Baptist Press??? Really???
The Southern Baptists have a joke that they tell on themselves.
They get to the popular culture just as soon as that fad is over.
Emerging Churches were slightly declining by the time that the SBC
noticed that they even existed. Kind of like "The SBC has noticed
it, so that's dead now. or at least on its way out."
David
"Anyone who thinks he has a better idea of
what's good for people than people do is a swine."--P. J. O’Rourke
On 9/7/2011 12:08 PM, [email protected] wrote:
Baptist Press
FIRST-PERSON:
Marriage's decline in blue collar America
Glenn T. Stanton
Posted on Sep 6, 2011
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (BP) -- There are two seismic --
yet under-the-radar -- trends happening in marriage and family
today, but too few have taken note of them. The evangelical
church would be wise to appreciate them, as we seek to
minister in this area.
The first is the continued and growing alienation of men from
family life. This alienation can be attributed to many things:
the male's own choosing, women and culture's growing negative
and unrealistic attitudes about men, artificial reproductive
technology among single women as well as the push for
parenting and adoption rights by same-sex couples. I have
written about these previously.
The second is discussed here: The growing marginalization of
marriage in blue collar America while it's doing better among
the more educated classes. This has important consequences for
the greater cementing of class divides.
A unique and important report has just been released by the
Brookings Institute, co-authored by two of the world's leading
marriage scholars: The more socially conservative W. Bradford
Wilcox, director of the National Marriage Project and
associate professor of sociology at the University of
Virginia, and the socially liberal Andrew J. Cherlin,
professor of sociology and public policy at Johns Hopkins
University.
Both scholars are concerned about the marked decline of
marriage among those who have graduated from high school, but
who have no college degree. This encompasses a full 58 percent
of the adult U.S. population. [1]
THE EVIDENCE
"Although marriage is still held in high regard across social
classes in America, in recent years, moderately educated
Americans have become less likely to form stable, high-quality
marriages, while college-educated Americans (who make up 30
percent of the adult population) have become more likely to do
so," Wilcox writes. [2]
A distinct marriage divide is developing in the following ways
among these two social classes:
-- High school-only grads are markedly more likely than
college grads to have three or more sex partners in a
lifetime.
-- Although many college graduates cohabit before marriage
(markedly fewer, however, than non-college grads) nearly all
of them (94 percent) marry before having their first child.
This is not true for high school-only grads, with just 56
percent marrying before the birth of their first child.
-- And not only are high school-only grads more likely to have
their children in cohabiting homes, but to also to raise them
in this environment. This is of significant concern, given the
profoundly higher levels of general volatility and instability
in cohabiting homes.
-- Divorce rates among college grads have fallen to early-1970
levels in the last few years. Divorce has risen slightly for
high-school grads.
-- Reports of college graduates being "very happy" in their
marriages have remained stable at 69 percent since the 1970s.
It has slipped a bit over this time frame for the moderately
educated and dropped nearly 10 percent for those who've never
graduated from high school.
-- A teen with a college-educated mother is just as likely to
be living with both mother and father today as in 1970s (80
percent). This is not true for a teen living with a high
school-only educated mother. While 74 percent of such teens
lived with both mom and dad in the 1970s, now only 58 percent
do.
Given how out-of-wedlock child-bearing, cohabitation and
divorce are more likely to prevent adults and their children
from advancing socio-economically -- while intact marriages
boost such advancement -- this trend of declining marriage
among the working-class should be of great concern to all who
care about improving social mobility and living status.
While being blue collar is an economic status, it is not
merely economics driving this decline. Professors Wilcox and
Cherlin remind us that "there was no dramatic increase in
nonmarital childbearing or cohabitation during the Great
Depression, when millions of Americans experienced
unemployment or underemployment." [3]
They explain that other factors are contributing to this
working-class retreat from marriage:
1. Dramatic changes in social norms surrounding sex and
unmarried parenting.
2. Non-college educated Americans tend to be less involved in
religious participation, which is not so true for the
college-educated.
3. Changes in laws and attitudes that favor individual
autonomy over social responsibility, as well as parenthood
itself over marriage.
Wilcox and Cherlin show how all of these developments have
happened more dynamically among the non-college educated than
the college educated.
They conclude: "Taken together, these economic and cultural
shifts have made Middle Americans less likely to get and stay
married. Indeed, one sign that moderately educated Americans'
faith in marriage is waning is that fully 43 percent of (them)
... report that 'marriage has not worked out for most people
they know,' compared to just 17 percent of highly-educated
young adults." [4]
When any class of citizens turns away from marriage, it is not
liberating nor empowering.
--30--
Glenn T. Stanton is the director for family formation studies
at Focus on the Family in Colorado Springs, Colo., and is the
author of the new book, "Secure Daughters Confident Sons: How
Parents Guide Their Children into Authentic Masculinity and
Femininity" (Multnomah, 2011).
1 W. Bradford Wilcox and Andrew J. Cherlin, "The
Marginalization of Marriage in Middle America," Center on
Children and Families at Brookings, CCF Brief #46, August
2011, p. 2.
2 W. Bradford Wilcox, "When Marriage Disappears: The New
Middle America," a report from the National Marriage Project,
University of Virginia, December 2010, p. ix.
3 Wilcox and Cherlin, 2011, p. 3.
4 Wilcox and Cherlin, 2011, p. 4
--
Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community
<[email protected]>
Google Group: http://groups.google.com/group/RadicalCentrism
Radical Centrism website and blog: http://RadicalCentrism.org
--
Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community <[email protected]>
Google Group: http://groups.google.com/group/RadicalCentrism
Radical Centrism website and blog: http://RadicalCentrism.org
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