Austrian Anxieties

American progressives have long looked to Western Europe for enlightened social attitudes, particularly with regard to alternative family forms.  With their generous welfare states and their thoroughly secular outlooks, Western Europeans have avoided the hysterics all too often seen among Americans exercised over the decay of marriage and family life.  But how can it be, then, that some of those enlightened and sophisticated Europeans are now deeply concerned about the effects of family disintegration?

Just how much family failure now disturbs some prominent Europeans may be inferred from the fact that in 2003 the Republic of Austria commissioned an exhaustive study of the social consequences of father deprivation, a deprivation that divorce and illegitimacy have made increasingly common—in Europe as in the United States.  Based on both Austrian and international social science, this new study identifies fatherlessness as a social problem that fully justifies American concerns over family decline—and that is increasingly unsettling European sensibilities.

The Austrian study establishes that—despite the generous benefits available through Austria’s welfare state—”fatherless families run a high risk of being economically underprivileged.”  Nonetheless, further analysis reveals that “the mere fact that they are economically underprivileged does not yet explain abnormal behaviour of the children after loss of the father in case of the parents’ separation.”  Regardless of the explanation, the Austrian researchers conclude that “the early loss of the father by divorce or death comes with specially sustained negative consequences.”  These negative consequences include “externalising behaviour” among school-age boys and adolescent girls.

Among both adolescent boys and adolescent girls, the researchers find that “children of divorced parents tend to problems with achievement in school and violating norms more than children from nuclear families.”  Nor do the problems consequent to fatherlessness end with adolescence.  “Father deprivation,” the Austrian scholars acknowledge, “can lead to problems with relationships and partnerships as well as emotional disorders in adulthood.”

With the consequences of family breakdown proliferating on their side of the Atlantic, perhaps enlightened Europeans will finally catch up in their social thinking to the backward traditional-family Americans.

(Source: Rotraut Erhard and Herbert Janig, The Consequences of Father Deprivation: An Analysis of Related Literature [Vienna and Klagenfurt: The Republic of Austria, 2003], 7, 174-176, emphasis added.)

Out of the Loop  

If marriage ties the generations together, then by logical inference, divorce unravels those bonds, shortchanging relationships between parents and children. Two recent studies demonstrate how divorce not only warps family dynamics but also pushes husbands and fathers “out of the loop” and isolates the latter from their children.

The first study, by Julianna M. Sobolewski and Paul R. Amato, analyzed data from the longitudinal panel study, Marital Instability over the Life Course, which polled more than 2,000 married and divorced individuals between 1980 and 1997, as well as more than 600 of their offspring in 1992 and 1997. The researchers found that parental divorce correlated with adult children being emotional distant from both parents and being close only to one parent (p <.001 for both variables). Additional tests found that when these children are close to just one parent, that parent is most likely to the mother (p <.01), a pattern that was stronger for daughters than for sons (p <.05).

While Sobolewski and Amato also quantify how these altered dynamics associated with parental divorce exert a significant and negative effect on the subjective well-being of young adult children, the second study looks at how those changed relationships leave parents—particularly fathers—out in the cold. Using the Netherlands Kinship Panel Study, which collected data on more than 8,000 parent-adult child pairs in the first wave (2003), Matthijs Kalmijn of Tilberg University found not only that older divorced parents enjoy less contact and emotional support from their grown children than do their married peers, but also that divorce magnifies existing disparities between married men and married women when it comes to relations with their children.

As the Dutch scholar frame it: “When married, fathers have less contact with their children than mothers and they also receive less support from their children. After divorce, gender differences are increased to the fathers’ disadvantage.” The pattern remained regardless of the timing of divorce. While the effects of late divorce on both variables (contact and support) were less dramatic than the effects of early divorce, they remained negative and significant.

Fathers are also shortchanged when parents remarry and have additional children, behaviors that Kalmijn found to further fray generational ties in cumulative fashion. While remarried mothers experienced only a marginally significant reduction in contact and support from their grown children, remarried fathers suffered significantly greater declines in contact and support levels. This held true even when controlling for the fact that divorced fathers remarry more often than divorced mothers. A final test found similar, yet less definitive, results when measuring the impact of remarried parents who had additional children, as fathers received less support from their original children than did mothers, who actually received more support.

Claiming that these findings provide “direct evidence for the notion that marriage protects men,” Kalmijn observes: “For fathers, the breakdown of marriage not only removes a spouse, it also removes a kinkeeper.”

By highlighting “the relatively fragile position of elderly men outside of marriage,” the Dutch study also helps to explain the results of a third study that found that most American adults believe that because men face greater difficulties outside of wedlock, men “need” marriage more than women. Looking at data from the 1992-94 wave of National Survey of Families and Households, Gayle Kaufman and Frances Goldscheider also found women are more likely than men to believe that adults can find happiness outside of wedlock and to feel that women do not need marriage. How these attitudes dovetail with actual behavior is not clear, but the previous studies clearly demonstrate that the well-being of men, women, and children depend a lot more on marriage than these popular attitudes warrant.

(Sources: Julianna M. Sobolewski and Paul R. Amato, “Parents’ Discord and Divorce, Parent-Child Relationships and Subjective Well-Being in Early Adulthood: Is Feeling Close to Two Parents Always Better than Feeling Close to One?” Social Forces 85 [March 2007]: 1103-1124; Matthijs Kalmijn, “Gender Differences in the Effects of Divorce, Widowhood, and Remarriage on Intergenerational Support: Does Marriage Protect Fathers?” Social Forces 85 [March 2007]: 1079-1104; Gayle Kaufman and Frances Goldscheider, “Do Men ‘Need’ a Spouse More than Women? Perceptions of the Importance of Marriage for Men and Women,” The Sociological Quarterly 48 [Winter 2007]: 29-46.)

Did the Patriarchy Enable Feminism?  

Given the cultural prevalence of the marriage-based, natural family throughout most of American history, how did the cultural left so quickly and so effortlessly achieve its feminist agenda of no-fault divorce, the suppression of sex differences, and the decoupling of sexual relations from marriage? Exploring the connection between the culture war in the United States and the international war on terror, Dinesh D’Souza in The Enemy at Home places the blame squarely on the shoulders of an unlikely party: powerful men:

The reason feminism prevailed so easily is that from the beginning, the feminists had the tacit support of many men. Contrary to the predictions of the feminists, the patriarchy offered no serious resistance to women’s liberation. Many men realized that feminists were championing something men have always sought, something that the ethic of the nuclear family denied them. Men discovered in women’s liberation a means to have sex with many women without having to marry or support them. This was even better than polygamy, which allowed men to have multiple wives but required the husband to look after all of them. Consequently, many men — especially rich, powerful men looking to expand their options — enthusiastically backed the feminist goal of liberation.

The research fellow at the Hoover Institution then explains how feminism essentially subjected relationships between the sexes to cold market forces that are anything but liberating for women: “What this means is that as the man grows older, more sophisticated, and earns more, he no longer feels obligated to stay with the spouse who has devoted her ‘best years’ to him....Call it ‘men’s liberation.’ The women who are left behind rarely have the same options than the men have.” Ditto for children: “Every child considers its particular family irreplaceable. Children lose their childhood the day their parents divorce. They become vulnerable to a host of social pathologies that are well known....No child would choose divorce, and the sons and daughters of divorce never wish it for their children. If children had the vote, there would be no such thing as divorce.”

At the same time, D’Souza identifies something even more fundamental than feminism, or the men that condoned it, behind the recent transformation of America into a society that exalts personal autonomy, expressive individualism, and self-fulfillment: “What has changed in America since the 1960s is the erosion of belief in an external moral order. This is the most important political fact of the past half century. ...Today there is no longer a moral consensus in American society.”

(Source: Dinesh D’Souza, The Enemy at Home: The Cultural Left and Its Responsibility for 9/11 [New York: Doubleday, 2007], pp. 170-171, p. 19.)

Major Decline in Minor Abortion Rates  

Previous studies by Michael J. New of the University of Alabama have linked the enactment of pro-life legislation to the reduction of abortion rates during the 1990s (see New Research, January 2005, p. 4). Now the political science professor has found that such legislation exerts an even stronger effect on the abortion rate among minors, which dropped more than 50 percent between 1985 (when the abortion rate was 13.5 per 1,000 girls between the ages of 13 and 17) and 1999 (when the abortion rate among the same was 6.5). That compares with a 29 percent decline in the abortion rate overall.

Like his 2004 study, New examined the relationship between pro-life policies and state abortion rates, but this time used the abortion rate among minors as the dependent variable, which he calculated using age-specific abortion statistics from U.S. Census Bureau, state data, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).  He found that Medicaid funding restrictions exert the strongest effect, having appeared to reduce the abortion rate by 23 percent, an average of 2.4 abortions per 1,000 girls under 17 (p <.01). Parental involvement laws, which 32 states had adopted by 2000, also exerted a statistically significant effect, reducing the abortion rate by 16 percent, an average of 1.67 abortions per 1,000 girls under 17 (p <.01).  Informed consent laws (adopted by 27 states by 2000) and partial-birth abortion bans (adopted by 12 states by 2000) were found to be less effective. Whereas informed consent laws reduced the abortion rate by an average of 0.53 abortions per 1,000 girls under 17 (p <.10), partial birth bans reduced the rate by an average of 0.33 abortions per 1,000 girls under 17.

Tests yielding a large difference between the effects of parental involvement laws on the minor abortion rate and the overall abortion rate, and a second test showing how states that enacted parental involvement laws experienced significantly larger reduction in the minor abortion rate relative to states that nullified such laws, confirmed that state policies—not broad value shifts in the states that passed them—were themselves responsible for the documented results.

(Source: Michael J. New, “Analyzing the Effect of State Legislation on the Incidence of Abortion Among Minors,” The Heritage Foundation Center for Data Analysis, Report No. CDA07-01, February 5, 2007.)

Places Prevention Programs Don’t Work  

Government officials have spent a good deal of tax money devising programs to keep teenagers from experimenting with alcohol.  But new research indicates that such programs lose their effectiveness when single-mother households multiply.

In an effort to analyze a substance-abuse program called “Keepin’ it REAL,” researchers from Arizona State University recently analyzed data collected for 4,622 Phoenix-area students exposed to the program.  Statistical analysis of these data reveals that “program effects [in reducing alcohol use] were dampened when students’ schools were located in neighborhoods with high proportions of single mothers.”  More specifically, the analysis shows that “for neighborhoods with high levels of single-mother families, the substance-prevention program had no effect.”  In contrast, “in neighborhoods with low levels of single-mother families, students who participated in the [substance- prevention] program scored significantly lower on the number of days [they] drank alcohol.”  

The Arizona State scholars remark that their findings are consistent with their initial view of “single-mother families in neighborhoods [as] a form of neighborhood social disorganization, which lowers levels of supervision of youth and decreases appropriate role models for young people.”

(Source: Scott Yabiku et al., “Neighborhood Effects on the Efficacy of a Program to Prevent Youth Alcohol Use,” Substance Use & Misuse 42[2007]: 65-87.)

Avoiding the Weed—Even When Parents Fight  

Social scientists have known for some time that teens from intact families succumb to the temptation of illegal drugs less often than peers from broken homes.  But a new study finds that an intact parental marriage shields children from drug use even when that marriage is strained.

In a study recently completed at the University of Montana-Missoula, sociologists carefully examine drug-use data collected from 15,455 Montana public-school students (grades eight through twelve).  Just as they anticipated, the researchers trace a clear linkage between adolescents’ family structure and their marijuana use.  “The percentage of [students] who had ever used marijuana is highest for youths living in a single-parent home (49.2%), followed by those living in nonparent homes (48%) and those in stepparent households (46.8%).  The lowest percentage [of students using marijuana] is associated with living in a two-parent family (31.9%).” 

When the researchers narrow their focus to “extreme use” of marijuana (defined as forty or more uses of the illegal drug), they limn a notably similar pattern: 28.7% of students from non-parent households reported such “extreme use,” followed by 19.9% of students from stepparent families, and 17.6% of students from single-parent households. Less than one in ten (9.8%) of students from intact two-biological-parent families report “extreme use” of marijuana.

None of these findings come as any surprise to the researchers.  However, some quite unpredictable results surface when the Montana scholars begin to probe the way household tension affects adolescent drug use. Indeed, the findings here may come as a rude shock to social theorists who believe that the quality of household relationships counts for far more than does family structure.  For when the Montana researchers examine the data carefully, they find that “levels of marijuana use are lower in high-conflict two-parent homes than they are in low-tension homes where one or both parents is missing.”  That is, even in households where family members have “serious arguments, insult or yell at one another, and argue about the same thing all of the time,” an intact parental marriage still fortifies teens against illegal drug use!

Of course, the data indicate that “the best possible outcome pertaining to marijuana use is a two-parent family where family tension is low.”  But it is certainly worth knowing that even quarreling parents are keeping the drug pushers at bay—so long as they keep their marriage intact!

(Source: Dusten R. Hollist and William H. McBroom, “Family Structure, Family Tension, and Self-Reported Marijuana Use: A Research Finding of Risky Behavior Among Youths,” Journal of Drug Issues 22[2006]: 975-998.)      

The Economics of Strong Families  

Observers on both sides of the political spectrum agree that declining fertility in many wealthy countries poses threats to their respective economies, not to mention their social security systems that are premised upon robust birth rates. Yet a study by two Harvard economists suggests that countries that want to increase fertility levels may need a renewed appreciation of politically incorrect family values, particularly conventional sex roles where women are oriented more to work in the home and their husbands work more in the market.

Looking at data representing 78 countries from the last wave (1999-2001) of the World Value Survey, Alberto Alesina and Paola Giuliano found significant differences between countries where citizens expressed “strong family ties” (Mexico, Poland, the United States, Canada, and many southern European countries) and countries with “weak family ties” (Germany, the Netherlands, and northern European countries). Residents of the former category were not only more likely to express traditional gender-role attitudes but also enjoyed significantly higher levels of fertility, as the latter reported a lower average number of children born per woman by 0.52, or 30 percent of the sample average.

Using data from the 12-country Multinational Time Use Study, the researchers found that traditional families (those with strong family ties) also exhibited higher levels of home production, including home cooking, domestic tasks, care for elderly parents, and the care and education of their larger number of children. As might be expected, these function-rich homes correlated with lower levels of female labor force participation. Yet unlike some economists, the Harvard professors do not consider this a negative, noting that because home production is often not included in GDP figures, official economic statistics “display a downward bias as a measure of total production (home and market) in countries with strong family ties.”

Nor are these productive and fertile households credited with demanding few or no burdens on costly public welfare systems, as the World Values Survey data show that “weak family ties” positively correlate with preferences for extensive social welfare systems and high taxes.

Yet the professors found that traditional family life yielded even more than economic benefits, as people living in societies with strong family ties were happier and more satisfied with their lives, even while they also reported lower levels of market activities and lower incomes.

(Source, Alberto Alesina and Paola Giuliano, “The Power of the Family,” National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper 13501, April 2007.)