Monday, December 22, 2014

The M.Guy Tweet, Week of December 14, 2014

1. The Imitation of Marriage, The New York Times
To what extent can the greater stability of upper-class family life, and the habits that have made it possible, be successfully imitated further down the socioeconomic ladder?

2. Multiracial Marriage on the Rise, Brookings Institution
In 1960, before immigration levels to the United States started to rise, multiracial marriages constituted only 0.4 percent of all U.S. marriages. That figure increased to 8.4 percent in 2010 and for recent newlyweds, 15 percent.

3. Sex and Divorce: What’s the Connection?, Family Studies
Most important, multiple sex partners seem to increase the chances of divorce for working class and college-educated Americans alike. (Note here that the association between sex partners and divorce is robust even after controlling for race, ethnicity, age at first marriage, and family structure of origin).

4. Census Bureau Proposes Dropping Some Marriage and Divorce Questions, Pew Research Center
The numbers help guide the distribution of more than $416 billion in federal funds, and are widely used by government officials, businesses, researchers and advocacy groups.

5. The Author Speaks, Psychology Today
That means that negative emotions, like defensiveness and contempt, have more power to hurt a relationship than positive emotions have to help a relationship.

6. Are Gadget-Free Bedrooms the Secret to a Happy Relationship?, The New York Times
One way to find a balance, according to researchers I spoke with, is to organize device-free outings with your significant other. . . At home. . . researchers suggested setting up gadget-free zones, where laptops, iPads and other devices are banned.

7. Parenting Without Marriage [AUDIO], KERA
[Conversation with Isabel V. Sawhill, senior fellow in Economic Studies at the Brookings Institute, on her new book, Generation Unbound: Drifting into Sex and Parenthood without Marriage.]

For more, see here.

Sunday, November 30, 2014

The M.Guy Tweet, Week of November 23, 2014

1. The No. 1 Cause Of Divorce May Not Be What You Think, Deseret News
[O]ur affections often grow toward our investments. Wherever we put our time, money and energy also ends up receiving our passion, interest and affection.

2. How Did Your Parents’ Divorce Affect You?, The Telegraph
Nearly one in three said one parent had tried to turn them against the other and more than a quarter said their parents tried to involve them in the dispute.

3. A Bad Marriage Can Literally Break Your Heart, Especially If You’re A Woman, The Washington Post
So while a lot of marriage counseling may focus on younger couples, the study authors emphasize that older couples would be wise to pay attention to the qualities of their marriages, too.

4. The Benefits: Evaluation Summaries of Healthy Romantic Relationship Programs for Youth, The Dibble Institute
Benefits include: Reduce teen dating violence and abuse and increase youth’s asset. . . significantly delay the onset of sexual activity. . . and decrease peer-to-peer physical violence and improve communications with parents.

5. The Biggest Reason For Income Inequality Is Single Parenthood, The American Enterprise Institute
Research by Harvard economists, Chetty et al. concludes that the single strongest correlate of upward economic mobility across geographic regions of America is the fraction of children living in single-parent families.

6. The Right and Campus Rape, National Review Online
So, in one large class at the University of Virginia, fully 39 percent of the female students report having been directly affected by forcible sexual assault. 

7. What’s Stopping Young Adults From Forming Stable Families?, Family Studies
[T]heir experiences of family fragmentation sharpen their desire to get and stay married, on the one hand, but on the other hand it also shakes their confidence in the durability of marriage. 

For more, see here.

Monday, November 17, 2014

The M.Guy Tweet, Week of November 9, 2014

1. America’s Relationship Status, In Five Maps [Visual], The Washington Post
The FlowingData blog has created these fascinating maps of America’s marital status: The counties in the US with the highest proportion of married, never married, divorced, separated and widowed people.

2. Millennials Have Inherited The Black Marriage Gap, National Public Radio
The cultural change with marriage has been so sweeping that everyone wants someone who they will regard as a soul mate, if you will. The challenge is that it's very difficult to realize that ideal if you're not affluent and well-educated.

3. Marriage Is Pro-Growth, National Review Online
Wilcox and Lerman write that 51 percent of the 1980-2000 decline in male employment is due to the drop in marriage rates, and is highest among unmarried men. 

4. Four-in-Ten Couples are Saying “I Do,” Again, Pew Research
[A]lmost 42 million adults in the U.S. have been married more than once, up from 22 million in 1980.

5. For A Lasting Marriage, Try Marrying Someone Your Own Age, The Atlantic
Marriage is, above all, about 50-50 partnership; differences in ages also mean differences in life experience and cultural reference points.

6. Marital Demography: The Immigrant Difference, Family Studies
But the central finding from Qian’s report – that neither education nor economics matter as much for immigrant family structures as they do for the U.S.-born – raises a number of questions. 

7. Science Says Lasting Relationships Come Down To 2 Basic Traits, Business Insider
"There's a habit of mind that the masters have," Gottman explained in an interview, "which is this: they are scanning social environment for things they can appreciate and say thank you for. They are building this culture of respect and appreciation very purposefully. Disasters are scanning the social environment for partners' mistakes."

For more, see here

Tuesday, November 4, 2014

The M.Guy Tweet, Week of October 26, 2014

1. The Family Deficit, The Washington Post
Sawhill quotes from one respected study that “married women and men live longer; they are less likely to be disabled. . . . [They] have better sex than the unmarried and they are less likely to be lonely.”

2. Want A Successful Career? Look For This Trait In A Spouse., The Washington Post
Yet when it came to the effect of a spouse's personality traits on a person's career, only high scores on conscientiousness had any impact, whether positive or negative.

3. Stress And Substance Abuse Increase More For Women Who Divorce Or Separate, Deseret News National
Married men and women are both less likely to use drugs or medications to relax, at about 17 percent, compared to the roughly 30 percent of separated or divorced men and women who say they do.

4. 8 Ways To A Happy Marriage, American Association of Retired Persons
Many people start out with a fixed idea of what they want from a partner, which becomes an excuse to break up the relationship when they (inevitably) don't get exactly what they expected. Flexible people, by contrast, work hard to figure out their partner, then readjust their expectations as necessary.

5. The Ideal And The Reality Of European Family Size, Family Studies
So it is an open question whether the two-child ideal will contribute to a fertility rebound or the realities of European life will suppress (and possibly even erode) that ideal.

6. For Richer, For Poorer: How Family Structures Economic Success In America [VIDEO], American Enterprise Institute
How much do changes in marriage and family stability affect this shifting economic landscape, the economic status of men, and the health of the American dream?

7. What An Intact Family Has To Do With The American Dream, In Six Charts, American Enterprise Institute
[A]bout one-third of recent increases in family-income inequality and male joblessness, and a significant share of median family-income stagnation, can be linked to the declining share of Americans who are getting and staying married.

For more, see here.

Tuesday, October 21, 2014

The M.Guy Tweet, Week of October 12, 2014

1. Four Ways To Divorce-Proof Your Marriage, Today
If you earn between $50,000 and $75,000 a year, divorce is 39 percent less likely.

2. The Divorce-Proof Marriage, The Atlantic
Couples who dated for at least three years before their engagement were 39 percent less likely to get divorced than couples who dated less than a year before getting engaged.

3. For More Millennials, It's Kids First, Marriage Maybe, National Public Radio
Among young women without a college degree — those like Michelle Sheridan — 55 percent of births are outside marriage, according to an analysis by the research group Child Trends. For those with at least a four-year degree, it's just 9 percent.

4. A Nation Divided By Marriage, Washington Examiner
We know. . . that Americans who pursue a success sequence, in which they first get educated, then get jobs, then get married, then have kids, in that sequence, enjoy markedly higher levels of economic success as well as a lower risk of divorce and poverty.

5. For Richer, For Poorer: How Family Structures Economic Success In America, American Enterprise Institute
How much do changes in marriage and family stability affect this shifting economic landscape, the economic status of men, and the health of the American dream?

6. Couples Who Met Online Three Times More Likely To Divorce, The Telegraph
[T]he new research from Michican suggests that 86 percent of online daters were concerned that profiles contained false information suggesting that trust may have been damaged at an early stage in the relationship.

7. Why Marriage Is the Best Environment for Kids, Brookings Institution
[O]ne of the central themes of the book: how to change “drifters” into “planners” in order to “have people take responsibility and make explicit choices about when to have children, whether to have children, who to have children with, and not to treat it so casually.”

For more, see here.

Monday, October 6, 2014

The M.Guy Tweet, Week of September 28, 2014

1. More Americans Forgo Marriage As Economic Difficulties Hit Home, Wall Street Journal
One in five U.S. adults aged 25 or older had never been married in 2012, a record high, according to a new report by the Pew Research Center that analyzed Census data.

2. Marriage Rates Keep Falling, As Money Concerns Rise, New York Times
Educated, high-income people are still marrying at high rates and tending to stay married, according to economists and demographers who study the issue. Remaining unmarried is more common among the less educated, blacks and the young, Pew found.

3. I Do? No Thanks. The Economics Behind America's Marriage Decline, The Washington Post
In the Pew Research survey, 78 percent of women rated someone with a steady job as “very important” when choosing a spouse. For men, 70 percent said having similar ideas about raising children was most important in choosing a spouse.

4. Convincing Millennials to Invest in MarriageFamily Studies
[I]f young adults come to see. . . marriage as a good not just for the married couple, but for the community, they might see it as something worth doing—and something doable—despite those financial obstacles.

Child poverty is an astounding 45.8 percent for children in single-mother households. For children in married-parent households, it’s nearly five times lower, at 9.5 percent.

“They’re less likely to get divorced. It might be the experience early in life of learning to share so much and live with the exceptional stress of having all those different personalities to deal with.”

7. Reforming the Bachelor and Bachelorette Party, Family Studies
This generation of couples bound for the altar deserves better than feeling trapped in the remnants of “bad ‘80s sex comedies.”

For more, see here.

Monday, September 29, 2014

The M.Guy Tweet, Week of September 21, 2014

Due to vacation schedules, this installment of The M.Guy Tweet will be postponed by one week. Thanks!

Monday, September 15, 2014

The M.Guy Tweet, Week of September 7, 2014

1. Happy Reunions Can Obscure the Challenges that Military Families Face after Deployment, The Washington Post
A study published last year in the Journal of Population Economics found that every month of deployment increased the risk of divorce, but only for couples married for fewer than five years.

2. The Motherhood Penalty vs. the Fatherhood Bonus, The New York Times
For men, meanwhile, having a child is good for their careers. They are more likely to be hired than childless men, and tend to be paid more after they have children.

3. Amicable Divorce 'Is Just as Damaging for Children': Impact of A Split on Youngsters Is Same if Couple Remain Friends or Not, Daily Mail 
"Getting on well might make the parents feel better about their split. But it does little for the children. To them it makes sense if the parents get on well yet won't live together. The 'good divorce' is a myth."

4. Making Marriage-Minded Decisions, National Review Online
People could afford to think more about what they really want, think about what will help them get there, and make decisions about their love - and sex - lives rather than just letting things happen. Too many people give up a lot of options before they have made a choice. 

5. Love Is All You Need: Insights from the Longest Longitudinal Study on Men Ever Conducted, The Art of Manliness
In 1938, researchers at Harvard’s medical school began a study that aimed to. . . discover what factors lead to an “optimum” life. . . “It was the capacity for intimate relationships that predicted flourishing in all aspects of these men’s lives.”

6. AHMREI (The Alabama Healthy Marriage & Relationship Education Initiative) Promo Video, Youtube
"When individuals are empowered with more knowledge and skills - that are science-based skills - they are going to make better decisions and they're going to have healthier relationships. It's good for them. It's good for their children. It spills over into the workplace. And that builds stronger communities."

7. How Conservatives Can Save the Safety Net, American Enterprise Institute
AEI's Brad Wilcox explained how education, work, and family are the core institutions through which the American dream can be made more accessible for struggling Americans.

For more, see here.

Tuesday, September 2, 2014

The M.Guy Tweet, Week of August 24, 2014

1. Lessons for All of Us Can Be Found in the McDonnells’ Imploding Marriage, The Washington Post
“You should be listening to try to understand what your partner’s worldview is, not just listening to gather information with which you can defend the way you see things. . ."

2. The Decisive Marriage, The New York Times
“Couples who slide through their relationship transitions have poorer marital quality than those who make intentional decisions about major milestones,” Dr. Rhoades and her colleagues wrote.

3. Could Relationship History Hinder Your Chance of a Happy Marriage?, Medical News Today
"In most areas, more experience is better. . . When it comes to relationship experience, though, we found that having more experience before getting married was associated with lower marital quality."

4. MatriMoney: For the Newly Wed, Having Open, Ongoing Money Talks is Key, The Denver Post
Kennedy herself is a proponent of a "his, hers and theirs" approach, which can be a good middle ground between "all-in" and "all-separate.

5. A 'Fatherhood Bonus' for Working Dads Can Benefit Moms Too, The Los Angeles Times
If the fatherhood bonus encourages more dads to take on childcare responsibilities, that’s great for women, who often carry the larger parenting load, and for men, who will get to be more involved in their kids’ daily lives without fear of jeopardizing their career.

6. Best-selling Authors to Hold Marriage 'Date Night' in Jackson, The Jackson Sun
[S]he and Les were motivated to share the "growing mountain" of research about fighting within a marriage — including the fact that a marriage's success can be based on the way a couple handles conflict with more than a 90 percent accuracy rate.

7. How Does Unemployment Affect Family Arrangements for Children?, Urban Institute
We find that for children initially living with two parents, an unemployment event is associated with a higher probability of a transition to any other type of family.

For more, see here.

Sunday, August 17, 2014

The M.Guy Tweet, Week of August 10, 2014

1. The New Instability, New York Times
In 1969, by the time men reached age 25, three-quarters were earning wages that could support a family of four above the poverty line. By 2004, it took until age 30 for the same percentage of men to reach this income level.

2. What Should Couples Do When Downsizing in Retirement?, Wall Street Journal
Downsizing can be a useful way to convert some of this wealth into liquid financial assets to be used for other retirement expenses.

3. Counselors Say Men Are More Willing to Try Couples Therapy When It Focuses on Results, The Wall Street Journal
Dr. Brooks has developed a male-friendly therapy practice . . . that focuses more on practical advice and getting results than on talking through problems.

4. New Campaign Helps Couples See 'Love Nuggets' in Relationships, Deseret News National
Relationships Foundation, a British research organization, found that family break-ups cost the country about $77 billion in 2013.

5. More Unmarried Moms Are Living With Partners, NBCNews
[B]irths in what researchers call “cohabitating unions” jumped to 58 percent of all nonmarital births during the period 2006 to 2010, up from 41 percent in 2002, according to. . . the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

6. Why Doesn’t Living Together Before Marrying Decrease the Risk of Divorce?, Family Studies
When they move in together, many people increase their constraints for staying in a relationship before they have reached a mutual dedication to doing so.

7. The 29-Year Effects of Having An Educated-Non-Teen Mom, Child Trends
29-Year Effects of Having an Educated, Non-Teen Mom - See more at: http://www.childtrends.org/the-29-year-effects-of-having-an-educated-non-teen-mom/#sthash.JfXWuWK8.dpuf
The 29-Year Effects of Having an Educated, Non-Teen Mom - See more at: http://www.childtrends.org/the-29-year-effects-of-having-an-educated-non-teen-mom/#sthash.JfXWuWK8.dpuf


The 29-Year Effects of Having an Educated, Non-Teen Mom

- See more at: http://www.childtrends.org/the-29-year-effects-of-having-an-educated-non-teen-mom/#sthash.JfXWuWK8.dpuf
The largest gain in an offspring’s income at age 29 is a result of their mother delaying first birth and of her completing high school. - See more at: http://www.childtrends.org/the-29-year-effects-of-having-an-educated-non-teen-mom/#sthash.JfXWuWK8.dpuf
The largest gain in an offsprings' income at age 29 is a result of their mother delaying first birth and of completing high school.

For more, see here.

Wednesday, July 30, 2014

The M.Guy Tweet, Week of July 20, 2014

1. If Marriage Moves Beyond Our Means, The New York Times
The situation is the most dire at the bottom of the economic ladder, where marriage “has all but disappeared in the poorest communities” — though not from a lack of respect for it, the authors say.

2. Marriage Falls Out of Favour for Young Europeans As Austerity And Apathy Bite, The Guardian
"But there are also economic causes because marriage means having a celebration and often this celebration is big and costs a lot. So in a time of crisis like this, people live together in an [unmarried] cohabitation."

3. The Best Way to Make Up After Any Argument, The Wall Street Journal
 "The biggest thing in making up is to understand that conflict is normal in a relationship," says Hal Shorey, a clinical psychologist and associate professor. . . "You don't want to avoid it. You want to manage it."

4. Are Evangelicals Bad for Marriage?, National Review Online
Using Add-Health data, Charles E. Stokes, Amber Lapp, and David Lapp looked at divorce risk among religiously affiliated people who marry “early” (ages 18 to 26) and found that for both conservative Protestants and Catholics, church attendance (but not affiliation) dramatically reduces divorce.

5. Marriage About More Than Finding Soul Mate: Column, USA Today
"With women more empowered to support themselves and marriage partially drained of its economic purpose, the young are inclined to focus on marriage's potential for deep emotional and sexual connection."

6. Millennials Say No to Marriage, CNN Money
If the current pace continues, more than 30% of Millennial women will remain unmarried by age 40, nearly twice the share of their Gen X counterparts, according to a recent Urban Institute report.

7. Moving In and Moving On, Family Studies
[C]ouples with clear plans to marry before cohabiting, along with those who marry without cohabiting, tend to have happier marriages and lower odds of divorce than those who move in together before having a clearly settled commitment to the future in marriage.

For more, see here.

Monday, July 14, 2014

The M.Guy Tweet, Week of July 6, 2014

1. Our Love Affair With Predicting Divorce, The New York Times
By analyzing how the couples talked, the study authors. . . were able to create a model that predicted with close to 94 percent accuracy which of them would be divorced within three years. 

2. How Men and Women Think Differently About Divorce, Family Studies
To put that more simply: Thinking about leaving one’s marriage was associated more with an absence of positive connection for women and the presence of negative interaction for men.

3. Love & Lust, Psychology Today
In the prime years, ages 25 to 59, married individuals were five times more likely to have sex two to three times a week (25 percent) than singles (5 percent).

4. More Kids Born Outside Marriage, But Fewer Teen Birth, The Wall Street Journal 
In 1976, 30.8% of women between the ages of 25 and 29 were childless. In 2012, the number was 49.4%.

5. The National Marriage Age Is Increasing, But Not For This Group Of People, Deseret News
Women who don't put off marriage are beginning to say that marriage is a just as important as career accomplishment.

6. Why The Decline In Marriage Among First-Time Mothers Matters For Their Children, The Washington Post
"[T]hese data suggest that, even over the course of many years, women with a nonmarital first birth do not catch up to their counterparts whose first birth was in marriage."

7. Why Readers, Scientifically, Are The Best People To Fall In Love With, Elite Daily
[T]hose who read fiction are capable of the most empathy and “theory of mind,” which is the ability to hold opinions, beliefs and interests apart from their own.

For more, see here.

Monday, June 16, 2014

The M.Guy Tweet, Week of June 8, 2014

1. Daddy's Influence? The Surprising Connection Between Fathers And Their Offspring During Pregnancy, Today
Infants whose fathers were absent— and had no involvement in the pregnancy— were more likely to be born with lower birth weight and to be born prematurely. 

2. Protecting Women and Girls, National Review Online
We were particularly concerned with spotlighting the danger that family instability — and the presence of an unrelated male in the home — poses to girls (and boys), a danger that is markedly lower for children in intact families.

3. Marriage And Money (Part One) -- Couples' Hindsight After The Honeymoon Is Over, The Wall Street Journal
[W]hen asked about important attributes when considering a spouse, 95 percent of respondents rate "financial responsibility" as important, with "physical attractiveness" and "career ambition" trailing at 86 percent and 77 percent, respectively.

4. For Millennials, Parenthood Trumps Marriage, Pew Research
Pew Research surveys also find that Millennials are less likely than adults ages 30 and older to say that a child needs a home with both a father and mother to grow up happily and that single parenthood and unmarried couple parenthood are bad for society.

5. The Transformative Power of Fatherhood, The National Review Online
Indeed, Harvard sociologist Robert Sampson has found that one of the better predictors of violence at the neighborhood level is the presence of large numbers of fatherless homes.

6. Obama Gets It Right, When It Comes to Fatherhood, Family Studies
Obama’s words are consistent with the general tenor of the research on fatherhood in the United States, which suggests that dads play an important role in increasing the odds that children thrive—emotionally, socially, and economically—across the nation.

7. Social Services Minister Kevin Andrews Says Taxpayers Could Provide Parents With Marriage Education, The Australian
He said before couples had a baby they did antenatal classes, were given information about the birth process and how to look after a new-born but no support was offered to help couples themselves deal with the life-changing event.

For more, see here.

Tuesday, June 3, 2014

The M.Guy Tweet, Week of May 25, 2014

1. One Wealthy Couple's Mission to Save Marriages, En Masse, National Public Radio
"What most people do, in getting into a serious conversation, is make mistakes right from the beginning. . . So these are structured, sensitive ways to get into — and stay with — a delicate conversation."

2. Pro-Family Policies to Strengthen Marriage and Help Children, Family Studies
Given their size in the population, and the central role that they have played in the American experiment, the growing fragility of family life in Middle America is cause for concern.

3. Many Moral Attitudes Have Changed, but Infidelity Remains Very Unacceptable, Sliding vs. Deciding
People's behavior tilts strongly toward increased faithfulness in marriage while cohabitation is not actually associated with higher levels of fidelity. Many people believe that it is or should be but, in fact, cohabiters have levels of faithfulness similar to daters. 

4. Building Strong Marriages, One at a Time, Public Discourse
Among women with less than a high school diploma, 65 percent of births are to single mothers; among those with no more than a high school diploma, the rate is about 55 percent. . . In contrast, among college graduates, the rate is not much higher than the overall rate back in the 1960s: about 8 percent.

5. 2014 Morning Roundtables: Success Stories of Twogether in Texas, NARME (National Association of Relationship and Marriage Education) Conference
Hear about how premarital legislation in Texas has been put into action. There will be providers from Texas to talk about the success of this program. Come learn how to bring this legislation into your state as well.

6. To Help Young Women, Offer Relief from Student Loan Debt, Family Studies
All of this raises the question: Are women putting off the things that studies consistently find they still want—marriage and family—because they want to, or because they feel like they have no choice?

7. Relate Cambridge Offers Counselling Gift Vouchers as Wedding Presents, BBC
"Relate Cambridge is recognising the importance of the preventative work it does on relationships with the new gift vouchers," the charity's Elaine Taylor said.

For more, see here.

Monday, May 19, 2014

The M.Guy Tweet, Week of May 11, 2014

1. Mother's Day 100-Year History A Colorful Tale Of Love, Anger and Civic Unrest, Deseret News
As they celebrate the day with their moms, most children — young or old — won’t know it’s in fact a holiday with a colorful history, started by a woman who adored her own mother but later tried very hard to take the holiday back.

2. Divorce Corp Documentary: How To Make Divorce Better, Forbes
The name of the film is Divorce Corp. . . It’s a $50 billion a year industry. How did it become this big? What are the problems with the current process, and what are some of the solutions?

3. Kevin Durant And The Absence Of Fathers, The Seattle Times
As such, the speech was a testimony to the power of a mother’s love. But it was also a reminder: A father’s absence has power, too. [See tribute to his mother here.]

4. Divorce Is Hardest on Already Disadvantaged Children, Family Studies
It was his analysis of the “Marital Instability Over the Life Course” study. . . that showed how it’s not the end of high-conflict marriages that injures children but the end of low-conflict ones. (Half of U.S. divorces are low-conflict.)

5. Love Overcomes Life’s Inevitable Sorrow, The Washington Post
My husband was part of the Grant Study at Harvard, which starting in 1938 examined nearly 300 “normal” male students. . . came to this conclusion about what made the subjects happy: “Happiness is love. Full stop.”

6. Why Men Resist Marriage Even Though They Benefit the Most From It, Family Studies
They associated marriage with a number of increased responsibilities and with a greater possibility of financial loss.

7. In Relationships, Understanding—Not Agreement—Is Key, Why?, Psychology Today
Conflicts in couples’ viewpoints needn’t cause conflicts in their relationship.

For more, see here.

Monday, May 12, 2014

The M.Guy Tweet, Week of April 27, 2014

1. Shotgun Weddings Give Way to Cohabitation in Surprise Pregnancies, The Washington Post
The latest analyses by researchers from those federal agencies — not yet published — suggest a drop to single digits as more couples opt to live together rather than marry and don’t want a child to rush them into marriage.

2. Working-Class Fathers Shouldn’t Be So Easily Dismissed, The New York Times
More and more young women are already making the choice to raise children alone, but while that choice may be rational, we as a society should hesitate before embracing it as a way forward or even accepting it as a done deal.

3. Fewer Marriages, More Divergence: Marriage Projections for Millennials to Age 40, The Urban Institute
We find that the percentage of millennials marrying by age 40 will fall lower than for any previous generation of Americans, even in a scenario where marriage rates recover considerably. 

4. The Case for Divorce Reform, Family Studies
Polling consistently shows that more than half of Americans favor more speed bumps on the road to divorce, especially for couples with children.

5. The Market Forces Behind the Marriage Gap, Family Studies
These changes fundamentally alter marriage markets—that is, the terms on which men and women find it worthwhile to forge lasting relationships—and they do so in ways that take the top and the bottom of the socio-economic system in different directions.

6. New Study Says Divorce Can Be Contagious, CBSNews
The study [from Brown University] found that 75 percent of participants were more likely to get divorced if a friend was divorced, and 33 percent were more likely to end their marriage even if a friend of a friend got divorced.

7. The Science of Happily Ever After: How Millennials Beat the Odds to Find Love, TIME
It’s what social psychologist Barry Schwartz calls the “tyranny of freedom”: a feeling of being overwhelmed, uncertain and anxious when we are given too many choices and no updated framework for managing those choices.

For more, see here.

Tuesday, April 22, 2014

The M.Guy Tweet, Week of April 13, 2014

1. Why Your Spouse May Be ‘Hangry’ for a Fight, ABCNews
“Self-control, impulse control uses energy, both mental and physical. . . When we deplete that energy, we have a higher tendency of doing things we regret, such as hurting our loved ones.”

2. More Women Staying Home With Young Kids, USA Today
Nearly three in 10 American mothers are now stay-at-home moms who don't hold a job outside the home, reversing a long-term decline that hit its low point in 1999, a new survey finds.

3. ‘Marriage Penalty’ Takes A Bite Out Of Working Families, The Washington Post
Despite all the morality rhetoric spewed by some policymakers and pundits, Congress has expressed peculiarly little interest in removing disincentives for married moms to work or for working parents to marry.

4. Women’s Wages Are Up, But Many Families’ Incomes Are Down: Why? A Q&A with Brad Wilcox, AEIdeas
[D]eclines in men’s income and marriage appear to have offset increases in women’s income for a large minority of American families.

5. Ignoring an Inequality Culprit: Single-Parent Families, Wall Street Journal
Abuse, behavioral problems and psychological issues of all kinds, such as developmental behavior problems or concentration issues, are less common for children of married couples than for cohabiting or single parents, according to a 2003 Centers for Disease Control study of children's health. The causal pathways are about as clear as those from smoking to cancer.

6. Why Is The Teen Birth Rate Falling?, Pew Research Center
Furthermore, among never-married teens who have had sex, 78% used a contraceptive method the first time they had sex, 86% used contraception during their most recent sex and 20% used dual methods (e.g., a hormonal method and a condom) during their most recent sex, all significant increases since 1988.

7. Marriage and Happiness: David Blankenhorn Interviews Charles Murray, The Huffington Post
He stresses that "cultural changes are the only effective ones," especially when you want to communicate that "bringing a child into the world when you are not emotionally, intellectually, [or] financially prepared to care for one, is profoundly wrong." 

For more, see here.

Monday, April 7, 2014

The M.Guy Tweet, Week of March 30, 2014

1. Work, School And Marriage: Americans At Age 27, National Public Radio
By a substantial margin, women are more likely than men to be married at age 27 and generally, people with more education are more likely to be married than those with less.

2. Marriage Healthy for the Heart? Study Tracks Millions in U.S., NBC News
A study of more than 3.5 million Americans finds that married people are less likely than singles, divorced or widowed folks to suffer any type of heart or blood vessel problem.

3. Don't Worry, America: Millennials Still Want To Marry, Forbes
The latest Monitoring the Future report found that 78% of female high school seniors and 70% of males say that having a good marriage and family life is “extremely important” to them—numbers that are virtually unchanged since the 1970s.

4. Can We Strengthen Marriages? Results of the Supporting Healthy Marriage Evaluation, Family Studies
And they reported a little less psychological abuse, substance abuse, and infidelity, each of which is a strong predictor of subsequent divorce. SHM couples reported more marital happiness, greater warmth and support, and more positive and less negative communication, as well.

5. Divorce: It’s Way Bigger Than We Thought, Family Studies
Worse, when you control for the change in the age of the population between 1980 and today—the population of married men and women is considerably older now—the divorce rate has actually risen 40%. 

6. What If Everything You Knew About Poverty Was Wrong?, Mother Jones
He says Edin's work has helped inform his effort in Maryland to pass legislation overhauling the welfare system to focus not just on women and children, but on couples and joint parenting.

7. Advice for a Happy Life by Charles Murray, The Wall Street Journal
Many merger marriages are happy, but a certain kind of symbiosis, where two people become more than the sum of the individuals, is perhaps more common in startups.

For more, see here.

Sunday, March 23, 2014

The M.Guy Tweet, Week of March 16, 2014

1. Grieving the Gray Divorce, Chicago Tribune
As divorce rates among adults 50 and older continue to hit an all-time high, adult children of long-time married couples can find themselves shocked when their folks announce they're splitting — and find themselves grieving with few places to turn.

2. After Online Dating, Online Making Up, The New York Times
“It’s definitely helped, and now he’s getting to the point where he sends spontaneous affectionate messages on his own, which means a lot to me, and he seems more affectionate in general,” she said.

3. Time to "Go Ahead and Shack Up"?, Family Studies
Most people absorbing some aspect of recent news stories would conclude that there are no risks to cohabiting. [See the real findings about cohabition mid-article].

4. David Cameron and George Osborne Urged 'to Stop Ignoring £46 Billion Cost of Family Breakdowns', The Telegraph
A new report from the Relationship Foundation, a Cambridge-based think tank, finds that the cost of such breakdowns is £46 billion a year, equivalent to £1,541 per taxpayer.

5. Government-Funded Relationship Education Can Work, The Atlantic
The government has invested heavily in these programs because the single most important predictor of a father's engagement with his children is how well he and the mother get along, regardless of marital status.

6. Can Anything Really Be Done about Family Breakdown and American Poverty? A Q&A with Brad Wilcox, AEIdeas
I think we have to take a page here from the progress we’ve made on teen pregnancy in the United States, where we’ve cut the teen pregnancy rate by 50% in recent decades because of a concerted campaign that’s been supported by the government, by civic institutions, and by major cultural actors to get behind a common message to our younger Americans. . . And if we can change that behavior, who’s to say we can’t also reconnect marriage and parenthood for Americans in their 20s, where now, today, most non-marital births take place.

7. Teen Births Are Falling: What’s Going On?, Brookings
We attribute the decline in the more recent period in the U.S. to a continuation of those broadly experienced ongoing trends plus an acceleration due largely to the effects of the high unemployment rate and to the impact of media influences, particularly MTV’s reality TV show, 16 and Pregnant.

For more, see here.

Monday, March 10, 2014

The M.Guy Tweet, Week of March 2, 2014

1. Older Americans' Breakups Are Causing A 'Graying' Divorce Trend, NPR News
"Back in 1990, fewer than 1 in 10 persons who got divorced was over the age of 50," says Brown. But today, "1 in 4 people getting divorced is 50 or older."

2. For Utah Parents, Hurdle to Divorce Could Advance, ABC News
Alan Hawkins, a professor at Brigham Young University's School of Family Life, said Nielson's bill would help lower the numbers of people who divorce by installing a necessary yellow light.

3. Ala. Looks At Mandating Divorce Classes For Parents, USA Today
The bill, sponsored by GOP Rep. Bill Poole of Northport, Ala., would require couples with children younger than 16 to take a four-hour class to increase parents' sensitivity to their children's needs during a divorce or separation proceeding.

4. Surprisingly, Most Married Families Today Tilt Neo-Traditional, Family Studies
It’s new in the sense that today’s married dads do a lot more child care and housework than dads of the 1950s, and that most married moms are working in the paid labor force. But it’s “traditional” in the sense that most husbands take the lead when it comes to breadwinning, and most wives take the lead when it comes to childrearing.
 
5. All Sex All the Time, National Review Online
It would seem, though, that an effective approach to lowering the unplanned-pregnancy rate among unmarried twentysomething women wouldn’t encourage behaviors — such as drunken, casual sex or multiple sexual partners — that can have a negative long-term impact on the still nearly universal aspiration toward marriage.

6. The Father Factor: What Happens When Dad Is Nowhere To Be Found?, Deseret News
Twenty-four million American children - one in three - are growing up in homes without their biological fathers, the 2011 Census says. Children in father-absent homes, it notes, are almost four times more likely to be poor.
Twenty-four million American children — one in three — are growing up in homes without their biological fathers, the 2011 Census says. Children in father-absent homes, it notes, are almost four times more likely to be poor.
Read more at http://www.deseretnews.com/article/865597043/The-father-factor-What-happens-when-dad-is-nowhere-to-be-found.html#tmh4LytfCY9yOm4G.99
Twenty-four million American children — one in three — are growing up in homes without their biological fathers, the 2011 Census says. Children in father-absent homes, it notes, are almost four times more likely to be poor.
Read more at http://www.deseretnews.com/article/865597043/The-father-factor-What-happens-when-dad-is-nowhere-to-be-found.html#tmh4LytfCY9yOm4G.99
Twenty-four million American children — one in three — are growing up in homes without their biological fathers, the 2011 Census says. Children in father-absent homes, it notes, are almost four times more likely to be poor.
Read more at http://www.deseretnews.com/article/865597043/The-father-factor-What-happens-when-dad-is-nowhere-to-be-found.html#tmh4LytfCY9yOm4G.99

Twenty-four million American children — one in three — are growing up in homes without their biological fathers, the 2011 Census says. Children in father-absent homes, it notes, are almost four times more likely to be poor.
Read more at http://www.deseretnews.com/article/865597043/The-father-factor-What-happens-when-dad-is-nowhere-to-be-found.html#tmh4LytfCY9yOm4G.99
7. How to Talk So Your Partner Will Listen, WebMD
Researchers at the University of Chicago found that most married couples don't communicate with their partners any better than they do with strangers.

For more, see here.

Monday, February 24, 2014

The M.Guy Tweet, February 16, 2014

1. The All-or-Nothing Marriage, The New York Times
The average marriage today is weaker than the average marriage of yore, in terms of both satisfaction and divorce rate, but the best marriages today are much stronger, in terms of both satisfaction and personal well-being, than the best marriages of yore.

2. The Science Behind a Happy Relationship (Graphic), Happify
[Example] Couples who can put a positive spin on their marriage have a 94% chance of experiencing a happy future together.

3. 5 Facts About Love And Marriage, Pew Research Center
In a Pew Research Center survey conducted last year, 88% of Americans cited love as a “very important” reason to get married, ahead of making a lifelong commitment (81%) and companionship (76%). 

4. Marriage Quality May Influence Heart Disease Risk, The Chicago Tribune
"The most intriguing finding was that within a couple, only if both of them felt ambivalent towards their partner did you see this elevated (heart disease) risk," said Bert Uchino, a psychologist at the University of Utah and lead author of the study.

5. How Single Motherhood Hurts Kids, The New York Times
The typical American single mother is younger than her counterpart in other developed nations. She is also more likely to live in a community where single motherhood is the norm rather than an alternative life choice.

6. Marriage Bonus and Penalty Tax Calculator, Tax Policy Center: Urban Institute and Brookings Institution
Conversely, the couple receives a “marriage bonus” if its partners pay less income tax as a married couple than they would have as two single individuals.

7. In Our Opinion: Fatherhood Hasn't Received The Attention It Deserves, Deseret News
“The time a dad spends with his children is a particularly strong predictor of how empathetic a child will become. . ."

For more, see here

Monday, February 17, 2014

The M.Guy Tweet, February 9, 2014

1. Love, Actually: Teaching Generation Y The Basics Of A Strong Relationship, New York Times
Their romance operandi — hooking up and hanging out — flouts the golden rule of what makes marriages and love work: emotional vulnerability.

2. What's The Secret To A Long And Lasting Marriage? (VIDEO), Fox News
Divorce and unwed childbearing cost US taxpayers a whooping 112 billion dollars every year and is costing our country in more ways than one.

3. Candy And Flowers: Romance Alive And Well Among Young Couples, Washington Times
"The fact that we know we can really help couples succeed in their relationship together is encouraging, said Ms. Howell. “As young couples gain access to these classes, it really helps build [their] confidence that we, as a young couple, can make it together.”

4. Forever Valentine: Study Shows Marriage Gets Better In Old Age, UC Berkley News Center
The emotional story for long-term marriages is really quite positive. People who get through the first 15 years of marriage learn to value each other.

5. Marriage Education Programs Can Help Low-income Families But Need Bolstering, Report Says, Deseret News
The interventions are especially crucial for children because kids in unstable families "suffer physically, have mental health issues, they're lonelier, and just like the intergenerational cycle of poverty, there's intergenerational transmission of divorce," said Hawkins.

6. Culture Of Divorce, Wealth Of Options Conspire To Keep Singles Single, Knox News
One is cultural, he said, as the first generation of children to grow up witnessing mass divorce (now in their 20s and 30s) worry that relationships are so risky that they constantly hedge their bets.

7. Map: The Countries That Feel the Most Love in the World, The Atlantic
That last stat comes from what the economist Justin Wolfers has described as "the most comprehensive global index of love ever constructed."

For more, see here

Monday, February 10, 2014

The M.Guy Tweet, February 2, 2014

1. How When Harry Met Sally Explains Inequality, The Atlantic
That's high-earning college grads marrying each other—which a new paper estimates has increased inequality by 25 percent.

2. Does A More Equal Marriage Mean Less Sex?, New York Times
Couples in which the husband did plenty of traditionally male chores reported a 17.5 percent higher frequency of sexual intercourse than those in which the husband did none.

3. New Census Data Show More Americans Are Tying The Knot, But Mostly It’s The College-Educated, Pew Research
Thus, almost the entire increase in new marriages (87%) from 2011 to 2012 is accounted for by the college-educated.

4. Marriage: What’s Love Got To Do With It? Historically? Very Little, Salt Lake Tribune
The ideal of love as a primary reason for marriage began to spread in the late 18th century and early 19th century, partly due to the French and American revolutions.

5. Poll: Is Dating Too Expensive?, The Guardian
"We're all going to be single forever because no one knows they're on a date anymore," TIME lamented last month, prompted by a survey from online dating powerhouses JDate and Christian Mingle which showed that 72% of singles ages 25-29 were confused about whether or not they were on a date.

6. Unequal Partners, Slate
Among college-educated people, in particular, the tendency is not so much to marry within your community as to marry within your educational cohort.

7. National Marriage Week USA Tool Kit, National Marriage Week USA
From February 7th to 14th every year -- is a collaborative campaign to strengthen individual marriages, reduce the divorce rate, and build a stronger marriage culture, which in turn helps curtail poverty and benefits children.

For more, see here

Monday, January 27, 2014

The M.Guy Tweet, Week of January 19, 2014

1. Does Marriage Make Sense For Millennials?, Forbes
A scant 30% claim that a successful marriage is an important achievement for them, well behind priorities such as having a high-earning career or being a good parent.

2. Millennials Talk Marriage: For Richer And For Poorer, The Guardian
To find out how millennials really feel about marriage, we turned to Guardian readers and asked: is marriage dead, or is this all about money? Sifting through responses from all over the world, we discovered that marriage isn’t as unpopular among millennials as one would think. 

3. Love and Work on a Timetable, The Wall Street Journal
Some couples respond by making career tradeoffs right away. Others avoid committing to a relationship at all. Ms. Fayal and Mr. Blake chose a third way.

4. Three Policies to Close the Class Divide in Family Formation, The Brookings Institution 
For unmarried women under 30, 70% of pregnancies are unintended. And unintended pregnancy is most common among those with the least advantage.

5. Study: Conservative Protestants’ Divorce Rates Spread To Their Red State Neighbors, The Washington Post
“What I can see in this study is the obvious shortcomings of a culture of ‘romantic individualism,’ one that’s toxic to marriage, rather than a warning to wait until you’re ‘older’ to marry.”

6. Daddy Track: The Case for Paternity Leave, The Atlantic
Paternity leave is a chance to intervene at what one study called “a crucial time of renegotiation”: those early, sleep-deprived weeks of diaper changes and midnight feedings, during which couples fall into patterns that turn out to be surprisingly permanent.

7. Colorado Initiative Would Mandate Pre-wedding Education, The Washington Post
A proposed initiative that could land a spot on the Colorado ballot would require couples who want to get married to go through 10 hours of pre-wedding marriage education.

For more, see Can You Learn To Wed? Law Proposed For Pre-marriage Classes (VIDEO), Today Show [Note: Start at 9:10]

For more, see here

Sunday, January 19, 2014

The M.Guy Tweet, January 12, 2014

1. How to Fight Income Inequality: Get Married, The Wall Street Journal
A better and more compassionate policy to fight income inequality would be helping the poor realize that the most important decision they can make is to stay in school, get married and have children—in that order.

2. Why Marriage Won’t Solve Poverty, The Nation
The right fails to see that what’s changed isn’t just the moral status of marriage, but the institution’s economic underpinnings, particularly the collapse of decent jobs for working-class men. 

3. Wealthy Women Can Afford to Reject Marriage, but Poor Women Can't, The Atlantic 
There's a cognitive dissonance in Ehrenreich's straight-up dismissal of the economic benefits of marriage, because the statistics tell an awkward truth: Financially, married women tend to fare much better than unmarried women.

4. Why the Government Should Promote Relationship Skills, Family Studies
As Ruby Payne outlines in her book A Framework for Understanding Poverty, poverty is not just financial. These days, it often also entails growing up without a father and later lacking stable and satisfying romantic relationships. Surely those problems are worth addressing along with financial deprivation.

5. Can Uncle Sam Sell Americans on Marriage?, The Atlantic
"I don’t know anyone who sees these programs as making a big dent in poverty," he said. "What I hear about is this is another tool that addresses a crucial factor in poverty. It makes a more complete toolbox."

6. To Defeat Poverty, Look to Marriage, The Washington Post
More to the point, we know that being unmarried is one of the highest risk factors for poverty. And no, splitting expenses between unmarried people isn’t the same.

7. W. Bradford Wilcox: Marriage for Single Mothers is Not a Panacea in War on Poverty, The Deseret News
Ironically, the CCF report just confirms wisdom recently articulated in the report Knot Yet: The Benefits and Costs of Delayed Marriage in America: namely, men, women and children are much more likely to enjoy a stable and supportive family life when they sequence marriage before parenthood.

For more, see here

Monday, January 13, 2014

Sunday, January 5, 2014

The M.Guy Tweet, December 29, 2013

1. More Moms In Arizona Skip Marriage, AZ Central
In Arizona in 2012, 70 percent of the unmarried women who had babies had a high-school diploma or less.

2. Reclaiming Fatherhood After Afghanistan, The New York Times
I must have thrown away 20 rough drafts with tears in my eyes as I tried to describe to our unborn daughter how much I loved her, quietly fearing that she would never know me beyond those few words.

3. Healthily Ever After: Study Finds Happily Married Couples Enjoy Better Health, PennLive
The study followed 1,681 married individual over two decades – the longest study on the topic to date – and measured marital quality in terms of happiness and satisfaction as well as marital problems such as how often couples argued and over what.

4. Lowry: The Rich Aren’t Holding Back The Poor, The Salt Lake Tribune
"Census data show that if all Americans finished high school, worked full time at whatever job they then qualified for with their education, and married at the same rate as Americans had married in 1970, the poverty rate would be cut by around 70 percent — without additional government spending."

5. Single Fathers Seek Equal Opportunity, Battle Creek Enquirer
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, about 4 percent of children live with single fathers compared to 23.7 percent of children who live with single mothers.

6. Prevention and Relationship Enhancement Program (PREP), NREPP
The Prevention and Relationship Enhancement Program (PREP) is a marriage and relationship education intervention that teaches couples (premarital and marital) how to communicate effectively, work as a team to solve problems, manage conflicts without damaging closeness, and preserve and enhance commitment and friendship.

7. Legacies of the War on Poverty, Lessons for the Future (EVENT), The National Poverty Center at the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy at the University of Michigan, the Russell Sage Foundation, and Spotlight on Poverty and Opportunity
Info: Wednesday, January 8, 2014 from 9:00 AM to 11:00 AM (EST), Washington, DC

For more, see here.