Eideard

And baby makes two…

It used to be called illegitimacy. Now it is the new normal. After steadily rising for five decades, the share of children born to unmarried women has crossed a threshold: more than half of births to American women under 30 occur outside marriage.

Once largely limited to poor women and minorities, motherhood without marriage has settled deeply into middle America. The fastest growth in the last two decades has occurred among white women in their 20s who have some college education but no four-year degree, according to Child Trends, a Washington research group that analyzed government data.

Among mothers of all ages, a majority — 59 percent in 2009 — are married when they have children. But the surge of births outside marriage among younger women — nearly two-thirds of children in the United States are born to mothers under 30 — is both a symbol of the transforming family and a hint of coming generational change.

One group still largely resists the trend: college graduates, who overwhelmingly marry before having children. That is turning family structure into a new class divide, with the economic and social rewards of marriage increasingly reserved for people with the most education…

The forces rearranging the family are as diverse as globalization and the pill. Liberal analysts argue that shrinking paychecks have thinned the ranks of marriageable men, while conservatives often say that the sexual revolution reduced the incentive to wed and that safety net programs discourage marriage…

Which gives an idea how dim and out-of-date conservatives can be. Sad. Life really is more complex than black-and-white B movies.

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The share of all U.S. adults who are married has dropped to a record low 51 percent, according to a new report. If the trend continues, the institution will soon lose its majority status in American life.

The report…by the Pew Research Center finds new marriages dropped a sharp 5 percent last year, which is very likely related to the bad economy. Pew senior writer D’Vera Cohn says it fits with a larger trend. “The most dramatic statistics to me are when you look at the share of younger adults who are married now compared with in the past. That’s really been where you’ve seen the big decline,” Cohn says.

Half a century ago, nearly 60 percent of 18- to 29-year-olds were married. Today, it’s just 20 percent. But the Pew report finds fewer married people across all age groups.

In their place: more singles, single parents, couples living together — many having children without marrying. In fact, some 40 percent of all U.S. births are now to unmarried mothers. But the driving force in the dropping marriage rate? People who do tie the knot are waiting longer than ever.

The Pew report finds the median age when people finally walk down the aisle is at an all-time high — 26 for women and nearly 29 for men. And it’s higher still for the college educated…

Good sense and educated opinions starting to prevail.

D’Vera Cohn says the report also points to a troubling marriage gap — the rich get hitched; the working class, not as much. Historian Stephanie Coontz says it’s yet another consequence of the nation’s widening economic inequality. Wages for those without a college degree have stagnated, weakening their power in the marriage market.

“The sort of incentive to get married — because you could rely on a man whose real wages would continue to rise, who would get a pension at the end of it — that incentive has been undermined as well,” Coontz says.

On the other hand, for those who do marry, there’s an upside to waiting, at least for women. Coontz says for every year a woman delays marriage — into her early 30s — she reduces her risk of divorce.

People becoming better at arranging their lives according to new standards, expanded knowledge – even at the least educated boundaries of society – will continue to reshape western families. We’ll just continue to be a bit behind the curve while the ideologues of the declining side of our culture raise their agitprop budget.

A Nova Scotia man is headed to jail for pricking holes in condoms in an attempt to get his girlfriend pregnant and save their relationship.

Craig Jaret Hutchinson, 41, was sentenced Friday to 18 months in prison for sexual assault.

The Crown asked for a two-year prison sentence, while the defence wanted a two-year suspended sentence and probation.

Nova Scotia Supreme Court Justice Richard Coughlan said a suspended sentence was “totally inadequate.”

Hutchinson, of Clyde River, was dating a woman for several months in 2006. When she told him she wanted to end the relationship, he decided to puncture her condoms so she would get pregnant and stay with him.

The woman became pregnant. She had an abortion…The woman called police after Hutchinson told her what he did to the condoms. Police subsequently charged him with aggravated sexual assault.

Hutchinson was acquitted in 2009. The judge said Hutchinson’s actions were “dastardly” but didn’t constitute sexual assault.

The Nova Scotia Court of Appeal ordered a new trial last year…and Hutchison was convicted of sexual assault in September.

What an egregious idiot. Bad enough he’s fool enough to believe he will force his girlfriend to marry him if he gets her pregnant; but, to deceive her into thinking they’re sharing safe sex is despicable.

At least she lives where she can have an abortion to end an unwanted pregnancy. That continues to become more and more difficult down here in the lower 48 – the Land of Liberty and Christian sharia law.

On a sunny day on the outskirts of Shanghai on Sunday, 20,000 hopeful, curious and in some cases desperate Chinese gathered for the world’s largest dating event.

But it would be misjudging the mood to say love was in the air. Instead, in a business convention centre, a stream of pragmatic men and women briskly exchanged vital statistics and contact details…

Like New York or London, Shanghai has become a city of career-obsessed workaholics, the organisers said, leaving many people with little time to find their perfect match. So 40 of the city’s dating agencies decided to hold Shanghai’s first “Marriage and Love Expo”, to a dramatic response.

Just over 10,000 tickets for the event were officially sold, but Shu Xin, one of the organisers, claimed that 20,000 people had visited yesterday and 18,500 on Saturday…

At least a third of the attendees were parents, either chaperoning their children, acting as go-betweens for the more bashful, or brokering deals with other parents for arranged romances…

The attendees, meanwhile, had some very rigid ideas about what they were looking for. Men said they wanted a “kind-hearted” wife, not too beautiful and flighty, but modest and homely. The “minimum requirement” for the women meanwhile was straight-forward: a man with his own house, and preferably also a car…

The government has tinkered with the law to try to dissuade women from marrying for money, rather than love, but there was little sign yesterday that the message had sunk in.

For many couples, the money for the house and car comes from the parents, giving those wandering yesterday’s fair plenty of influence when it comes to picking their in-laws.

Pretty scary. The parents for sure. Marriage culture in China is still obviously having a rough time breaking away from the past.

We went through the same thing in the West – several centuries ago. I don’t envy the current generation in China the struggle on this question.

The Roman Catholic Church reacted harshly [predictably]… to a bill proposed by Mexico City legislators that would require all couples to sign a prenuptial agreement specifying how to handle child custody and other issues in case of divorce — and estimating how long the marriage is expected to last.

Sponsors of the bill submitted this week in the city council say the proposal aims to cut down on the lengthy, nasty divorce proceedings choking the capital district’s courts, by making potential couples decide about monetary and custody issues by mutual agreement before they get married.

But the bill also says “the duration of the marriage will be bound by the terms that the couple negotiate in the familial agreement, which shall not be less than two years…”

“People can specify terms of 99 years, or ’til death do us part,’ if they think the marriage, or their lives, are going to last that long,” Carlos Torres said.

Catholic leaders don’t see it that way…

“This is a proposal made by people who do not understand the nature of marriage,” Valdemar said. “It is not a commercial contract; it is a contract between two people for a life project, and the creation of a family.”

“This denigrates the concept of the family … and makes it more like a pact between friends,” he said…

Equal friends at that. Interested in running their own lives as they see fit – instead of leaving everything in the hands of a sectarian rulebook from the 14th Century.

“We are looking for solutions to problems that are seen every day in family courts … in which there is emotional blackmail, or the children are used as pawns,” Torres said. “This would cut down of the torturous proceedings at the time of a divorce.”

The bill is meant to solve a big problem in the city of 8.9 million people, where divorce proceedings are so costly, painful and time consuming that many people just skip them and start a new family.

The Roman Catholic church has always opposed democracy and the freedom of individuals to order their own lives. The obvious decline of their power and profits speaks volumes of how that opposition has failed.

That the proposed legislation also allows for parents to agree beforehand on what religious education – if any – their children might endure is another challenge to the church’s political power. As it should.

A high-profile bishop who tended some of the dead and wounded of Bloody Sunday has called for an end to celibacy in the clergy.

Edward Daly, who was bishop of Derry for nearly 20 years, said allowing the clergy to marry would solve some of the church’s problems. He is the most senior figure in Irish Catholicism to challenge the ban.

The number of Catholic priests in Ireland is in sharp decline as older clergy die out and very few young men choose to take up a celibate life. In some parishes the church has transferred priests from Poland and the developing world to fill the gap.

“There will always be a place in the church for a celibate priesthood, but there should also be a place for a married priesthood in the church,” he said on BBC Radio Ulster.

“I think priests should have the freedom to marry if they wish. It may create a whole new set of problems but I think it’s something that should be considered. I’m worried about the decreasing number of priests and the number of older priests. I think it’s an issue that needs to be addressed, and addressed urgently.”

Daly accepted he might be out of step with current Vatican thinking but said he was “not engaged in a popularity contest”.

He said that during his time as a bishop he found it “heartbreaking” that so many priests or prospective priests were forced to resign or were unable to get ordained because of the celibacy issue. Many young men who had once considered joining the priesthood turned away because of the rule, the cleric said.

Overdue.

I hold no brief for the superstitions premised as religion; but, as long as human beings choose philosophical idealism over material reality they should enjoy the option of those who speak for that religion to be living something approaching a normal, healthy life.

Cynthia Daily and her partner used a sperm donor to conceive a baby seven years ago, and they hoped that one day their son would get to know some of his half siblings — an extended family of sorts for modern times.

So Ms. Daily searched a Web-based registry for other children fathered by the same donor and helped to create an online group to track them. Over the years, she watched the number of children in her son’s group grow. And grow.

Today there are 150 children, all conceived with sperm from one donor, in this group of half siblings, and more are on the way. “It’s wild when we see them all together — they all look alike,” said Ms. Daily, 48, a social worker in the Washington area who sometimes vacations with other families in her son’s group.

As more women choose to have babies on their own, and the number of children born through artificial insemination increases, outsize groups of donor siblings are starting to appear. While Ms. Daily’s group is among the largest, many others comprising 50 or more half siblings are cropping up on Web sites and in chat groups, where sperm donors are tagged with unique identifying numbers.

Now, there is growing concern among parents, donors and medical experts about potential negative consequences of having so many children fathered by the same donors, including the possibility that genes for rare diseases could be spread more widely through the population. Some experts are even calling attention to the increased odds of accidental incest between half sisters and half brothers, who often live close to one another…

“These sperm banks are keeping donors anonymous, making women babies and making a lot of money. But nowhere in that formula is doing what’s right for the donor families…” Let’s don’t forget making it more difficult for the average neurotic to sue the donor.

Because there is so much secrecy surrounding sperm and egg donations, Wendy Kramer said, it has been difficult for families of children born via sperm donation to step forward with their concerns. Some heterosexual couples never tell a child that he or she is the product of a sperm donation…

Experts are not certain what it means to a child to discover that he or she is but one of 50 children — or even more. “Experts don’t talk about this when they counsel people dealing with infertility,” Ms. Kramer said. “How do you make connections with so many siblings? What does family mean to these children?”

And who cares? Maybe, just maybe, they’re mostly concerned with living their own lives instead of being part of a pseudo-science soap opera.

RTFA to consider the few tidbits of legitimate concern – awash with neurotic fear and trepidation lacking scientific measurement. Exactly the kind of tempest in a teacup that could keep a congressional committee – and some bible-thumping politician running for reelection – busy for an entire year.

The wedding of Inna Zyskind and Pavel Kogan last week was one of the happiest days of their lives.

Friends and family watched as they exchanged vows and rings under a canopy in their quirky designer outfits. Then more than 1,000 guests attended an open-air festival in Tel Aviv, with street performers and musicians, partying long into the night.

The couple’s only regret is that their marriage is not legally recognised in Israel. In fact, it was organised by activist groups as part of a colourful protest against religious restrictions on who can marry.

Inna, who was born in Russia, was able to move here and become an Israeli citizen under the state’s law of return for Jews. But she is not recognised as truly Jewish by Israel’s orthodox rabbinical establishment. And in Israel, only religious marriages, not civil ones, are allowed…

“This was our demonstration,” says Pavel. “We’re secular people. We want to break the religious monopoly over this part of our life in Israel. We should be allowed a civil wedding…”

RTFA for detail, anecdotes, none of which should come as a surprise. Celebrating love and marriage, trying to live a civilized life in the 21st Century – in a nation that tries to cram people’s lives into tiny ideological boxes leftover from the Talmud – can be an exercise in futility.

To be expected in any land legally ruled by a culture which rejects history, science, secular knowledge.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-California, announced Tuesday a bill to repeal the federal law that defines marriage as a “legal union between one man and one woman as husband and wife” and that allows states to reject legal same sex marriages from other states.

The Defense of Marriage Act, or DOMA, passed both the House and the Senate in 1996.

Feinstein said she is one of only 14 senators who voted against the legislation at the time. “I thought even then, this is unconstitutional and wrong. Well, today it’s unconstitutional, I believe, and wrong,” she said in a news conference at the National Press Club in Washington.

She said her bill would “strike the Defense of Marriage Act from law and would free the government to allow for the same type of benefits they allow for married couples to also be applied to same-sex couples…”

“Believe it or not, there are over 1,000 federal laws and protections that are afforded to married couples but are not afforded to legally married same-sex couples in any of the states that have approved same-sex marriage,” she said.

Kathleen Cumiskey and Robin Garber were among three same-sex couples who joined Feinstein at the news conference. They said they traveled from New York’s Staten Island with a stack of papers they take with them nearly everywhere.

The couple was married in Toronto, Canada, in 2006 and their home state of New York legally recognized their marriage in 2008. But when they travel across state lines, they said, they have to bring with them paperwork in case of an emergency.

“We traveled from New York City last night and had to bring with us our box of documents,” Garber said holding up a marbled-cover box. “Wherever we go we need to be able to prove the legal documentation of our relationship. We need to be able to prove that we are legally responsible for each other, that we have the legal right to make decisions for each other.”

She added, “We find it really incredible that we can travel halfway around the world — we can go to Spain, we can go to Ireland, we can go to South Africa — and have our marriage recognized and respected, but when we travel 15 miles from our own front door that is not the case and we need our box of documents.”

Overdue. Like so much civil rights law in the land – it’s time to dump the hatred and fear and support equal opportunities for all citizens.

Should be a cutting edge showdown between the Right side of the issue from homophobes all the way to the simply intellectually lazy opposing change – versus official Democrats including the president who has said he will endorse the “Respect for Marriage” Act, progressives and conservatives with a commitment to the Bill of Rights.

Daylife/AP Photo used by permission

A number of old-fashioned Republican conservatives decided Friday night they would be contradicting their own beliefs in the American Constitution if they voted to deny fellow citizens the same rights of marriage they enjoy themselves – for any reason. The issue turned on gender identity. The decision was made as it should be – on the virtues and value of our Constitution.

The right-wing Conservative Party of New York State, activists from many religions who felt their beliefs take precedence over civil law, Tea Party activists of one or another stripe all tried to turn those Republicans away from acting in concert with Democrats who supported this bill. They failed.

Progressives, Democrats, LGBT activists and civil libertarians, who have toiled for years to bring this measure to pass in a state that has a long history of democracy and struggles for equal rights – won their case. They have prevailed.

Good for you, New York. And special kudos to those Republicans who turned away from the mean-spirited reactionaries and bigots who have captured so much of that Party throughout the United States. I write often about traditional American conservatives. Their history has affected the ethics of my family – and my extended family – throughout my life. Honesty, rejection of hypocrisy, care for the natural wonders of this planet, a willingness to understand and seek understanding in the joys of education, a fair chance at a good life for all – are what I was raised with.

Many in that extended family have walked away from what the Republican Party has become in these last ten years. I’d be the last to suggest there’s a qualitative change among today’s Republicans – outside of the states that never left those values in the first place.

Good for you, New York.