring the fattened calf and kill it. Let's have a feast and celebrate. ²⁴For this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.' So they began to celebrate.

²⁵"Meanwhile, the older son was in the field. When he came near the house, he heard music and dancing. ²⁶So he called one of the servants and asked him what was going on. ²⁷'Your brother has come,' he replied, 'and your father has killed the fattened calf because he has him back safe and sound.'

²⁸"The older brother became angry and refused to go in. So his father went out and pleaded with him. ²⁹But he answered his father, 'Look! All these years I've been slaving for you and never disobeyed your orders. Yet you never gave me even a young goat so I could celebrate with my friends. ³⁰But when this son of yours who has squandered your property with prostitutes comes home, you kill the fattened calf for him!'

³¹" 'My son,' the father said, 'you are always with me, and everything I have is yours. ³²But we had to celebrate and be glad, because this brother of yours was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.' " [Emphases added.]

This parable has two parts.  In the first, it tells the story of the younger son’s fall and redemption; in the second, of the older son’s unforgiving attitude.  Regarding the second aspect, there are several real-world parallels to the brothers’ relationship.  We find here the attitude of the Pharisees towards the “sinners and tax collectors”.  We see the attitude of the Jews towards the pagan Gentiles that would soon flock to God’s worship.  And we are warned against an ever-present danger to the church in our own time.

The Meme

Obviously, although the parable cogently states the older brother’s grievance, there is much to criticize.  First, his sense of entitlement – “‘All these years I’ve slaved for you’” – ignores the need we all have for God’s grace.  Second, his hardness of heart – “refused to go in” – leaves no room for restoration.

But there is a meme about this parable that has crept its way into a couple of sermons I have heard over the years that I believe to be not just erroneous, but dangerously misleading.  The meme calls attention to the highlighted passages above contrasting Jesus’ narrative description of the younger son’s life of sin with the older son’s characterization of it.  This is alleged to say something bad about the older brother:  he makes an unwarranted assumption, and/or he betrays an envious attitude of his brother’s erstwhile un-chastity.

I dissent. 

The Problem

Regarding the first point, the assumption looks unwarranted only by ignoring the implausibility of the contrary assumption – that the younger brother went off to the big city for “wild living” that didn’t involve women of easy virtue.  Um . . . where’s the fun in that?  Speaking for myself, I don’t think I have to actually aspire to a life of dissipation in order to admit that, were I to lead such a life, I would certainly hope that it involved the attention of, if not professionals exactly, then dedicated amateurs.  What would be the point otherwise?

This brings us to the second allegation:  the charge of envy.  This is trickier; to wax Clintonian, it depends on the definition. Nothing in the narrative prevents the older brother from following the younger to the big city, but he doesn’t; instead, he chooses to remain loyal to his father.  Allowing that human motivation is complex, this is the choice we all make when we resist temptation.  We could give in to temptation, and certainly when the sin is un-chastity,  there are few external impediments preventing us.  But to the extent we are moral agents, when we instead choose the way of righteousness, it becomes difficult to lay against us the charge of really wanting to do otherwise.

To the extent that the narrative contrast in the parable has a point, it may be this:  that the older son was fully aware of the trade-off he had made.  The older son is saying, “hey, junior there had a grand ole’ time up there in the big city, while I’ve loyally slaved away.”  That this doesn’t imply what the older son thinks it does, doesn’t make it false; on the contrary, it is factually true:  the older son did choose  what in the near run was the harder path.  Yes, in the long run this worked out well – “‘everything I have is yours’” -- but that he, and we, give up treasures on earth in favor of treasures in heaven doesn’t mean that the earthly treasures don’t really exist.  Let’s face it:  if sin wasn’t fun, this conversation wouldn’t be necessary.

We are often assured that the wages of sin are paid in this life, that the way of immorality ends in earthly misery.  Often this is true.  The book of Proverbs certainly encourages us to think so, as does Jesus’ parable:  the younger son, after all, returns home broke and starved.  Likewise, it is easy to draw a straight line between sexual immorality and various unpleasantness like STDs and unwanted pregnancy.  But two quick points.  First, as morally satisfying as this aspect of the story is, it’s not especially reliable.  Many people don’t so much repent of their sin as simply outgrow it, with no noticeable ill effects.  Second, the benefits of righteousness are usually realized collectively.  The reason God told the Israelites that murder, theft, and adultery were crimes was because they undermine the social trust so necessary to a collective project such as conquering Canaan and building a nation.  It would be impossible for the soldiers on the front lines to fight bravely if they had to worry about what the rear guard was doing with their wives and property.  But the Israelites didn’t need a story about how the apparent ability of one person to lie, steal, or adulterate his way to advantage was somehow a product of false-consciousness.

It can be argued that God’s grace make all earthly pleasures pale by comparison.  I would agree that the closer we draw to God, the less the emotional salience of the trade-offs we make to get there.  But stated categorically, the argument reminds me of the Tiger Woods episode on South Park:  everybody (the men anyway) pretending to be shocked, shocked, that Tiger had sex with a string of beautiful women.  Come off it!  It doesn’t compromise the moral judgment to say there’s no mystery to what motivated him.  It’s not envy to say that, yeah, we get it.

The Danger

This is no mere theological arcanum.  I am convinced that the meme described blinds us to the way this parable often plays out in real life.  To illustrate, let’s . . . tweak it a bit.

In Jesus’ version, the younger son comes home destitute.  I suppose one can analogize the “money” that his father gave him that he no longer has, but let’s suppose that money is just money.  Now let’s suppose the younger son comes home not destitute.  Let’s suppose that, in spite (or because) of his “wild living”, he now has a fortune that rivals or exceeds his brother’s.

Or, even more on point, let suppose the younger son comes home, maybe with money, maybe without it, but after reintegrating himself in the family he . . . steals his older brother’s girlfriend.  It’s not hard to see why.  Even if we accept his repentance at face value, the younger brother carries with him an aura of worldliness.  While admitting that the causality runs both ways, we can see that the younger brother is now experienced in, as Roissy would put it, the “dark arts”.  Maybe his intentions are now strictly honorable, maybe they aren’t, but the point is that the younger brother has directly parlayed his misadventures into attractiveness to women.  And suddenly, all the nose-to-the-grindstone young men who were regarded as perfectly adequate now seem hopelessly provincial.

I’m not making this up.  It is precisely the attendant social confidence that leads an otherwise decent man like Trumwill to abandon the ethic of chastity and eagerly anticipate the conquests of his own (future) sons.  I even had a female youth director at church (a relatively liberal, PCUSA church) say without shame that she hoped her future husband was sexually experienced.

Alas, this preference is not limited to liberals.  Granted, no conservative woman would state it that baldly, but . . . ye shall know them by their fruits.  A few years ago, I read a feminist blogger who, commenting on a young female chastity advocate, said something along the lines of:  “well, just make sure you marry a virgin.”  She intended this as a taunt, of course, but the remark succeeded in highlighting, if not hypocrisy exactly, then at least an incongruity between what female chastity advocates claim for themselves and the mate choices they make.  I challenged Spearhead blogger Hestia on this point last year and discovered that even conservative Christianity confers on its adherents little immunity to the rationalization hamster.

Likewise, the response to this from the Christian community at large is disappointing.  I have blogged before about my experience  at a large, urban, relatively conservative church, hearing twenty-something women complain about how the men in our circle were so . . . uninteresting, and then listening to church leaders say, basically, “yeah!”

Which brings us back to the meme.  It bodes ill for the church’s ability to apprehend the perverse incentives it is perpetuating.  It says, alternately, “shame on you for noticing!” and “none of this should matter.”  But that’s too pat.  Men have wanted women since Adam noticed he didn’t have one.  Jesus taught his disciples to pray, “Give us this day our daily bread,” i.e. a competent portion of the good things of this life, including the opportunity to find a mate.  I don’t want to exaggerate the extent of the church’s responsibility here, but young men aren’t (generally) stupid.  If they notice that the path to getting married routinely take them through promiscuous behavior, I promise you that we will get more promiscuous behavior.  This is injurious not only to social morality but also to the church’s ability to retain the loyalty of its young people.

No Easy Answers

Solving this problem will be hard.  On the one hand, the church has turned the doctrine of forgiveness into an inability to enforce social disability, let alone social ostracism, in any kind of sustained way.  On the other, it has no language with which to hold women accountable for their preference for social confidence and charm.  In isolation, each of these appears defensible.  But the church does itself no favors by refusing to acknowledge that their combination is poisonous. 

UPDATE: Lest I seem out-of-touch, I want to say that Ferdinand already posted at length on this topic.

Parenthood on Adultery

In episode 10, the adult children confront Zeek about his financial woes stemming from a bad real estate investment. For some reason, they do this in front of his wife Camille, who is predictably upset. In her anger, she reveals what we had long suspected: Zeek had an affair.

The show is remarkably honest about how the dynamics of this play out. Camille had turned a blind eye to the affair while she believed Zeek to be financially successful. But, a few years after the affair had already run its course, and Zeek is on the rocks financially, now the affair becomes her justification for putting him out of the house.

In an era in which no-fault divorce is a moral norm, obviously Camille can divorce Zeek for any reason or no reason. But to those who, like me, believe that adultery is a singular justification for divorce, I ask you: is there a "statute of limitations" beyond which an affair can't be considered the real reason for divorce, as opposed to a mere pretext?

Robert Wright on Tiger Woods

Via Trumwill, an excellent (though uneven) Robert Wright op-ed on Tiger Woods:

Though monogamous marriage may be, on average, the best way to rear children, a lifetime of monogamous fidelity isn’t natural in our species. And extramarital affairs have a way of leading, one way or another, to the dissolution of marriages — not unfailingly, by any means, but with nontrivial frequency. And even when an affair doesn’t end a marriage, it can permanently change the marriage — and child-rearing environment — for the worse.

So we’re stuck with this unfortunate irony: the institution that seems to be, on average, the least bad means of rearing children is an institution that doesn’t naturally sustain itself in the absence of moral sanction — positive sanction for fidelity, negative sanction for infidelity. And negative sanction often involves sounding judgmental — something that, in addition to incurring the wrath of a columnist’s readers, raises genuinely thorny intellectual problems.

These problems are handily summarized via two aphorisms: 1) Let he who is without sin cast the first stone; 2) There but for the grace of God go I.

The first of these is the problem of hypocrisy. Given how many people have either cheated on their spouse or done something comparably serious, how can we dish out moral sanction — blame people for their transgressions — without being a society of hypocrites? (Maybe we can’t; as various people have argued, and as I suggested in an earlier column, maybe hypocrisy is a natural ingredient of an effective moral system.)

The second problem is the problem of moral imagination. If you can imagine yourself in Tiger’s shoes, you can see that he is exposed to a level of temptation most of us will never know. I for one don’t claim that I could withstand it.

Read the whole thing.

Megan McArdle on Lori Gottlieb

For those of you who missed it, Megan McArdle wrote a lengthy, double-edged review of Lori Gottlieb’s book Marry Him, based on her famous Atlantic article. A sample paragraph:

I too am annoyed by Gottlieb's tendency to make sweeping generalizations about women, and to hold up men as a better example, when really, men just have more time to fix their mistakes. But maybe because I've spent a bit of time thinking about these choices, I see Gottlieb trying to convey, somewhat hamfistedly, not that women are "too picky" in some metaphysical sense, but that for women in their early thirties the clock is ticking in a way that it isn't for men--which means that being picky is risky for them. So when women are tempted to hold out for something better, they should think hard about how likely that really is. [Emphasis added.]

As someone who has written often that women are indeed “too picky”, if not in a metaphysical sense, then in a relative SMV sense, I will have to mull over this proposition. Thoughts?

UPDATE: Be sure to watch Gottlieb's video interview on Megan's article. I think Gottlieb appears exceptionally attractive and personable for a woman her age; it seems that she shouldn't have any difficulty finding a middle-aged man to marry her if that was what she wanted. Is mine just a minority opinion?

Early Marriage Reconsidered

The excellent Robin Hanson, after quoting from a couple of articles that document the steep decline in female fertility with age, observes:

Today high status women stay long in school, start careers, and take long to match up with a man before having kids.  They are often too late, their kids have more defects, and the interruption hurts their career.  Low status women more often have an accidental early kid out of wedlock.

Imagine a different equilibrium, where females pick a male at 15, then school more slowly to have kids till some standard age (20? 25? 30?), when females return to full-time school and uninterrupted careers.

While it is not entirely clear if this new equilibrium would be better or worse, it certainly has some positive features.  Kids and moms would be healthier, kids more numerous and less accidental, moms more energetic, older folk would enjoy more grand kids etc., and career interruptions wouldn’t make female employees suspect.

Early parenting would have to be paid for by grandparents or via loans (or perhaps income shares), presumably in trade for some loss of autonomy.  While childhood does seem to be lengthening, it is not clear if this autonomy loss could be accepted.

For the male pattern, there are two obvious variations: males switch life-plans along with females, or males stay on the current plan.  Having males also switch would keep mates at similar ages, promote healthier kids and more energetic dads, and reduce opportunities for gender discrimination.

You knew this was coming . . . .

In fairness to Hanson, he almost certainly realizes the thoroughgoing cultural change we would have to affect in order to realize these kind of downstream effects.

The most obvious problem is that, as Taylor Swift candidly sings, there is no evidence that fifteen year old girls are especially competent decision makers, especially in matters of love and sex, and even more especially in choosing with whom they should spend the rest of their lives.  As I have argued previously, our culture sends a lot of false signals to young women in the regard, but that only deepens the required cultural retrenchment.

Hanson hints that parents should take a more active role in screening their daughters’ suitors, and indeed advocates greater involvement by extended families in helping new couples get their start in life.  Certainly this would be both necessary and appropriate; however, were they to actually follow Hanson’s apparent advice and match their teen girls with teen boys, they would have very little in the way of useful signals as to which of these suitors will be capable of providing for their daughters in The Manner To Which They Have Become Accustomed, or even which of them will tubs-o'-lard by age 40.

Hanson continues:

Randomness in kid timing and number would make it a bit harder to estimate student quality based on student performance – could we find ways to correct for this?  And the fact that low status moms now have kids early makes it harder to coordinate a switch to this new equilibrium.  But still, it seems an interesting thing that never was, about which to ask: why not?

On the contrary, my understanding is that this has been the arrangement throughout most of the history of civilization. It is our current equilibrium that is historically anomalous. But again, our historical antecedents offer little of a roadmap on how to get from here to there, even if we agreed that we wanted to.

UPDATE: It occurs to me that Hanson's timeline appears to assume that families surrender the primary education of their children to conventional schools. But homeschooling families undertake full-time child-rearing responsibilities for a good twelve years longer. At some point, we should be realistic about the chances of a woman returning to "high school" at age 35. Indeed, the "historical antecedents" to which I referred took for granted that a woman's education would peak at a level far below that of a man.

That said, it will not surprise my readers that I would be largely complacent about this development. On the one hand, I want positive life outcomes for my daughters, and quitting school at age 15 makes these outcomes highly improbable, given the culture we actually have. But in general, I'm not especially enthused about the mass production of female corporate drones, and as far as education's claims to making a woman more "cultured", I would question the efficiency of conventional schooling to achieve this relative to, say, a library card.

Prom Nite

A prom nite story in two parts.

Part 1:

Part 2:

I wonder vaguely if abstinence education would be more successful if it looked more like this.

Signs your Game is Working

Mrs. Φ [6 a.m.]: “I had a dream last night.”

Φ: “Mmmfff”

Mrs. Φ: “I dreamt you had an affair and the girl got pregnant.”

Φ: “Oh? How did that work out?”

Mrs. Φ: “We adopted the baby.”

Φ: “Wow! That’s . . . the nicest thing a girl ever said to me.”

[Later]

Φ: “So . . . did your dream put you in The Mood?”

Mrs. Φ: “Oh, no! That was just a coincidence.”

Don't Try This at Home, Boys and Girls

As I prepared for the last couple of posts on Braver's Divorced Dads, Mrs. Φ caught me reading it. This obviously required some explanation. I explained, truthfully, that it was research on some topics we had discussed in Sunday School the week before last. After we had discussed some of the themes of the book for a while, we had the following exchange:

Mrs. Φ: "Well! I'm so happy we have a solid relationship."

Φ: "I agree. And speaking of which, can I bill this coversation against our discussing-the-relationship time?"

Mrs. Φ: [...]

Mrs. Φ: "You are so lucky have gotten married!"

Φ: "I know! I had to really clean up nice that year."

Braver on Who Leaves the Marriage . . . and Why It Matters

In Chapter 7 of Divorced Dads: Shattering the Myths, Sanford Braver discusses the question of who initiates divorce and why. The answer to the "who" question is straightforward: all studies consistently show that divorce is initiated by the mother in two-thirds of all cases. In fact, while men initiate divorces at about the same rate as in 1950, the rate among women has risen six-fold, accounting for the entirety of the increase in the divorce rate over the last 50 years. This fact is evident from both studies of court filings and survey data, although it supposedly still surprises many people when they learn of it. Braver reports on his own research showing that three years after the divorce, women view the divorce far more positively than men. When women are granted custody of the children, fully two-thirds of them are happy with the divorce even when the husband had initiated it. Among non-custodial fathers, only 50% of the initiators were happy that they had done so, and only 38% were happy with the divorces that their wives had initiated.

Braver also quotes a 1989 study from the National Center of Health Statistics that shows women with children as significantly more likely to be the initiator of their divorces than women without children.*

The following table shows the reasons that both men and women give for their divorces. This data was taken from surveys of divorcing couples; thus, the differing accounts that men and women give can be directly compared. Note that the percentages shown reflect the number of respondents affirming the listed factor as "Very Important" to the breakdown of the marriage and the decision to divorce.

Table 7.1: Listing of Factors Contributing to the Breakdown of Marriage and Decision to Divorce

Factor	Mom %	Dad %	Mom Rank	Dad Rank
Gradual growing apart, losing a sense of closeness	57	52	1	1
Serious differences in lifestyle and/or values	54	33	2	2
Not feeling loved or appreciated by spouse	45	30	3	6
Spouse not able or willing to meet major needs	41	32	4	4
Emotional problems of spouse	38	24	5	11
Husband's extramarital affair	37	9	6	22
Severe and intense fighting, frequent conflict	36	33	7	3
Frequently felt put down or belittled by spouse	35	22	8	13
Spouse not reliable	33	21	9	14
Problems and conflicts with rotes, i.e., division of responsibility for household jobs or other chores outside of house	29	21	10	15
Husband's alcohol abuse	29	5	11	25
Violence between you and spouse	20	10	16	21
Husband's drug abuse	19	3	18	26
Wife's extramarital affair	5	30	24	5
Wife's alcohol abuse	3	8	27	24
Wife's drug abuse	3	6	27	24

The respondents are characterized, here and in the book, as mothers and fathers; the implication is that only divorcees with children participated in the survey. As we can see, respondents could and did list multiple factors as "very important". Significantly, the reasons -- infidelity and abuse -- that, in the public imagination, drive most divorces turn out to be infrequently listed. Infidelity is cited by women in only 37% of divorces and by men in only 30%. And domestic violence didn't even make the top ten reasons. In contrast, the reasons most often cited are the least forensic: "growing apart", "lifestyle differences", "not appreciated", "needs not met".

We the readers do not have access to Braver's survey data, but considering that multiple causes for a divorce could be listed, it would be interesting to see where the overlaps occur. It is possible that, for instance, the "touch-feely" reasons are often accompanied by at least one more-substantive reason like chemical dependency or frequent conflict. However, Braver appears to have the integrity to have let us known if this were obviously the case.

Taken at face value, the survey shows that either the common belief that women only initiate divorce for really good reasons is far from the reality, or the standard of what constitutes a "really good reason" has changed dramatically over the last 50 years. Conservative commentators have almost certainly fallen victim to the first delusion; however, the latter explanation appears to account for the behavior among women in the broader society. As Braver writes:

There is no question that the women's movement has made fundamental positive changes in the opportunities and equality available to both women and men. I agree with most informed observers that the loosening of sex roles has increased opportunity and flexibility and widened the options offered to men as well as women, and improved the quality of lives of all members of the family. This is why I have always been a supporter of the women's movement. Despite these unmistakable benefits, according to influential author Shere Hite in her book, The Hite Report on the Family: Growing Up Under Patriarchy, the women's movement also contended that the traditional nuclear family was "an essentially repressive one" . . . .

As David Popenoe writes: "If men in families can't be reformed, the argument goes, let's throw them out. This perspective typically envisions the nuclear family . . . as a 'patriarchal invention'" . . . .

As these views took hold of the thinking of mainstream society, they undoubtedly also contributed to women's current level of dissatisfaction in marriage. Men have had their consciousness raised as well: men today are performing their roles as fathers and husbands somewhat, but not dramatically, better than in the sixties. But wives' standard of acceptance of husbands' behavior has changed far faster than most husbands' behavior. As women have raised their consciousness, their degree of tolerance for unrewarding marriages or for their husbands' behavior and shortcomings has correspondingly decreased.

* This study, cited in an endnote, is slightly problematic because the numbers given -- 56% of divorces among childless couples are initiated by women while 65% among couples with children are initiated by women -- doesn't combine to get anywhere close to the two-thirds number, unless almost no divorces occur among childless couples. Which would be a pretty depressing commentary on parenthood.

Sanford Braver on the Economics of Divorce

On Wapiti's recommendation, I checked out Divorced Dads: Shattering the Myths, by Sanford Braver, a psychology professor at Arizona State University. The book examines a number of ways in which family law is heavily biased against fathers, and I hope to review the book in more detail in coming posts; however, the particular data that interested me were those dealing with the economics of divorce.

Chapter four of Divorced Dads deals with the way post-divorce standards of living are calculated. Braver explains that standards of living are calculated as ratios to the poverty level income for a family of a particular composition, and provides the following vignette:

[L]et's make up a hypothetical but typical family and see how divorce might affect their standard of living (the calculations are summarized in Table 4.1 [shown]). Since our sample became divorced in 1987, we will be using 1987 figures throughout the chapter. Later, we'll report the computations on our real families.

Let's assume that Rachel and Jeff have two children. Before divorce, he earned $31,000, while she earned $16,733. Their combined family income was therefore $47,733, 4.14 times the poverty level, giving them an income-to-needs ratio of $4.14 ($47,733 divided by $11.519). they divorce, and Rachel gets custody of the two children. Suppose that after the divorce, Jeff pays $500 per month, or $6000 annually in child support, and Rachel increases her work hours (as most mothers in our sample in fact do) and now earns $20,000. Her combined income including child support she receives is $26,000. Hers is now a one-parent/two-child household; the poverty level for this sort of family is $9,151.

For Rachel's standard of living to remain the same, exactly 4.14 times the poverty level, she would have needed to take in $37,885 ($9,151 x 4.14) in total, in salary and child support. Instead, her income-to-needs ratio is now only 2.84 $26,000 divided by $9,151). So her standard of living is now only 69 percent of what it was (2.84, the post-divorce income-to-needs ratio divided by 4.14, the pre-divorce income to needs ratio); it has declined 31 percent. (If the ratio of post-divorce divided by pre-divorce standard of living is less than 100 percent. (If the ratio of post-divorce divided by pre-divorce standard of living is less that 100 percent, subtract the number from 100 percent to get the percent drop or decline.* If the ratio of post-divorce divided by pre-divorce standard of living is more than 100 percent, subtract 100 percent from the number to get the percent gain.)

Jeff's is now considered a single adult/no children household; the poverty level for him is $5,909. For Jeff's standard of living to stay the same, again exactly at 4.14 times the poverty level, he would need to have $24,463 ($5909 x 4.14) left in income after paying child support. Instead, he actually has a little more, $25,000, left. His income-to-needs ratio is now 4.23 $25,000 divided by $5,909). His standard of living is now 102 percent (4.23 divided by 4.14) of what it was before the divorce, a gain of 2 percent.

Table 4.1: Figuring Rachel & Jeff's Post-Divorce Changes in Standard of Living

	Jeff	Rachel	Combined
Pre-Divorce Salary	$31,000	$61,733	$47,733
Pre-Divorce Needs			$11,519
Pre-Divorce Income-to-Needs Ratio			4.14
Post-Divorce Salary	$31000	$20,000
Child-Support	($6000)	$6000
Total Income after Child Support Paid	$25,000	$26,000
Post-Divorce Needs	$5,909	$9,151
Post-Divorce Income-to-Needs Ratio	4.23	2.84
Post-Divorce/Pre-Divorce	102%	69%
Gain/Loss	2%	-102%

Although this method seems fairly straightforward in figuring outhow divorce might affect standards of living, I came to recognize that the method used by Weitzman, and sometimes others (including us) in calculating the "needs adjusted income" was highly misleading and seriously inaccurate for several reasons, which I'll describe in detail next.

Braver goes on to enumerate the difficulties with these calculations:

• Taxes: Custodial parents enjoy multiple tax advantages that non-custodial parents do not.

  • Dad pays taxes on the child support; Mom does not.

  • Mom gets a tax credit for any child care expenses; Dad does not, even when he must make childcare expenditure during visitation periods.

  • Mom's taxes are calculated from the tables for a "head of household"; Dad's taxes are calculated from the much-higher "single" tables.

  • Mom takes the exemptions and credits for household members; Dad does not. (I should add here that this can be, or used to be, negotiated.)

  • Mom's income-to-family-size ratio might make her eligible for the EITC.

• Expense Allocation: The needs ratios shown assume that the custodial parent alone spends money on the children, but in fact non-custodial parents almost always make contributions beyond child-support awards.

  • Two-thirds of Dads report buying clothes for their children.

  • Dad bears the visitation expenses. Not just travel expenses, but all the food, recreation, and child-care during visitation periods, during which he is paying twice for the children's upkeep. (This particular injustice was so egregious that child-support tables were recalculated in 1996 to reflect visitation. But the studies of the 1980s that purported to show female post-divorce immiseration did not.)

Braver recalculates the post-divorce standards of living for his typical family after correcting for these factors, and finds that Jeff now suffers a 15 percent drop in his standard of living, while Rachel suffers only a 5 percent drop. But Braver doesn't end here. He enumerates several other expenses that non-custodial parents must endure:

• Notwithstanding his titular "single" status, Dad must still maintain a residence of sufficient size to accommodate his children during visitation.

• Dad has no say about where Mom chooses to take the children. If she moves out-of-state, or even out of the country, Dad still bears the transportation expenses for visitation.

• Dad's are often ordered to pay medical and dental expenses and insurance as part of the divorce decree, independent of child-support awards.

• Dad usually moves out. Thus Dad must pay for all expenses of setting up a new household. On top of which, he must typically acquire new housing at a much higher price than that which Mom continues to enjoy at the old residence.

Braver brings these revised criteria to his own study with more recent data. He finds that the medium-term economic impact of divorce appears to be evenly distributed between men and women. But he adds an important caveat about the longer term impact:

There are at least two reasons to believe that the earlier we study the economic impact, the more disproportionately disadvantageous to mothers it will appear. Put another way, the longer we wait before assessing teh impact of the divorce, the less it will appear that mothers are disadvantaged. The first reason is that as time goes on, women will progressively upgrade or rehabilitate their education or job skills, earn promotions, and work more hours (as the children age), all of which will help them earn more.

The second factor is remarriage. Statistics show that 75 percent of women and 80 percent of men will remarry, the vast majority within seven years after the divorce. When a woman remarries, she tends to marry someonen who brings substantial income, but relatively few expenses. When a man remarries, however, he tends to marry someone who brings expenses proportinately greater than income. Duncan and Hoffman found that five years after divorce, even the minorithy of women who had not remarried had risen from a 30 percent declind to within six percent of their pre-divorce standard of living, due to their enhanced salary, while those who had remarried now had a living stnadard 25 percent higher than in the year before their divorce.** And Randal Day and Stephen Bahr found that males who remarried suffered a 3 percent decline in per capita family income (compared to their predivorce levels) whiole females experienced a 14 percent increase.

* Braver belabors what appears to be pretty elementary math because this was exactly how Weitzman screwed up her study. As she later admitted (and blamed a grad student for), her "74 percent decline" in a woman's living standards was actually a 26 percent decline.

** My impression is that these values were calculated using the methods of Table 4.1. Using Braver's revised criteria, I would assume that the disparity would be even more dramatic.

Updated and Bumped: the facts on the economics of divorce.

A long standing factoid about the economics of divorce is that it improves a man's standard of living while diminishing a woman's. I first heard this 20+ years ago and took it at face value, but it is hard to square with the anecdotes of men immiserated by child support and alimony orders.

Can anyone point me to any studies that address this question either way?

In the comments, Wapiti points to Christopher Rapp's article that recounts the history behind the factoid. The original claim was made in 1985 by Lenore Weitzman in her book The Divorce Revolution. She subsequently conceded that she had made mathematical errors that exaggerated the disparity, but a more fundamental problem was that her data was drawn from a small sample of divorced couples in Los Angeles. A more representative sample by Atlee Stroup, published in 1994 (exerpted here, sort of), showed that both male and female standard of living declined after divorce, although the standard of living of women declined more, especially in poor households. However, Rapp's article goes on to quote Warren Farrell, author of The Myth of Male Power, to the effect that none of the studies adequately account for the expenses that men have to bear in the wake of a divorce.

Atheists Divorce at Higher Rates

Via Thursday's comment, Vox Day's explanation of that old factoid about Christians divorcing at higher rates than atheists:

However, Barna's conclusions in his 1999 study were marred by a serious problem. The divorce rate he calculated was not based on the percentage of marriages that had failed within each religious affiliation but, rather, the percentage of divorcees out of the total population of the affiliation. Since one cannot get divorced if one has never been married, the conclusions presented a very misleading picture of the comparative likelihood of divorce for Christians, atheists and everyone else. This flaw may be why the study is no longer available on the Barna site; it is certainly the reason that Barna noted in a later study "One reason why the divorce statistic among non-born-again adults is not higher is that a larger proportion of that group cohabits, effectively side-stepping marriage, and divorce, altogether."

Read the whole thing.

IMBs on National Geographic

I couldn't sleep last Friday night, so I found myself watching the "Email Order Bride" episode of the Inside series on the National Geographic channel.

A few thoughts:

• My primary emotion watching the episode was sadness. It profiled two male clients of an International Marriage Broker (IWB) seeking Russian women. We saw profiles of two men: the first, 36yo James, starting his relationship with 30yo Uliana; the second, 3rd grade schoolteacher Gary (age not provided, but I would guess 50yo), who married his Russian fiance' Olga (I would guess 40yo) by the end of the hour. My general impression was that, personality-wise, James had a bit more going for him than Gary, but both of these men were sweet, awkward, and bereft of game. We see James' fawningly complimenting Uliana in a desperately beta kind of way; we see Gary, at the airport to receive Olga, waiting for two hours for her to clear customs, almost in tears at the possibility that she may not have made the flight. It was easy to see why these men faced difficulty in the domestic mating market. They were, in a word, harmless, it both the good and bad senses of the word.

• And then there was . . . Indle King. I try to be skeptical of easy post hoc predictions in which people say, yeah, this guy was obviously dangerous. But looking at the Nat. Geo. clips of the King family's home movies (no doubt selected for affect, but still), it looks to me like Indle's issues went beyond mere lack of game. But on the other hand, what is obvious to us should have been obvious to Anastasia, who had ample opportunity to not marry a man that obviously repelled her. But instead of doing that, she waited until she was securely married in the U.S. to . . . stop having sex with him. I think I can safely say, without "blaming the victim" or justifying murder that Anastasia perpetrated a monstrous fraud on her husband, a fraud for which he had no legal recourse.

• I didn't think either of the two women, Uliana and Olga, were drop-dead beautiful. Uliana was a seven, while Olga was at best a five. But they were each definitely a cut or two above what James and Gary would have qualified for here in the U.S. And it was clear that they were going through what I would call an adjustment in expectations as they realized that, no, Cary Grant didn't subscribe to IMB services. Uliana seemed cheerfully amused at James' goofiness. Olga seemed . . . resigned. Notwithstanding Gary's giddy devotion to her, Olga gave him nothing emotionally except reserved politeness, even as she married him. (Oddly, during their simple civil ceremony, the show only showed Gary stating his vows, which reinforced this impression. Again, film editors wield enormous power in managing impressions in this regard.) Heartbreaking in its way. I dunno, maybe Gary and Olga can both be happy with this arrangement. It appears that IMB marriages are more successful that domestic marriages overall. But I stand by my original warning about how cultural differences can bite your ass.

IMB Regulation and the Age of the Fine Print

For reasons I will explain in a subsequent post, I had occasion to read this description of the "International Marriage Broker Regulation Act of 2005". Broadly speaking, this legislation requires matchmaking and correspondence services connecting Americans and foreigners to research the criminal history of the American client and provide that history to the foreign client.

I'm pretty sure that I've read criticisms of this legislation on MRA sites, but I can't see any objection to this requirement in itself. The obvious question that pops into my head is, if full disclosure of criminal records is such a good idea, why only require it of Americans? Why not require of the foreign client as well?

Oh, that's right: protecting the interests of your own citizens is so . . . pre-1965. Congress doesn't do that anymore.

But here is what I didn't expect:

Definition of an International Marriage Broker. “International marriage broker” is defined as an entity (whether or not U.S.-based) that charges fees for providing matchmaking services or social referrals between U.S. citizens/permanent residents and foreign nationals. The definition also sets forth exceptions so as to exclude nonprofit religious or cultural matchmaking services, and dating services that do not match U.S. citizens/residents with aliens as their principal business and that charge comparable rates and offer comparable services to all clients, regardless of gender or country of citizenship.

Mmmm . . . cui bono?

Here is my speculation: the ethnic lobbies who wrote this legislation realized that background checks on American clients would turn up a lot of people in the country illegally. I also expect that there are substantial numbers of Muslims, Sihks, and Hindus who use these services who would just as soon not be bothered with making these disclosures, and that our ever-obsequious Congress granted them these exemptions. After all, they only wanted to protect immigrant women from white men. If you adhere to some alien culture or pagan religion, well then, it's buyer beware for the women in those relationships.

Divorce, USAF edition

Somebody on the blogroll, or maybe it was a commenter, asked about divorce statistics for people serving on active duty in the armed forces. It just so happened that in its 21 September edition, the Air Force Times (subscription required) published the results of its own study of divorce among Air Force servicemen and women.

Now keep in mind that the Air Force is the best educated and most religious of all the military services, and its statistics are likely not representative of the divorce rate among, say, combat infantrymen. But with that caveat, here is the article, interspersed with my own commentary.

As of August, 70.9 percent of officers and 56.3 percent of enlisted were married, and 4.4 percent of active-duty officers and 7.3 percent of enlisted airmen were divorced.

I can only assume, as I assume the honesty of the Air Force Times, that the 4.4 percent figure includes those who have remarried. These numbers seem encouraging, but they are only a snapshot. They don’t really tell the lifetime likelihood of divorce that an individual serviceman faces.

Among adults in the general population, 50.5 percent were married and 10.5 percent were divorced as of 2007, the latest year for which data is available from the U.S. Census Bureau.

I should point out here that the relevant comparison for measuring the stress of military service on family life is not to compare service members to the population at large, but compare them to that subset with good health and stable employment.

An analysis by Air Force Times of the service’s marriage and divorce statistics turned up surprising conclusions. Many defy easy explanation.

• Female airmen are two to three times more likely than male airmen to be divorced and are less likely to be married. Among active-duty officers, 3.1 percent of men and 10 percent of women are divorced. For enlisted, the numbers are 5.8 percent of men and 13.1 percent of women.

• Officer career fields with both the highest and lowest percentages of divorce are tied to health care. Physicians generally are the least likely to be divorced, and nurses, physician assistants and health care administrators the most likely. Operating room nurses have the highest percentage of divorce, 15.6 percent.

I’m not sure what “defies explanation” about this. I would have predicted that two keys to not getting divorced would be (1) have a high-status job and (2) don’t work with classes of people who are substantially higher status than your husband.

• Some enlisted career fields with the lowest divorce percentages are those most heavily deployed – pararescue; survival, evasion, resistance and escape; tactical air control party; and security forces. Those with the highest percentages include the fields of education and training, paralegal, personnel, family support center and military training instructor.

Measuring divorce by deployability of career field is only a rough proxy of the deployment history of those servicemen who actually get divorced.

The reasons for divorce among airmen are myriad, said Chaplain (Maj.) David Carr, the marriage and family coordinator in the resource division of the Chaplain Corps College, co-located with the Army Chaplain School at Fort Jackson, S.C. But a major factor, he said, is a misunderstanding of what marriage should be and how much work it involves.

Honestly, I’ve never understood what this means. I understand how parenthood is a lot of work. I understand how having a wife (or husband, for that matter) means having someone to make you do stuff you wouldn’t otherwise do. But how is marriage itself work?

Furthermore, Chaplain Carr isn’t necessarily the best judge of this. Since nobody has to give an explanation in court anymore about why they are seeking divorce, all we have are the anecdotes of divorced or struggling couples. And as the article makes clear, those claim that deployment has been a tremendous strain, for a variety of reasons.

The deployments, the TACP operator [being interviewed] said, placed a strain on an essential part of marriage: trust. He sometimes heard about his wife being at a party and became jealous simply because she was around other men. [Note to Mrs. Φ: if I’m ever a “deployed service member,” and you aren’t home or shopping, you’d better be in church, dammit!]

A lack of trust has been a problem that Master Sgt. Mark Wilson has seen in other marriages during his seven deployments. Wilson, the plans and programs superintendent for the 96th Security Forces Squadron at Eglin Air Force Base, FL, described himself as happily married for 22 years.

“I’ve seen several marriage fail [because of it],” he said. “In fact, I’ve seen attempted suicides over jealousy or somebody thinking that their husband or their wife is cheating on them while they’re away. It’s mainly because of the unknown.”

Rather, it’s mainly because of the unproven, which is not the same thing.

What's in a Name?

Trumwill has a post in which he discusses societal norms with respect to the conduct of weddings. The particular norm he examines -- that a father walks his daughter down the aisle to "give her away" -- wasn't one I had been required to think about during my own wedding. The future Mrs. Φ was very attached to the symbolism of this tradition, and as you might expect, I had no objections.

But one of the commenters brought up an issue that had rather more resonance: the last name. I have a vague sense that a fair percentage of women, even ones with no socio-political axe to grind, go through some "separation anxiety" with respect to their maiden names, and Mrs. Φ fell into this percentage. At some point, she made noises about keeping her maiden name, and this became one of the issues we discussed.

Supposedly, there are some cultures that are matrilineal, by which I mean women keep their last names and pass them to their children. (I don't have any specific examples of this, but I am assured that it is so.) Hypothetically, were I the product of such a culture, I would not have any objection to following its rules. I can't think of any theoretical reason why matrilinealism is superior to patrilinealism, or vice-versa.

But . . . in our culture, a man with a wife that keeps her maiden name is saying something very specific. He is aligning himself with . . . those people. And I had no desire to align myself with those people. I had no occasion to keep company with those people, nor did I aspire to. And it didn't matter to me that Mrs. Φ wasn't trying to make any kind of social statement about "equality" or anything. So this was, potentially, a deal-breaker.

Ultimately, the compromise, such as it was, was that she would keep her maiden name "for work". Ultimately, the work never materialized, Mrs. Φ got on the mommy track, and I'm pretty sure we haven't discussed the matter in nine years.

Submission

In Sunday School this week, we studied Colossians 3:18-25. As is fairly typical of my experience, the group had a good discussion of the challenges couples face as they seek to love and submit, what these look like, and how best to be faithful to God's command.

Near the end, our pastor made an interesting observation. He said that in his long experience in ministry -- he is a "Boomer", while the rest of us are "Gen-X'ers" -- he has noticed a dramatic change in the attitudes of the couples under his care, both in group settings and in pre-marital counseling. It used to be, he said, that he could count on significant female opposition to the notion that they would be required to submit to their husbands. He would regularly struggle against the assumption that Col. 3:18 was somehow archaic, or didn't really mean what it said, etc. Whereas now, women are much more open to the principle of submission, more congnizant of God's sovereignty over marriage, and more hopeful that in this way their lives will bring glory to God.

I was considering why this change in attitudes occurred. I have three possibilities, not mutually exclusive:

• Younger women have learned from the mistakes of their Boomer forebears that a constant striving for "equality" does not a successful marriage make.

• Their larger socio-political victory complete, younger women feel freer to choose submission in marriage from a position of strength.

• Evaporative Cooling: the kind of women likely to object to God's order in marriage have long since dissociated themselves from the kind of churches that Φ would likely attend.

Thoughts?

Toby Young on Marriage

From How to Lose Friends and Alienate People:

Up until this point I'd been a confirmed bachelor. I'd briefly considered asking Syrie to marry me but had decided against it on the grounds that I'd be sacrificing far too much. I'd asked myself the following question: Am I ready to give up the possibility of having hot, monkey sex with a string of drop dead killer bimbos in order to settle down and get married? Obviously, the answer was no.

Needless to say, it's only men with girlfriends who have this rose-tinted view of single life. For some reason, we all imagine that if only we weren't shackled to the old ball and chain we'd be living the life of Hugh Hefner. Because Hef managed to pull it off, every sad sack with a dressing gown thinks that living in a mansion in Beverly Hills with a harem of topless lovelies is, at some level, an option. Consequently, when we're weighing up the pros and cons of getting married we never think of the alternative as a solitary, miserable existence punctuated by Stouffer's Chicken A La King and Jenna Jameson videos. Rather, it's always an Austin Powers fantasy in which we're a finger-clicking lothario surrounded by a bevy of min-skirted blondes.

After a tour of duty in Manhattan, all my illusions about the joys of being single had gone. There's something immature and a little sad about wanting to sleep with a different woman every night, particularly if you've only had about five one night stands in your life. In your mid-thirties, chasing sixteen-year-old Swedish schoolgirls is undignified, not to mention illegal in the United States.