Word: cherlin
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...past 40 years, the face of the American family has changed profoundly. As sociologist Andrew J. Cherlin observes in a landmark new book called The Marriage-Go-Round: The State of Marriage and the Family in America Today, what is significant about contemporary American families, compared with those of other nations, is their combination of "frequent marriage, frequent divorce" and the high number of "short-term co-habiting relationships." Taken together, these forces "create a great turbulence in American family life, a family flux, a coming and going of partners on a scale seen nowhere else. There are more partners...
Marriage can always end, and the protection it once offered offspring is now covered by child-support laws. Add that development to the gains made by the domestic-partnership movement, and, Cherlin says, "the legal advantages of marriage, the benefits that one would get, are eroding." This is one reason CUs like Charles Backman, 44, a commercial real estate developer in New Hampshire, see marriage as outdated at best. Backman wants no part of what he calls "the government stamp" of approval on his relationship to his partner of 15 years. "People mistake the government sanctioning your marriage for commitment...
...marriage on its way to becoming the relationship equivalent of our appendix (in that it's no longer needed but can cause a lot of pain)? "You're looking at the vanguard," sociologist Andrew Cherlin says of CUs like McCauley and Hathaway. A Johns Hopkins professor and author of The Marriage-Go-Round: The State of Marriage and the Family in America Today, he notes that unmarried parents in Europe stay together longer than married parents in the U.S. "Marriage is a more powerful symbol here," he says. "It's the ultimate merit badge of personal life...
...Marriage-Go-Round By Andrew J. Cherlin Knopf; 271 pages...
...have so many romantic partners? Thanks to multiple marriages and divorces, cohabitation, stepfamilies and various other couple combinations, America experiences "more turbulence in our family lives, more changes of partners and parents, than any other nation." So says Johns Hopkins University professor of public policy Cherlin, whose new study of the U.S. marriage landscape blames two contradictory yet dominant cultural ideals for our matrimonial meanderings. On one side is marriage itself, which holds a sacred place in American life. On the other is a "kind of individualism that emphasizes self-expression and personal growth." It's easy to see where...