Ten Dollar Thoughts

I have a favorite child: IEP.  He is my smartest, funniest, cutest, and most affectionate child.  He is the most obedient and the most eager to please.  He is the most intuitive and the most insightful.  He is the most articulate.  He gives the best hugs and kisses.  He is my favorite child.

He is also my only child.

While I assume that the moment that Baby #2 arrives (no time soon, for those keeping score…) I will no longer have a favorite child.  I will have two children whom I love differently, but equally.  Always equally.  Right?  Not necessarily.

According to Dr. Ellen Libby, author of The Favorite Child, it is actually quite common for parents to favor one child over another.  The conclusions she draws in this article are not surprising: specifically that favoritism can cause depression in both the favored and unfavored child, and that favoritism in general affects the entire family. 

What the article doesn’t address (perhaps the book does, but I haven’t read it so I can’t comment) is what causes such favoritism in the first place.  What is the catalyst for favoritism?  And how early does it start?  Does it begin when a child adopts hobbies and outlooks that are similar to the parent’s and helps the parent to relate to that child?  Does it begin when a child is a colicky baby and the frustration the parent feels during that phase is sustained over time?  Is the same child always the favored child?  Or does it vary over time?

These questions fascinate me.  I wonder how many parents will admit to anyone, or even to themselves, that the decks in their hearts are not stacked equally.  It must be a gut wrenching reality to face.  But I suspect that facing it is the only way to keep it from poisoning your entire family.  I also suspect that dealing with such psychological undercurrents is a major task.  Libby offers some tactical pointers, but while they may be valid I find her proposed antidotes to be trite:

• Listen to each other. 
• Respect different viewpoints. 
• Strive to accept the truth of different perceptions. 
• Work deliberately at not being defensive. 
• Feel safe to express words of personal truth. 

“Feel safe to express words of personal truth”???  Really??  I have to believe that handing down that little gem to a 13-year-old sitting on the “unfavored” side of the equation is probably as valuable as telling him to “harness his inner calm and stay tuned to his feelings of worth” or some such nonsense.  Wholly abstract and completely impossible to interpret.  

I don’t know what Baby #2 will be like.  I have no idea how my feelings for my children will differ.  I like to believe that I will love and care for them equally, and that the burden of favoritism will not exist in our family.  I cannot be so arrogant, however, as to assume that such biases could never happen to me.  And I hope that such awareness (and, if I’m being honest, a bit of fear) will help me to identify and address such preferences the moment they surface.  I am not a perfect parent (news flash: “Goodnight Goon” scares the bejeezus out of toddlers…) but I hope that in admitting my imperfections I can mitigate the damage they cause.

If we’re going to get right down to brass tacks about it, I’m materialistic.  It’s certainly not my best quality, but we all have traits that rank below the 50^th percentile.  It’s true, I love they way a nice leather handbag feels on my shoulder.  I love the way the mattes on the watercolors over my living room mantel match the wall color perfectly, setting off both the frames and the paintings.  I love having 15 lipstick color choices when I open the makeup case in my purse each morning, allowing me to select a shade that matches both my mood and outfit.  I like these things, and countless other things in a similar vein. 

I don’t admit this easily because it carries with it all kinds of implications.  There is a common belief – and not altogether erroneous – that materialism is bad.  Period.  Materialistic people are shallow and vain and inconsiderate.  Right?  Maybe not.  I think that materialism isn’t as big a sin as we might be inclined to believe.

In an interesting (and somewhat biologically-based) article on The Huffington Post last week Dylan Kendall wrote an article about whether or not objects can make us happy.  She aptly notes that, “… objects have stories and the best ones we carry with us our whole lives. Like our grandmother’s table lamp or the baseball with which we hit our first home run, objects have the power to become more than just ‘things.’”

We can all relate to the significance of these kinds of objects.  Like most people I have objects of varying value that are priceless to me because of what they represent.  But for the purposes of this discussion I’m more intrigued by the objects that have no particular emotional underpinning, but which we enjoy.  Take my handbags as an example.  I have close to a dozen and they were all moderately expensive.  Do I need nearly a dozen handbags?  Absolutely not.  But I use and enjoy each one.  I switch bags several times each week.  I choose one based on my clothing and take pleasure in the way they are functional and stylish at the same time.

This leads me to wonder about the line that we all want not to cross – the line between caring about our belongings and caring only about our belongings.  To what extent is it acceptable to have and enjoy our possessions even if they lack a higher level of sentimental meaning?  And when do we enter the territory of wanting things just to have them, rather than for their value via form or function?  Further still, how does the collector (of stamps, tiny commemorative spoons, or even cars) factor into this moral landscape?

I suppose I would draw that line in the form of a pie chart.  I have and enjoy all kinds of objects.  Some of those objects are practical, like my food processor or a nice pen.  Others are less practical, like artwork or lipstick, but still bring me pleasure.  But my enjoyment of these kinds of things should only take up a certain portion of my life and my focus – a relatively narrow sliver of my pie chart.  I should also spend time focusing on mental and spiritual growth, maintaining relationships, helping other people, and behaving charitably.  As long as those things are bigger priorities in my life then I’m comfortable that my enjoyment from material possessions is not overblown.  But the moment that my little equilibrium tips in the direction of objects over everything else is the moment I need to reevaluate my priorities.

About a month ago I did something that scared the bejeezus out of me: I started researching preschools.  Yes, I know, IEP is not even two yet.  Mostly I just had no idea at what age kids start going to preschool and didn’t want to miss the boat because I was lost in a state of denial thinking, “But my baby is only nine years old.  Surely he isn’t old enough to start school yet, right?”

The comforting answer to the question spurring my research was that we have two full years before we start taking first-day-of-school photos on the front porch.  The not-so-comforting follow-up information came when I started clicking into tuition pages and discovered that many of the preschools we’re considering cost more than my high school did.  This is one of the few moments when I’m glad I don’t live in Manhattan and haven’t felt pressured to start the application process every day since my second trimester.  But I digress…

As an interesting parallel to our own preschool-filled horizon I happened across this NYT article about “The Littlest Redshirts.”  Apparently it is now de rigueur to hold your child back a year in some sort of Darwinian power play to make sure that he is among the smartest, tallest, and strongest in his class.**  Not surprisingly, I am ambivalent about this.

As a September baby I always enjoyed being among the oldest in my class.  I was one of the first to drive and vote and drink (legally, at least).  Whether or not I actually did, I perceived myself as having a bit of a leg up.  And all of these things factored somewhat into our decision to shoot for an autumn baby before I got pregnant with IEP.  But in spite of our own “strategery” I have an adverse response to the idea of holding a child back to stack the deck in this way. 

Perhaps I have visions of aggressive stage parents jockeying their children for position at the top of the toddler heap.  (I certainly have visions of the scene in Baby Boom where Diane Keaton sits dejected at the playground as other alpha mommies decry her parenting techniques and shun her for not having little Elizabeth on the Dalton waiting list.)  Such visions are off-putting enough.  But I think my real objection here is the effect that this “my child is the exception” mentality has on the kids who follow the rules.

For example, say IEP was born in April.  If I enroll him in preschool the year after he turns three (as is customary, I have learned) he will be among the younger members of his class.  Kids will be up to eight months older or four months younger than my son.  Now, say I don’t like the idea of IEP being on the young end.  Say I am heavily invested in my son’s success and I want him to have every advantage.  So I hold him back a year.  Now he starts preschool as a four-year-old.  He is older, smarter, and stronger than he was a year ago and than most other kids in his class.  IEP wins!

But who loses in this scenario?  What about the child who was born in mid-August and just barely made the September 1^st cutoff?  Now that child (and lots of other summer babies) are not just being stacked up against to kids who are 10 and 11 months older, but to kids who are up to a year and a half older.  By comparison they will be significantly less developed on many levels.  And I’m certainly no expert in early childhood development, but I can’t imagine that this does wonderful things for self-esteem (not to mention standardized test results which are scored in percentiles…). 

As a parent I totally understand the desire for your child to have every advantage you can hand him in this big bad world of ours.  But what does it say to your child about your confidence in him if you choose to cheat the system to give him a leg up?  And what does it teach him about how to succeed in the world if you’re willing to leave others to flounder for your own benefit?  I think the answer is: nothing good.

**Note – I’m not talking about kids who are held back for legitimate developmental reasons.  Many kids are held back because they simply aren’t ready and that is a bird of a different feather.

A year ago I would have cared very little about the ensuing battle over “net neutrality.”  I would have been content to let the big players fight it out either in the court of public opinion or, more likely, actual court, and wait for the verdict to be handed down.  As it is, that is still what will happen (I am not even a two-bit player on the World Wide Web) but I have a dog in the fight these days.

The moment I launched this little blog such issues suddenly mattered to me (even if I didn’t realize it at the time).  This site is exactly the type of site that would not get priority treatment in the new internet landscape that is being floated.  If I care that I can easily post and you can easily read, then I want to make sure that the web facilitates that transaction.

At any rate, net neutrality is not really my point today.  Rather, in all of my observation of the coverage of the net neutrality battle, I came across this interview with Eric Scmidt, the CEO of Google.

In it, Schmidt talks about the dangers of online anonymity.  Specifically he says, “In a world of asynchronous threats, it is too dangerous for there not to be some way to identify you.”  This freaked me out a little at first.  There are all sorts of things that I wouldn’t want made public.  What if I Google an old boyfriend?  What if I look up the procedure for declaring bankruptcy?  What if I look up the symptoms of some horrible disease?  (All of the above are hypothetical, by the way.)

Then I read Schmidt’s follow up comment: 

“Privacy is incredibly important,” he said, adding, “Privacy is not the same thing as anonymity. It’s very important that Google and everyone else respects people’s privacy. People have a right to privacy; it’s natural; it’s normal. It’s the right way to do things.”

And this commentary struck a chord with me.  As I thought about it I realized that many of us (at least myself, for sure) have long equated online anonymity with online privacy.  I can go just about anywhere on the web and unless my computer is hacked no one will ever know.  While that is a monumental comfort to many internet users who are up to no good (What, there are people online other than touchy-feely bloggers?  No.  Couldn’t be…) as Schmidt says, it’s dangerous.

There is a lot of private information about me out in the world.  It resides in places like my doctors’ offices, my HR department’s personnel files, my tax returns, even my fingerprints.  This is not data that I want made public, but it is data that I am comfortable residing in the hands of trusted keepers.  The strange thing about the internet is that we inadvertently make lots of different parties keepers of our private information.  Google.  Amazon.  Yahoo.  These major sites are some of the biggest players.  But any site where you’ve made an online purchase has data about you on file as well. 

In the pre-internet world I could walk into a bookstore and make a purchase without anyone logging that purchase into a catalog of previous purchases that is constantly evolving into a user profile designed to predict my preferences.  I still can.  But if I order my books online (more likely) I have to be comfortable with the knowledge that Amazon.com is amassing volumes of data about my shopping and purchasing habits.  They are one of my keepers now. 

While I think Eric Schmidt raised some eyebrows with his comments about online anonymity, I actually think he’s on the right track.  Online anonymity has facilitated all kinds of atrocities in the real world (look up some back episodes of Dateline if you’re curious…).  Online privacy, on the other hand, will protect those of us who are harmless yet don’t care to have our affairs made public.  The tricky part is deciding whom to make our keepers.  It’s hard to trust someone you’ve never met.  And yet we do it here in cyberspace every single day.

Every Sunday at noon I walk into a Level 3 NICU and hold babies.  I am not a doctor or a nurse.  I have no medical training at all.  But I am a NICU volunteer, and in that capacity I have learned how to keep feeding tubes, central lines, IVs, and heart monitors untangled.  I have learned which babies like to be rocked and which like to be patted.  And I have sat silently out of the way when someone’s heart rate spiked or breathing slowed. 

I tell you this not to applaud myself.  (I do what I do because I need to; because my son started his life in that very NICU and because it healed him.)  I tell you this because one result of my time in the NICU is a collection of strong opinions about prenatal care and newborn health.  I care deeply for the babies I visit each week.  And because of that deep concern and affection I feel compelled to speak on their behalf.  So it is that I am about to do something that I have disavowed in the past.  I am about to judge. 

I read earlier this week that the Duggars are ready to have another baby.

[In the event that you are not familiar with the Duggars, here’s the Reader’s Digest version:  They are an Arkansas-based family with 19 children ranging in age from eight months to 22 years.  Their youngest daughter, Josie, was born three months prematurely last December after Michelle Duggar developed preeclampsia.  Josie weighed 1 pound, 6 ounces at birth and remained hospitalized for more than six months before being permanently discharged.  The family stars in a TLC television series called “19 Kids and Counting” and has written a book about their life.]

My struggles with this news are many.  The biggest one, though, is a total lack of comprehension.  I just do. not. get it.  I don’t understand how 19 children aren’t enough.  I don’t understand how the rewards of a 20^th child could outweigh the risks at this point.  And I really don’t understand the convictions that Jim Bob Duggar cites when he talks about their reasons for having so many children.  As the article I read states:

Similarly daunting [to the concerns about finally having Josie at home] are the very real medical risks Michelle could face with another pregnancy – particularly a return of preeclampsia, which can lead to a stroke or prove fatal. But despite the risk – and intense criticism – the pair vow to stick to their beliefs.

“People think we are overpopulating the world,” says Jim Bob. “We are following our convictions.”

What convictions? 

After doing a bit of online sleuthing I have learned that the Duggars ascribe to the Quiverfull movement, which eschews all forms of birth control (including NFP), believes that children are blessings from God, and that having many children is the most efficient means of spreading God’s word.  (For a 2009 Newsweek article on the movement, click here.) 

I should state here that it is not the premise of a large family that bothers me.  Nor am I bothered by the religious doctrine behind it.  (I should clarify: I don’t agree with the Quiverfull movement at all, but I’m fine with the idea of developing a family around your own beliefs.)  The Duggars are entitled to their choices and they seem to manage those choices well.  They are a happy (and debt-free) family each of whose children had been born healthy until Josie arrived.  If they can follow their convictions, choose this life, and make it work then I say bravo.  But it seems to me that these convictions and choices aren’t working anymore.

According to Quiverfull doctrine, barrenness is God’s decision and something to be accepted and dealt with through prayer.  And while Michelle Duggar obviously doesn’t have any problems conceiving a child, I wonder if her inability to carry Josie to term should also be interpreted as God’s way of communicating that she should not bear more children.  (Again, these are not my beliefs; I’m just trying to apply the Quiverfull doctrine consistently.)  The Duggars, however, do not seem to think so.  They are ready for #20, and I am aghast. 

I hear this news and I think about the babies I see each week.  I think about their discomfort.  I think about how many of them struggle for months just to learn simple reflexes like swallowing.  And I think about the constant hums, dings, and flashing lights of the NICU and how it is nothing like being at home.

As I think about these things, all of which the Duggars almost certainly experienced during Josie’s six months in the NICU, I wonder how they could consider another pregnancy.  How could they possibly be willing to put another child (not to mention the rest of the family) through that experience again?  When will they say, “We have been blessed enough”?  At what point does the accumulation of God’s blessings stop being holy and start being greedy?  As far as I’m concerned, the Duggars are treading precipitously close to that line.

What do you value more in your life: Experiences or belongings?  Adventures or routine?  New and different or known quantities? 

When we’re speaking abstractly it’s easy to say that we care more about having great experiences in life; that we aren’t attached to our belongings; and that we are always up for something new.  It’s quite another thing to live out those statements for seven years on a sailboat with your family. 

That’s right.  I said seven years on a sailboat with your family. 

The Crafton family, whom I find simultaneously inspiring and full-throttle bonkers did just that, and apparently they’d do it again.  The nuts and bolts of their story go something like this:

• Family of five decides to ditch everything (literally – homes, careers, property, cars, etc), buy a boat, and sail the world.
• Two of the kids had speech delays which were better addressed without typical peer pressure.
• Everyone got along better without the distractions of material belongings and adolescent angst.
• They stayed on the water for seven years and only returned when it was time for one of the kids to start college.
• They don’t regret a moment of it.

As I read the article about their experience a strong sense of ambivalence hovered over me.  I love the idea of giving it all up in favor of a life un-tethered by convention.  Yet in the same moment I felt intensely protective of those same conventions.  However would I survive without Bobbi Brown face wash, or my KitchenAid mixer, or my king size bed?  How would I incorporate some of my favorite things into a life on the open sea?  Could I get satellite internet service?  How many books would I need to pack?  How would I manage to log four workouts per week? 

Then I kicked myself.  I realized that the purpose of a decision like this is absolutely NOT to create a portable version of your existing life.  The purpose of a decision like this is to turn away from your existing life and take on a life that looks entirely different.  And doing that means giving up things that may mean a great deal to you.  Fresh herbs, air conditioning, a social life, and countless creature comforts would be left behind on purpose.  (Also little things like scalloped tomatoes, television reruns, and flirty nightgowns.) 

And that scares the bejeezus out of me.

By why?  Why do I cling to these things so fiercely?  What do I think will happen to me in their absence?  Will I become unhappy?  Do I measure myself in some way against these benchmarks of convention?  Would I completely lose sight of myself and my priorities in the absence of typical guideposts?  And most importantly, if any of these things is true, what on earth does that say about me? 

I know that I am more than my home, car, wardrobe, and hobbies.  But if that is true, then shouldn’t I be willing to let any of them go?  I don’t necessarily think so, but I can’t place my finger on why. 

PS – As a completely unrelated aside, this is my one hundredth post.  I can hardly believe that after just seven months of blogging I’ve reached an actual milestone.  Thanks for reading and commenting and being a part of these little mental exercises of mine.

I’m playing catch-up from my blog-cation the past couple of weeks.  So please pardon the fact that this story may have already phased out of the national conversation, but I’m still pondering it.

Unless you live under a rock (in which case you probably don’t have internet and aren’t reading this) you know that a couple of weeks ago LeBron James announced that he would be leaving the Cleveland Cavaliers and joining his buddies Chris Bosh and Dwayne Wade in Miami.  All of South Beach celebrated, and everyone from Chicago to New York to Cleveland itself wished a pox on King James for forsaking them.  Ahhh, the drama.

But once all the loving and hating that stemmed from the initial announcement settled down two elder statesmen of the game of basketball stirred up some drama of their own.  First Michael Jordan and then Magic Johnson came out and publicly stated (as though we were all curious) “I would never have done what LeBron did.”   And this got me scratching my head.

Why does this matter?  Why is it relevant?  Why do we care what two retired players claim they would or wouldn’t have done in a different era under different circumstances with different opportunities?

(As an aside, kudos to LeBron for keeping his mouth shut and not responding, “Well, Michael, I wouldn’t have developed a massive gambling problem.”  And, “Well, Magic, I wouldn’t have caroused around having unprotected sex with random women until I contracted HIV.”  I suspect that took some real restraint on LeBron’s part.)

Because this little outburst from Jordan and Johnson perplexed me I did what most women would do: I asked my husband about it.  Not surprisingly, he had already discussed the same topic with some friends of his and so had a broader sampling of feedback than I was expecting.  According to GAP (and his buddies at work) the purpose of rejecting LeBron’s decision has something to do with the integrity of the competitor.  As it was explained to me winning isn’t enough; and going to someone else’s team, playing with a stacked deck, and then winning isn’t the same as winning on your own.  The implied message from MJ-1 and MJ-2 is that LeBron should have stayed the course in Cleveland, continued to build the team up around himself, and then proceeded to win a series of championships.  Further still, the argument apparently goes that now that he’s left the Cavs to join forces with more elite teammates he may never be able to clinch the title of “best man to ever have played the game” because whatever he accomplishes now won’t have been on his back alone.

Now please pardon me here, but I think that is bloody ridiculous.  It’s all semantics.  GAP explained that LeBron “went to Wade’s team.”  Whereas the Cavaliers was “his team” the Heat is someone else’s.  Also, now that he’s playing with other superstars LeBron’s talents will supposedly be masked and his candidacy for “the greatest player in history” substantially diluted.   And apparently in the world of patriarchy and pissing matches, this matters.

I, for one, just don’t get it.  I don’t understand why it matters to grown men who has marked what territory.  Much less do I understand why long-retired superstars who should be resting happily on their laurels are passing value judgments based on a situation they themselves never encountered (unless it’s to reclaim dying media relevance).  And as for the “best player ever” argument I see it this way: either he is or he isn’t.  Perhaps this is naïve of me, but I say that being the best player ever means exhibiting the most talent and channeling that talent into the most success.  Whoever else happens to be on the court should be irrelevant.

I don’t think I have to go too far out on a limb in saying that I value education.  It’s not an especially risky position to take.  I am the fortunate product of a good education, a family of readers, and a marriage filled with challenging ideas. 

These things suit me, but beyond that, I believe they make me a better person.  I believe that I improve myself every time I learn something, whether it’s the result of extensive reading or a quick Wikipedia search.  I also believe that learning and education are not exclusively achieved by enrollment in colleges and graduate schools.  They likewise come from independent reading, engaging with people, exposing yourself to new environments and cultures, and experiencing things firsthand.

Having said all this I am fully aware that there are plenty of ignorant people in the world.  Some of them yearn for better opportunities and broader experiences.  But plenty of them are content to meander through life with the knowledge they’ve already obtained, along with whatever else happens upon them without too much effort. 

It is this second category of people that GAP and I discussed over dinner Saturday night.  He has a low level of tolerance for people who don’t engage their minds.  Not for people who are uneducated.  Not even for people who aren’t very bright.  His beef is with those who don’t try; people who could ask interesting questions and think interesting thoughts, yet choose not to.  They exist in all circles of society: urban, rural, middle class suburban, wealthy, and poor. 

I am inclined to give these people a pass, of sorts.  There is a part of me that believes that their choices are not my business.  If they are happy enough in their current lifestyle, who am I to assume that my own approach to personal growth is right for them?  Additionally, ignorant bliss aside, for many of these people additional knowledge or analytical insight may not measurable improve their lives in any tangible way. 

Yet I have said it: I value education.  I think it is important.  So how can I reconcile that belief to only some subset of my society?  I would never state that vegetables and exercise are only important for people who already enjoy them.  I would never concede that open-mindedness and generosity are only valuable in people who care about those traits.  So why would I parse words when it comes to education?

I suppose it is that when it comes to advocating mental muscle there is a risk factor for snobbery that scares me.  Particularly given that I am well educated I fear that being outspoken about education (formal or otherwise), intellectual curiosity, and other aspects of knowledge and learning will imply judgment that I truly do not mean to convey.

There is a line from The West Wing (probably my all-time favorite show) that comes from a senior White House staffer in the midst of an election cycle.  The sitting president is an educated liberal from a prestigious family, fighting against a challenger who comes from more humble roots and is gaining ground on his platform of being a regular guy.  As the president grapples with how to leverage his own intellectualism the staffer says, “Before I look for anything, I look for a mind at work.”

I have always loved this line because it succinctly communicates exactly what I value.  He doesn’t say, “Before I look for anything I look for a post-graduate degree” or “a high iQ” or “analytical genius.”  He looks for a mind at work.  The range there is so broad.  It allows for so many versions.  A mind at work includes library books, The History Channel, and conversations with quirky and interesting people, as well as diplomas that read Summa Cum Laude. 

I suppose what I’m here to say is that I don’t care whether or not you have a college degree or even a high school diploma.  I don’t care if you’re a savant-like genius or a dim-witted fool.  I care if you’re trying.  I care that you get up each day and put your thinking cap on.  I care if there’s a mind at work.  And that, I hope, is a fair position to take.

Last night LeBron James revealed, to much fanfare, that he would join the Miami Heat come next season.  And while his professional endeavors were the focus of the one-hour announcement event, it was his philanthropic endeavors that spoke most loudly to me.

Highly paid athletes and celebrities have used their public platforms for innumerable reasons over time.  Getting into exclusive clubs.  Getting lighter prison sentences.  Getting astronomical endorsement deals.  Selling newborn photos of their children to gossip magazines.  You name it.  But in the lead-up to last night LeBron identified an opportunity and seized it.  Knowing full well that he would have America’s undivided attention he requested that sponsorship of the announcement be sold, and that the proceeds should go to the Boys and Girls Clubs of America.

When we discussed this decision over dinner with friends the other night GAP was quick to dismiss the significance of this charitable maneuver.  He didn’t think it was that big a deal.  Collectively we countered.  The line of questioning went something like this:  “What if more celebrities did things like this?  What if it became a trend?  What could this do for charity if celebs across the board started using moments like this to benefit others who really need it, instead of just themselves?”  GAP eventually crossed over to our side, but given his lack of celebrity I need our powers of persuasion to reach a bit further. 

There is a growing trend among the super-rich of pledging to donate half of their net worth to charity.  (Warren Buffet has famously pledged 99% of his wealth.)  Odd corporate sponsorship proceeds here and there may not tally into the billions as these private pledges do, but it’s more than a drop in the bucket. 

I say kudos to LeBron James for harnessing the media for the benefit of someone else.  Would that other celebs would follow in his footsteps.

Last week I picked up a copy of Newsweek at the gym and read this article on marriage as I pedaled away on the elliptical machine.  With my wedding band firmly affixed to my sweating left hand I read two women’s assertions as to why today’s woman doesn’t need marriage as her mother and grandmother did.  Further, authors Jessica Bennett and Jesse Ellison argue that the institution is an utterly outmoded thing of the past. 

The statistics in their article collectively make a good case:

• We can support ourselves without a man’s salary.
• Americans have the highest divorce rate in the Western world.
• For every year that we delay marriage our chances of divorce go down.
• Due in large part to the efforts of same-sex couples, heterosexual couples now enjoy more rights as an unmarried couple than ever before.
• With 41% of 2008’s births coming from unwed mothers the stigma attached to having children out of wedlock has almost completely lost its stigma.

These and other points in the article did not surprise me.  I don’t have to look around for very long to see that the landscape of the American family isn’t today what it was for Ward and June Cleaver or for Cliff and Claire Huxtible.  What did surprise me was my own reaction to the premise that marriage isn’t necessary.  I didn’t disagree with it.

I am happily married.  Once GAP and I had been dating for several years and knew that our futures would be forged together, it never entered my mind not to get married.  It was, without question, what we wanted.  The wedding lived up to all of the romantic ideals of my girlhood.  And the marriage has seen better, worse, richer, poorer, sickness, and health.  As I sit here today I cannot envision a life in which GAP and I are in a committed, monogamous relationship but not married.  Yet I cannot articulate why.

As I read the Newsweek article I found myself with neither words to defend my decision to marry, nor a desire to defend it in the first place.  By the time I reached its conclusion my thoughts trended along the lines of, “Hmmm.  Well I guess it’s not for everyone.”  It was in the same vein as “Some people like vanilla and some people like chocolate.”  But shouldn’t a topic like this trigger a more vigorous response than a comparison of ice cream flavors?  Shouldn’t I want to passionately advocate for the decision that changed my life and has served me so well?  Is there a point at which our levels of tolerance and dismissal of social constructs become destructive to our culture?

The rub for me is that the social constructs that I value – family, community, education, support networks, and the like – do not suffer in the absence of marriage.  Bennett and Ellison write:

Research shows that the more education and financial independence a woman has—in other words, the more success she has outside the home—the more likely she is to stay married. (In states where fewer wives have paid jobs, for example, divorce rates tend to be higher.) But when these egalitarian, independent couples decide not to marry at all, they lose none of that stability. Just take a look at couples in Europe: they’re happier, less religious, and more likely to believe that marriage is an outdated institution, and their divorce rate is a fraction of our own. Not being married may make it slightly easier to walk away—at least legally—but if you’ve gone to the lengths to establish a life together, is it really all that different? Studies show that never-married couples with the intention of forever are just as likely to stay together as married ones. And for all the talk of marriage being good for families, a study of the Scandinavian countries—where a majority of children are born out of wedlock—found that kids actually spend more time with their parents than American children do. 

And so I am left in an odd place.  I have made a huge decision about my life.  It’s a decision that affects me, my family, and my community.  I believe it was the right decision for me.  But I have absolutely no interest in promoting it to other people.  Does this mean that I walked blindly into marriage as a result of cultural norms?  And if I did, is that a bad thing?

The family landscape is changing indeed.  But I struggle to understand my own neutrality on the topic.