Monday water cooler 7.2.07

Did you see the news over the weekend of a new Pew Research Center survey reporting the sharp drop in Americans who see children as "very important" to a good marriage? In 1990, 65 percent replied that children are key to a healthy marriage. Just 41 percent say so now, and having kids has fallen to eight out of nine criteria for wedded bliss. I'm sure this will drive our "traditional values" friends crazy, since it negates the idea that sex is only intended for procreation.

Faithfulness is most important: In 1990 and now, more than 90 percent call fidelity the most important factor. A healthy sexual relationship (70 percent) and sharing household chores (62 percent) rank second and third. Other criteria include adequate income (53 percent), good housing (51 percent), shared religious beliefs (49 percent), and shared tastes and interests (46 percent). The only criteria ranking below having children is agreement on politics, which only 11 percent feel is pivotal. That's funny: I'm pretty sure I could never be married to a Republican, at least not of the Bush-Cheney variety.

One researcher said that the low priority on having children may reflect the economic unease felt by many of today's couples. Another speculates that, fueled by popular culture, people are simply more dedicated to hedonistic pleasure-seeking, but the emphasis on marital fidelity seems to run counter to that. In any case, people who do have children hold their kids in high esteem. The report noted: "As a source of adult happiness and fulfillment, children occupy a pedestal matched only by spouses and situated well above that of jobs, career, friends, hobbies and other relatives."

In looking up a link to the research above, I also saw another interesting nugget on the Pew site. Did you know that nearly 13 percent of Americans can no longer be reached by telephone pollsters because they have no landline phone, only a cell phone?

How about you? What do you believe is critical to marital success? (I'd definitely add "sense of humor" to the list.) Are you among the landline-less? My family's not there yet, but we probably will be by next year.

Comments

[Sara]

Maybe there are hedonists who really enjoy monogamy.

[The Nickel-Plated JA]

Let's start with the methodology -- the "important to marriage question" was asked to all participants, not just ones who have/had a healthy marriage, which could skew some of the factors; also, there is a fundamental (much like political polling in the last couple election cycles) problem with their demographic, which they acknowledged in the other article:

"...cell-only adults are very different. The National Health Interview Survey found them to be much younger, more likely to be African American or Hispanic, less likely to be married, and less likely to be a homeowner than adults with landline telephones."

Not to mention the strange skew in the data among adults in their early forties -- which probably correlates to the smallish (ca. 2000 respondents) overall size of their sample. In fact, given the nature of the questions ( a lot of rank-ordering ) I'm not sure what a reasonably-large sample size would be; for routine either-or types of polling ( ie. Obama v. Giuliani ) a good rule-of-thumb is the square-root of the size of the population as a whole... but it would be *seriously nontrivial* to talk about things like confidence intervals using such an esoteric/unusual type of question ( and then comparing the answers to each head-to-head ).

Unfortunately, it leaves me with two thoughts:

1. I'm often left holding my nose when confronted with the work of Pew, or for that matter, many other organizations attempting social sciences research. Usually this has more to do with methods than anything else.

2. I recall the eminent Dr. Riker, who absolutely maintained that popular opinion can only be accurately gauged in the negative, e.g. voting an incumbent out of office because of disapproval.

All that being said, I suspect reality doesn't differ *THAT* radically from their numbers, at least in terms of public opinion... probably fidelity is less important and sex is more imporant. OTOH, the whole thing seems infinitely Family-Feud-ish ("100 people surveyed, top 6 answers on the board"), from the perspective of having their own "facts" based on popular opinion; what does the average person-on-the-street *REALLY* know about what makes for a successful marriage? You're likely to get better results from a cage match between John Gray and Dr. Phil....

[Julie Fanselow]

But NPJA, are you questioning the steep fall in people naming children as key to marital success? That was the headline from this poll, and the huge drop (22 percent in 17 years) doesn't seem to be affected by the factors you mention.

Sara, you make a good point - and it's hard to deny that having children tends to put the kibosh on all manner of hedonism. Of course, some of us raised with the Protestant work ethic believe that's not necessarily a bad thing.

All things in moderation, I always say ...

[Tara Rowe]

No comment on the marriage study, but on landlines--I haven't had one in at least 2 years.

[The Nickel-Plated JA]

The parenting thing doesn't really surprise me, but I'm questioning the validity of the entire project.... If anything, given the demo they seem to be overlooking, I'd be shocked if the parenting numbers aren't even lower; this seems to correlate well with the attitudes I've seen among most of the 20-somethings I interact with: many of them are seriously-childfree, the ones who do want kids don't neccessarily correlate that in any meaningful way with marriage, and many of the ones who have kids do so as the end result of one or more already-failed relationships.

[The Nickel-Plated JA]

Oops... left out an important word... that should have read, "I'd be shocked if the *REAL* parenting numbers aren't even lower."

[The Nickel-Plated JA]

Oh, and for the record, I have a landline (that I almost never use) for screening junk calls, sending faxen, and piggybacking my DSL... but I foresee a day not long from now when I'll ditch mine too.