The percentage of Americans who consider children "very important" to a successful marriage has dropped sharply since 1990, and more now cite the sharing of household chores as pivotal, according to a sweeping new survey.Sweeping, eh? Heh. Because a broom is such a consolation when it visits you in your hospice.
The Pew Research Center survey on marriage and parenting found that children had fallen to eighth out of nine on a list of factors that people associate with successful marriages — well behind "sharing household chores," "good housing," "adequate income," a "happy sexual relationship" and "faithfulness."Shall I go out on a limb and guess that no happy marriages result where "good housing" beats "faithfulness" on the list of priorities? What I love in stories like this is how the random experts called upon for comment manage to make absolutely anything into a peg on which to hang their hobby-horses.
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Chore-sharing was cited as very important by 62 percent of respondents, up from 47 percent in 1990.
The survey also found that, by a margin of nearly 3-to-1, Americans say the main purpose of marriage is the "mutual happiness and fulfillment" of adults rather than the "bearing and raising of children."
Virginia Rutter, a sociology professor at Framingham State College in Massachusetts and board member of the Council on Contemporary Families, said the shifting views may be linked in part to what she called America's relative lack of family-friendly workplace policies, such as paid leave and subsidized child care.Because nothing cures colossal selfishness like taking all your responsibilities away.
As anecdotal corroboration of these findings, I can offer a conversation I had yesterday with a group of parents at the awards picnic for our 6-yr-old's t-ball season. The parents of one of the kids are getting married in a couple of weeks and people stood around trying to talk them out of it! You know, all in that joshing way people have of asking questions like, "Are you married or are you happy?" But nevertheless, there was a certain earnestness in it, because the warnings that all their fun was about to be over persisted beyond one or two one-liners. No one had anything positive to say about marriage and no one said anything about what would be best for the child in question. The couple spent a good several minutes defending themselves for getting married as if they were doing something slightly nutty or outre, like refusing to vaccinate their kids. In a group of about 15 adults, only 3 of us allowed as how we thought it was nice and wished them well.
