The Essence of Fatherhood

Thanks to the work of the National Fatherhood Initiative, the public has become more aware of the importance of fatherhood in the lives of children, especially boys. Yet the greater challenge may be persuading policy makers to see how responsible fatherhood and marriage go hand in hand. As a new study by researchers at the Urban Institute and Child Trends documents, marriage and intact families significantly boost the effects of involved fatherhood in protecting teens against juvenile delinquency and substance abuse.

The researchers crunched data from National Longitudinal Survey of Youth that involved three rounds of surveys between 1997 and 1999 of a cohort of teens (average age between 14 and 15) who were disproportionately from minority (black and Hispanic) and broken homes. Thirty seven (37) percent had engaged in a delinquent activity during the observation period; 45 percent had used substances.

In their multivariate analysis, the researchers found that while the effects are small or modest, higher levels of father involvement in the emotional and behavioral lives of their children consistently lowers teen risks of transitioning into delinquent behavior and substance use (odds ratio 0.99 for both dependent variables). The correlation remained significant even after controlling for other covariables, including mother involvement, other father and mother characteristics, immigration status, and socioeconomic status.

Yet "living in an intact family" exerted a greater independent effect in lowering teen risk behaviors (odds ratios: 0.81 for first delinquency, 0.83 for first substance use). In addition, living with a larger number of siblings also lowered a teen first's substance use (Odds Ratio, 0.89; p<.001).

Using models that included "two-way interaction terms," the researchers measured the strength of father involvement in protecting teens from risk behaviors relative to family structure and gender. As expected, the effects of father involvement in lowering risks of both behaviors (and net of other factors) were significantly stronger for teens from intact families than teens from non-intact families, as well as for sons than daughters.

While the researchers do not press the point, their findings suggest that responsible fatherhood may not mean much unless fathers marry—or stay married to—the mothers of their children.

(Source: Jacinta Bronte-Tinkew et al., "The Influence of Father Involvement on Youth Risk Behaviors Among Adolescents: A Comparison of Native-Born and Immigrant Families," Social Science Research 35 [March 2006]: 181-209.)

Marriage and Self-Employment  

Self-employment may not be everyone's first choice in earning a living, yet most economists believe that jobs and businesses created by individuals (and families) play a greater role in the economy than many Americans realize. But just as self-employment represents a plus for the economy, a study by Danielle Taana Smith of the Rochester Institute of Technology finds that marriage is good for self-employment.

Smith examined data from the 1993 through 2000 waves of the Current Population Survey, which tracks roughly 60,000 households, and found that martial status, among other "household social resource" variables, is significantly linked to self-employment among both white and black Americans. More than 76 percent of self-employed whites are married, as well as 51 percent of self-employed blacks (p<.001 for both correlations).

In her model that weighed the probability of self-employment, married people across the board were 45 percent more likely to be self-employed than singles (p<.001). The marriage effect on blacks was weaker but still significant, increasing self-employment by 18 percent.

These findings, however, are not enough to impress Smith, as she ironically concludes: "Household social resources are not significant factors for Whites or for African-Americans in determining the likelihood of their becoming self-employed." In her view, public and private economic-development programs—including federal contracting for minorities—are more vital, especially among African-Americans. While no one would deny the importance of economic factors, her findings on marriage nonetheless reveal a side of self-employment that economists often overlook.

(Source: Danielle Taana Smith, "Developing Self-Employment Among African-Americans: The Impact of Household Social Resources on African-American Entrepreneurship," Economic Development Quarterly 19 [November 2005]: 346-355.)

Safe With a Spouse  

Some women carry a handgun or pepper-spray canister to protect themselves against violent crime.  The most effective protection against such crime, however, may come in the form of a wedding ring: according to a study recently published by researchers at Bowling Green State University, married women fear violent crime much less than their single peers.

Analyzing data collected between 1994 and 1996 from a national probability sample of adult women, the Bowling Green scholars identify the absence of husband and children as clear predictors of a woman's being "very concerned about personal safety." "Married women and those with more children," the researchers remark, "are less likely to be very concerned about personal safety" than are single and divorced women and those with fewer children.  Though both marital status and number of children predict the level of a woman's anxiety about her personal safety, marital status proves the stronger predictor in all four of the researchers' statistical models (p<0.001 for marital status and p<0.01 for number of children in all four statistical models). 

Because married women feel safer than do their single peers, it is hardly surprising that they also feel more hopeful and optimistic about life in general.  Compared to single and divorced peers, "married women... tend to exhibit less depressive symptomatology," the researchers report.  Prey to fear and depression, single women are particularly likely to turn to the bottle for solace: the Bowling Green researchers find that divorced and single women are statistically more likely to engage in binge drinking than married peers (p<0.01 in all four statistical models).

No one who cares about the well-being of women can be happy about a retreat from wedlock that has plunged millions of women into fear, depression, and alcohol abuse.

(Source: Alfred DeMaris and Catherine Kaukinen, "Violent Victimization and Women's Mental and Physical Health: Evidence from a National Sample," Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency 42 [2005]: 384-411.)

Sex Roles and Marital Quality  

When President Johnson submitted the Civil Rights Act to Congress in early 1964, the White House was hoping in part to shore up the foundations of the black family by removing employment barriers that prevented African-American men from being good fathers, husbands, and breadwinners. How and why this landmark legislation—with the help of the courts—became more of a cheerleader for the employment of women of either race is a complicated story, but a study exploring the benefits of marriage for African Americans by the Institute for American Values in New York confirms that the Johnson Administration had the right idea.

Explaining their findings that black women appear to benefit less from marriage than do black men or white women, five family scholars commissioned by the Institute speculate that the documented overall lower quality of black marriages contributes to this gap. They further speculate that the lower stability of black marriages is in turn due to the "contradictory and conflictual gender roles among African Americans," particularly the reduced likelihood of black husbands, relative to their white peers, to function as primary breadwinners in their households.

Citing another study, they write: "American wives are happier when their husbands earn more than 66 percent of the couple's income, something which is much less common in African-American households," even as African Americans often uphold traditional sex roles as the ideal. Therefore, "the relative lack of complementary gender roles might very well also undercut one of the benefits typically associated with marriage: namely, that marriage provides a couple with a set of norms that guide their behavior in productive ways."

Yet even with this qualification, the researchers unequivocally conclude that "marriage typically and substantially improves the well-being of African-American women, men, and children," based upon an extensive review of scholarly articles, reports, and books on marriage and race published between 1990 and 2004, as well as data from the 1973 through 2002 waves of the General Social Surveys conducted at the University of Chicago. They also conclude that "marriage is particularly important to African-American males at all stages of the life cycle," largely because marriage benefits black males "even more" than black females. They note, for example, that for young black males, "having one's father in the home, and particularly one married father, appears to be a crucial determinant of better outcomes in a range of important areas, including levels of parental support, risks of delinquency, self-esteem, and school performance."

Not only do they find that marriage matters for improving the well-being of African Americans, they also claim that marriage matters more than the extended family, often hailed by social workers as a valid substitute for marriage. Black single parents—even those living with extended family—are still more likely to be poor than their married peers, who actually report feeling closer to extended families than do single parents. Finding no evidence that kinship factors have offset the decline in marriage, the researchers observe, "Kin support and extended families promote the well-being of single-parent black families in important ways, but do not compensate for the marriage advantage."

(Source: Lorraine Blackman et al., "The Consequences of Marriage for African Americans: A Comprehensive Literature Review," Institute for American Values, 2005.)

Marriage Meltdown, Crack Crescendo  

Why were urban police far busier arresting pushers and users of crack cocaine in 1990 than they were in 1980?   After careful study of the upsurge in crack-related arrests during the Eighties, criminologists at the University of Florida have adduced evidence implicating "social disorganization" as a reason that urban law-enforcement officers were apprehending large numbers of crack sellers and users by 1990.  And it is the disappearance of marriageable men and the multiplication of divorce lawyers that accounts for that social disorganization. 

Correlating arrest data from the Justice Department with census data for 168 cities of 100,000 or more residents, the Florida researchers find that during the years of "growth in drug arrests" the urban areas under scrutiny "became  increasingly socially disorganized via indicators of family disruption and residential instability."  For theoretical reasons, the Florida researchers suspect that "family disruption (via divorce and [erosion of the] male marriage pool) will decrease social control in a given area because of the instability and disintegration it causes in the family unit and in the community at large."  Empirical analysis indeed enables the researchers to show that an erosion of "the male marriage pool" during the decade in question did foster a rise in "drug arrests among whites and blacks in similar ways."  It would appear that "the lack of employed males as potential marriage partners...decreases stability within the family, contributing to the impoverished conditions of the family unit and the overall disorganization of the community."  

And though they cannot establish the effects of divorce on crack arrests among blacks, the Florida researchers are able to show that "the rise in percentage of white divorced males in urban areas significantly contributed to the increase in all types of white drug arrests over time." 

In the fight against drug abuse, men who marry and stay married may count for more than narcotics officers.

(Source: Karen F. Parker and Scott R. Maggard, "Structural Theories and Race-Specific Drug Arrests: What Structural Factors Account for the Rise in Race-Specific Drug Arrests Over Time," Crime & Delinquency 51 [2005]: 521-547.)  

Hurting Women More  

The ideology that makes feminists indifferent to the costs of divorce looks stranger and stranger as evidence mounts that it is women who are hurt most by marital break-ups.  Adding to that mountain of evidence is a study recently published in Race, Gender & Class by sociologist Kei M. Nomaguchi of Northern Illinois University.

Parsing data collected between 1987 and 1994 from a national probability sample of 4,232 adults who were married in 1987-88, Nomaguchi finds that, except for black men, "those who were separated/divorced [in 1993-1994] report significantly higher levels of depression than those who remained married."  When Nomaguchi looks more closely at this pattern, he finds "that women are more likely than men to be vulnerable to the effect of marital dissolution on depression."  And though some social theorists have argued that divorce is less traumatic for black women than for white women, Nomaguchi concludes that "in contrast to [his] expectations, black women are as distressed as white women upon becoming separated/divorced, and it appears that women are more psychologically vulnerable to marital dissolution than men, regardless of race."

Nomaguchi interprets his findings in the context of earlier research showing that "marital dissolution has a great negative influence on mental health."   How many more such studies will be completed before feminist ideologues finally join the social scientists who "agree that separation/divorce is one of the most stressful, undesirable events in adult lives"?

(Source: Kei M. Nomaguchi, "Are There Race and Gender Differences in the Effect of Marital Dissolution on Depression?" Race, Gender & Class 12.1 [2005]: 11-30.)

More Houses Without Spouses  

Fewer and fewer American adults are hearing the melody of wedding bells. And even among those American men and women who do find their way to the wedding chapel, the music of conjugal carols have often given way in recent decades to the cacophony of divorce-court wrangling.

Just how completely America has been transformed by the silence of wedding bells and the rancor of the divorce court is all too evident in an analysis recently released by the Population Reference Bureau (PRB). Scrutinizing data from the federal government's Current Population Survey and the American Community Survey, the PRB analysts highlight "the increase in the proportion of adults who are not married" as "one of the biggest demographic stories of the past several decades." "Between 1960 and 2003," the PRB team reports, "the share of Americans age 15 or older who have never been married increased from 22 percent to 29 percent, and the share of Americans who are divorced increased from 2 percent to 10 percent."

Over time, the plummeting marriage rate and the simmering divorce rate have transformed the character of American society. The PRB analysts thus identify "rising age at first marriage [and] high divorce rates" as key reasons for "dramatic decline in the share of married-couple families, and the corresponding increase in the share of single-parent families." The data indeed indicate that between 1960 and 1983, "the proportion of families with children that were headed by a single parent increased from 9 percent to 28 percent." The PRB team further notes that "in some large cities...the share of female-headed families approaches 50 percent (for example, Cleveland, Detroit, and Newark, N.J.)."

Though the PRB analysts are statisticians, they recognize the human distress behind the numbers they parse. In particular, they view with "concern" the increase in the number of female-headed households "because people living in female-headed families typically have access to fewer economic or human resources than people in married-couple families." Data collected for 2003 in fact show that "about 37 percent of families maintained by women with children were poor, nearly six times the rate for married couples with children." Poverty rates run especially high among households with children headed by black and Latina women: 42 percent of such black households and 46 percent of such Hispanic households are mired in poverty.

Before even more American children find themselves trapped in poverty, perhaps it is time that America put its wedding bells back in melodious motion and its divorce courts into silent quiescence.

(Source: Mark Mather, Kerri L. Rivers, and Linda A. Jacobsen, "The American Community Survey," Population Bulletin 60.3 (2005): 15-17.)

A Little Extra Happiness   

Find a young man or young woman happy with life and you've likely found someone who grew up in an intact two-parent family. The relationship between young adults' happiness and the type of family that reared them receives attention in a study recently published in Psychological Reports by psychologist Kevin Marjoribanks.

Examining data collected from an Australian national probability sample in 2000 (3,580 men and 3,991 women with an average age of 20.2 years), Marjoribanks finds that on a 14-item survey, young men and women reared in two-parent families are significantly more likely to express greater happiness than peers reared in one-parent families. Because the differences in the reported levels of happiness are not very large, Marjoribanks highlights as "meaningful" only the largest two differences for women (happiness in contemplating their future and happiness with their standard of living) and the three largest differences for men (happiness with where they live, happiness with their standard of living, and happiness with the way the country is being run).

Still, Marjoribanks acknowledges that ten other differences in happiness scores for women and eight other differences in happiness scores for men—all "statistically significant," though relatively small—favor those reared in two-parent families over peers reared in single-parent homes. And even if it is not large, one of the psychological advantages enjoyed by young men and young women who have grown up in two-parent families encompasses a great deal. Compared to peers reared in single-parent families, young men and young women from two-parent homes are significantly more likely to say they are happy with "life as a whole."

(Source: Kevin Marjoribanks, "Relations Between One- and Two-Parent Families and Young Adults' Happiness Scores," Psychological Reports 96 [2005]: 849-851.)