[acb-hsp] A Threat to Modern Society?

[peter altschul]

Is Romney's Outdated View of Family a Threat to Modern Society?
  Nicole Rodgers October 19, 2012
  During Tuesday night's second presidential debate, while 
answering a question about assault rifles, Mitt Romney veered off 
on a family-values tangent.  "But gosh, to tell our kids that 
before they have babies, they ought to think about getting 
married to someone, that's a great idea," he said.  Earlier in 
the night, Romney boasted about letting female employees off work 
in time to make dinner for their kids.  It was a uniquely honest 
glimpse, as one stationew York Timesst editorial succinctly put 
it, of a man desperately trying to graft "2012 talking points 
onto his 1952 sensibility." These moments of transparency exposed 
a man deeply out of touch with what families are like today, a 
man still pining for a world in which we all aspire to be the 
Cleavers.
  Unfortunately, Romney wasn't the only person launching public 
attacks on the unmarried this week.  In a confounding move, a 
prominent Rabbi writing for The Jewish Press shamed 42-year-old, 
unmarried, childless Jewish comedian Sarah Silverman for her 
inability to "forg[every] a permanent relationship," offering 
unsolicited advice for why "a happy marriage is the key to 
wholesomeness" and to pray publicly that Silverman will "pursue 
marriage and, if you are so blessed, raise children." What made 
this unsolicited public attack so shocking was that Silverman's 
main transgression was daring to make life choices that didn't 
conform to Rabbi's Yaakov Rosenblatt's worldview about what women 
are supposed to aspire to: marriage and babies.
  In reality, the country is very different than both these men 
would like it to be-the structure of our relationships, families, 
and work lives have all been changing rapidly in recent decades.
  On the professional front, women have been outpacing men in 
bachelor's degrees since 1996, and now have more advanced degrees 
than men, too.  They make up the (slight) majority of the 
workforce, and in 147 out of 150 of the biggest cities
  in the United States, young women's salaries are higher than 
those of their male peers.
  On the home front, according to census data, far fewer folks 
are marrying than just a few decades ago and those who stdst 
marry are marrying later.  More women are childless and those who 
have babies are having them later.  A record 4-in-10 births are 
to unmarried women.
  All of this terrifies and confuses Romney and men of his ilk.
  There is something telling about Romney's advice to "get 
married to stsomeonest" thatbs worth exploring.  He didn't say to 
marry your beloved, your partner, your boyfriend or girlfriend, 
or your lover, because the stwhost is unimportant.  Marriage is a 
palliative to all social ills: Want to reduce crime? Marry 
someone! Stuck in poverty? Marry someone!
  For him, it's the institution of marriage that is king, not the 
relationship.  Suckering someone, stanyonest, into signing that 
old marriage license is, in itself, a victory.  But he's not 
alone in his simple-mindedness.
  There are many who believe that declining marriage rates and 
rising out-of-wedlock birth rates signal a coming apocalypse, or 
at the very least, the destruction of the social fabric they 
believe holds this country together.  But all the hand-wringing 
is futile: You can't just stop demographic trends.  They are the 
result of larger economic, political, and cultural forces that 
have been at play for some time.  Isn't the sensible response to 
figure out how to support the reality of what individuals' lives 
look like now rather than try to shove them back to a past that 
no longer exists?
  As Stephanie Coontz explained in her fascinating 2006 
myth-busting book, Marriage, A History, despite the cultural 
power the traditional nuclear family has, it's actually only very 
recently in our history (about 200 years) that people began 
marrying for love and emotional fulfillment.  For the 5,000 years 
prior, marriage was an institution based on economic necessity 
and contractual obligation where the idea of marrying for love 
would have been considered dangerous and absurd.
  When emotional fulfillment gained primacy within marriage in 
the late 19th century, a funny thing happened: Marriage became 
more satisfying as a personal relationship, but more fragile and 
fraught as an institution.  The arc of history is long, and when 
it comes to the relatively new invention of love-based marriage, 
we're still just figuring it out.
  There is simply no single right way to do relationships, 
marriage, or family anymore.  Depending on your perspective, 
that's either immensely liberating or cause for alarm.
  The important question for those of us in the reality-based 
community is how to meet people where they are.  Just think about 
your own extended family: Do they all resemble Romney's ideal of 
what a family should be? Do your friends? My guess is probably 
not.  There is nothing inherently damaging or intrinsically 
problematic about family structures that deviate from some 
nuclear family ideal.  Presidents Obama and Clinton were both 
raised in single-mother households, after all.  Romney can pine 
for some regressive 1950's white-picket-fence vision that was a 
historical blip on the cultural radar (for some privileged white 
heterosexual folks), but unless he has a super secret plan to 
make lifelong heterosexual marriages, babies, and home-cooked 
meals mandatory for all adults, we're never going back there.
  For too long, we've accepted what the Mitt Romneys and Rabbi 
Rosenblatts of the world have told us: that we are a threat to 
sttheirst family values and sttheirst belief systems.  But the 
truth is, they are quickly becoming a threat to ours.