Tardy Troublemakers

Most theorists believe that anti-social behavior begins in childhood or early adolescence.  However, researchers at Rutgers University and the University of Minnesota have recently drawn attention to the considerable number of young people—especially young women—whose pathological pattern of antisocial behavior first manifest itself in mid- to late adolescence.  And their data indicate that parental divorce helps incubate this late-emerging pathology.

The authors begin their study by carefully scrutinizing epidemiological data collected for 358 young participants in the Minnesota Twin Family Study.   The researchers then identify and classify the 142 youths who have been engaged in antisocial behaviors: a third (33%) of this group manifest such behaviors in early adolescence but stop such behaviors by mid-adolescence; almost one half (47%) begin adolescence entangled in such behaviors and persist in such behaviors through late adolescence; and one fifth (20%) begin their antisocial behavior in mid- to late adolescence. 

The Rutgers and Minnesota scholars acknowledge that the course of antisocial behavior that begins in mid- to late adolescence is “less common than other courses of antisocial behavior.”  Yet they note that this pattern “clearly exists” and is “pathological,” even if it does not fit within “commonly accepted taxonomies of antisocial behavior.”  What is more, those young people who begin manifesting antisocial behavior in mid- to late adolescence are at “particularly high risk of substance dependence during the transition to young adulthood.”   The researchers indeed note that “youths with late-onset antisocial behavior evidenced rates of substance dependence that were higher [than those of peers involved in no antisocial behaviors] for all three classes of substances [alcohol, tobacco, and marijuana; p < 0.001 for all three].” 

The pattern of substance abuse among young adults involved in late-onset antisocial behavior very much resembles the pattern seen among young adults involved in persistent antisocial behavior throughout their adolescence.   But the researchers highlight a “striking” gender difference separating these two antisocial groups: females account for almost three-fourths (72%) of late-onset antisocial behavior, while males constitute more than three-fourths (78%) of persistent antisocial behavior.  In other words, the commonly accepted taxonomies of antisocial behavior—which do not account for late-onset antisocial behavior—”particularly fail to capture antisocial behavior among young women.” 

But as striking as the gender difference is between the largely female late-onset antisocial group and the largely male persistently antisocial group, the similarity in risk factors is in some ways just as striking.  In particular, the researchers highlight evidence that “youths with persisting antisocial behavior and youths with late-onset antisocial behavior experience similar levels of family-based risk.”  This family-based risk is clearly evident in statistics for parental divorce: only 8% of the youth manifesting no antisocial behaviors had experienced parental divorce and only 6% of the youth who had stopped such behaviors by mid-adolescence, compared to 23% of the youth manifesting persistent antisocial behavior and 31% of the youth manifesting late-onset antisocial behavior.  The researchers in fact highlight the “similarly high rates of parental divorce” linking the persistent and late-onset antisocial-behavior groups. 

Among males who start their disruptive behaviors early and among females who throw over the traces years later, parental divorce is all too likely to have helped write the turbulent life script.

(Source: Naomi R. Marmorstein and William G. Iacono, “Longitudinal Follow-up of Adolescents with Late-Onset Antisocial Behavior: A Pathological Yet Overlooked Group,” Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry 44 [2005]: 1284-1291.)

Homosexual Unions: Rare and Fragile  

Progressive activists in the United States have argued strenuously in recent years that giving homosexuals the legal right to marry will improve life for homosexual couples and will consequently benefit society as a whole.  A new study of same-sex marriage in Scandinavia, however, casts serious doubt on such assertions.  For, as it turns out, relatively few homosexual couples avail themselves of this revolutionary right. And a surprisingly high percentage of those who do so end up in divorce court.

To analyze the demographics of homosexual marriages, a team of German and Norwegian scholars recently examined data collected in Norway and Sweden since these bellwether countries discarded centuries of legal tradition by authorizing homosexual unions (in 1993 in Norway and in 1995 in Sweden).  Both countries have thus now enacted laws granting homosexuals “the legal right to registered partnerships, a civil status that [the researchers believe], in practice does not deviate much from the concept of marriage.”  The legal equivalence of homosexual unions to heterosexual marriage indeed largely explains why the researchers use “the terms registered partnerships and same-sex marriage interchangeably.”   Similarly, the researchers “use the term divorce to refer to [homosexual] partnership dissolution because the divorce procedures of the marriage act [in both countries] apply to registered [homosexual] marriages as well.”

As the German and Norwegian scholars survey the available data for homosexual unions, they cannot avoid one obvious reality: “the incidence of same-sex marriage in Norway and Sweden is not particularly impressive.”  Between 1993 and 2001, while Norway recorded 196,000 heterosexual marriages, the country witnessed the legal registration of only 1,293 homosexual partnerships.  Similarly, while Sweden recorded 280,000 heterosexual marriages between 1995-2002, the country saw the formation of only 1,526 registered homosexual partnerships.  The researchers accordingly calculate “a ratio of around 7 same-sex marriages to every 1,000 new opposite-sex marriages” in Norway and a comparable “ratio of 5 new partnerships to every 1,000 new opposite-sex marriages” in Sweden.  The researchers remark that the numbers of same-sex marriages have run “considerably lower” than might have been expected by those relying on recent surveys of sexual behavior.  These surveys have indicated that “well over 1%” of women and between 1 and 3% of men have had a same-sex partner during the last year, with between 4 and 9% of men and approximately 4% of women reporting that they have had a same-sex partner at some time during their lives.  (The authors of the new study are too well informed to rehash the now discredited absurdity—promulgated by Alfred Kinsey—that fully ten percent of the adult male population is homosexual.)

The data for same-sex unions in Norway and Sweden indicate, however, not only that such unions are relatively rare, but also that they are remarkably fragile, ending in divorce significantly more often than do the heterosexual marriages of peers.  The statistics indeed reveal “that the divorce risk for partnerships of men is 50% higher than the corresponding risk for heterosexual marriages and that the divorce risk for partnerships of women is about double (2.67) that for men (1.50).”   The researchers then re-examine the data in statistical models that take into account age, education, and other background characteristics, but these multi-variable models “do not alter the basic relation between divorce risks in different family types.”

The German and Norwegian scholars acknowledge that “divorce-risk levels [that are] considerably higher in same-sex marriages” than in heterosexual marriages would hardly have been predicted by those who have supposed that “the symbolic meaning of partnership formation for a group that has just acquired the right to marry [would have been] related to a higher commitment to this civil status and to lower divorce risk.”  On the other hand, homosexual couples’ distinctively high propensity to break apart would not have surprised those who recognize “the group’s lower exposure to normative pressure to maintain lifelong unions.”  Among homosexuals, the researchers predict, “past relationship experience” is likely to cause “lesbians and gay men…[to] have lower expectations of relationship duration than will heterosexual couples.” 

In their concluding comment on their groundbreaking study—the first such study of “an unambiguously defined population of gay and lesbian couples”—the researchers emphasize the applicability of their findings well beyond Norway and Sweden.  “Many of the demographic characteristics of our Scandinavian couples,” they remark, “resemble those found for other populations of same-sex couples, such as same-sex co-residents in the United States…. Evidently, some aspects of gay and lesbian lifestyles are common for different countries.”

Before American jurists and lawmakers press ahead with the dubious project of granting homosexuals a legal right to marriage or marriage-like civil unions, they should ponder this new study and its conclusions.  For the revolutionaries who congratulate themselves on having smashed centuries of tradition may soon realize that they have wrought this destruction for the benefit of very few couples, a high proportion of whom are soon separated.

(Source: Gunnar Andersson et al., “The Demographics of Same-Sex Marriage in Norway and Sweden,” Demography 43 [2006]: 79-98.)

Married Fathers, Involved Fathers  

Both young men and young women benefit from the influence of a highly involved father.  But a study recently completed by Marcia L. Carlson of Columbia University indicates that adolescents are far more likely to realize that benefit if their biological parents have achieved a stable marital union than if their parents have failed to create such a union. 

Analyzing data from a national sample of over 2700 adolescents, Carlson examines four measures of problems in adolescents’ lives: negative feelings (feeling “sad and blue” or “nervous, tense, or on edge”), internalizing symptoms (being “too fearful or anxious” or “withdrawn”), delinquency (damaging property, stealing, lying to parents, injuring others, or skipping school), and externalizing behavior (failing to “get along with other kids,” “argu[ing] too much,” or cheating).  Carlson’s data indicate that “across all the four measures, the higher the level of reported father involvement, the lower the level of behavioral problems....Adolescents who report that they do not have a father have the highest problem scores.” 

Carlson adduces evidence that on a number of measures paternal involvement is beneficial for adolescent well-being regardless of adolescents’ family circumstances.  However, the data show that fathers are far more likely to be “highly involved” in the lives of adolescents if they live with them.  Such coresidence is unusual except for “continuously married fathers.”  “Fathers,” Carlson remarks, “are least involved with adolescents born outside of marriage whose mothers either remain unmarried or marry a stepfather.”  A father who was married to his adolescent offspring’s mother but has then divorced is likewise unlikely to be highly involved in their lives.  Consequently, Carlson documents a high level of paternal involvement for only 10-18% of all fathers who are not coresident with their adolescent children. 

Carlson’s research reveals not only that a typical coresident father is more involved in his adolescent child’s life than a father living apart, but also that “father involvement is more beneficial when the father is coresident.”  In statistical analysis, “the benefit of each unit of father involvement is two to three times as great when the father lives with the adolescent as when he lives elsewhere.”  Indeed, Carlson’s numbers indicate that in reducing the negative feelings an adolescent experiences, paternal involvement is “only beneficial if provided by a coresident father.” 

Even more incompatible with progressive orthodoxy than Carlson’s findings concerning paternal involvement in children’s lives are her findings about family structure.  For although progressives desperately want to believe that all family forms serve children equally well, Carlson’s concludes that “adolescents living with their continuously married biological parents have significantly lower behavioral problem scores compared to all other family types,” even in statistical models that control for differences in mothers’ and children’s background characteristics.   The difficulty of accommodating this family-structure finding within progressive thinking is compounded by statistical analysis showing that paternal involvement only “partially accounts for the family-structure effects.”  In other words, some of the benefits that an intact parental marriage delivers to adolescent children remain even when the father is not particularly involved in his children’s lives. 

Why is it that even adolescents with uninvolved fathers are better off when their parents stay married?  The distinctively high levels of parental involvement among married mothers may be the key.  Carlson reports that the mothers in this study who were “least likely to be highly involved” in their children’s lives were actually those who had “either divorced and remained single or [who had] had a nonmarital birth and remained unmarried.”  It appears that the omni-competent single mothers who can handle parenthood without a husband are quite rare.

Hard realities are puncturing decades of progressive fantasies about how resilient children and superwoman single mothers would do just fine in a world without fathers. 

(Source: Marcia J. Carlson, “Family Structure, Father Involvement, and Adolescent Outcomes,” Journal of Marriage and Family 68 [2006]: 137-154.) 

Unbalanced Single Mothers  

Those who have severed the traditional tie between wedlock and motherhood have done much to secure the employment of America’s psychiatrists and therapists.  Whether they have done much to secure the well-being of husbandless mothers is another question.

The relationship between the marital status of American mothers and their mental health recently received careful scrutiny from a team of epidemiologists at the University of Manitoba.  Parsing mental health data collected from a nationally representative sample of mothers ages 15 to 54, the researchers limn a clear relationship between marital status and psychological disease. Compared with married peers, never-married and separated/divorced mothers suffer from psychological disorders at distinctively high rates. “Specifically,” remark the Manitoba scholars, “separated/divorced mothers had the highest frequencies of depression, dysthymia, G[eneral]A[nxiety]D[isorder], and alcohol abuse,” while “never-married and separated/divorced mothers had equally high frequencies of P[ost]T[raumatic]S[tress]D[isorder], drug abuse, and antisocial personality disorder.” 

In subsequent analysis, the researchers re-examined their data in a statistical model that took into account differences in mother’s socioeconomic and stressor circumstances.  Only the artificial world of statistical modeling separates different marital statuses from the economic and stressor circumstances that typically inhere in those statuses.  But even in this highly artificial statistical model, separated/divorced mothers suffered from anxious-misery disorders, depression, dysthmyia, G[eneral]A[nxiety]D[isorder], externalizing disorders, and antisocial personality disorder at markedly higher levels than were observed among married peers (Odds Ratios of 1.60 to 2.88; p < 0.05 for all psychological disorders).  When compared to married peers in the same statistical model, never-married women appeared to be more vulnerable to most of the forms of psychopathology diagnosed in this study, but the difference in vulnerability reaches the threshold of statistical significance for only P[ost]T[raumatic]S[tress]D[isorder] and drug abuse (Odds Ratios of 1.87 and 2.11 respectively; p < 0.05 for both diagnoses). 

In their conclusion the Canadian researchers stress that the “odds of experiencing psychopathology are lowest for married mothers,” and they note that the odds of experiencing such pathology are most sharply elevated for separated/divorced mothers, conjecturing that perhaps “the stress of separation or divorce could lead to poor mental health.”  “Never-married mothers,” observe the authors of the new study, “appear to be in a somewhat intermittent position between married and separated/ divorced mothers with regard to psychopathology.”

Though most feminists appear slow to recognize it, improving the mental health of the nation’s mothers appears to depend in part on fostering and strengthening wedlock.

(Source: Tracie O. Afifi, Brian J. Cox, Murray W. Enns, “Mental Health Profiles Among Married, Never-Married, and Separated/Divorced Mothers in a Nationally Representative Sample,” Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology 41 [2006]: 122-129.)

Symptom of Trouble  

Adolescent pre-marital sexual activity—fornication in the language of our ancestors—troubles many prominent educators only when the young people involved fail to use contraceptives.  Such sexual license is perfectly normal, these pedagogues assert, while pressing for more ambitious programs for distributing contraceptives and dismissing as misguided and naïve all attempts to teach abstinence.  This Panglossian view of adolescent sexual activity does not square, however, with the findings of a study recently published in the Journal of Research on Adolescence by a team of pediatricians at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York City.

Examining survey responses collected from 1052 inner-city adolescents, the Einstein scholars discern clear evidence that sexual continence predicts a healthy academic profile while sexual experimentation predicts a tangle of academic and behavioral pathologies. 

Compared to sexually experienced peers, the virgins in the study reported higher grades in school (p < 0.01) and expressed “higher educational aspirations,” being distinctively more likely to plan on graduating from college and/or attending graduate school (p < 0.05).  Not surprisingly, the virgins in this study were strikingly more likely than their sexually experienced peers to come from an intact two-parent family (p < 0.0001).

In contrast, the sexually experienced students in this study were distinctively more likely than their virgin peers to earn low grades (p < 0.01), to be high school drop-outs (p < 0.01), and to use tobacco, alcohol, marijuana, and other illegal drugs (p < 0.01 for all substances). 

In examining “the co-occurrence of substance abuse and dropping out of school with sexual activity,” the authors of the new study acknowledge that the entire problematic cluster may plausibly be viewed as a “problem behavior syndrome.” 

Only the ideologically blind would suppose that handing out contraceptives will cure this ugly syndrome. 

(Source: Ellen Johnson Silver and Laurie J. Bauman, “The Association of Sexual Experience with Attitudes, Beliefs, and Risk Behaviors of Inner-City Adolescents,” Journal of Research on Adolescence 16.1 [2006]: 29-45.)