No communities have been more enthusiastic about cohabitation as a substitute for marriage than those made up of university intellectuals. It may even be said that the nation’s universities, more than any other institutions, have given cohabitation its new status of semi-respectability. That personal relationships within cohabitation typically prove far less reliable and far more treacherous than those within wedlock apparently does not much trouble the professors who have helped effect this shift in attitude toward what our ancestors regarded as living in sin. Still, the evidence exposing the comparative deficiencies of cohabitation does keep accumulating.

The latest proof that cohabitation hurts those who try it comes from American Journal of Public Health, proffered by a team of researchers from the United States (Harvard in Cambridge; the Population Council in Washington, D.C.) and Mexico (the Mexican Ministry of Health in Mexico City). In scrutinizing data on extrarelational sex among 3990 men living in Mexico City, the researchers noticed that "a cohabiting relationship [was] associated with extrarelational sex." Indeed, compared to married peers, cohabiting men were almost twice as likely to cheat on their partners (Odds Ratio of 1.81; p < .001). Of course, the authors of this new study point out that the female partners of unfaithful men "may be exposed to HIV and other S[exually]T[ransmitted]D[isease] risk via the sexual behavior of their male partners."

Interestingly, the authors of this new study also found that "men with a higher education reported more extrarelational sex than did men with a primary-school education" (Odds Ratio of 1.51; p < .001).

Perhaps in Mexico, as in the United States, the partiality of the university set for cohabitation has less to do with enlightened liberalism than it does with the unrestrained libido.

(Source: Julie Pulerwitz, Jose-Antonio Izazola-Licea, and Steven L. Gortmaker, "Extrarelational Sex Among Mexican Men and Their Partners’ Risk of HIV and Other Sexually Transmitted Diseases," American Journal of Public Health 91[2001]: 1650-1652.)

As infinitely plastic social conventions, traditional notions of masculinity and femininity must surely change–perhaps even disappear–as men and women adopt new social roles. So progressive thinkers have been arguing since at least the 1960’s. But the authors of a study recently published in Social Forces are not so sure. Indeed, as these sociologists from the University of Akron examine survey responses collected in seven surveys between 1974 and 1997, they are struck by the "persistence of sex typing," a persistence which is stubbornly "contrary to the predictions from the sociocultural model" relied upon by all progressives in predicting the imminent demise of traditional perceptions of gender.

Though the Akron scholars acknowledge some evidence indicative of "a slight increase in masculinity scores among females" during the 24-year span of data, that is not the dominant pattern. "The major findings," the researchers insist, "have been stability and increasing sex typing. Of the 24 comparisons [investigated in this study], ten have shown stability and eleven an increase in sex typing, the strongest of these being the increased femininity of females, both in the ratings of the typical female by both males and females and in the self-ratings of the female respondents." These findings of stable or even increasing sex typing defy "the general expectation of the diminution of sex typing" because of the dramatic "changes in all areas of women’s life: labor force participation, desegregation of work, increasing levels of responsibility, political office holding, family size, age at marriage, divorce, and the important shift in family structure toward single parenting, increased participation in higher education and in nontraditional advanced degrees, and increased recognition of women’s athletic competitions."

Lest anyone misread their conclusions, the authors spell them out emphatically: "The findings of this study with regard to gender stereotypes are very clear: they are not decreasing; if anything, they are intensifying."

Since these results run wholly "contrary to prevailing notions of the dynamics of gender," the authors look outside of those notions for an explanation. Though sociocultural theories of gender plasticity cannot account for it, the researchers see stability of gender stereotypes as a phenomenon "consistent with the concept of predispositions based on innate patterns as posited by the evolutionary model." Nor do these scholars detect anything in the new evidence of "temporal stability in sex-differentiated personality traits and stereotypes" which does not fully harmonize "with the basic propositions emanating from the differing reproductive strategies of males and females." Though these propositions are "not familiar nor comfortable terrain for most sociologists," perhaps they need to become so, now that sociologists’ sociocultural theories are failing them.

(Source: Lloyd B. Lueptow, Lori Garovich-Szabo, and Margaret B. Lueptow, "Social Change and the Persistence of Sex Typing: 1974-1997," Social Forces 80[2001]: 1-35, emphasis in original.)

Family disintegration helps to create neighborhoods so permeated with fear that living in them compromises the health of their residents. In a new study of neighborhood life, sociologists Catherine E. Ross and John Mirowsky of Ohio State University adduce fresh evidence that "neighborhood disadvantage may negatively affect residents’ health." Their analysis of data collected from a probability sample of 2842 Illinois adults demonstrates conclusively that "neighborhood disorder has a significant negative association with health." Sophisticated multivariable statistical tests highlight the negative health effects of living in a "disadvantaged neighborhood," effects which persist "over and above the impact of personal socioeconomic characteristics" such as low income, limited education, or advanced age. Not only do the residents of disadvantaged neighborhoods "tend to feel less healthy," but they also suffer from "more physical impairments and chronic health problems such as high blood pressure, asthma, and arthritis."

"Health is damaged by residence in a disadvantaged neighborhood," the Ohio State scholars explain, "because disadvantaged neighborhoods have high levels of disorder." Because "social control has broken down" in these areas, residents confront an environment in which "streets are dirty and dangerous; buildings are run-down and abandoned; graffiti and vandalism are common; and people hang out on the streets, drinking, using drugs, and creating a sense of danger." Such environments naturally induce fear, and it is chronic fear that the researchers blame for wreaking havoc upon the health of residents of bad neighborhoods. "The impact of living in a disadvantaged neighborhood," they write, "is mediated entirely by disorder in the neighborhood, which influences health, both directly and indirectly, by way of fear."

The authors of the new study provide a technical explanation of "fear’s damaging effect on health," noting that when fear triggers first the release of epinephrine and norepinephrine and then the release of cortisone and cortisol, the body begins to suffer from high blood pressure, high serum cholesterol, and high serum glucose, so heightening "the risk of diabetes, stroke, heart disease, and so on."

Perhaps not everyone can understand the biochemistry, but the sociology of fear-inducing, health-damaging neighborhoods is much more straightforward. "High rates of poverty and mother-only families and low rates of college education and home ownership," remark Ross and Mirowsky, "compromise the ability of residents to create and maintain public order. The breakdown of social control and order in disadvantaged neighborhoods appears to form the major link to individual health." The researchers focus particularly on "the prevalence of mother-only households," for this prevalence not only "captures social disadvantage which is correlated with economic disadvantage" but also because it "potentially makes an independent contribution to disorder because single parents may be less able to control their children and single-parent neighbors may be less able to watch each other’s children."

So when family life in an area breaks down, residents have good reason to fear–and to fear that fear.

(Source: Catherine E. Ross and John Mirowsky, "Neighborhood Disadvantage, Disorder, and Health," Journal of Health and Social Behavior 42[2001]: 258-276.)

Sociologists have known for some time that the children of parents who divorce are especially prone to divorce themselves. The way in which the divorce contagion spreads from one generation to the next was recently clarified in a study published in the Journal of Marriage and the Family by researchers from the Pennsylvania State University and the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. In parsing data collected between 1980 and 1997 from 2033 married persons, the researchers first confirmed that parental divorce does indeed drive up the likelihood of divorce: among those interviewed for this study, "parental divorce approximately doubled the odds that offspring would see their own marriages end in divorce." What is more, the statistical linkage between parental divorce and offspring divorce "persists after controlling for a variety of variables measured prior to parents’ marital dissolution." Hence, although the researchers concede the impossibility of controlling for "all possible third variables," they affirm that their study "provides the strongest evidence yet that the association between parents’ and children’s marital instability is causal."

The Penn State and Nebraska scholars then considered two contrasting hypotheses to account for this evidently causal linkage: 1) that children whose parents have divorced are especially likely to divorce themselves because they have been deprived of healthy "parental models" for developing "the skills and interpersonal orientations that facilitate the maintenance of long-term mutually satisfying intimate relationships"; 2) that children whose parents divorce are especially likely to divorce themselves because they have lost "faith in marital permanence."

To test these two hypotheses against each other, the researchers compared divorce rates among three different groups: 1) offspring with continuously married, low-discord parents; 2) offspring with continuously married, high-discord parents; 3) offspring with divorced parents. Their results provide strong support for their second hypothesis (that elevated divorce rates among the children of divorce reflect a loss of faith in the ideal of marital permanence), but very little support for the first hypothesis (that elevated divorce rates among the children of divorce reflect impaired relationship skills).

Consonant with both the relationship-skills hypothesis and the faith-in-marital-permanence hypothesis, statistical tests established that "thoughts of divorce among offspring were elevated when parents had either a discordant marriage or a marriage that ended with divorce." However, only the faith-in-marital-permanence hypothesis could be readily harmonized with the finding that "divorce among offspring…was elevated only when parents had divorced." That is, while children of continuously married, high-discord parents were more likely to consider divorce than children of continuously married, low-discord parents, they were not significantly more likely to actually carry through with a divorce. (The divorce rate among offspring of continuously married, high-conflict parents did run 28% higher than that among offspring of continuously married, low-conflict parents, but the researchers dismiss this difference as statistically "nonsignificant.") "Apparently," the researchers remark, "growing up with troubled but continuously married parents predisposes offspring to contemplate divorce in their own marriages. But without a parental divorce to emulate, these thoughts are not generally translated into behavior." In other words, "when offspring did not experience a parental divorce, parental discord had few consequences for offspring’s probability of divorce."

Indeed, in highlighting one of the more surprising results of their investigation, the researchers report that "divorce was most likely to be transmitted across generations if parents reported a low, rather than a high, level of discord prior to marital dissolution." The researchers speculate that the reason that parental divorce is especially likely to foster divorce among children when the parental relationship has been characterized by relatively little conflict is that divorce under such circumstances is particularly likely to be understood by children as evidence of "the nonbinding nature of the marital commitment."

The data thus lend little credibility to the notion that the children of divorce end up in divorce courts themselves because they have not learned good relationship skills. Rather, the data clearly implicate a loss of commitment to the ideal of marital permanence as the reason for the high divorce rates among the children of divorce. It is this "undermining of commitment" to lifelong marriage which emerges as "a primary mechanism underlying the intergenerational transmission of marital instability." The authors of the new study acknowledge that a commitment to marital permanence "may be harmful" if it causes a spouse to "stay in an abusive relationship." But they also point out that "a strong commitment that motivates a spouse to find ways to revitalize a jaded relationship, seek counseling when the marriage is troubled, and stick together through the inevitable hard times may be beneficial."

(Source: Paul R. Amato and Danelle D. DeBoer, "The Transmission of Marital Instability Across Generations: Relationship Skills or Commitment to Marriage?" Journal of Marriage and Family 63[2001}: 1038-1051, emphasis added.)

For some time, public health authorities have worried about how excessive use of antibiotics is fostering the emergence of new antibiotic resistant pathogens. As a consequence, medical authorities are now urging physicians to cut back on their prescriptions for antibiotics. Unfortunately, if a study recently published in Pediatrics may be taken as any indication, the new efforts to reign in excessive antibiotic use may have only very limited success so long as the day-care center remains a common replacement for in-home parental care.

Analyzing data from a controlled community-intervention trial in northern Wisconsin, the authors of the new study documented the success of a multifaceted, community-based, educational intervention in reducing physician prescriptions for both liquid and solid (capsule/tablet) antibiotics. "The median number of solid antibiotic prescriptions per clinician," report the researchers, "declined 19% in the intervention region and 8% in the control region. The median number of liquid antibiotic prescriptions per clinician declined 11% in the intervention region, compared with an increase of 12% in the control region." This would be very good news for health officials–were it not for one glaring exception to this pattern of progress: "In child-care facilities," report the researchers, "there was no apparent impact on judicious antibiotic use." For all of the progress they see elsewhere, the authors of the new study admit that they were "unable to demonstrate a reduction in inappropriate antibiotic prescribing among children who attended child care."

In trying to explain "the absence of a reduction in antibiotic use among children in child care," the researchers conjecture that "parents of children who were in child care may have been more likely to expect or demand antibiotics compared with parents of children who were not attending child care." Parents’ making demands for antibiotics for children in day care seems especially likely in light of "evidence that child-care providers may encourage this behavior."

Since overuse of antibiotics helps incubate the emergence of antibiotic resistant supergerms, it is entirely predictable that the authors of the new study trace a statistical link between children’s colonization with penicillin-nonsusceptible pnemococci (PNP) and their hours per week in child-care facilities (p < .001). And unfortunately, these virulent new pathogens spread beyond the child-care facility. In speculating as to why the community-wide reduction in the use of antibiotics was "not associated with a measurable decline in PNP prevalence" in the community at large, the researchers implicate the day-care center. "There was no reduction in the rate of antibiotic prescribing for children in child care," they observe, "so selection pressure for antibiotic resistance may have been maintained in the child-care facilities despite community-wide reductions in antibiotic use."

The authors of the new study call for "further work" on the problem of antibiotic overuse and the consequent spread of antibiotic-resistant disease agents. But until the day-care centers close and children go home to parental care, that work may yield only meager results.

When the wealthy experiment with risky alternatives to traditional family life, the media portray them as daring pioneers, and their affluence shields them from real dangers. But when the poor try to imitate these glamorous exemplars, they soon find themselves entangled in life-destroying pathologies. The malign influence of the rich upon the poor is well described by political scientist James Q. Wilson of Pepperdine University in his new book The Marriage Problem. "Imagine," writes Wilson, "a game of crack the whip in which a line of children, holding hands, starts running in a circle as the first child rotates so as to require the others to follow. The first child, or the first few, move slowly, but at the end of the line the last few must run so fast that many fall down." In the way the rich have set the pace for the national retreat from marriage and family life, Wilson believes "crack the whip has become institutionalized."

"The pleasures of loose sexuality," Wilson explains, "were celebrated by the affluent, who wrote articles about sexual freedom or made motion pictures glamorizing the lives of unmarried mothers; the people at the end of the line thought sexuality without marriage was desirable, but there was no place for their children to turn for help. It is hard to keep up at the end of the line." This perverse game of crack-the-whip "may well help us understand why a changed culture–the decline of stigma, the embrace of cohabitation, and the acceptance of divorce–may influence most powerfully the people who did the least to create it."

"The tolerance and individualism of the affluent," Wilson asserts, "have exacted a heavy price from the poor."