Red Family, Blue Family

[RamboLiberal]

Fifty years ago, American family structures were remarkably uniform. The rich married at roughly the same rate as the poor and middle class. Divorce rates were low for the college educated and high school graduates alike. Out-of-wedlock births, while more common among African-Americans, were rare in almost every region and community.

-----

When it comes to drawing lessons from this story, though, the agreement between liberals and conservatives ends. The right tends to emphasize what’s been lost, arguing that most Americans — especially the poor and working-class — would benefit from a stronger link between sex, marriage and procreation. The left argues that the revolution just hasn’t been completed yet: it’s the right-wing backlash against abortion, contraception and sex education that’s preventing downscale Americans from attaining the new upper-middle-class stability, and reaping its social and economic benefits.

This is one of the themes of “Red Families v. Blue Families,” a provocative new book by two law professors, Naomi Cahn and June Carbone. The authors depict a culturally conservative “red America” that’s stuck trying to sustain an outdated social model. By insisting (unrealistically) on chastity before marriage, Cahn and Carbone argue, social conservatives guarantee that their children will get pregnant early and often (see Palin, Bristol), leading to teen childbirth, shotgun marriages and high divorce rates.

This self-defeating cycle could explain why socially conservative states have more family instability than, say, the culturally liberal Northeast. If you’re looking for solid marriages, head to Massachusetts, not Alabama.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/10/opinion/10douthat.html

[ihavenobias]

1. K & R. Here's an interview with one of the authors, June Carbone

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xStPQxup1mw

[Doctor_J]

2. Like "conservative" Gingrinch waited until marriage to have sex

with lots of women besides the ones he was married to.

[mulsh]

3. my very liberal parents were together for 45 years.

Both were virgins when they got married, my dad said if he expected his wife to be one he felt he should too. In fact most of my politically liberal friends and relatives have been with their partners a very long time. Most of them, including my parents planned their families.

Almost all of my conservative friends and relatives have had multiple marriages, especially ironic in the ones who harp about "family values". A great deal of them had "accidents" one of our staunches Catholic great aunts offered to arrange an abortion for my mom when she thought she was pregnant at 45.

almost all of the older generation of the above groups married while in their twenties. Most of their kids waited longer to settle down, if ever.

I know none of this is very scientific.