A story published today by the Bergen Record reports that a survey released by the Gallup Organization, commissioned by the National Marriage Project at Rutgers University has found that marriage has lost its standing among today's young adults who no longer view marriage as a route to financial stability, parenthood, or religious affirmation.

Of those surveyed, 88 percent agreed there was a "special person, a soul mate, waiting for you somewhere out there," and 87 percent thought they would find that person when they were ready to get married.

The survey which was part of the project's wider "The State of Our Unions" report on marriage trends in the United States, was based on telephone interviews with 1,003 married and single men and women age 20 to 29 from January through March this year.

David Popenoe, who heads the Marriage Project and has devoted his career to revitalizing the institution of marriage, worries that today's expectations are so idealistic that they may inadvertently set off a new round of divorces as couples become disillusioned.

"It used to be that people looked for a marriage partner who would help with the tasks of life -- child rearing, bread winning, and homemaking -- and also hopefully be a good friend," said Popenoe. "This new standard, seeking an intimate relationship to resolve the isolation of today's fractured society, is unrealistic and may contribute to a high number of fragile marriages. Young people say they're desperate to avoid divorce, but they may be working against the very thing they're striving to achieve."

"Twenty-somethings are still romantic and idealistic, still want to find their soul mate and have the marriage of their dreams, so that's very good," said Diane Sollee, the founder and director of the Washington, D.C.-based Coalition for Marriage, Family and Couples Education. "The bad news is if we keep operating on that premise, we will keep repeating the current trend of a very high divorce rate."

Others say the shift is the culmination of decades of social change, including women's growing financial independence.

"What's different now is that women are prepared to say, 'If I don't find a soul mate, I can provide for myself,' " said Stephanie Coontz, co-chairwoman of the national Council on Contemporary Families who is writing a book on the history of marriage. "What that means is that women can now afford to be as romantic about marriage as men have been."

The survey also revealed that:

42 percent of single young adults believe it is important to find a spouse of the same religion.

16 percent of young adults think the main purpose of marriage today is to have children. Six in 10 say it's acceptable for an adult woman to have a child on her own if she hasn't found the right man to marry.

More than eight in 10 young adults agree it is unwise for women to rely on marriage for financial security. More than 80 percent of women believe it is more important to have a husband who can communicate about his deepest feelings than to have a husband who makes a good living.

"For the text of the complete report issues by the Marriage Project at Rutgers University, click here."  http://marriage.rutgers.edu/TEXTOOU2001.htm

A story released by the Associated Press reports that a government study released Tuesday reported that the teen pregnancy rate continued to fall, hitting a record low in 1997, the latest year for which complete figures are available. The abortion rate fell by nearly a third since 1990, also reaching a record low.

Researchers don't know why teens decide against having sex or to use birth control.

``That is almost wholly up to speculation,'' said researcher David Landry of the Alan Guttmacher Institute, which focuses on reproductive health issues.

Those who support a greater emphasis on abstinence - telling teens to just say no to sex - tend to credit an increase in support for these programs, which saw a massive infusion of government money beginning in 1997.

Others believe the availability of birth control is key point to new, more reliable methods of contraception.

Other reasons speculated are: fear of AIDS has made teens more conscious about using condoms, and the strong economy has given them other options for their futures. Much of the decline comes from a sharp drop in second births to teen-agers.

No matter what the reason, it's clear that teen pregnancy rates are continuing to fall. The rate fell by 4.4 percent between 1996 and 1997, continuing a trend that has marched through the 1990s.

In 1997, about 9.4 percent of all girls ages 15 to 19 became pregnant - a total of 872,000 pregnancies. Fifty-five percent gave birth, 29 percent had abortions and the rest miscarried.

Pregnancy rates, however, are significantly higher in low-income communities, and black and Hispanic girls are more than twice as likely to get pregnant as white girls are. Still, the study showed that rates are falling among all races.

Most of the teen pregnancies are among 18- and 19-year-olds, though some 6.4 percent of girls ages 15 to 17 were pregnant in 1997. That's down 21 percent since the peak in 1990.

Overall, the teen pregnancy rate fell 19 percent in 1997 from its peak in 1991, and was the lowest since 1976, when the government began keeping records.

A story released today by the Associated Press reports that according to the first set of reports released by the U.S. Census 2000, U.S. households indicating same-sex partners has seen a dramatic increase over the past decade.

Although the report involved only two states -- Delaware and Vermont -- both of them showed a substantial change during the 1990s.

Same-sex couple households in Vermont, for instance, increased from an estimated 370 in 1990, to 1,933 in 2000, a fivefold jump, according to data released today by the Census Bureau. Delaware saw an even greater increase: up from an estimated 212 to 1,868 households, a nearly ninefold increase. These two states were the first to receive the latest wave of data from last year's national head count, with all 50 to get the Census Bureau material by late August.

Researchers attributed the increase to more gay couples feeling comfortable identifying their relationships than any big increase in such couples. Figures to be released for more crowded states like California will give a clearer picture of the nation's gay and lesbian population, said Urban Institute analyst Gary Gates.

Unmarried partner statistics in 1990 were based on a sample of responses; 2000 data are based on a count of all households. Nationally, unmarried partner homes, regardless of sexual orientation, increased 72 percent from 3.2 million in 1990 to 5.5 million in 2000.

A story published today by the Atlanta Journal Constitution reports that Southern Baptists on Tuesday called for the strengthening of American families, starting with their own.

"Families are in crisis," the Rev. Tom Elliff, pastor of First Southern Baptist Church in Del City, Okla., told the convention. "It's not just American families. It's Southern Baptist families as well. We believe it is time for us as a convention to decide that we're going to stand for the family in America."

Statistics from various sources cited in a report from the new Southern Baptist Council on Family Life include: A million children a year see their parents divorce. More than one-third of the country's children live apart from their biological fathers. Cohabitation by unmarried couples has increased almost 1,000 percent in the last four decades.

Elliff said the council plans to propose a specific strategy for dealing with the problems to next year's convention in St. Louis.

Rev. James Merritt, president-elect of the Southern Baptist church took up the theme in a rousing sermon that also touched on the importance of doctrinal integrity and the need to reclaim the culture. "There is an assault on the family today that is unparalleled in the history of the human race," he declared, "and much of it is self-inflicted."

Merritt made it clear that the family that needs to be saved is the one described in the Baptist Faith and Message, a revised denominational statement of faith that sees marriage as "the uniting of one man and one woman in covenant commitment for a lifetime," the husband as the head of the household and children as "a blessing and heritage from the Lord."

"We need to get back to the biblical understanding of marriage: that marriage is not a legal contract between two people that can be ended by a judicial decree; it is a divine covenant bound together in heaven that should never be broken before a holy God," Merritt said.

A story published today by the New York Times reports that more than one-quarter of all American adults will not get a tax rebate this year. Altogether, nearly 40 percent will not get the full amount of $300 for individuals and $600 for couples.

The main reason is that after deductions, exemptions and credits, these people owed little or nothing in income taxes, even though most of them paid Social Security and Medicare taxes.

The calculations showing the large number of taxpayers who will not get a rebate were made by Citizens for Tax Justice, a liberal, nonprofit research institute that has the only computer model outside the government that can figure what the tax law signed last week by President Bush means for people at different income levels

Monday, June 11, 2001

USDA reports increase child-rearing costs for U.S. families 

A story released today by Reuters reports that according to a recent report released by   the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the average American family with a child born last year can expect to spend about $165,630 for food, shelter and other basic necessities over the next 17 years, $5,000 higher than if the child was born in 1999.

Transportation, child-care, education and health-care costs increased the most for middle-income two-parent families, while clothing expenses saw a slight decline compared to 1999, an annual government report said.

Housing costs were the single largest per-child expenditure last year, averaging 33 percent of the total costs, followed by food at 17 percent.

Families living in the western United States will spend about $180,000 on their child, while households in the Midwest will spend about $156,000, according to the report.

When adjusted for inflation, the average family will spend $233,530 to raise a child.

USDA's Center for Nutrition Policy and Promotion began publishing the report in 1960. USDA said the overall cost of raising a child, after adjusting for inflation, has increased 13 percent from 1960 to 2000.

A story released today by the Associated Press reports that the U.S. Supreme Court ruled Monday that Courts may set a higher threshold for fathers than mothers when deciding the citizenship of children born overseas and out of wedlock.

In a Texas case involving a man born in Vietnam to an American father and Vietnamese mother, the court narrowly ruled that setting such separate standards does not violate the equal protection clause of the Constitution, given a mother' s natural role in childbirth.

"To fail to acknowledge even our most basic biological differences -- such as the fact that a mother must be present at birth but the father need not be -- risks making the guarantee of equal protection superficial, " said the majority opinion by Justice Anthony Kennedy.

The Texas father, Joseph Boulais and his son, Tuan Ahn Nguyen, had argued the law amounted to " sex-based stereotyping" and unlawful discrimination against men.

Government lawyers countered that Congress has broad authority to decide who is entitled to U.S. citizenship.

The ruling upheld a previous decision by a federal appeals court. Justice Kennedy was joined in the majority by Chief Justice William Rehnquist and Justices John Paul Stevens, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas. The two female justices, Sandra Day O' Connor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg dissented, along with Justices David Souter and Stephen Breyer.

Federal immigration law automatically gives citizenship to children in Tuan' s circumstance if their mother is an American and has previously lived in this country for at least a year.

But if the father is American, the child can be considered a U.S. citizen only if the father legalized the relationship through a court order or sworn statement by the time the child turned 18, and if the father agreed in writing to support the child until adulthood.

Kennedy said that calling these rules stereotypes would " obscure ... prejudices that are real."

"The difference between men and women in relation to the birth process is a real one, and the principle of equal protection does not forbid Congress to address the problem at hand in a manner specific to each gender, " he wrote.

A story released today by the Associated Press reports that a Texas judge angrily ordered a 19-year-old probationer who had fathered two children with two teen-age girls not to have sex until he is married.

"If you so much as have thoughts of getting another girl pregnant, you will go to prison for life or 99 years two times," state District Judge J. Manuel Banales told the young man. "You'll not get out of there alive. I want you to know that."

"He is fathering too many children for which he is not supporting," Banales said. "So, I told him he can father as many children as he wants as long as he establishes a marital relationship."

Robert Torres had been sentenced to five years' probation in 1999 after he pleaded guilty to having sex with a 13-year-old girl. According to court records, the girl told authorities she was Torres' girlfriend when they had sex two times in the front seat of his car.

At an April 18 hearing to revoke his probation over violations that included smoking and drinking beer, Banales issued the no-sex order after learning Torres had fathered a daughter with a 16-year-old and had a child with a 17-year-old while serving the term.

Torres was also sent to jail for 30 days, and his probation was extended another five years.

The order was criticized by Torres' attorneys and the American Civil Liberties Union.

A story published today by the Boston Globe reports that in a speech at the National Summit on Fatherhood, President Bush praised healthy marriages as ''incredibly important for children,'' and went on to quote a passage from George Eliot's 1859 novel, ''Adam Bede'':

''What greater thing is there for two human souls than to feel that they are joined for life to strengthen each other in all labor, to rest on each other in all sorrow, to be one with each other in silent, unspeakable memories at the moment of last parting.''

The novel quoted by the president is about an English carpenter, Adam Bede, who marries a virtuous Christian after the woman he loves is deported to Australia for killing her out-of-wedlock child.

''If George Bush has read Adam Bede, I'd give him half my salary,'' said Jonathan Loesberg, a professor of literature and an Eliot scholar at American University. He added that Eliot, whose real name was Mary Anne Evans cohabited for 24 years with a married man, wrote with an unusual contempt for the notion that women were slaves to marriage.

''President Bush's decision to quote George Eliot, a woman who lived her adult life in a long-term, loving, unmarried relationship, only underscores our message: People always have and always will form both married and unmarried families,'' said Dorian Solot, executive director of the Boston-based Alternatives to Marriage Project.

A White House spokeswoman had no comment on the president's speech.

A story released today by the Christian Science Monitor reports that last Tuesday, a nationwide protest was held by mostly divorced fathers complaining about the inequality of the court system when it comes to child custody rulings. Dubbed as "deadbolted dads," they complained that courts routinely give mothers custody of kids and then fail to act when ex-wives lock fathers out of their children's lives by ignoring visitation schedules.

"Court is where most divorcing fathers ... leave in a state of shock after discovering they have been reduced to a mere biweekly visitor to their children," says Dianna Thompson of the American Coalition for Fathers & Children, which sponsored the protests.

The issue seems ripe for consideration. The National Fatherhood Initiative have just concluded a fatherhood summit in Washington, where organizers hoped to reach out to a range of men, including divorced and unmarried fathers.

At the same time, the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges recently met in Charlotte, N.C., to focus on child custody and visitation. "When the parties go to family court, one party loses," says M. James Toner, dean of the council. "Sometimes, even with the best intentions, the best interest of the child is sacrificed on the altar of acrimony."

The protesters yesterday offered a different vision for families of divorce: They call it shared parenting.

Under this scenario, parents share equally the custody of children - a move that Ms. Thompson says would require a family-law overhaul. According to the US Census, mothers presently win custody in 85 percent of cases.

Shared parenting, says Thompson, also increases financial support for children. According to the latest census data, fathers who have joint custody or shared parenting paid their child support on time in 90 percent of cases.

Family advocates see scattered signs of progress. Among the 3,000 US counties, 1,500 offer programs to help divorcing parents, says Sanford Braver, author of "Divorced Dads: Shattering the Myths." Aimed at helping divorcing parents bury the hatchet, such programs are "changing the culture out there," he adds.

Noncustodial fathers like Mr. Wayne Torman of Mansfield, Mass., welcomes such steps. Holding his sign on the Foxboro bridge, he says that the family court system "really needs to change. It's gotta change."