Eideard

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While the Bible Belt is known for its devotion to traditional values, Southerners don’t do so well on one key family value: They are more likely to get divorced than people living in the Northeast.

Southern men and women had higher rates of divorce in 2009 than their counterparts in other parts of the country: 10.2 per 1,000 for men and 11.1 per 1,000 for women, according to a new report from the U.S. Census Bureau released Thursday.

By comparison, men and women in the Northeast had the lowest rates of divorce, 7.2 and 7.5 per 1,000, which is also lower than the national divorce rate of 9.2 for men and 9.7 for women…

Youth and lack of education can lead to higher divorce rates, said D’Vera Cohn, a senior writer with the Pew Research Center..”There tend to be higher divorce rates in states where women marry young,” Cohn said. “Education also may play a role. In general, less educated women marry at younger ages than college-educated women, and less educated couples have higher divorce rates.”

Values about premarital sex associated with the Bible Belt and rural America may be encouraging people to marry early, at ages when they are likely to have less education and less income to support a long-lasting marriage, according to Naomi Cahn, law professor at The George Washington University Law School…”There’s a moral crisis in red states that’s produced by higher divorce rates and the disparity between parental values and behavior of young adults,” said Cahn. “There is enormous tension between moral values and actual practices…”

“The very fact that people feel less pressure to get married (in the Northeast) means they can be more selective about who they marry and take their time, ” Coontz said. “They don’t have to rush into it to please parents or avoid stigma of premarital sex…”

Meanwhile, divorce still pushes more women into poverty than men and affects their children, since children are still more likely to live with their mothers than their fathers, according to the same U.S. Census report.

Bible Belt and fundamentalist Christians have a built-in acceptance for hypocrisy. Lying about ethical standards – building rationales acceptable to your peers to justify just about anything is part of the whole equation of being “forgiven”. You can build your life on superstition and guesswork – and watch it fall apart – because you have someone waiting for you, next Sunday, who will tell you, “It’s OK. You gave it a try. God loves you anyway.”

Even if you don’t make your child support payments.

Whatever you do, don’t smoke the seeds!
Daylife/AP Photo used by permission

Thousands of copies of a new book about the Catholic Church’s teachings will have to be pulped after a translation error suggested that the Vatican had radically changed its views on contraception.

The book was officially launched on Wednesday at the Vatican, but the event was overshadowed by the embarrassing error, which will mean that around 30,000 copies will have to be scrapped.

The book, called YouCat – short for Youth Catechism – was originally written in German and contains a question and answer format about whether Catholic couples are entitled to plan the size of their families by “regulating conception”.

The answer provided was yes, because the Church sanctions ‘natural family planning’, in which married couples chart a woman’s menstrual cycle to determine when she might be capable of conceiving.

But in the Italian edition of the book, the question was translated as whether married couples could “use contraceptive methods.”

Again the answer was yes, implying that the Church had overturned its entrenched opposition to condoms, the pill and all other forms of contraception…

The translation mistake is just the latest in a series of public relations debacles to hit the Holy See.

In November, ambiguities in the translation of a book about the Pope, Light of the World, suggested that he believed that condoms were morally justifiable in some circumstances, for instance in preventing the transmission of a deadly disease such as Aids between a prostitute and a client.

Of course, the Holy Roman Catholic isn’t about to open the door to modern knowledge, ethics or understanding. Leaving the 14th Century behind might be too much of a shock. Might even lose a few gold bars along the way.

Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, who was relieved of command in Afghanistan after a magazine profile quoted his subordinates as disparaging senior civilian leaders, has been invited back to public service by the Obama administration to help oversee a high-profile initiative in support of military families, White House officials said Sunday.

General McChrystal will lead the three-member advisory board for the initiative, called Joining Forces, whose aim is to encourage companies, schools, philanthropic and religious groups and local communities to recognize the unusual stress that is endured by families of active-duty personnel, reservists and veterans, and to strive to meet their needs.

The appointment of General McChrystal, who commanded elite Special Operations units before taking over the mission in Afghanistan, can be seen as an effort to mend any perception of a civilian-military breach following his forced retirement.

Recognizing as well – perhaps – that a lot of folks here in the States felt the criticisms were legit.

More broadly, the new program is an acknowledgment by the administration that while the United States has been described as “a nation at war,” the burden of combat is carried by less than 1 percent of the population. The military has been fighting for almost a decade — since a month after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks — the longest sustained era of conflict in the nation’s history. And unlike previous wars, these have been carried out by an all-volunteer force…

General McChrystal, in a telephone interview on Sunday, noted that a decade of combat carried out by a relatively small military force “has required a lot of sacrifice by families.”

“This program will be a chance to focus people’s attention on ways they can help, and on the importance of helping, and provide opportunities for people to find practical things to do to support military families,” he said…

Since leaving the military, he has been teaching at Yale University and making the rounds on the lecture circuit. He said Sunday that the Obama administration’s invitation to return to public service should be seen as proof to those in uniform, and to the American public, that there were no hard feelings on either side of the civilian-military divide.

Poisonally, I think one of the triggers that presaged this decision by the Obama White House was Stan McChrystal’s recent appearance at the TED conference. His talk about leadership certainly conveyed to me a growth in understanding about the separation of responsibilities between civilian and military divisions in our government.

Certainly sharper than any understanding among most in Congress.

The Obama administration is examining whether the new health care law can be used to require insurance plans to offer contraceptives and other family planning services to women free of charge.

Such a requirement could remove cost as a barrier to birth control, a longtime goal of advocates for women’s rights and experts on women’s health. But it is likely to reignite debate over the federal role in health care, especially reproductive health, at a time when Republicans in Congress have vowed to repeal the law or dismantle it piece by piece. It is also raising objections from the Roman Catholic Church and is expected to generate a robust debate about privacy.

Yes, folks. Apparently we’re supposed to get prior approval from the Pope and other experts who disapprove of birth control as an option for modern families from the git-go.

The law says insurers must cover “preventive health services” and cannot charge for them. The administration has asked a panel of outside experts to help identify the specific preventive services that must be covered for women.

Administration officials said they expected the list to include contraception and family planning because a large body of scientific evidence showed the effectiveness of those services. But the officials said they preferred to have the panel of independent experts make the initial recommendations so the public would see them as based on science, not politics…

Uh, OK. You think science means something to the average American? There are part of this country that still aren’t certain about the Earth being round.

Dr. Hal C. Lawrence III, vice president of the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, said contraceptives fit any reasonable definition of preventive health care because they averted unintended pregnancies and allowed women to control the timing, number and spacing of births. This, in turn, improves maternal and child health by reducing infant mortality, complications of pregnancy and even birth defects, said Dr. Lawrence, who is in charge of the group’s practice guidelines…

In a report more than 15 years ago, the Institute of Medicine said financial barriers to contraception “should be reduced by increasing the proportion of all health insurance policies that cover contraceptive services and supplies, including both male and female sterilization, with no co-payments or other cost-sharing requirements.”

Nothing was done.

Daylife/Getty Images used by permission

With one in four U.S. public school students dropping out of high school before graduation, America continues to face a dropout epidemic. Building a Grad Nation: Progress and Challenge in Ending the High School Dropout Epidemic…shows that we can end the dropout epidemic, even in schools from lower-income, urban and rural districts that many previously thought were hopeless…

The U.S. graduation rate increased from 72 percent in 2002 to 75 percent in 2008. The report reveals that the number of “dropout factory” high schools fell by 13 percent – from 2,007 in 2002 to 1,746 in 2008. While these schools represent a small fraction of all public high schools in America, they account for about half of all high school dropouts each year. Experts say targeting these high schools for improvement is a critical part of turning around the nation’s dropout rate.

More than half of all states – 29 in total – increased their statewide graduation rate from 2002 to 2008.

The state of Tennessee and New York City led the nation by boosting graduation rates 15 percent and 10 percent, respectively.

Most of the decline in dropout factories – 216 of the 261 – occurred in the South.

Just as Secretary of State George C. Marshall launched a plan to rebuild Europe after World War II, we must rebuild our broken school system. We are launching a “Civic Marshall Plan,” comprising policymakers, educators, business leaders, community allies, parents and students to address the dropout epidemic by focusing on the dropout factory high schools and their feeder elementary and middle schools. In tune with the call from President Obama and U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan earlier this year to increase the U.S. graduation rate to 90 percent by 2020, we are working to mobilize Americans to quicken the pace. To reach these national goals, the graduation rate must rise by an average of 1.5 percentage points per year over the next decade. The Civic Marshall Plan outlines the benchmarks to ensure the attainment of those goals, and focuses on the strategic deployment of human resources to help school districts and states accelerate improvement.

Please, please read the report [.pdf]. There is little hope for improvement in any and all aspects of life in this land without leadership from an educated citizenry.

Time to get off your rusty dusties, folks.

One day two summers ago, an elderly couple walked into a local museum, shyly offering up the surprisingly well-preserved quilt for sale. The 90-year-old man, who had lived his whole life on the flat plains an hour north of Denver, was divvying up family heirlooms when he found the mysterious quilt.

The man didn’t remember seeing the quilt before and wasn’t sure who made it. His mother and sister had been avid quilters, as had so many women of his childhood. Maybe they made it together and it was tucked away when his mother died in 1934. His sister was also dead, so there was no one left to ask.

JoAnna Luth Stull, registrar at the museum, was working that day and gently explained that the museum didn’t buy items but suggested where the couple could get the quilt appraised. She was immediately transfixed by the workmanship as she smoothed the cloth across a table, not noticing the bold geometric pattern.

“Oh, wow,” said the museum superintendent as he happened by. “That’s a swastika quilt.”

Stull, 55, did a double take. Arranged across the quilt in shades of red, pink and beige were 27 swastikas. Her reaction was immediate and visceral. She saw an emblem of hate. “That’s what my generation sees,” she said.

So began an unlikely dilemma for the small museum in a city named for Horace Greeley, the New York newspaperman who famously cajoled all to “Go West.”

Could they display the quilt? Should they?

“Our mission is to preserve and interpret the history of Greeley. This is a cultural artifact,” said Erin Quinn, museum director. Greeley was founded in 1870 as a utopian community, with strict covenants requiring temperance and modest living. Quinn can imagine women only a generation or two removed from the city’s founders gathering to socialize and make something functional.

I had this discussion with a friend of mine, thirty years ago. She had a hatpin with a swastika on it – that had belonged to her grandmother – made before WW1. She wore it, once in a while, mostly to get discussions going to see where her neighbors really had their heads during the war with the Nazis.

She was always willing to explain the differences – and ask questions.

Hail, hail, the gang’s all here!
Daylife/Reuters Pictures used by permission

Dozens of Italian women who have had relationships with Roman Catholic priests or lay monks have endorsed an open letter to the pope that calls for the abolition of the celibacy rule. The letter, thought by one signatory to be unprecedented, argues that a priest “needs to live with his fellow human beings, experience feelings, love and be loved”.

It also pleads for understanding of those who “live out in secrecy those few moments the priest manages to grant [us] and experience on a daily basis the doubts, fears and insecurities of our men”.

The issue was put back on the Vatican’s agenda in March when one of Pope Benedict’s senior advisers, Cardinal Christoph Schönborn, the archbishop of Vienna, said the abolition of the celibacy rule might curb sex abuse by priests, a suggestion he hastily withdrew after Benedict spoke up for “the principle of holy celibacy”.

The authors of the letter said they decided to come into the open after hearing his retort, which they said was an affirmation of “the holiness of something that is not holy” but a man-made rule. There are many instances of married priests in the early centuries of Christianity. Today, priests who follow the eastern Catholic rites can be married, as can those who married before converting to Roman Catholicism from Anglicanism.

One signatory, Stefania Salomone, 42, an office manager, said the message to the pope had been endorsed by nearly 40 women registered with an online forum linked to Il Dialogo website. But such was the sensitivity of the issue that only three had published their names…

My family walked away from the Roman Catholic church almost 70 years ago – over the question of freedom to access means of birth control. I think it unlikely that the church is ready to engage intelligent dialogue on an even more demanding subject.

Living in the 21st Century, peering backwards at an ideology, superstition, rooted to the Dark Ages like a tumor clinging to an organ it has already sucked dry of life – I hardly see any reason for this attempt at dialogue except to illustrate the unwillingness of Papal princes to learn and grow into the real world.

Previous studies have found that the vast majority of published psychological research in the United States is based on American samples and excludes 95 percent of the world’s population. Yet, these results are often generalized and taken as universal.

When University of Missouri doctoral student Reid Trotter examined perfectionism and coping methods in Taiwanese culture for his dissertation, he decided to collaborate with a graduate student in Taiwan. From their collaboration, they found that models of perfectionism and coping were not universal. Trotter hopes his experience will encourage more researchers to develop cross-cultural relationships.

“In general, there has been very little cross-cultural research in the United States,” Trotter said. “This has resulted in an insufficient understanding of the psychological functioning of the human species. Cross-cultural research requires developing a relationship with a member of the culture in which you plan to study. This relationship will help researchers address possible cultural blind spots that may unintentionally weaken the study.”

Previously, geographical barriers limited researchers’ ability to develop these relationships. Now, technology, such as Skype, can help scholars facilitate communication and work through possible cultural misunderstandings.

“Cross-cultural relationships require trust and respect and should be collaborative instead of hierarchical,” said Puncky Heppner, professor of educational, school and counseling psychology in the MU College of Education. “Researchers need to be aware if they are coming across as condescending in another culture and realize they are examining a culture with their own glasses that may tint a situation blue, whereas other glasses may tint a situation yellow.”

Overdue.

American researchers face a horde of parochial fences of their own creation, limitations built into systems by funding, departmental competition, scholarly history.

Marine Cpl. Sarah B. Furrel, 3rd Battalion, 4th Marines at a girls school

The Marines in a recent “cultural awareness” class scribbled careful notes as the instructor coached them on do’s and don’ts when talking to villagers in Afghanistan: Don’t start by firing off questions, do break the ice by playing with the children, don’t let your interpreter hijack the conversation.

Cpl. Michele Greco-Lucchina led a group during a “cultural awareness” exercise last month at Camp Pendleton, Calif.. And one more thing: “If you have a pony tail,” said Marina Kielpinski, the instructor, “let it go out the back of your helmet so people can see you’re a woman.”

These are not your mother’s Marines here in the rugged California chaparral of Camp Pendleton, where 40 young women are preparing to deploy to Afghanistan in one of the more forward-leaning experiments of the American military.

Next month they will begin work as members of the first full-time “female engagement teams,” the military’s name for four- and five-member units that will accompany men on patrols in Helmand Province to try to win over the rural Afghan women who are culturally off limits to outside men. The teams, which are to meet with the Afghan women in their homes, assess their need for aid and gather intelligence, are part of Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal’s campaign for Afghan hearts and minds. His officers say that you cannot gain the trust of the Afghan population if you only talk to half of it…

As envisioned, the teams will work like American politicians who campaign door to door and learn what voters care about. A team is to arrive in a village, get permission from the male elder to speak with the women, settle into a compound, hand out school supplies and medicine, drink tea, make conversation and, ideally, get information about the village, local grievances and the Taliban…

The idea for the teams grew out of the “Lioness” program in Iraq, which used female Marines to search Iraqi women at checkpoints. Over the past year in Afghanistan, the Army and Marines have assembled ad hoc female engagement teams, but the women were hastily pulled from work as cooks or engineers.

The women at Pendleton are among the first to be trained exclusively for the mission. “Every Marine wants to go outside the wire,” said Cpl. Michele Greco-Lucchina, 22, referring to assignments off the base. “We all join for different reasons, but that’s the basis for being a Marine.”

I expect the Marines to provide this sort of advanced and experimental engagement in ordinary human activities. As do the Marines I engage with in recurrent discussions about the history of war.

Glad as hell to see this particular step forward receiving official support.