Job posting: executive director
AtMP was founded in 1998. I was hired in 2005. You could say that AtMP has passed through its organizational childhood and adolescence, and is now ready for a new leader to take it into adulthood. Please help us find the perfect person by sharing this job posting widely.
If you’re thinking of applying, please don’t delay! We’ve already received over 35 applications, and I hear that many of them look good.
Chosen families: widespread and important
Recent research on families made up of people who do not share blood or legal ties supports AtMP’s belief that society should recognize the importance of diverse relationships. Dawn Braithwaite at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln finds that “people who have voluntary family see them as different from close or best friends in that they are expected to be permanent relationships and to fulfill roles played by family members. … Most people find voluntary family important and a great source of understanding, companionship, and support.”
The research team suggested several directions for further study, and wrote a case study of communication styles in one such family. It’s fascinating stuff! Thanks to the Council on Contemporary Families for introducing us.
Bright answers to dim questions on marriage & healthcare
Ever wonder what to say when some ‘helpful’ person asks awkward questions like
“When are you going to get married?”
“Don’t you want kids?”
“Aren’t you worried about who will make medical decisions for you?”
AtMP members have come up with lots of fun, creative retorts, including
“When are you going to get divorced?”
“Why do you have kids?”
“Of course I’m not worried, I’ve written my advance directives! Have you?”
Here’s the truth about healthcare decision making: you can handle it. You already have an equal right to name a proxy – someone to speak for you if you can’t speak for yourself. You don’t have to be in a relationship or get married to have peace of mind about decision making in medical emergencies. And it’s free!
National Healthcare Decisions Day is April 16th. Are you ready? It’s as easy as 1,2,3!
1. Find out where you stand
2. Download the forms
3. Tell some friends – they can handle it too!
Go for it!
Popular singles experts team up for new book
We’re looking forward to the release of Dr. Bella DePaulo’s next book by Double Door, Singlism: What it Is, Why it Matters, and How to Stop It, a collection of writings on singlism. The essays are intended to both inspire readers and instruct how to tackle this all too common form of prejudice.
One of the contributors is a long-time, devoted member of AtMP, Jaclyn Geller, who wrote an essay titled, “Why the History of Marriage Matters.” In this essay, Geller explores some of the problematic aspects of the history of Western marriage and explains why AtMP’s formation was so decisive and important. Here’s a sneak peek of the first two pages:
In Book Nine of Homer’s epic, The Iliad, the Greek warrior Agamemnon regrets his dispute with fellow soldier, Achilles. It is nine years into the Trojan War; the Achaeans are a superior force, and Troy is destined to fall. But a quarrel between the two most formidable Greek soldiers, Agamemnon and Achilles, has weakened their army. Achilles has withdrawn from the battlefield, giving Trojan fighters the upper hand. Agamemnon decides to repair the rift with his comrade by allowing Achilles first dibs once Troy has been conquered:
if the gods grant that we sack the city of Priam, let him be there when we are dividing the spoil; he shall load his vessel with piles of gold and bronze, and choose for himself twenty Trojan women, the most beautiful after Helen. Then, if we return to Argos, he shall have my daughter to wife…I have three daughters, Chrysothemis, Laodice, and Iphianassa; any one of these he shall have without bride-price to take to his father’s house; and I will give her a dowry greater than ever man gave to a daughter. (The Iliad 121-122)
An envoy of generals visits Achilles’ tent to make the offer, which he rejects.
Agamemnon’s proposal contains beliefs that must have seemed obvious to the culture that mythologized him as a national hero. (For centuries The Iliad was recited orally at public gatherings before it took shape as a written text.) First, the practice of ancient armies taking the spoils when they conquer a village includes appropriating both goods and people: namely, women, although men were customarily taken as slaves as well. Second, the way of healing a breach between men is with the “giving” of a daughter in marriage. Her consent is not deemed necessary. The waiving of her bride price (a token fee paid by her husband) is represented as a gesture of noblesse oblige intended to cement an alliance between men, the operative figures in Greek society, and the only ones whose desires, intentions, and decisions, matter. In The Iliad these beliefs are not put forth in the form of arguments; they are assumed. Like most assumptions, they appear to require no explanation and no defense.
I first encountered Homeric epic in high school, when, I dutifully trudged through a few chapters of The Iliad, found it tedious, and put it aside in favor of the more immediate pleasures of Bob Dylan, Patti Smith, and Elvis Costello. Like many teenagers have before and since, I resisted my teachers’ best efforts to convey the greatness of epic as a “cornerstone of Western civilization,” a “book whose influence rivals that of the Bible,” and other magisterial descriptions that evoke boredom in the minds of sixteen-year olds attending public schools.
*To finish reading ”Why the History of Marriage Matters” download the PDF.
More on mixed race & matrimania
Many thanks to John for pointing out this poll that links opinions about interracial marriage with opinions about political candidates. (Click through to see the difference between Palin and Romney fans.)
We asked voters on this poll whether they think interracial marriage should be legal or illegal- 46% of Mississippi Republicans said it should be illegal to just 40% who think it should be legal.
Fascinating, because the New York Times recently reported that “Mississippi led the nation in the growth of mixed marriages for most of the last decade,” and cited data “suggesting that much of the growth in the mixed-race group can be explained by recent births.”
The Times still describes marriage as the only indicator of mixed-race relationships and the only source of mixed-race births. This feels inaccurate to me, but a wonderful fact sheet published by our friends at the Council on Contemporary Families suggests why my instincts might be wrong.
- Interracial daters report receiving less social support, such as positive affirmation or help from friends, family, or just people they interact with in public.
- Due to perceived lack of support, interracial couples are less likely to … report thinking of themselves as a couple.
- …The odds of going from dating to living together or getting married are 1 in 4 for same-race daters and about 1 in 5 for interracial daters.
- Interracial couples who cohabit are only 60 percent as likely as same-race cohabiters to get married to each other.
I’m still willing to guess that interracial cohabiters are less likely to marry because they are less bound by traditional views about relationships, rather than assume their relationships don’t work out. I’d love to see some research on that.
I’d also love to see stats on the marital status of parents of mixed-race children. The CCF fact sheet does not mention childbirth – perhaps we can inspire them to look into that question for a future fact sheet.
Meanwhile, more of you have responded to our quiz about interracial identity and relationships. Thank you! Here’s an update based on your 56 responses:
- 40% identify yourselves as multi-racial or multi-ethnic
- 14% of your parents were unmarried when you were born
- 93% of you are unmarried
- 82% of you are in committed relationships including marriage, and 80% of those relationships are with one different-sex partner
- 67% of your relationships are interracial, including 50% where your partner is one race/ethnicity that is different from yours, and 17% where your partner has a mixed-race identity
- 43% of you have mixed-race/ethnicity children
Unmarried votes should be prized in redistricting
Yesterday the Census Bureau announced it had beaten the deadline to provide redistricting data to all 50 states. Politicians around the country will soon be looking at new district boundaries. Marital status is recognized as a very strong predictor of voting patterns, so legislators facing redistricting should be very interested in how many unmarried people they represent, and what those people think. The 2010 Census information about marital status and household composition has not yet been released (though data about race and ethnicity are available now). However, we can use other recent data to estimate where unmarried potential voters might have the biggest impact.
First, what is redistricting? In a nutshell, the population both grows and moves around, but there are only 435 seats in the House of Representative. So state officials use Census redistricting data to draw new borders for Congressional (and other legislative) districts so that each district contains roughly the same number of people. (Since every state must have at least one district, the districts do not have exactly the same number of people (calling that whole one-person-one-vote thing into question, but that’s for someone else’s blog)). Typically, party loyalists try to draw boundaries that encircle constituencies most likely to vote for their party. That often means creating districts with very strange shapes.
The four states that will gain or lose the most seats are New York (loses 2), Ohio (loses 2), Florida (gains 2), and Texas (gains 4). If you love demographics, politics and technology, check out this awesome map (click the tab called ‘apportionment’).
Second, where might unmarried constituents get the most attention? There are lots of ways to come up with estimates – here’s one:
I used the 2009 American Community Survey to look up the number of unmarried individuals and unmarried partner households in every Congressional district in NY, OH, FL and TX. The data on individuals includes all people age 15 and over – this is always a source of controversy and frustration. Obviously, most 15-18 year olds are unmarried; more importantly, they can’t vote. It would take a couple hours to extract them; I’d love to coach a volunteer on how to do that.
The following districts are in the top quartile on both measures – i.e., they have more unmarried individuals as a percentage of all individuals, and more unmarried partner households as a percentage of all households, than the remaining three-quarters of all districts in all four states. (One could use other criteria to pick key districts; I’m happy to share the data with anyone who wants to do more analysis.) Click the district name to see its current map and who represents it.
Florida 3 6.7% of households are headed by unmarried partners, 60.7% of individuals are unmarried
Florida 11 7.5% - 59.1%
Florida 23 6.5% - 60.0%
New York 12 6.7% - 57.6%
New York 16 7.0% - 68.0%
New York 21 8.2% – 53.3%
New York 28 6.6% - 60.3%
Ohio 10 7.2% - 54.3%
Texas 18 6.7% - 55.9%
Texas 25 6.7% - 53.2%
Texas 30 6.9% - 57.9%
Do you live in one of these districts? Is your Representative sensitive to the concerns of unmarried voters? How can we help you get their attention?
Is singlism a factor in military suicides?
USA TODAY reports that suicide “rates among GI’s who are single or divorced double when they go to war, [but] the rate among married soldiers does not increase…”
“One of the big things we’re interested in now is digging into this marriage thing and saying, ‘What is it you get, by being married? And how could we put it in a bottle so we can give it to everybody, whether or not they’re married?” says Ronald Kessler, a psychiatric epidemiologist at Harvard Medical School who is working on the project.
I’ve written to Dr. Kessler to suggest that many of the things married soldiers get need to be budgeted, not bottled. Pay rates, VA and survivor benefits, housing quality and other tangible features of military life have all been documented to be better for married service members.
I also suggested looking at it from the other direction: what do unmarried soldiers get that harms them, and how do we take that away. For example, do they get assigned harder jobs or longer hours or more crowded barracks? That would hardly be surprising, as we have heard many examples of such assignments in civilian life. Do unmarried soldiers get more teasing (i.e., harassment) about their relationship status, or less sympathy when their relationships end? That would also mirror workplace complaints that we frequently hear from civilians.
New Hampshire rejects civil unions for all
If civil unions for all seemed like a solid trend, then New Hampshire just reversed its course. According to The Telegraph, a bill (HB 569) had been proposed to “replace same-sex marriage with domestic unions for all adult partners, be they heterosexual or homosexual couples.”
Easton Republican Rep. Gregory Sorg said there is no political support for domestic unions even though Gov. John Lynch signed a civil union bill for gay couples in 2007.
Lawmakers then replaced it with same-sex marriage. Lynch became the only sitting governor to have signed a law granting marriage rights for gay and lesbian couples.
“It seems to me there is no longer a constituency in the House for domestic unions. It has not been a Republican issue,” Sorg said.
“I do not believe the Democrats are in favor of reverting to civil unions and I know the Republicans aren’t,” he said.
Walpole Democratic Rep. Lucy Weber said the domestic union bill posed more complications than the civil unions law the state previously had.
“I have a very grave concern with the way this bill was written as opposed to the way civil unions was written,” Weber said.
“If we change to domestic unions for everybody, I am very unclear with how that meshes with all the federal laws and tax provisions that give us benefits because we are married.”
Michigan action alert: save healthcare for unmarried families!
Job-based health benefits for unmarried people are under attack all over the country.* Most recently, the Michigan State Senate resolved to take away health benefits from the unmarried families of state employees, including the staff at public universities. This would be an especially painful setback because Michigan’s rules are more inclusive than many other states’: any adult household member can be covered, even if not in a romantic relationship with the employee.
For this mean-spirited and costly decision to take effect, two-thirds of the State House has vote for it by April 18th. If you live in Michigan, please speak up now!
If you know someone who lives in Michigan, please encourage them to speak up!
*For example: in Ohio, and Arizona.
Perhaps they all live alone
A quip about marketing to single people caught my eye this morning, in a light-hearted article about housewares: “A visitor from another planet… might have the following impressions. These Earth people love coffee and little brightly colored, high-tech coffee makers, but perhaps they all live alone, for they seem obsessed with something called “single-serve units.””
Curious about whether the living-alone numbers had recently changed, I dug into the five-year estimates of the American Community Survey. (Statistics about un/marriage remain the 2nd most popular topic among visitors to this website. I’d love to know more about what you’re looking for and whether you find it. Please take a moment to give us valuable feedback!)
For the record, here’s how many of us really do live alone, and how the rest of us live:
