Thursday, Jul 24, 2008
The underlying assumption is that no one consciously chooses to live in what would be considered to be an "alternative family." Instead, we remain uncoupled, or unsuccessfully coupled, or childless or unmarried despite our best intentions. Crucial in this view are the various indications, supported by research, say conservatives, that outcomes for parents and children in alternative families are dire -- or least not what they could be if these people were ensconced in nuclear families.
On May 15, the day that the new census figures were released, the Family Research Council responded with a press release titled, "Marriage Is a Must -- Cohabitants Who Marry Are More Likely to Divorce," which cited (unspecified) studies that show that married couples are less likely to divorce, that marriages last longer than cohabiting unions and that married couples are happier, and their kids fare better, than those who live in cohabiting homes.
Adds Johnson of the Heritage Foundation, "The research shows that having children out of wedlock puts a child at risk for a host of other social problems, and the choices of the parents can stack up against the child. I think that every individual makes choices, but most people would agree that it's bad to be poor, it's bad to have children who are more at risk for criminal behavior, it's bad to have children who are at risk for educational failure. And I think that people recognize that their families will be better off to the extent they can avoid those risks."
But social science is, unfortunately, not absolute in its authority or pronouncements on family structure. As is so often the case when "research" is cited as gospel, one finds that the data and its collector must be scrutinized and evaluated for signs of limitations or manipulation. It's true that some respected studies have shown that the children of divorced or never-married parents are statistically more likely to have problems (usually measured in terms of educational achievement, behavior and discipline).
But at the same time, early studies also suggest that certain nontraditional families -- especially those of single fathers and gay parents -- score as well as or better than intact families in child outcome. In part, this seems to be because of the "exceptional parent" syndrome: It is so difficult to become a gay parent or, to a lesser extent, a single father that the ones who do so are unusually committed to becoming a parent.
"Social science hasn't proven anything," says Barbara Nordhaus, assistant clinical professor of social work at the Yale Child Development Center. "It can't prove anything about family structures, because the one thing we know is that conflict in families is detrimental to children.
"But we don't have any information about family structure," she adds. "We have information about deprivation, poverty, malnutrition, disease, unemployment, drug addiction of parents -- those kinds of things aren't good for kids. But it's not about the structure of the family. That's a prejudice, a bias. And it's more and more of a fairy tale. No one even remembers what the nuclear family was. People think it's a cartoon from the '50s."
Nordhaus also criticizes studies that reportedly reflect what is in the best interest of children -- particularly when it comes to family structure.
"The 'best-interest notion' is totally bogus in this discussion," says Nordhaus. "It's extracted from the legal arena, and even in the legal arena it has caused more confusion than clarity. It has to be translated for each individual child. There is no agreement about a child's best interest -- except in the terms of a child to be protected and loved and wanted and to be part of a family that is not intruded upon by the state. But it doesn't really advance the discussion at all; it's just a smoke screen, really, for these people to fill in what they want to fill in and claim that they are only acting in a child's best interest."
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