Will This Marriage Last? – Read Our New Piece at Time.com
From Ash:
In keeping with the pieces Po and I have been blogging this week, we have a new piece on Time.com. We've taken the issues we've been talking about here and turned the discussion into a sort of wedding-day handicapping guide to the success of a marriage – for that conversation about a couple's future that we all too often find ourselves having in the back of the church during the ceremony.
I think it's worthy and really fun read, if I do say so myself. If you've been following along with the blog, it works as sort of a summary post. But it's also a good email to send to introduce people to these issues as well – especially to those who are leery of marriage because of what they've heard about divorce rates.
In keeping with the pieces Po and I have been blogging this week, we have a new piece on Time.com. We've taken the issues we've been talking about here and turned the discussion into a sort of wedding-day handicapping guide to the success of a marriage – for that conversation about a couple's future that we all too often find ourselves having in the back of the church during the ceremony.
I think it's worthy and really fun read, if I do say so myself. If you've been following along with the blog, it works as sort of a summary post. But it's also a good email to send to introduce people to these issues as well – especially to those who are leery of marriage because of what they've heard about divorce rates.
posted by Ashley Merryman at 11:36 PM
7 Comments:
"FYI, among the major religions, Catholics get divorced the least. Protestants the most. But what is really important here is not what religion they are, but how devoted they are to practicing their faith. You're right to worry if the bride insisted they married in the chapel, when the groom really wanted a wedding at the beach."
I am curious as to whether you studied all RELIGIONS or perhaps just 'sects'. Protestanism and Catholocism are 'sects' of Christianity as most people will agree. When I read the statements above by you and Po, they implied that you had researched Islam, Bhuddism and other major religions in making the comparison. I am going to assume that you only studied Christianity. If I am incorrect please correct me.
We looked at every study we could find, and we did not limit it to Christianity. However, most of the studies stated that they looked at various denominations of Christianity and Judaism. I specifically looked for mention of other religions as well, but I didn't really see anything. That many mean that those religions fell somewhere in the middle between those, so they weren't highlighted in the reports. But what I think is more likely is that religions such as Islam have been influential on a worldwide level for centuries, but are comparatively recent additions to the American religious sphere. Because of that, sociologists haven't yet been able to conduct the longitudinal studies of these populations (since most of the marital stability studies I looked at were looking at over 7, 15, 30 year periods): they would have considered the populations to be too small to have been representative.
In this article you made no mention of how the groom's relationship with his mother affected a marriage. (If indeed it does.)
So what's the answer?
RE: "That's not the case for the groom — the quality of his relationship to his father does not impact his odds".
Gosh, we all thought that the relationship to the mom made a huge difference, right? And it probably does. just that statistically, whether a bride or groom has a close or distant relationship to their mothers wasn't one of the variables that correlates with more or less divorce. I certainly would never say "that variable doesn't matter", but statistically it's not the warning sign we thought.
I might go back and look again to see if we can find anything more ...
Po, I just read an article in the NYT entitled, "To Be Married Means to Be Outnumbered" http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/15/us/15census.html?pagewanted=2&ei=5087%0A&em&en=7178555ed9402d2c&ex=1161057600
It's not necessarily central to the thread above, but what are your thoughts? Cheers
Po, I just read an article in the NYT entitled, "To Be Married Means to Be Outnumbered" http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/15/us/15census.html?pagewanted=2&ei=5087%0A&em&en=7178555ed9402d2c&ex=1161057600
It's not necessarily central to the thread above, but what are your thoughts? Cheers
Well the coverage accurately notes that people aren't turning away from marriage, they're just taking longer to do it. But to call this a "delay," which they commonly do, is an inaccurate portrayal. These days, we have to accomplish so much before it's time to be financially ready for marriage. Women, especially, need to get educated before they marry. So we don't delay marriage, we just have to get some other stuff done first. And I sent out an email a year ago noting that the typical american home no longer has children in it. But be aware people still are marrying, eventually. Over 90% of people will get married at some point in their lives. For the women who turned 40 this year, 83% of them had already married by the age of 35. So while it takes a while to marry, people still do it - almost all of them.
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