Fragile Families and the Marriage Agenda Lori Kowaleski-Jones Nicholas H. Wolfinger Editors Fragile Families and the ~ a r r i aA~geen da With 3 1 Figures Q- Springer Lori Kowaleski-Jones Nicholas H. Wolfinger Department of Family Department of Family and Consumer Studies and Consumer Studies University of Utah University of Utah 225 South 1400 East 225 South 1400 East Salt Lake City, UT 841 12-0080 Salt Lake City, UT 841 12-0080 USA USA lori. [email protected] [email protected] Library of Congress Control Number: 2005926769 Printed on acid-free paper. O 2006 Springer Science+BusinessM edia, Inc. All rights reserved. This work may not be translated or copied in whole or in part without the written permission of the publisher (Springer Science+Business Media, Inc., 233 Spring Street, New York, NY 10013, USA), except for brief excerpts in connection with reviews or scholarly analysis. 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Dufur Department of Sociology, Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah Rachel Dunifon Department of Policy Analysis and Management, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York Paul Florsheim Department of Psychology, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah Renata Forste Department of Sociology, Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah Lori Kowaleski-Jones Department of Family and Consumer Studies, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah Matthew McKeever Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Mount Holyoke College, South Hadley, Massachusetts Sara S. McLanahan Department of Sociology and the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey vi Contributing Authors Brent C. Miller Department of Family, Consumer, and Human Development, Utah State University, Logan, Utah Dawne Moon Department of Sociology, University of California-Berkeley, Berkeley, California Le Q. Ngu Department of Psychology, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah Rayna A. Sage Department of Family, Consumer, and Human Development, Utah State University, Logan, Utah Kelly P. Trontman Department of Sociology, Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah Lynn D. Wardle J. Reuben Clark Law School, Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah Jaye Cee Whitehead Department of Sociology, University of California-Berkeley, Berkeley, California Bryan Winward Department of Family, Consumer, and Human Development, Utah State University, Logan, Utah Nicholas H. Wolfinger Department of Family and Consumer Studies, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah Preface Lori Kowaleski-Jones and Nicholas H. Wolfingerl 'Department of Family and Consumer Studies, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah Marriage has become part of America's political agenda. President Bush promised "unprecedented support to strengthen marriages" (Ooms 2002). Numerous states have recently passed pro-marriage legislation, including financial incentives for marriage and provisions for marriage education (for an overview see Gardner et al. 2002). Louisiana, Arizona, and Arkansas have attempted to limit the availability of divorce via "covenant marriage" laws; similar legislation has been considered in more than 30 states. Many of the reforms to the welfare system included in the 1996 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act were designed to increase marriage and reduce out-of-wedlock childbear- ing. For example, time limits on benefit receipt were enacted in part to increase the cost of remaining single for low-income women (Edin 2000a). More recently, the Department of Health and Human Services Administration for Children and Families announced that it will support various new research projects for helping couples develop the skills neces- sary to form and sustain successful unions (Health and Human Services News 2004). Inherent in all of these marriage promotion policies is the premise that marriage is better for children and adults than are single parenthood and cohabitation. Many people see government involvement in family policy as a response to the American family "crisis." Some point to the large number of non- viii Preface traditional or "fragile" families, generally defined as unmarried women with children. Primarily on account of divorce and out-of-wedlock births, there were ten million single mothers in America in 2000; more than one and a half million of these women had unmarried live-in partners (Fields and Casper 2001). One of the primary concerns with these non-tradi- tional families is their precarious financial status. In 2003,28% of female- headed families were poor, compared to only 5% of two-parent families (DeNavas-Walt et al. 2004). Economic deprivation while growing up increases the risk of various adverse outcomes, including poor physical health and reduced academic achievement (McLoyd 1998). Not all of the deleterious effects of non-traditional families can be linked to poverty: irrespective of economic well-being, children growing up without both biological parents have lower rates of high school completion and higher rates of premarital fertility (McLanahan and Sandefur 1994). Some contend that marriage is the solution to many of the problems faced by single-parent families (Waite and Gallagher 2000). Unwed moth- ers who get married indeed experience substantial gains in income (Lichter et al. 2003). Others suggest that government programs designed to raise marriage rates may cause more problems than they solve (Solot and Miller 2002). It has been argued that poor socioeconomic prospects for lower-class men have driven down marriage rates in this population (Lichter et al. 1992; Lloyd and South 19967 Wilson 1987). Consequently, marriages resulting from governmental interventions may well fail to solve the social problems that have inspired much of the pro-marriage agenda. Furthermore, such marriages may be plagued by high levels of domestic violence and divorce (Edin 2000b). These issues, at the center of the controversy over governmental efforts to promote marriage, highlight the need for more information about the causes and consequences of non- traditional family forms. CONTENTS AND GOALS OF THIS VOLUME This volume explores issues related to fragile families. It is based on a collection of papers presented at the 2003 Rocco C. and Marion S. Siciliano Forum, an annual lecture series at the University of Utah on the state of American society. Past participants have included David Gardner, former president of the nine campus University of California system, Alejandro Portes, Howard Harrison and Gabrielle Snyder Beck Professor of Sociology at Princeton University and former president of the American Sociological Association, and Karl Rove, Special Assistant to President George W. Bush. Preface ix The keynote speaker at the 2003 Forum was Sara McLanahan, Professor of Sociology and Public Affairs at Princeton University and former president of the Population Association of America. Her address, "Fragile Families and the Marriage Agenda," provides the cornerstone of this volume. McLanahan's paper articulates many of the issues surround- ing the current controversy over the state of marriage. Eight other original papers on a variety of topics related to fragile families provide the balance of the volume. The book begins with McLanahan's address. She observes that govern- mental programs to promote marriage make assumptions about people's willingness to participate, the programs' efficacy, and their potential bene- fits to children in fragile families. Using data from a national sample of new parents and their children, McLanahan offers qualified evidence that the government's marriage promotion programs may indeed succeed in their goals. The second part of the book presents theoretical, public policy, and legal perspectives on the value of marriage. Dawne Moon and Jaye Cee Whitehead explore the discursive links between public images of and poli- cies toward marriage, and the prevailing feminist and sociological views. Their analysis suggests that marriage is a political construction that con- secrates and sanctifies particular forms of intimate life. By contrasting popular culture representations contained in the 2003 television show Married by America with government efforts to promote marriage, Moon and Whitehead suggest that the state uses marriage to avoid its own responsibilities to poor families. Brent Miller, Rayna Sage, and Bryan Winward observe that teenage pregnancy and childbearing in the United States have declined by about one fourth since 1991, but remain far more common than in other developed countries. Furthermore, teenage mothers have become less likely to be mar- ried. Miller and colleagues assess the evidence linking early childbearing to parental well-being and evaluate public policy proposals to reduce teen pregnancy. Lynn Wardle reviews three effects of American family law on fragile families. First, he discusses how fragile families are often invisible to fam- ily law. Second, he reviews family law principles and reforms intended to help fragile families. Third, he considers family law doctrines that have been detrimental to fragile families, either by contributing to their prolif- eration or by exacerbating the plight of existing fragile families. Next the book examines some of the causes and consequences of child well-being in fragile families. A large body of research documents that sin- gle parenthood is associated with behavior problems and reduced aca- demic achievement among offspring. Rachel Dunifon and Lori x Preface Kowaleski-Jones observe that little research has examined racial differ- ences in the influence of single parenthood on children. They find that that growing up in a single parent family is associated with negative out- comes for white, but not black, children. Many children who grow up in poverty do so in households headed by divorced mothers. Matthew McKeever and Nicholas Wolfinger explore how changes in women's human capital and labor market participation have affected the incomes of divorced women since 1980. Using newly developed statistical methods for studying income distributions, they find that improvement in family income for these women can largely be attrib- uted to growing levels of human capital in conjunction with declining family sizes. Although the proliferation of mother-headed families has contributed to economic stratification, income polarization has not occurred within the population of divorced women. Mikaela Dufur and Kelly Troutman focus on a specific adolescent risk behavior, high-intensity work, and theorize that adolescents in certain frag- ile families will work more hours because of financial need, while teens in others will extend their work hours to avoid unpleasant home environ- ments. Their results suggest that scholars hoping to understand fragile fam- ilies must take different family structures and processes into account. The final portion of the book addresses a historically understudied group, fathers in fragile families. Renata Forste explores the family circum- stances of unmarried fathers. Although many of these men are involved with their children, both interpersonal and economic factors have pre- vented them from marrying the mothers. Instead, most of the mothers and fathers have intermittently engaged in non-marital cohabitation. Paul Florsheim and Le Ngu identify developmental factors associated with positive fathering among a sample of young men aged 15 to 19. Despite significant individual and social disadvantages, these fathers developed relational capacities associated with positive parenting. These capacities included a growth-oriented perspective on the co-parenting relationship, a commitment to shared responsibility for maintaining this relationship, and a willingness to empathize with their co-parenting part- ners. They conclude by discussing the importance of studying unexpected successes for the development of effective interventions. The authors of this volume come from a variety of disciplinary back- grounds, and employ both qualitative and quantitative data. The variety of analytic approaches has yielded a diverse set of findings about fragile families. We hope that they contribute to current political and academic debates over the value and viability of marriage in contemporary American life.