WP: Numbers Drop for the Married With Children

[RamboLiberal]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/03/AR2007030300841.html

Punctuating a fundamental change in American family life, married couples with children now occupy fewer than one in every four households -- a share that has been slashed in half since 1960 and is the lowest ever recorded by the census.

As marriage with children becomes an exception rather than the norm, social scientists say it is also becoming the self-selected province of the college-educated and the affluent. The working class and the poor, meanwhile, increasingly steer away from marriage, while living together and bearing children out of wedlock.

"The culture is shifting, and marriage has almost become a luxury item, one that only the well educated and well paid are interested in," said Isabel V. Sawhill, an expert on marriage and a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.

Marriage has declined across all income groups, but it has declined far less among couples who make the most money and have the best education. These couples are also less likely to divorce. Many demographers peg the rise of a class-based marriage gap to the erosion since 1970 of the broad-based economic prosperity that followed World War II.

"We seem to be reverting to a much older pattern, when elites marry and a great many others live together and have kids," said Peter Francese, demographic trends analyst for Ogilvy & Mather, an advertising firm.

[TechBear_Seattle]

1. This makes it all the more urgent to make married couples produce children

As the Washington Supreme Court stated last July, couples who can not procreate do not have a right to be married. In Washington, we are working to put that ruling into law. (See link in sig.)

[sanskritwarrior]

3. Why exactly do we have to have children?

Been married 9 years we'll get to it one day......or maybe we won't.

[TechBear_Seattle]

7. Well...

It would solve the "problem" of childless marriages. :hi:

But seriously, see post #6 below.

[sanskritwarrior]

8. I don't think you are going to win a lot of allies

this way.....I see your point and agree it is absurd. I'm not sure your actions will lead to a lot of support among the unwashed masses.........

[pitohui]

5. what the--? it's a joke, right?

are you telling me that no post menopausal woman should have the right to marry?

marriage has nothing to do with whether or not you are able to procreate, it's a financial contract

[TechBear_Seattle]

6. Tell that to the Washington Supreme Court

Last July, the Washington Supreme Court ruled that because same sex couples can not have children together, they have absolutely no right to be married. It is now a judicial precedent in Washington State that the ability to have childen can be used as a prerequisite for legal marriage.

Initiative 957 is taking a reductio ad absurdam path of putting this ruling into law, first to show how ridiculous and unfair it really is, and second to create a case that can be brought back to the Court and force it to strike this silly precedent down as unconstitutional.

[northzax]

23. technically, what the court said

was that the legislature was entitled to say that it was in the best interests of the state to produce children, and therefore they could limit marriage to couples capable of procreating. It was actually a ruling that was very narrow, and reflected a remarkably cleverly worded law.

that said, my reading of the decision is that the court was reacting only to the intention of the law, and was a little annoyed that it was crafted so cleverly. Their hands were basically tied, under the Washington Constitution and this particular law. the way the law and case were written, they had no choice. the ballot measure is, I think, exactly the sort of thing the court was trying to force, I think they looked for a way to strike the law down, and found no real alleyway in case law to do so, so they crafted a decision to function as a road map for those looking to overturn the law.

[TechBear_Seattle]

26. Horse manure

I strongly suggest you read the rulings given by King County Superior Court judge William Downing in Andersen v. King County (here and by Thurston County Superior Court judge Richard Hicks in Castle v. Washington (here), and the dissenting opinion from the Washington Supreme Court on Andersen written by Justice Mary Fairhurst, with Justices Bobbe Bridge, Tom Chambers and Susan Owens concurring here.)

Judge Downing ruled against DOMA by systematically ripping apart each argument brought by the state and concluding that there existed no rational basis for the law and that therefore the law failed the judicial doctrine of rational review and should be struck down.

Judge Hicks ruled against DOMA based on the Washington Constitution's "Privileges and Immunities Clause", found in Article I, Section 12, to whit: No law shall be passed granting to any citizen, class of citizens, or corporation other than municipal, privileges or immunities which upon the same terms shall not equally belong to all citizens, or corporations.

Justice Fairhurst points out extensive flaws in the plurality opinion, including how Judge Madsen ignoring some rulings handed down by the Washington and United States supreme courts, twisted some previous rulings and took other rulings out of their original contexts to make them speak to an entirely unrelated issue. Although not explicitly stated, Justice Fairhurst makes an excellent case that the only way Judge Madsen could have come up with her opinion is by ignoring the principle of impartiality and ruling based on bigotry.

The Supreme Court could very well have let stand the rulings of the lower courts. They did not. Instead, they created a precedent which makes the ability to have children together a prerequisite for legal marriage. So be it. Our state constitution gives the people nearly all of the same rights to make law as the legislature; if the legislature can take what actions it deems necessary to use marriage to promote couples to have children together, so too can the people, via the initiative. And all we are doing is putting the Court's own legal precedent into statutory form, in accordance with the Washington Constitution's Privileges and Immunities clause. If this is a violation of rights, well then, someone ought to create a case to bring back to the Washington Supreme Court.

Oh, yeah. That's exactly what we are trying to do.

[Catfight]

12. Well said pitohui, it is a financial contract, so why do people do it?

Don't lawyers and Wills cover all that stuff without signing your life over to someone and merging yourself through paper, giving up your individual rights? It seems pointless to me.

[Nikia]

18. Because a marriage license is cheaper than a bunch of contracts

Many couples do have expensive weddings, but it is not necessary in order to be legally married. Some couples who have lived together for a long time decided to make it legal when certain issues came up.

[pitohui]

24. what nikia said, plus insurance issues

in theory you hear that somewhere in the land there is a company or a state where health and life insurance are offered to unmarried partners, it never seems to happen to anyone i know though

if one of the couple wants to go back to school, do a self-employed venture, or even just stay home and be a mom, being able to get on the other person's insurance is crucial to financial security -- hence marriage instead of just shacking up

many couples may live together for years until age and financial reality mean that they must marry so both of them get insurance coverage

IF two partners have equally good career-type jobs with equally good insurance, then maybe marriage would never become important, except for probate type issues, but it's rare that two people would be exactly financial equals and marriage can protect the partner who earns less or receives less valuable benefits through work

marriage offers a lot of financial benefit to middle-aged, middle and upper class people, it is of less benefit or even financially harmful to people who are poor or don't have career-type jobs or who are already of retirement age & might draw more social security as a widow/er than as a remarried

[HappyWeasel]

2. What ever happened to REAL family values?

[donsu]

15. what are 'real' family values? who decides what is 'real'?

who decides what is a family?

[pitohui]

4. marriage is a financial contract

the purpose of a legal marriage is to provide such things as health insurance for spouse/child, undisputable right to inherit for your spouse/child, undisputable right to make health care and financial decisions for your spouse if your spouse is incapacitated

if there is no money and no hope of any, if there is no health insurance and no hope of any, then marriage serves no purpose except to please the invisible cloud being and poor people really don't have money to waste on that

the reason marriage used to be for elites only is that only elites needed a "contract" to establish claims to inheritances, etc. before they married and spawned

poor people w. nothing to lose don't need to worry about pre-nups or the nups themselves, they can just jump the damn broom and get on with it

people aren't really as stupid as we would pretend to believe, there tends to be a logic about trends like this

[Gman]

9. Actually

the state's only interest in marriage is allowing 2 people to conduct business as one like a business joint partnership. That is government's ONLY interest.

[bread_and_roses]

10. Excellent points (n/t)

[soothsayer]

14. To Adam Smith (wealth of nations) children are the highest form of

joint property, and that it's beneficial to society to support the family structure.

[Vidar]

29. Little benefit. Lots of risk. Divorce is not pleasant.

[Catfight]

11. I shrug my shoulders on this one. I don't understand marriage. nt

[Joe Bacon]

21. Nether do I

You're not alone. Seeing Dogbeater Dobson telling people that women have to stay home, be barefoot and pregnant is a repulsive idea.

Most of my coworkers are not in a married relationship, both of them have to work just to make ends meet and they cannot afford to have children. Especially in Los Angeles where the rents have gone through the roof. Buying a house here??? Only if you were lucky enough to match six lotto numbers!

Few of them even have pets, the health care costs for sick pets bankrupts them just like unpaid medical expenses! One of my coworkers got hit with a $10,000 bill for his poor kitty suffering from leukemia. The vet asked him why he didn't have health insurance for his kitty. Well the reason is that Steve can't even afford health insurance for himself!! Now he has to go through bankruptcy and get SodomBIDENED like the rest of the poor...

[w4rma]

22. Poor people now, can't afford to take care of children. So the responsible ones don't have any. (nt)

[MountainLaurel]

28. Not just the poor

It's reaching a point where it's too expensive for the middle class, depending on where you live, what your career is, whether you needed student loans, etc.

[tanyev]

13. Ah, back to the good old days of feudalism.

Good times.

[donsu]

16. how is not being married feudalism?

nt

[Nikia]

17. In the past, weren't there common law marriages?

That a couple who had lived together for a certain time were considered legally married?
Legally marriage protects the other partner without having to draw up thousands of dollars worth of contracts.

[Joe Bacon]

20. Plenty of states are invalidating common law marriages

Thanks to the Jesusbots hijacking state legislatures, a bunch of states no longer recognize common law marriage.

[pitohui]

25. yeah it's sort of a thing of the past

to be fair, there were tax issues that could arise if the state could just come around and say, hey, you two, over there, yeah you, we consider you married! in fact, one used to hear of such cases decades ago

[enki23]

19. good.

.

[HockeyMom]

27. Never Married or Divorced

of the people I work or have worked with. They range in age from 20s to 40s. None of the 20 somethings have ever been married and the 30s and 40s are nearly all divorced. It is the people in their 50s who are the ones who are still married.