From his decision: ” the fact that Prop 8 passed as a voter initiative was irrelevant as ‘fundamental rights may not be submitted to [a] vote; they depend on the outcome of no elections.’”

What a just victory. But the game is not over yet. The defense will appeal and wants to take it all the way to the Supreme Court.  I don’t get why opponents to same sex marriage just don’t get it–it is discrimination, plain and simple.  Many countries do get it, like Argentina…. 

..Canada. Sweden, Norway, Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, Portugal, Iceland and South Africa.  

I continue to be baffled by why opponents are so against two people of the same sex getting married. Why do they care what people’s sexual preference is in the first place–why is it any of their business? It is clear that sexual preference does not have anything to do with good or bad parenting–research supports this, and plenty of hetero’s  are bad parents. 

Beyond this, kids aren’t even the issue, because we are already past the idea that marriage is about having kids. People don’t get married to have kids these days. As  the CF know, a growing number of couples don’t have children at all. People marry for love.  So why should one group of people who love each other and have a certain sexual preference be the only ones who are allowed to get married?

Religion comes into play, but that argument fails too.  The separation of church and state makes it such that we have no right to force our religion onto others through laws. But that is exactly what opponents to same-sex marriage are trying to do. 

But off to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals and to the Supreme Court go…we may be ahead of other countries on many things, but definitely not on this issue.

What do you think–what is the biggest reason why so many people are against same sex marriage?

The July question: What gives your life meaning and fulfillment? How would describe your purpose in life?

Look to your right in the On-the-Ground section for August’s question!

A recent Time.com article, “Are Marriage Statistics Divorced from Reality?”by Belinda Luscombe discusses this stat as a myth ..

..and fleshes out factors that help predict whether couples will stay together and not.

Age and education seem to be predictors. Tara Parker-Pope, author of For Better, debunks the 50% stats, and indicates that because since the 70s more women have been going to college and delaying marriage “marital stability appears to be improving with each decade.”  Of college grads who wed in the 70s, 23% split within 10 years. Of college grads who wed in the 90s, however, only 16% split within 10 years.

 According to the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, in the 80s 81% of college grads who got married at 26 or older were still married 20 years later. 65% of grads who got married before they were 26 were married 20 years later.

Income comes into play too. Studies show that less educated, lower income couples divorce more than college grads and may be doing so in higher numbers. According to Penn State sociologist Paul Amato, “The people who are most likely to get divorced have the least resources to deal with its impact, particularly on children.”

It’s interesting that there’s no mention of kids and their influence on marriages lasting longer or not.  We do know however, that the higher the education, the fewer children a women has. So if marital stability has to do higher education, one could surmise that there will be fewer children involved if any.

Of those couples who stay together, it seems they are more likely to have a college education, marry a bit later, and not be lower income.  Two demographic characteristics relate to childfree folks as well—they tend to have higher education and incomes.

Questions I am left with:

Who tends to get married later—the childfree or those who end up becoming parents?  

Where is parenthood (or not) on the predictor list after age, education, and income?

To you: Do you think the 50% stat is a myth? Do you see childfree marriages or marriages with parents as more likely to divorce?

The second area : Relationships and Sex.

From the article: The old saying that three’s a crowd has a ring of truth. In 1992 research, the University of California Berkeley found women and men change the way they view themselves once they become parents and the part of them that was the “lover” or “partner” shrinks. A quarter of all parents recorded serious marital conflict after the arrival of their bundles of joy. Meanwhile, a 2000 Queensland study reported a significant drop in marital satisfaction when couples became parents. A major issue was fathers feeling anxious, and in turn resentful, about the time the mother spent with the baby.

But just while relationships may survive the baby years, sex often drops off. It is something that childless by choice Jan Rogerson, a 46 year old teacher, couldn’t imagine. “I couldn’t contemplate not a having a good sex life. If you have chosen to be with someone then it is important to have as good a sex life as possible.”

However, parents don’t seem to have much of a choice. Melanie Roberts-Fraser, co-author of No Sex Please, We’re Parents, interviewed 150 people and found the news was all bad. She says: “There wasn’t a single person who said that their sex life had not been affected by parenthood.”

Exhaustion was cited as one of the major reasons, but Roberts-Fraser also found that couples struggled with their new parenting roles.

But despite the tiredness, Jeannine Burt, a 41 year old mother of two, says sex is still on the agenda even if the art of seduction is no longer about candles and champagne: “If I hear that he has folded the washing, made kids dinner and put on a DVD that the kids are really interested in, then it is a possibility.”

Cameron says—“Winners: Childfree, but some parents are still trying.”

While the 1992 and 2000 research she quotes on the dip in marital satisfaction matches other research in this area, it is from some time ago.  More recent research suggests that while it dips upon the first birth, marital satisfaction tends to rise slowly over time and get even better when the kids leave the nest.  But that is more likely when the couple continues to tend to their relationship while they are raising the kids. 

If not, they  may wake up when the kids are gone and find they have old issues that need dealing with (or it’s too late) or they need to find a “new” place together as a couple. Some make it, some don’t.  I’d like to see the research on this, but I do see a lot of parent couples split when the kids leave home.

On the other hand, parent couples who go the distance find ways to stay connected and have good sex, even if it means changing what “good” might mean (like Jeannine Burt above). A mother friend of mine once told me a great thing that they did as they were raising their kids to keep the sex fresh—they “mastered the art of the quickie”–! Now that is something parents and childfree could practice! Parent couples that go the distance remain committed to carving time out for themselves, e.g., treat date nights with the utmost importance, and as the kids get older, do weekend trips just the two of them. 

In the end, while I think that the childfree have it much easier when it comes to tending to the relationship and sex, it does boil down to the marriage first, and how couples nurture it over time. Kids or not, if couples don’t do this, marital satisfaction plummets.

Childfree, was the concern of how kids would affect your relationship part of your decision not to have kids? Parents with high levels of marital satisfaction, how do you do it?

Other thoughts and discussion welcome!

Andrea Tone, author of Devices and Desires: A History of Contraceptions in America, debunks this myth…

According to Tone, years before the pill became available, a 1953 Kinsey report on female sexual behavior found that  half of all women had premarital sex.   What the pill did do however, was place “the power to prevent pregnancy entirely in women’s hands.”  And used it women have–2002 government data shows that more than 8 in 10 women ages 15-44 had taken the pill at some point in their lives.

Author of America and the Pill Elaine Tyler May thanks two women as “mothers of the pill.”  In the 1920s, Margaret Sanger founded the predecessor of Planned Parenthood, the America Birth Control League, the first doctor-run birth control clinic.  Along with activist Katherine McCormick, they “pushed and funded the scientists” Carl Djerassi and Gregory Pinicus, who are credited for inventing it.

May says that,”They knew that women could not achieve full equality unless they had control over their reproductive lives….<the pill> gave <women> unprecented control over the timing and number of their pregnancies.”

It is hard to imagine that until the 1970s that all women, married and not, did not have legal access to contraception.  When the pill first became available, it  couldn’t be given to single women. It took a 1965 Supreme Court ruling, Griswold v Connecticut,  to establish the right of married couples to use birth control, and then another Supreme Court decision in 1972 to ensure that unmarried people could access contraceptives as well. Like with Roe v Wade, the right to privacy drove the legal rationale.  It is good to keep in mind, as we watch states like Oklahoma pass laws that strategically try to chip away at Roe v Wade, that it if it is ever overturned, it can open the door for those against the use of contraception to go after it too.  And believe it or not, they are out there.

We’ve come a long way, but I agree with Lisa Hymas of grist.org that we still have a ways to go when it comes to contraceptive education and access. Also, not only does contraception create more full equality, but so does our attitude about reproduction. I still find it interesting that, as Dr. Ruth has said, while “the pill didn’t cause the sexual revolution, it was revolutionary,” the talk about it focuses on the power to be able to decide “when” to have a child, but not as a way to choose “whether” to have a child at all.  Women will not achieve full equality until all of our reproductive decisions are talked about and accepted.

This goes for men too. And an effective male pill appears to be within reach. Several formulations are expected to become commercially available within the near future, but when asked will they take it, journalist John Schieszer writes in his msnbc article, “some say yes, some say only if their partners make them, and other say they would never even consider it.”  What if women said that? But that’s talk for another post….