Sunday, November 30, 2014

The M.Guy Tweet, Week of November 23, 2014

1. The No. 1 Cause Of Divorce May Not Be What You Think, Deseret News
[O]ur affections often grow toward our investments. Wherever we put our time, money and energy also ends up receiving our passion, interest and affection.

2. How Did Your Parents’ Divorce Affect You?, The Telegraph
Nearly one in three said one parent had tried to turn them against the other and more than a quarter said their parents tried to involve them in the dispute.

3. A Bad Marriage Can Literally Break Your Heart, Especially If You’re A Woman, The Washington Post
So while a lot of marriage counseling may focus on younger couples, the study authors emphasize that older couples would be wise to pay attention to the qualities of their marriages, too.

4. The Benefits: Evaluation Summaries of Healthy Romantic Relationship Programs for Youth, The Dibble Institute
Benefits include: Reduce teen dating violence and abuse and increase youth’s asset. . . significantly delay the onset of sexual activity. . . and decrease peer-to-peer physical violence and improve communications with parents.

5. The Biggest Reason For Income Inequality Is Single Parenthood, The American Enterprise Institute
Research by Harvard economists, Chetty et al. concludes that the single strongest correlate of upward economic mobility across geographic regions of America is the fraction of children living in single-parent families.

6. The Right and Campus Rape, National Review Online
So, in one large class at the University of Virginia, fully 39 percent of the female students report having been directly affected by forcible sexual assault. 

7. What’s Stopping Young Adults From Forming Stable Families?, Family Studies
[T]heir experiences of family fragmentation sharpen their desire to get and stay married, on the one hand, but on the other hand it also shakes their confidence in the durability of marriage. 

For more, see here.

Monday, November 17, 2014

The M.Guy Tweet, Week of November 9, 2014

1. America’s Relationship Status, In Five Maps [Visual], The Washington Post
The FlowingData blog has created these fascinating maps of America’s marital status: The counties in the US with the highest proportion of married, never married, divorced, separated and widowed people.

2. Millennials Have Inherited The Black Marriage Gap, National Public Radio
The cultural change with marriage has been so sweeping that everyone wants someone who they will regard as a soul mate, if you will. The challenge is that it's very difficult to realize that ideal if you're not affluent and well-educated.

3. Marriage Is Pro-Growth, National Review Online
Wilcox and Lerman write that 51 percent of the 1980-2000 decline in male employment is due to the drop in marriage rates, and is highest among unmarried men. 

4. Four-in-Ten Couples are Saying “I Do,” Again, Pew Research
[A]lmost 42 million adults in the U.S. have been married more than once, up from 22 million in 1980.

5. For A Lasting Marriage, Try Marrying Someone Your Own Age, The Atlantic
Marriage is, above all, about 50-50 partnership; differences in ages also mean differences in life experience and cultural reference points.

6. Marital Demography: The Immigrant Difference, Family Studies
But the central finding from Qian’s report – that neither education nor economics matter as much for immigrant family structures as they do for the U.S.-born – raises a number of questions. 

7. Science Says Lasting Relationships Come Down To 2 Basic Traits, Business Insider
"There's a habit of mind that the masters have," Gottman explained in an interview, "which is this: they are scanning social environment for things they can appreciate and say thank you for. They are building this culture of respect and appreciation very purposefully. Disasters are scanning the social environment for partners' mistakes."

For more, see here

Tuesday, November 4, 2014

The M.Guy Tweet, Week of October 26, 2014

1. The Family Deficit, The Washington Post
Sawhill quotes from one respected study that “married women and men live longer; they are less likely to be disabled. . . . [They] have better sex than the unmarried and they are less likely to be lonely.”

2. Want A Successful Career? Look For This Trait In A Spouse., The Washington Post
Yet when it came to the effect of a spouse's personality traits on a person's career, only high scores on conscientiousness had any impact, whether positive or negative.

3. Stress And Substance Abuse Increase More For Women Who Divorce Or Separate, Deseret News National
Married men and women are both less likely to use drugs or medications to relax, at about 17 percent, compared to the roughly 30 percent of separated or divorced men and women who say they do.

4. 8 Ways To A Happy Marriage, American Association of Retired Persons
Many people start out with a fixed idea of what they want from a partner, which becomes an excuse to break up the relationship when they (inevitably) don't get exactly what they expected. Flexible people, by contrast, work hard to figure out their partner, then readjust their expectations as necessary.

5. The Ideal And The Reality Of European Family Size, Family Studies
So it is an open question whether the two-child ideal will contribute to a fertility rebound or the realities of European life will suppress (and possibly even erode) that ideal.

6. For Richer, For Poorer: How Family Structures Economic Success In America [VIDEO], American Enterprise Institute
How much do changes in marriage and family stability affect this shifting economic landscape, the economic status of men, and the health of the American dream?

7. What An Intact Family Has To Do With The American Dream, In Six Charts, American Enterprise Institute
[A]bout one-third of recent increases in family-income inequality and male joblessness, and a significant share of median family-income stagnation, can be linked to the declining share of Americans who are getting and staying married.

For more, see here.