New Study (2014) Says Women More Stressed By Home Than Work

New Study (2014) Says Women More Stressed By Home Than Work

But so many Christians portray stay at home wife and motherhood as being bliss for women. Come to find out, women don’t always enjoy being SAHMs.

(Link): Why You’re More Stressed by Home Than Work

Excerpt:

by Belinda Luscombe
May 22, 2014

A new study out from the Council on Contemporary Families suggests that contrary to most surveys, people are actually more stressed at home than at work.

Three Penn State researchers measured people’s cortisol, which is a stress marker, while they were at work and while they were at home and found it higher at what is supposed to be a place of refuge.

“Further contradicting conventional wisdom, we found that women as well as men have lower levels of stress at work than at home” writes one of the authors, Sarah Damaske, assistant professor of labor and employment relations, sociology and women’s studies at Penn State (the italics are hers).

In fact women even say they feel better at work, she notes. “It is men, not women, who report being happier at home than at work.”

Another surprise is that the findings hold true, says Damaske, for both those with children and without, but more so for nonparents. This is why, the authors conclude, people who work outside the home have better health.

What the study doesn’t measure is whether people are still doing work when they’re at home, whether it’s household work or work brought home from the office. For many men, the end of the workday is a time to kick back. For women who stay home, they never get to leave the office.

And for women who work outside the home, they often are playing catch up with household tasks.

With the blurring of roles, and the fact that the home front lags well behind the workplace in making adjustments for working women, it’s not surprising that women are more stressed at home.

But it’s not just a gender thing. At work, people pretty much know what they’re supposed to be doing: working, earning money, doing the tasks they have to do in order to draw an income.

The bargain is very pure: employee puts in hours of physical or mental labor and employee draws out life-sustaining moola.

———————–
Related posts:

(Link): The Changing American Family (article)

(Link): The Jetson Fallacy – Much longer lifespans could explode the nuclear family (article)

(Link): Widows and Childless and Childfree Have Better Well Being Than Married Couples and Parents says new study

(Link): 5 Scientifically Proven Reasons It’s Better To Be Single

(Link): More single dads than ever head US households

(Link): Remarriage rates plunge as divorced Americans have doubts – and about Christian culture and divorce and remarriage vs singleness

(Link): (Articles) Marriage Rate At All Time Low

(Link): False Christian Teaching: “Only A Few Are Called to Singleness and Celibacy” or (also false): God’s gifting of singleness is rare – More Accurate: God calls only a few to marriage and God gifts only the rare with the gift of Marriage

(Link) Family Is Not a Norman Rockwell Painting, Christians: Man kept dead mom in freezer for 3 years, cashed her Social Security checks: cops

How American Christians Were Influenced by 1950s American Secular Propaganda to Idolize Marriage and Children and Against Singles and the Childless -and how over-emphasis on “family” and lack of respect for singleness started a backlash against both – [both = marriage, having kids] (excerpts from ‘Pornland’ book)

How American Christians Were Influenced by 1950s American Secular Propaganda to Idolize Marriage and Children and Against Singles and the Childless -and how over-emphasis on “family” and lack of respect for singleness started a backlash against both (excerpts from ‘Pornland’ book)

Excerpts from Pages 2- 5 of Pornland: How Porn Has Hijacked Our Sexuality by Gail Dines – read it for free on “Google Books.”

(Below this long excerpt are a few observations by me):

For a magazine [Playboy] to clearly state that it was not “a family magazine” in the 1950s was close to heresy.

According to social historian Stephanie Coontz, it was during this period that there was an unprecendented rise in the marriage rate, the age for marriage and motherhood fell, fertility increased, and divorce rates declined.

From family restaurants to the family car, “the family was everywhere hailed as the most basic institution in society.”

The mass media played a pivotal role in legitimizing and celebrating this “pro-family” ideology by selling idealized images of family life in sitcoms and women’s magazines, while demonizing those who chose to stay single as either homosexual or pathological.

The most celebrated sitcoms of the period were Leave It To Beaver, Father Knows Best, and The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet. The ideal family was white and upper middle class, with a male breadwinner whose salary supported a wife and children as well as a large home in the suburbs.

The primary roles for men and women were seen as spouses and as parents, and the result was a well-run household populated by smart, well-adjusted kids.

The print media also got in on the act, carrying stories about the supposed awfulness of being single. Reader’s Digest ran a story entitled “You Don’t Know How Lucky You Are to Be Marred,” which focused on the “harrowing situation of single life.”

One writer went so far as to suggest that “except for the sick, the badly crippled, the deformed, the emotionally warped and the mentally defective, almost everyone has an opportunity to marry.”

In the 1950s, “emotionally warped” was a coded way of saying homosexual, and indeed many single people were investigated as potential homosexuals and by extension Communists, since the two were often linked during the McCarthy years.

This pressure on men to conform not only to the dictates of domestic life but also to the growing demands of corporate America had its critics in the popular media. Some writers pointed to the conformist male as a “mechanized, robotized caricature of humanity… a slave in mind and body.”

According to Barbara Ehrenreich, magazines like Life, Look, and Reader’s Digest carried stories suggesting that “Gary Gray” (the conformist in the gray flannel suit) was robbing men of their masculinity, freedom, and sense of individuality.

While pop psychologists criticized the corporate world for reducing American males to “little men,” it was women in their roles of wives and mothers who were essentially singled out as the cripplers of American masculinity. As Ehrenreich has argued, “the corporate captains were out of the bounds of legitimate criticism in Cold War America,” women were the more acceptable and accessible villains.

Described as greedy, manipulative, and lazy, American women were accused of emasculating men by overdomesticating them.

Singles in the Church by Dave Faulkner / Also: Isolated: single Christians feel unsupported by family-focused churches (article / survey)

Singles in the Church by Dave Faulkner / Also: Isolated: single Christians feel unsupported by family-focused churches (article / survey)

He (Faulkner) says on his blog page about singleness that he did not marry until he was 41 years old, so he definitely lived through and noticed the incredible bias that conservatives and Christians harbor against the unmarried.

Note that “bias against the unmarried” I mention does not always fall under the rubric of Christians walking up to an unmarried and proclaiming, “You are a loser for being single at your age!,” but quite often in what Christians omit to do, such as neglecting to include the unmarried in leadership positions in churches, paying for full time adult singles preachers or ministries, etc, etc, etc.

But most churches are utterly devoted to marriage and children. 🙄

(Link): Singles in the Church

Excerpts:

A survey of single Christians in church does not surprise me at all. Single Christians often feel ‘isolated , alone and lonely’ in church. Single women feel they are seen as threats to married couples.

Why does this not surprise me? Because I was 41 before I married, and I experienced some of this. I was told that marriage was ‘the norm’, which made me feel abnormal. There were questions raised behind my back about my sexuality.

Here’s the survey he mentioned:
(Link): Isolated: single Christians feel unsupported by family-focused churches

Excerpts:

Women not in steady relationship ‘treated as threats to couples’
JONATHAN BROWN Author Biography WEDNESDAY 24 APRIL 2013

Single Christians feel “isolated, alone and lonely” within their churches, according to new research. More than a third of worshippers who were not married or in a relationship said they did not feel treated the same as those that were part of conventional families.

Nearly four out of ten single churchgoers said they often felt “inadequate or ignored” whilst 42.8 per cent said their church did not know what to do with them. A total of 37 per cent said they “did not feel treated as family members”

The findings were based on the responses of 2,754 people who used the Christian dating site Christian Connection and suggest there is a significant minority of worshippers who feel alienated by the prevailing attitudes within protestant denominations in Britain including the Church of England.

The survey found that older people were more keenly aware of their single status and that women not in a steady relationship were treated as “threats to couples”. Singles said they often felt more valued outside rather than inside their church.

Independent researcher and writer David Pullinger who analysed the data, which included single parents, said churches needed to respond to changing times.

… Among the comments made by respondents were that they felt the “pain” of being single in a predominantly family setting and that there were few activities aimed at those aged between 30 and 60 for those without a partner.

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Related posts, this blog:

(Link): Never Married Christians Over Age 35 who are childless Are More Ignored Than Divorced or Infertile People or Single Parents

(Link): If the Family Is Central, Christ Isn’t

(Link): Single Adults – Why They Stay and Why They Stray From Church – Book Excerpts

(Link): Preachers and Christian Media Personalities: Re: Marriage – You’re missing the point stop trying to argue or shame singles into getting married

(Link): Why Even Middle Aged Married with Children Christians Are Leaving Church – Not Just Unmarried Singles | 40 Somethings Gen X Quitting Leaving Church

Response to the Hemingway Editorial ‘Fecundophobia’ – conservatives and Christians continue to idolize children, marriage – which is unbiblical

A Response to the Hemingway Editorial ‘Fecundophobia’ – conservatives and Christians continue to idolize children, marriage – which is unbiblical

Ms. Hemingway must be out to lunch.

Other than the secular, hyper-militant Child Free persons (and yes, they do exist, I’ve encountered them on forums or blogs for Child Free, and they are usually self professing pagans or atheists, and they are almost always very liberal and hostile towards Christians, pro lifers, and Republicans), I don’t know of many people who are pushing for, or embracing, “low fertility rates.”

Nor do I know many people among the childless or CF (childfree) who are “afraid” or pregnant women or children.

Here is a link (well, it’s a tiny bit farther below) to the editorial by the woman, Hemingway, who has a misunderstanding about the childless and childfree. Not all childless or childfree are alike in personality, political or religious views, or in their reasons as to why they remain without children.

I’ll only be writing from my particular vantage as a childless woman, I will not be attempting to defend or explain the differing views of or for every single childless or childfree person.

I have additional commentary below these excerpts; there are points where I agree with this author, and points where I do not:

(Link): Fecundophobia: The Growing Fear Of Children And Fertile Women, By Mollie Hemingway

The author, Hemingway, begins by quoting an article by a sportswriter about a football player who is about to have child number seven, and she seems to feel that the author is implying that it is “weird” for the footballer to have so many children.

Here is the section Hemingway quoted:

And he’s [the football player] also about to have his seventh kid. There are going to be eight people with Rivers DNA running around this world.

If you visit the page in question, however, (Link): the page in question, you can see that the page’s writer is primarily riffing on this point:

• This is the only GIF necessary from this game [showing the footballer’s odd habit of making weird facial distortions and pumping his fists in the air on the sidelines during a game].

Nick Novak hit a 50-yard field goal just inside the two-minute warning to give the Chargers a two-possession lead. This was Philip Rivers’s reaction. He’s like a sad movie character who pumps himself up in front of a mirror.

The primary point of the page is not fertility at all, but rather, the player’s strange body language and facial expressions he makes during games.

The part about him having six or seven kids is a minor thought that appears at the bottom of that page. It is not the focal point.

Hemingway then goes on to criticize several papers for not criticizing the choices of other football players who asked their girlfriends to get abortions.

Note that Hemingway quotes this by Philips, when asked how he handles being father to six children:

It’s a two-year rotation: Once the diapers come off of one, we usually have a newborn. And we have another one on the way, due in October. I help when I can, but my wife, Tiffany, is the key.

This is actually one of several reasons I am somewhat opposed to the acceptance of, or pushing of, hyper fertility – the burden is always put primarily on the woman to look after the rug rats, while hubby gets the easier task of shuffling off to the 9 to 5 job daily.

Mom never gets a break; she stays with the children 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

But women like Hemingway think this lop-sided and unfair burden of child care foisted on the woman only is a good thing, I would suppose.

Read about Andrea Yates and how she murdered several of her children after being expected to be a full time mommy with little to no help from anyone, not even her spouse ((Link): Yates information).

Hemingway responds to the perfectly natural, “how the hey do you manage with six children?!” question by asking incredulously,

— but what kind of question is that? Seriously. Who asks a question like that?

Why, it’s the kind of perfectly normal, natural reaction of someone, of any sane, rational, and logical person, who thinks having more than two or three children is strange, expensive, and very time consuming – that is the sort of person who.

Even people who are currently parents to two or three children might wonder in awe at, or in bewilderment at, why anyone would want to have more than three children, or how they handle more than three, without going broke or being physically exhausted all the time.

It is not only the liberals, childless, or childfree who get puzzled by this sort of thing.

Hemingway writes,

It may be impolitic to suggest that men and women are in any way different, science be damned, but many women have a particular specialty in cultivating relationships and family. To denigrate women who acknowledge and accept this as a good thing rather than fight against it is not exactly life-affirming.

Christian gender egalitarians note that there are some differences between men and women ((Link): visit CBE – Christians for Biblical Equality), but it does not follow that while women may be better at relationship, or more drawn to building them, that they therefore should all have at least one child, or up to ten of them.

Women can just as easily use their interest in, and talent at, relationships for volunteering to help lonely seniors at senior citizen retirement homes, or volunteering to feed homeless people at soup kitchens, or, helping take care of homeless puppies and cats at the ASPCA.

Hemingway’s argument shortly before that, which gets into how we are all interdependent, actually shoots down her other points which argue in favor of each person having ten children: you can go through life childless but depend on brothers, sisters, uncles, neighbors, friends, and if you are a church goer, fellow church members.

One does not have to have children in order to have someone to depend on, or to be “interdependent.”

Just because a larger percentage of people in contemporary society are choosing not to have children (and remember, some who want to are unable to – from lack of partner to infertility), does not mean all people will make this same choice.

As a matter of fact, the number of babies among unmarried women have been skyrocketing, which is angering, or worrying, a lot of Christians:

• (Link):

The Rise of the Single Mother and of Women Out-Earning Men

• .

Additionally:
(Link): Single Father households on the rise

Nor does a decrease in people interested in pro-creating necessarily mean all of society will grind to a halt. There will always be someone, somewhere, who will keep getting pregnant and giving birth. (It’s just not going to be me specifically. And that is okay.)

Then there’s this information, which would appear to refute some of Ms. Hemingway’s views:

• (Link):

Fertility crisis myth? Rates unchanged, even though more waiting to have kids

(Link): America’s Baby Bust Must Be Over

(Link): Trend of Older People Becoming First Time Parents

What Jesus Christ and Paul Taught About Family/ Having Children / Being Married

As a matter of fact, that is the pattern that Jesus Christ sought to establish, that people be freed from the ancient over-dependence on family, because Jesus recognized that such a society ignored those without one, such as orphans, spinsters, and widows:

• While Jesus was still talking to the crowd, his mother and brothers stood outside, wanting to speak to him.

Someone told him, “Your mother and brothers are standing outside, wanting to speak to you.”

He replied to him, “Who is my mother, and who are my brothers?”

Pointing to his disciples, he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers. 50 For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother.”
[source: Matthew 12]

And further, from Matthew 10, Jesus speaking:

• “Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword.

For I have come to turn
“‘a man against his father,
a daughter against her mother,
a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law—
a man’s enemies will be the members of his own household.’

“Anyone who loves their father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; anyone who loves their son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.”

No where in the Bible does Jesus teach that one must have children in order to have someone to “depend upon.”

Having children, in the New Testament, is not listed as a rule or commandment.

Your spiritual brothers and sisters in Christ (that is, other Christians) are to be your primary family; you are not to seek family out in husband, children, mother, or brother.

The Bible does not condemn marriage or having children, but it remains that singlehood, as stated by Paul the Apostle under inspiration of the Holy Spirit, is stated as being preferable for believers – not marriage and procreating.

Quoting Paul:

• Now to the unmarried and the widows I say: It is good for them to stay unmarried, as I do. [

source

]

Paul again,

• 25 Now about virgins: I have no command from the Lord, but I give a judgment as one who by the Lord’s mercy is trustworthy.

26 Because of the present crisis, I think that it is good for a man to remain as he is.
27 Are you pledged to a woman? Do not seek to be released. Are you free from such a commitment? Do not look for a wife.

28 But if you do marry, you have not sinned; and if a virgin marries, she has not sinned.

But those who marry will face many troubles in this life, and I want to spare you this.

32 I would like you to be free from concern. An unmarried man is concerned about the Lord’s affairs—how he can please the Lord.

33 But a married man is concerned about the affairs of this world—how he can please his wife— 34 and his interests are divided.

An unmarried woman or virgin is concerned about the Lord’s affairs: Her aim is to be devoted to the Lord in both body and spirit. But a married woman is concerned about the affairs of this world—how she can please her husband.

35 I am saying this for your own good, not to restrict you, but that you may live in a right way in undivided devotion to the Lord.
[source: 1 Corinthians 7]

Culture Still Puts Pressure on Women to Have Children, Contrary to What Hemingway Says

Hemingway states,

And keeping the womb empty at all costs during all, or nearly all, of one’s fertile years is the sine qua non of modern American womanhood. Woe to the woman who “chooses” otherwise.

I am a right winger, I am a social conservative, and yes, I realize that a lot of the media -which is tilted left- rabidly supports abortion.

I do not support abortion myself.

I am not opposed to women having babies, if that is their informed choice.

However. It remains a fact in American society that outside of left wing media, there is still a tremendous pressure, and expectation, placed upon people, especially women, to crank out babies.

The cultural landscape is the direct opposite of what Hemingway states in her editorial.

Outside of fringe, far left, kook, militant Child Free type groups or individuals, or rabidly militant, secular feminists, there is still a huge expectation from larger culture that women should have babies, and if they do not have children, for whatever reason, they are hounded for it, put down, and insulted, or scolded, or treated as though they are freaks.

Women are attacked for remaining childless not only by commentators such as Hemingway in newspapers and blogs, but also by their baby-obsessed mothers, sisters, aunts, and grandmothers, and female co-workers.

It is a very real perception and stereotype by the child-loving population, which is in the majority, that you are thought weird, baby-hating, evil, incredibly selfish, etc, if you cannot have children, or, if you deliberately choose not to have children.

I have never liked children myself, so I never cared if I had a baby or not.

But please note: I do not “hate” children, I do not fear them, I do not condone child abuse or abortion. I am simply not comfortable around babies and children: they are typically loud, messy, distracting. I prefer not being around them.

At one point in her editorial, Hemingway talks about walking around a city, an area very liberal in flavor. She mentions seeing signs hanging up around that part of town reading, “Thank you for not breeding.”

I suggest to her, I posit, that conservative and Christian culture does the same exact thing as that liberal section of the city she visited, only they are mirror opposites: rather than hanging up signs that say “thank you for not breeding!,” conservatives and Christians hang up signs screaming at women TO marry and TO “breed.”

False Christian Teaching: “Only A Few Are Called to Singleness and Celibacy” or (also false): God’s gifting of singleness is rare – More Accurate: God calls only a few to marriage and God gifts only the rare with the gift of Marriage

False Christian Teaching: “Only A Few Are Called to Singleness and Celibacy” or (also false): “God’s gifting of singleness is rare” – More Accurate: God calls only a few to marriage -and- God gifts only the rare the exceptions the few with the gift of Marriage

Before I get to the main point of this post: About the chastity thing, or celibacy thing. Technically, all Christians are called to a chaste life, not just singles.

If you are married, you are not supposed to be diddling anyone but your spouse, and per Jesus’ comments of (Link): Matthew 5:27-28, that means no dirty web site, movie, or magazine viewing for married people, either.

First of all, the Bible does not teach the concepts of “Gift of Singleness” (GOS) or “Gift of Celibacy” (GOC).

Nor does the Bible teach that God fore-ordained in eternity past who would remain single, or who would be married, which is the faulty method in which some Christians understand the term “gifted with singleness” or GOC.

I will not address those points here, because I have discussed them in older posts here:

(Link): The Myth of the Gift – Regarding Christian Teachings on Gift of Singleness and Gift of Celibacy

(Link): The Gift of Singleness – A Mistranslation and a Poorly Used Cliche’

(Link): There is No Such Thing as a Gift of Singleness or Gift of Celibacy or A Calling To Either One

Does God Gift Only A Few With Singleness?

I want to address one somewhat common falsehood and assumption I see crop up in televised Christian marriage seminars or sermons, or in Christian blogs and pod casts about dating, sex, and marriage, which is this:

Often times, a preacher will pause to say during a presentation about marriage that “only a few are called to singleness.” But is this true?

Preachers will sometimes use this “only a few are gifted or called to singleness” rhetoric to shame singles into getting married.

I believe preachers and conservative Christian organizations feel this way and keep quoting “only a few are chosen for singlehood,” since they assume that the once-common American cultural situation of one marrying in one’s twenties and having children was typical, that it remains typical.

Most troubling, such Christians seem to assume that the Bible commands, or expects, all Christians to marry and have children, and that not marrying, or not procreating, is sinful – but it does not. In the New Testament, singleness is regarded as being fully acceptable.

Preachers, and even many Non Christians, continue to assume that marrying young and having children is the norm.

However, census data of the past ten years reveal that getting married young, if at all, is no longer the norm.

More and more people – including Christians – are either skipping marriage altogether, or getting married later in life, due to circumstances beyond their control, or, some are deliberately choosing to stay single for a lifetime, or at least until their 30s or later.

Some figures I have seen have stated 44% of American adults over the age of 18 are single, while other figures cited have been as high as 50%.

When close to half the American population of adults is single, and this applies to conservative Christians in Baptist and evangelical contexts as well, how can Christian preachers, Christian talking heads and speakers at Christian marriage seminars, keep making the BOGUS claim that only a few are called to singleness?

When half of adult conservative Christians are single, is it not more accurate to say (if you believe in the “gifting” or “calling to” of singleness, which I do not), that God has called a heck of a lot of adults to singleness, and that God has only called a piddling few to marriage?

The New Testament does not prescribe or describe marriage or having children as being normative.

The New Testament does not depict being married, getting married, or having children as requirements, commands, mandates, or expectations for anyone, for most, or for all.

Marriage and having children are presented as valid options for believers, but as being no more valid or worthy than being single and childless, whether by deliberate choice or by circumstance.

I do not believe God calls or pre-ordains anyone to singlehood or marriage, but if one insists upon using such terminology, and wishes to be accurate about the state of culture today, it looks like God has called only a few to marriage and childbearing / procreation.

Look at these American statistics:

(Link): Barely Half of U.S. Adults Are Married – A Record Low

New Marriages Down 5% from 2009 to 2010

by D’Vera Cohn, Jeffrey S. Passel, Wendy Wang and Gretchen Livingston

Barely half of all adults in the United States—a record low—are currently married, and the median age at first marriage has never been higher for brides (26.5 years) and grooms (28.7), according to a new Pew Research Center analysis of U.S. Census data.

In 1960, 72% of all adults ages 18 and older were married; today just 51% are. If current trends continue, the share of adults who are currently married will drop to below half within a few years. Other adult living arrangements—including cohabitation, single-person households and single parenthood—have all grown more prevalent in recent decades.

(Link): Facts for Features: Unmarried and Single Americans

Single Life

102 million

Number of unmarried people in America 18 and older in 2011. This group comprised 44.1 percent of all U.S. residents 18 and older.

Source: America’s Families and Living Arrangements: 2011
Table A1.

62%
Percentage of unmarried U.S. residents 18 and older in 2011 who had never been married. Another 24 percent were divorced, and 14 percent were widowed.
Source: America’s Families and Living Arrangements: 2011
Table A1

55 million
Number of households maintained by unmarried men and women in 2011. These households comprised 46 percent of households nationwide.
Source: America’s Families and Living Arrangements: 2011
Table A2

33 million
Number of people who lived alone in 2011. They comprised 28 percent of all households, up from 17 percent in 1970.
Source: America’s Families and Living Arrangements: 2011
Table H1 and HH-4

(Link): Single Adults-A Population Group Too Large To Ignore 

(but churches keep right on ignoring singles anyway)

Excerpt:

Author and speaker Carolyn Koons said, “The church needs to expand its term ‘family,’ moving from a traditional family definition to one that includes singles, widows, single-parent families, extended families, expanded families, stepfamilies, and blended families. We must become the family we are—the family of God.”1 Statistics on single adults in America are growing rapidly and affecting lifestyles and family types.

(Link): For Many Adults, Marriage Can Wait, Census Shows – WSJ.com

By CONOR DOUGHERTY
Updated Sept. 29, 2010

The long-term slide in marriage rates has pushed the proportion of married adults of all ages to 52% in 2009, according to the Census, the lowest share in history. In 1960, 72.2% of adults over 18 were married.

The U.S. began tracking marriage statistics in 1880. The latest figures on marriage come from the Census’ annual American Community Survey, the government’s deepest and broadest look at economic, social and demographic trends.

(Link): Why Are There So Many Single Americans? – New York Times

By KATE ZERNIKE
Published: January 21, 2007

THE news that 51 percent of all women live without a spouse might be enough to make you invest in cat futures.

But consider, too, the flip side: about half of all men find themselves in the same situation. As the number of people marrying has dropped off in the last 45 years, the marriage rate has declined equally for men and for women.

(Link): Marriage Rate Declines To Historic Low, Study Finds

Posted: 07/22/2013 2:28 pm EDT | Updated: 07/22/2013 3:07 pm EDT

We’ve been hearing for years that fewer and fewer people are tying the knot, and a new study reveals just how much the marriage rate has declined in the last century.

A new report released Thursday by Bowling Green State University’s National Center for Marriage and Family Research found that the U.S. marriage rate is 31.1, or 31 marriages per 1,000 unmarried women. That means for every 1,000 unmarried women in the U.S., 31 of those previously single women tied the knot in the last year. For comparison, in 1920, the national marriage rate was 92.3.

Meanwhile, the average age at women’s first marriage is 27 years old, its highest point in over a century.

In 2011, the Pew Research Center found that 51 percent of Americans were married, compared to 72 percent in 1960. However, rates of cohabiting couples are rising — according to private research company Demographic Intelligence, less than half a million couples were cohabiting in 1960, compared to 7.5 million in 2010.

Earlier this year, Los Angeles Times columnist Meghan Daum offered a reason for declining marriage rates: cultural “rules” now compel couples to wait to marry until they have reached upper-class status. Pew researcher D’Vera Cohn told HuffPost in 2011 that the decline could be due to more acceptable living arrangements, including unmarried cohabitation.

(Link): Table for One Ministries – Singles Stats

(Link): Facts About Single People Demographics – Unmarried America

There are 106 million unmarried adults in the United States.

Singles constitute more than 44% of the adult population in the nation.

About 44% of the nation’s workforce are unmarried employees

The Census Bureau estimates that about 10% of adults will never marry.

Households:

A majority of the nation’s households are headed by unmarried adults

Married couples with minor children live in fewer than 25% of the nation’s households.

Single adults living alone comprise about 27% of the nation’s households.

Another 13 million single adults are living with unmarried relatives.

Considering that 44% – 50% of all American adults are single, it can just as easily be argued or said that ‘God calls only a few to marriage and/or procreating.’

Marriage has not been the norm in American culture for at least the last ten years now, maybe longer, depending on how one wishes to look at things. It is therefore dishonest and misleading for Christians to keep insisting that only a “few” “chosen” are called to lifelong singleness or celibacy or are “gifted” with it.

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Related topics, this blog:

(Link): Statistics Show Single Adults Now Outnumber Married Adults in the United States

(Link): Four in 10 Adults Between the Ages of 25 and 54 are Single, Up From 29% in 1990

(Link):  Nearly 4 in 10 American Adults Live Without Spouse or Partner As Single Population Grows: Pew

(Link): Federalist Magazine Staff Annoyed that Other Outlets Publish the Down Side of Motherhood and Are Requesting Sunny Motherhood Propaganda Pieces – As If Conservatives Haven’t Pushed for Motherhood Enough? The Mind Boggles

(Link): Fewer Americans Think Marriage is Needed To Create Strong Families, New Poll Suggest

(Link): Do You Need a Partner to Have a Happy Life? by D. LaBier

(Link): Instone-Brewer: Ancient Jews Expected All to Marry, Was Illegal to Remain Single in Ancient Rome

(Link): Lifeway Research: Pastors Encourage Single Adults, Some Provide Targeted Ministries (How Churches Are Ministering to Adult Singles in 2022)

(Link): Misapplication of Biblical Verses About Fertility (also mentions early marriage) – a paper by J. McKeown

(Link): Jesus Christ Removed the Stigma, Shame From Being Single and Childless – by David Instone Brewer

(Link): Pew for One: How Is the Church Responding to Growing Number of Singles? by S. Hamaker

(Link):  Ever Notice That Christians Don’t Care About or Value Singleness, Unless Jesus Christ’s Singleness and Celibacy is Doubted or Called Into Question by Scholars?

(Link):   Typical Conservative Assumption: If you want marriage bad enough (or at all), Mr. Right will magically appear

(Link): Fewer Americans See Their Romantic Partners As a Source of Life’s Meaning

(Link): Can We Stop Saying Singleness is God’s Will? by Anonymous via Sheila Wray Gregoire

(Link): If the Family Is Central, Christ Isn’t

(Link):  Newlyweds Forced to Be Celibate After Bride Diagnosed With Cervical Cancer Just Days After Honeymoon

(Link): Stop Believing God Told You to Marry Your Spouse by G. Thomas

(Link): The Netherworld of Singleness for Some Singles – You Want Marriage But Don’t Want to Be Disrespected or Ignored for Being Single While You’re Single

(Link): Never Married Christians Over Age 35 who are childless Are More Ignored Than Divorced or Infertile People or Single Parents

(Link): Remarriage rates plunge as divorced Americans have doubts – and about Christian culture and divorce and remarriage vs singleness

(Link): Candice Watters and Boundless Blog Gets It Wrong / Christian prolonged singlehood singleness singles ignored

(Link): It’s Not Your Imagination, Single Women: There Literally Aren’t Enough Men Out There – Re: Man Shortage – Follow Up Interview 

(Link): To the Christians (especially married ones) Who Like to Instruct Single Christian Adults They Should Only Marry Other Christians, Listen Up (Re: Equally Yoked Rule)

(Link):  Nearly 4 in 10 American Adults Live Without Spouse or Partner As Single Population Grows: Pew

(Link): Marriage-Pushing Zealot Wilcox Suggests that Being Single is Immoral: National Review Article

(Link): Why We Thought Marriage Made Us Healthier, and Why We Were Wrong by Bella DePaulo

(Link):  What If Marriage Is Overrated? – A social psychologist has been chipping away at many claims about marriage changing one’s life for the better

How The Changing Structure of the American Family is Changing Floor Plans in New Homes

How The Changing Structure of the American Family is Changing Floor Plans in New Homes

(Link): One Roof, Many Generations: Redefining The Single-Family Home

New homes are back in a big way — literally. This summer, a typical new house in Phoenix was more than 20 percent larger than a resale home as builders across the country added more space to accommodate post-recession lifestyles.

Take Jacque Ruggles’ family, for example. Four women from three generations live under one roof.

“I’m the matriarch,” Ruggles says. “I’m grandma.”

Ruggles makes the monthly $1,789 mortgage payment on the 2,900-square-foot home in Gilbert, Ariz., which she bought new about a year and a half ago. Her daughter, Marci Dusseault, lives here, too, along with her college-aged daughter, Jamie.

“I’ll eventually move out, but right now it’s nice to not have to worry about a lot of bills and stuff, and I can focus on school,” says Jamie, a student at Mesa Community College.

But the family affair did not stop there. Jamie’s older sister moved in last November. Chelsie, 22, had been living on her own for a while, but …

Ida Christian, who suffers from dementia, gets help from her granddaughter, Yolanda Hunter (left), in blowing out the candles on her birthday cake. Yolanda quit her lucrative job to become Ida’s full-time caregiver.

“Then life happens,” says Chelsie, who lost her job and racked up $6,000 in credit card debt. “So I had to move back in.”

Their home was made for this type of living. It includes an attached 600-square-foot suite, complete with a kitchenette and living room.

Focus on the Family Members Practice Infidelity or Homosexuality and Get Divorced and Remarry – links to exposes

Focus on the Family Members Practice Infidelity or Homosexuality and Get Divorced and Remarry – links to exposes

(Some of these stories date from the year 2000.)

Edit. April 2016. Preface and Clarification.

I am right wing myself and do not hate “the family,” nor am I opposed to traditional values or marriage.

Since I have started this blog, I have collected newer examples, ones that date up to March and April 2016, of other pro-family, Christian, or right wing persons or groups that have been caught in extra-marital affairs, or sexually abusing children – including, but not limited to, the Duggar family, whose son Josh was in the media for having sexually molested his sisters and a babysitter.

Here’s one example:

(Link): Pro Family Values Republican Hastert in Trouble Over Sexually Abusing Children (story date: April 2016) – I even criticize certain liberal views about sexuality in the midst of criticizing right wingers in that post.

You can look further examples up on my blog using the “search” box on the right hand side of the page to find newer examples; some of them might be linked to at the bottom of this post under “Related Posts”.

Interesting Links Re Christianity and Gender Roles (A.K.A. Church and Christian Approved Sexism)

Interesting Links Re Christianity and Gender Roles (AKA Church and Christian Approved Sexism)

This is a very good editorial:
(Link): Feminism vs Egalitarianism

(Link): Friday Challenge: Guess The Year [‘How Feminine Am I’ sexist and out-dated check list used by Baptist churches] – Stuff Fundies Like blog

Next link. Regarding the nutso Quiverfull-ish, Doug Phillips, Vision Forusm-ish sexist beliefs of treating women like unthinking chattel and keeping them at home with their fathers, even if they don’t marry into adulthood:

(Link): Sleeping Beauty and the Five Questions, Part 1: Blurring the Lines (TBB) – from Scarlet Letters blog

Excerpts

My main concern, however, with the vision of SAHD [Stay At Home Daughters] laid out in [Phillips’ version of] Sleeping Beauty is that it seems to progressively break down healthy boundaries in father-daughter relationships.

… In Sleeping Beauty, however, it becomes clear that “helpmeet” is only one example of a more extensive terminology shift. Fathers are said to “court” and “woo” their daughters and ultimately “win their hearts.”

(Link): Dan Kirby Kopp, 45, was found guilty of beating his wife with a spoon [for not addressing him as “sir” and other stupid crap]

The video shows Kopp showing her [his wife] the spoon and giving her a ‘count of three to comply’ with his demand of addressing him with a ‘yes, sir’ in front of the couple’s children.

He is also heard threatening to ‘cast the demons out of her’ next time she disobeyed him.

(Link): “A Year of Biblical Womanhood” Genre Cheat Sheet Rachel Held Evans’ blog

I don’t agree with what appears to be that blog’s rejection of biblical sexual ethics, or disregard for people who have remained virgins into adulthood, in favor of sugarcoating biblical sexual teachings so as to soothe the consciences of women who say they feel shamed or get hurt hearing that pre-marital sex is sinful according to the Bible, but I do agree with the blog’s disdain for biblical gender complementarianism.

Guest comments at that page (and I agree with these comments):

My favourite is their “committee” page [the writer may be referring to the gender complementarian group CBMW] where each women’s career is labelled “homemaker” and then proceeds to list all the conferences she will be attending for the next 12 months – I added up one of the women’s ‘away’ dates and figured the only way she could be a ‘homemaker’ was if she lived in a motor home.

And:

Christina Steve Dawson • 7 hours ago −

I suspect this is true. Otherwise they would have noticed years ago the irony of women building careers in which they travel, write, and speak, all for the purpose of convincing other women not to have careers.

And

Rachel Held Evans Mod Christina • 7 hours ago −

Oh my gosh! This DRIVES ME CRAZY! I went to this “biblical womanhood” conference a couple years ago where many of the attendees were professional women with careers. And the speaker – a professional woman herself – proceeded to dis on feminism as an anti-biblical worldview…starting with second wave feminism and using Mary Tyler Moore as an example of a first step away from biblical womanhood. It was so confusing

——————-
Related posts this blog

(Link): Christian Culture and Daddy Daughter Dates

Californian Politician signs bill to allow children more than two legal parents

Californian Politician signs bill to allow children more than two legal parents

This is kind of funny. I wonder how Christian “Focus on the Family” type of groups will deal with culture re-defining family to no longer mean “man and women married with children.”

This will probably devastate my fellow social conservatives and conservative Christians. Unlike them, though, I do not make an idol out of family.

Jesus taught that the church is based on His message, not by married couples reproducing babies.

So there is no real reason for Christians to panic about these types of news stories where a politician allows society to re-define parenting and marriage, but you can bet most Christians will panic, because they have turned the 1950s June Cleaver family into an idol. They view attacks on the 1950s structure of family as an attack on Jesus Himself, something Jesus never did.

I am aware that some homosexual activists and communists believe breaking down the traditional family unit is a way to rot a culture, and hence a nation, from the inside, which is one of their goals in taking over society, but again, does the Bible say a culture is to be

1. won and defended by propping up the nuclear family
or by
2a. Christians helping other Christians and
2b. telling Non Christians about Jesus?

I believe the Bible teaches points 2a and 2b, not point 1.

As a matter of fact, if one invests more time in 2a and 2b, that could lead to more of point 1 as a natural result.

Kind of like how helping Christian singles to meet and date other Christian singles would likely lead to more marriage (it certainly would not hurt), yet churches stupidly keep ignoring the Christian singles but keep bitching about the low rate of Christian marriages, and spend all their time bitching about divorce rates and homo marriage… none of which actually helps create more Christian marriages.

(Link): New law says a child may have more than two parents

(Link): Jerry Brown signs a California bill allowing a child to have more than two parents

Catholic Group Warns College Is Not For Women: ‘She Will Not Learn To Be a Wife And Mother’ (article)

Catholic Group Warns College Is Not For Women: ‘She Will Not Learn To Be a Wife And Mother’

As much as I take Baptists, conservative evangelicals, Fundamentalists, and Protestants to task for ignoring singles and worshipping the nuclear family, it looks like the Roman Catholic Church is just as sexist and backwards.

Apparently, Roman Catholics have their own idiotic family-centric marketing or concern group, akin to that of the Protestant “Focus on the Family,” and theirs is called “Fix the Family.” 🙄
(Links to news stories about this group, or to their blog itself, appear father below on this page)

If we go by Fix the Family’s definition of “family,” which I would assume is the nauseating, narrow one of a guy and woman married with a kid, with almost half the American population SINGLE, there aren’t too many “traditional families” for them to fix.

Most singles cannot even marry to start with, and many of us who are traditional or Christian, want to marry before having a kid. We cannot even form a family.

Do these types of family obsessed groups care about this, are they doing anything to help single women who want to marry (such as me) land a husband and make families of our own? Nope, they sure do not. They only pant, whine, and complain about current families who are supposedly under attack.