Assigned reading

[muckefuck]

So I've been drawn into a discussion of gay marriage in tbearpsy's LJ. It reminded me of my resolution to read Waite's The case for marriage, which was briefly summarised in the alumni magazine recently. I'd heard of some of the documented benefits--like more and better sex, longer lifespans--before, but what I hadn't heard is that the biggest constrast is not between singles and couples, but between the married and the merely cohabitating. I'll admit, I'm damned curious to figure out why this should be--and why, for instance, the mere fact of my parents' divorce supposedly shaved four years off my life expectancy.

I've always supported my mom's decision to divorced and it's disturbing for me to discover that I may turn out to have been wrong--or, at least, to have based my support on false assumptions. In the same spirit of humility, I realise I may have been too kneejerk in slamming the case against Thanksgiving yesterday; therefore, if any of you can point me toward a well-written article that makes that case, I promise to give it a chance.

Comments

research methodology

[niemandsrose.livejournal.com]

Curious about these things: Marriage-not-divorce gives longer lifespans to *whom*? Did they factor in all the wives murdered by husbands? Or does marriage-not-cohabitation cut down on girlfriends murdered by jealous boyfriends? Really really not pc of me even to wonder, but I do.

Re: research methodology

[lhn.livejournal.com]

Presumably, they're factoring in deaths from all causes. (At least, I can't imagine a basis counting up the spousal murders and subtracting them from the total in a study like this.) However, I'd be wary of equating correlation and causation in any case. Does marriage make people live longer, or do people who are likely to live longer for other reasons have a greater tendency to marry? For example, people who marry rather than cohabitate (among those given the choice) may be more risk-averse by some measures, which might translate into less physical risk in the long run. People who avoid various potentially dangerous vices for religious reasons are more likely to be married or single than cohabitating. I'd guess that there are other differences in the distribution of various behaviors and lifestyle choices between the two populations that might be relevant as well.

Or it may be a real causal link. But I tend to be suspicious of such links, particularly when they tend to reinforce the writer's (and my) prejudices or desires. At the very least, I'd want to see a testable hypothesis as to why the link is presumed to exist.

Re: research methodology

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

It'd be interesting to see the figures. It seems to that I mostly hear reports of husbands killing their ex-wives or their estranged wives who were threatening a divorce. Waite points out that divorce is the superior option in extremely bad marriages, but thinks that these constitute a far smaller percentage of marriages than usually acknowledged. As I understand it, she and some of her colleagues are working on isolating the factors that determine whether divorce really constitutes an improvement over staying together. I'm especially curious to see how lopsided the results are, since marriages are often lopsided. (I think the figure is something like, in 3/4 of the cases where one spouse was "very unhappy", the other wasn't.)

[grahamwest.livejournal.com]

One solution to the problem would be to have civil unions for both straight and gay couples, and to make that the default form on union. Marriage itself seems (at least to me) mostly to be about religion and ritualism, so let the churches have that. The societal (and other non-spiritual) benefits of marriage would all be based off the civil union. Those benefits are being handed out on the basis that people commiting to each other are good for society, so why should the gender matchup really matter?