Send you something? OK :) I am choosing not to read the csmonitor piece because I am not interested in the legal/political/ aspects of this problem. But there are aspects of this issue that interest me greatly. There are other examples that involve step-parents and child abuse. The now classic Daly & Wilson Ontario research on child abuse in the 1980s found that children raised with one step-parent are 40X more likely to be abused compared to children raised with both genetic parents, with SES controlled (perhaps this is an underestimate of the effect since some % of those parents in the "two genetic parents" group may have been fathered by another man). It has been suggested that despite attempts to equate on SES the step-parent families are less able to hide abuse. However, that argument can't account for the incidence of child _killing_ shows an even stronger effect (40 - 100X more likely to be killed with 1 stepparent). It's virtually impossible to hide bodies.
Some "primitive" societies (we can find the references with a little effort) have traditions in which in the death of a husband/father, the women and children are acquired by the husband's brother, keeping everything "in the family" and protecting the woman and her children. After all, the brother-in-law and children overlap genetically as second-order - 25%. It's a stretch to advocate such a system today, given that it is probably easier for a single women & children to survive today sans husband; plus the base rate for child killing is very low (though anything >0 is too high). BUT, perhaps we can appreciate the origins of these customs, not get too arrogant about our own, and recognize that American-style individual freedom has costs to others. Given my seeming (?) unique perspective on religion, it is easy for me to speculate on lurking (confounding) varibles in the cohabitation data. Marriage is just a piece of paper, and two people can love each other just as much without it as with, but marriage is social/cultural/religious, not an individual event designed for a couple's happiness. True, a lot of people show up for religious classes, get married and are never seen in the community again, but in theory it is an entrance to a social network. I'd be surprised if the social network isn't the real IV here. Social networks are good. This is why I have never been in favor of anything other than traditional marriages. No doubt everyone thought "gay marriages" when I said "other than traditional" but that's may be red-state Pavlovian conditioning at work :) Traditional means more than that. ----------------------------- John W. Kulig Professor of Psychology Director, Psychology Honors Plymouth State University Plymouth NH 03264 ----------------------------- -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, August 25, 2006 10:55 AM To: Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS) Subject: [tips] Marriage as a cure for domestic viol >From the Christian Science Monitor for August 23, "Debate grows on >out-of- wedlock laws" http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0823/p03s02-ussc.html Taking a page from Jim Guinee's book: "Christian activists say the state laws [forbidding cohabitation without marriage] are worth fighting for, but acknowledge that cohabitation is "part of the life we live now," says Brian Fahling, senior trial attorney at the American Family Association's Center for Law & Policy in Tupelo, Miss. One reason: Unwed couples are more than three times as likely as married couples to report incidents of domestic violence, reports the National Survey of Families and Households. "Our forefathers were wise, and such laws as the cohabitation law here in North Carolina are really important for holding up moral standards," says the Rev. Mark Creech, director of the Christian Action League. "Cohabitation simply imitates marriage, but without actually creating the internal, the emotional, the moral and the legal structure that protects couples." Send me something. Stephen ----------------------------------------------------------------- Stephen L. Black, Ph.D. Department of Psychology Bishop's University e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] 2600 College St. Sherbrooke QC J1M 0C8 Canada Dept web page at http://www.ubishops.ca/ccc/div/soc/psy TIPS discussion list for psychology teachers at http://faculty.frostburg.edu/psyc/southerly/tips/index.htm ----------------------------------------------------------------------- --- To make changes to your subscription go to: http://acsun.frostburg.edu/cgi-bin/lyris.pl?enter=tips&text_mode=0&lang=engl ish --- To make changes to your subscription go to: http://acsun.frostburg.edu/cgi-bin/lyris.pl?enter=tips&text_mode=0&lang=english
