Posted on 01/20/2014 1:02:17 PM PST by xzins
A Leftist is someone who advocates marriage for homosexuals but opposes it for heterosexuals.
Recently, Ari Fleischer, a press spokesman for George W. Bush, responded to the current administration’s newfound desire to fight the plague of “income inequality”—which has spread more under Barack Obama than under any other recent president—by stating the obvious: that marriage is good economic medicine.
“`Marriage inequality’ should be at the center of any discussion of why some Americans prosper and others don’t,” Fleischer said. “According to Census Bureau information analyzed by the Beverly LaHaye Institute, among families headed by two married parents in 2012, just 7.5% lived in poverty. By contrast, when families are headed by a single mother the poverty level jumps to 33.9%.”
The response from the Left has been predictable. Carol Gilligan, a New York University professor, asked sarcastically, “Does anybody know the word patriarchy?”
Stephanie Coontz, a contributor to the liberal Center for American Progress’s “Women’s Nation” report, suggests that conservatives want to force women into bad marriages. “Trying to shoehorn women whose expectations of equal treatment have been rising into marriages with men whose economic prospects have been falling is no solution to contemporary work and family dilemmas,” Coontz says. “Women are far less likely than in the past to put up with the kind of behavior that so often accompanies economic loss and chronic employment stress—such as drug or alcohol abuse and domestic violence—and we should not encourage or incentivize them to do so.”
Yet even liberal critics, so suspicious of the motives of those who advocate heterosexual marriage, can’t deny the correlation between it and economic well-being. “The social science literature is quite clear,” writes CAP senior fellow Ann O’Leary, “that children of single-parent families, particularly those living in low-income households, do not fare as well as their peers living in two-parent families, and that these poorer outcomes persist, even when you control for socioeconomic differences.”
Those outcomes are even clearer for married couples. “The statistics tell an awkward truth,” writes Emma Green in The Atlantic: “Financially, married women tend to fare much better than unmarried women.” Columnist Kathleen Parker acknowledges that “marriage creates a tiny economy fueled by a magical concoction of love, selflessness and permanent commitment that holds spirits aloft during tough times.”
Sen. Marco Rubio, a possible presidential candidate, is one of the few national politicians willing to speak up clearly for the economic benefits of marriage. During a recent speech, the Florida Republican acknowledged the seriousness of income inequality, and also the existence of factors other than marriage in the problem, such as the lack of educational and economic opportunities. But he didn’t back away from the social factors, either.
“One of the greatest eradicators of poverty... is marriage,” Rubio said. “When a kid is being raised in a married family, [his or her] likelihood of being in poverty drops dramatically.”
And while marriage makes dollars and sense for women and children, it also helps the overall economy, which continues to struggle. According to a survey last fall by Gallup, “Married Americans report a daily spending average of $102, followed by $98 among those who are living in domestic partnerships, $74 by divorced Americans, $67 by those who are single and never married, and $62 by those who are widowed.”
Yet despite all the clear economic benefits to marriage, the marriage rate in the United States continues to languish. The National Center for Family and Marriage Research at Bowling Green State University reports that the marriage rate has fallen to its lowest level in nearly a century. In 1920, there were about 92 marriages for every 1,000 married women. Today, it’s only about 31—a huge drop of two-thirds. Married couples are now, for the first time, the minority among U.S. households, according to the Census Bureau.
“Marriage is no longer compulsory,” says Susan Brown of the NCFMR. “It’s just one of an array of options. Increasingly, many couples choose to cohabit and still others prefer to remain single.”
The current economic decline, as many have noted, has been harder on men than on women—and the damage to families has been incalculable. Many couples delay or reject marriage because of their poor economic prospects, making matrimony increasingly the privilege of a few at the top of the economic ladder. Many women generally do better in colleges and grad schools than men, making marriage problematic to say the least. Many blue collar male occupations are disappearing, leaving many men as the modern equivalents of vestigial organs in the new economy.
Even some feminist observers are concerned that this devaluing of the male has dire implications for Western civilization. “What you’re seeing is how a civilization commits suicide,” says Camille Paglia. Marriage can help men every bit as much as women.
No one advocating the role of marriage in poverty and income inequality, to my knowledge, is calling it a panacea. There are many other factors in this multifaceted problem—poor schools, a lack of jobs, and so on. But to ignore the pivotal role of marriage, or the lack thereof, is to deny reality and to preclude finding meaningful solutions.
“One of the differences between the haves and the have-nots,” Fleischer notes, “is that the haves tend to marry and give birth, in that order. The have-nots tend to have babies and remain unmarried. Marriage makes a difference.”
men don’t want to be married to feminists (ie other men without penises). We don’t want another CAPTAIN to butt heads against. We don’t want someone who believes they deserve the very best of everything just because they are a woman and it’s a man’s obligation to give that to them. We don’t want someone who never really loved us only to divorce us if the gravy train slows down or stops, or we get injured and need help, and takes our kids and half our stuff.
This is the world being molded today by the liberals in charge of many of our institutions, some of our churches and some of our families.
Regrettably people who have kids first get to have everything handed to them and the ones who want to marry have to wait.
” We don’t want someone who believes they deserve the very best of everything just because they are a woman and it’s a man’s obligation to give that to them”
This is why I think men should marry women who make their own money. It’s not the job of a man to give his new wife a new lease on childhood, having fun while the only person paying the bills goes from “Daddy” to “Husband.”
I’m a believer in one stay-at-home parent raising young kids. Assuming the presence of at least one decent job — not an easy assumption in the Obama economy — a household should have no more than 1.5 jobs while children are small and should then can adjust working hours higher based on times older children are returning from school.
Just my humble opinion is all.
If they are raising the kids; a lot of affluent housewives pawn the kid off to a nanny and have staff doing the rest.
The affluence probably helps.
Gosh, it almost seems like it was DESIGNED to be the best way to raise children. Amazing, huh?
What a coincidence!
I agree, and my children bear this out. All of them have told me, at some point or the other, that they're sure glad they were born into our family. They've had dealings with their peers, and they can see the difference between what their peers describe as their growing up years, and their own, and are thankful for what they had.
Now these are not teenagers talking about their horrible parents; our kids are all grown, and have attended college. The two older ones are a lawyer and a PhD Computer Scientist, respectively, so they've had dealings with a WIDE swath of the middle to upper middle class population. Their acquaintances don't seem to have had very supportive upbringings, because of what OUR kids described, second hand as their friends' insane or 'helicopter' parents.
Hubby and I decided, while we were preparing for marriage, that I would work while he was in school, furthering his education in Mathematics/Statistics, thus being able to command a larger salary. The plan was for me to quit, when the first baby arrived, which is what happened in his third year of grad school. We'd put some money aside so that we could pay the bills, so when he got his PhD, and got his first job, we had some cash to work with. This was all as a result of planning, and God's timing.
Thankfully, I was able to stay home while they all attended school, and through the homeschooling in Middle and High school of our two younger kids. After thirty years out of the workforce, I finally went back in 2010, because hubby and I had decided, in 2006, that I would work, while he took some time off corporate work to do some research he'd been thinking about for many years. We're just praying that pans out before he needs to go back to work, which will probably be this year.
Far from being the 'patriarchy' that the feminists in this article deride, these were the decisions worked out by two people who love and respect each other, which is what it's supposed to be when a man and woman marry.
Saying one parent should be home seems to defy economic sense. After all, you’d hear, 2 jobs bring in more money. But experience seems to indicate that that “extra” money gets lost in the whirlwind, and really more that that extra money gets lost.
The efficiencies gained by the stay at home parent are immediately seen in the fact that there are no child care expenses. But it goes far beyond that. There is, as you’ve pointed out, strategic thinking that goes into organization of the home, the finances, the kids, their development. Trouble is expensive. Less trouble is less expensive.
Amen, and I totally agree with you. I have said basically the same thing, and as a woman, I find the feminist movement has set back women’s issues 50 years. Because of their idiotic ideas we are cursed for millions of abortions, homosexuality, and the immorality of our times.
Women are still not paid equally, single women have to give their children to others to raise in daycare/afterschool programs (w libnuts), and men have become less manly or uncomfortable in their role as the romantic aggressor.
Some of us long for the days of being treated like women, when men were men... and we had the comfort of our children being raised (especially sons) by real men and not the fluff of this socialistic society.
Thanks.
Endemic poverty in a modern economy has two primary markers: broken families and substance abuse. And those two are pretty closely related to one another too.
Stop that right now! That's RACIST!
Women are paid as much or more than men when they have the same jobs and experience. The inequality only shows up when feminists try to equate clean jobs with dirty jobs.
Wrong...do the research:
http://www.jdsupra.com/legalnews/the-pay-gap-the-glass-ceiling-and-pay-94101/
It's amazing how this obvious point never gets mentioned in these silly discussions about this subject.
sounds good to me.
Well maybe you aren’t as smart as you think you are, because obviously you don’t research. Maybe you should rethink your work force, if that helps your bottom line! Of course your type of job is relevant, for example...if you own an Alaska Fishing Boat, etc.
This issue is not a left or right issue, it just shows how the left pushing women’s rights in the wrong way has inhibited real wage growth for women in certain upper level positions.
The article is right and you should have read it... to understand the gap that still exists after all the billions spent to create an equality most women will never receive in certain areas and jobs. Nor should they, as some things are a man’s territory contrary to the spinners. I know my limitations, and that the upper body strength of a woman is not the same as a man.
Comparing apples and oranges never proves anything.
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