Asymmetrical Information

It wasn't all that long ago that the Times would have little interest in soft puffy stories of this sort. Something must have changed, that's for sure.

Notice also that the Times has decreed that a "trend" exists based largely on a handful of anecdotes. One of the researchers quoted in the article, from the MacArthur Foundation, says that there's very little actual research or data.

I believe cause and effect may be confused here. Any woman who calls a man four times a day about what she's having for lunch ain't gonna be in a relationship very long (I would assume the opposite may be true as well).

I believe cause and effect may be confused here. Any woman who calls a man four times a day about what she's having for lunch ain't gonna be in a relationship very long (I would assume the opposite may be true as well).

FAMILIES? Whatever happened to cats?

Cats aren't family?

Oh, wait...maybe that's where the NYT got confused.

I worked with a guy once that took a call from his wife. Twice each day, morning and afternoon. At least 45 minutes each time. I don't think waiting to wed will cause a person to abuse their work and co-workers in this way. I think there are certain people that tend to do this. The 'four phone calls a day' would be made, I expect anyone willing to pick up the phone that often would do as well.

And I think the story itself is twisted. People aren't staying home, finding intimacy with their families, because they are marrying later. They are marrying later because there aren't enough role models showing how to pick a worthwhile, intimate mate, a reason to form a home, and a reason to make babies.

We have fashion ads, soaps, books, movies and TV all showing how to pursue sex with others. Very seldom any more does the message of forming a home get through. We get lots of stories of separations, divorces, and catching the 'hottest' for dates. Sex seems to be the only reason given to make room in our schedules for dating.

And the parents don't have grandchildren to make visits by their children times of dread and of delight.

When was the last time you heard, "I want to raise sons to fight in the Army!" (As in the Vietnam War song by Barry Sadler, "Put Silver Wings/On My Son's Chest/Make Him One/Of America's Best!"). Patriotism seems to have evolved today into a sound bite for the news or YouTube. When we see in the world that is the fecund and fertile nations holding on to power. There are many other reasons to make babies, but we stopped talking about that generations ago. Now the reason to make a home, take a life-mate, seems to be mostly 'it feels nice', or 'it might be cheaper' or even seem convenient. No wonder we check in and out like renters.

Brad, one of the other biggies is that people make lotsa babies, at least they go through a lot of the motions, but the abortion rate is over a million a year, as per Planned Parenthood.

In the 70's I was aghast that little ole' Japan was doing a million a year, about 20 years to 'catch up.' You can look at it alot of ways: they'd be too crowded for their islands if they didn't, their population has plateaued and even a little recessive, or that the pursuit of personal gratification and material goods tends to push the idea of havin' the little nippers into the Land of Oz.

falkoyn

Actually birth rates and abortion rates aren't correlated.

Britain has a high abortion rate, and a high birth rate.

The US has a high birth rate, and one of the higher abortion rates. Canada has a lower abortion rate, AFAIK, and a lower birth rate.

Russia has a high abortion rate, and a very low birth rate.

Sweden has the highest birth rate in western Europe, and a relatively low abortion rate. This is also true of France.

Spain has a low abortion rate, and the lowest birth rate in the Western world.

Ireland has (theoretically) a zero abortion rate, and a relatively high birth rate. I say theoretically, because of course in Ireland you can pop across the border or across the Irish Sea and get one done for a couple of hundred quid.

The correlation with abortion rates is the availability of sex education and contraception to teenaged girls. The age of first menstruation (menarche) has moved down across the entire developed world in the last 4 generations: Victorian women would often experience menarche at 16-17, now in British schools 9 or 10 is not uncommon. This also true in America.

(we don't know why, exactly, but we think it is the increase in the average amount of fat in the diet)

So what you have is a world where women are fertile from a much earlier age, but social institutions haven't adapted to that.

I doubt people are having more (or less) sex than they used to, it's just their bodies that have changed.

Brad K.

Attitudes, and the reasons for marriage, family etc. have changed a lot less than you think.

The difference now is women can survive, even as mothers, without being married. It's the arrival of women in the workforce that has changed everything.

Marriage was more of a social institution in past generations. It was accepted in middle class families that a husband might keep a mistress (the Victorian solution) or have it off with the servant girl or see prostitutes (not at all uncommon in our grandfather's time). But the marriage held together because it wasn't possible for the woman and children to survive.

Romantic love was a creation of 19th century novelists. Jane Austen was a wish fulfilment for all those women who married for social place and material comfort-- remember Darcy's biggest attraction is the size of his annual income.

Read Alastair Cooke's book about travelling around America after WWII was declared. Mass mobilization meant that everyone had someone in the fight, but the patriotism was no more (or less) intense than after 9-11. People were mostly happy they had jobs and money again, after the 30s.

If you read the diaries of the British people, who were in a much worse shape (besieged, everything rationed, etc.) you find there is patriotism, but it's more about day to day getting through, cheating on the rationing system, etc.

If you talk to people who fought in those wars, it was about surviving day to day. Victory happened to be the only way you could ensure your survival, so they fought for victory. Patriotism? That was for propaganda films.

There are married women who call their mama four times a day, too. When I was in the Air Force, there was a problem with married members who'd lost their telephones through inability to pay their long-distance bills - like over $400/month, if you convert to 2007 dollars. (The problem for the AF, of course, was in how to contact them when something came up, like a war or an exercise practicing for war, and they needed everyone to show up ASAP.) My wife called her mother every night, but she did wait until night when the rates were at their lowest, and kept track of how many minutes she was using. Evidently, many women were incapable of doing either of those things.

I love my mom, and talk to her frankly about many things, but the women in this article go quite a bit further than I do.

In fact, while I was reading the article I realized that the role their mothers hold is closer to the role my sister holds in my life. I talk to her nearly every day on the phone, and frequently my husband and I have dinner with her and her husband. So maybe this "trend" is more indicative of smaller families with fewer children (and thus fewer siblings to lean on) than some byproduct of the feminist war on marriage.

The real Times-ism there, though is:

The women who uttered those words — professionals in their 20s and 30s — were not talking about their shrinks. They were talking about their mothers.

Romantic love was a creation of 19th century novelists.

I am sorry to say that you have been taken in by a academic called Lawrence Stone who spent years studying the history of the family and apparently felt so obliged to come up with some unifying theory that he ignored available evidence to do so. Romantic love has existed for centuries earlier. Ever heard of some plays by a guy called Shakespeare like Romeo & Juliet, or Much Ado About Nothing? And how about that chap called Homer who wrote The Illiad - a war started by Paris getting carried away . Or Lancelot and Guinevere? Or the problems caused by Julius Ceaser's dalliances with Cleopatra?

Romantic love as a cause of marriage has a long and proud history in Europe.

ValueThinker: Where is the evidence for sex ed correlating with lower pregnancy rate? Wealth and general education level, I've seen a lot on that. But I was under the impression that sex ed hadn't generally been demonstrated to have much impact in either direction.

Comments are Closed.