A decade ago, Stanley Kurtz kicked off his own personal whinefest against that awful liberal media by taking on Harvard University Press in an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal. Harvard Press, he railed, had rejected a book called "The Case for Marriage: Why Married People Are Happier, Healthier, and Better Off Financially," which he described as "packed with scholarly evidence" and written "clearly and calmly." (The book was published by Doubleday.)
Over time, Kurtz got even more psyched about The Case for Marriage, calling it "a model of calm and cogent argumentation, backed up by carefully sifted facts" in the National Review in February of 2001, then "a lively, rigorous, path-breaking study of the advantages of marriage" on the same pages in November of 2001.
I'll give him this: The facts were carefully sifted. They were sifted so that those most favorable to Waite and Gallagher's case would make it into the book, and others would be sifted some more to make them seem to fit the case the authors were trying to build.
When I was doing the research for my book, Singled Out: How Singles Are Stereotyped, Stigmatized, and Ignored, and Still Live Happily Ever After, I did something that I suspect that none of Harvard's reviewers, nor Doubleday's, did. Stanley Kurtz didn't either. I read the original journal articles that were cited, and checked them against the claims made in Waite and Gallagher's book. I read the relevant sections of their book line by line, and even scrutinized the claims slipped into the footnotes.
Kurtz scoffed at the person at Harvard Press who told a Crimson reporter that The Case for Marriage "was second rate and not worth publishing." I have news for Stanley Kurtz, the student reporter, and everyone else: The Case for Marriage was second rate and not worth publishing.
This is important, because The Case for Marriage continues to be cited uncritically, not just by the right-wing and the marriage movement, but even in academic publications, by people who should know better.
[Disclaimer: My PhD is from Harvard, but I've never been published by Harvard University Press, nor tried to be.]
What's Wrong with The Case for Marriage?
Some of the cheater tricks that Waite and Gallagher play on their readers are the ones you might expect:
1. They selectively include studies favorable to the case they want to make.
2. They selectively exclude studies unfavorable to their case.
I held myself to a higher standard when critiquing their work. I asked whether their conclusions were supported by just those studies they chose to include in their book. So never mind points 1 and 2 about whether they really were selective. Let's go with their picks.
3. They selectively present, or misrepresent, the findings of the studies they do include.
Most importantly:
4. The kinds of studies they most often cite simply cannot support the claim that getting married makes people happier or healthier or better off in any other way.
To see why this is so, consider first what you would think of a drug company that tried to sell you its latest product based on comparable research. The company does not randomly assign people to the drug condition vs. no-drug (placebo) conditions - it let's people decide for themselves whether or not to take the drug. More than 40% who decide to take the drug find that they can't stand it and refuse to continue taking it. Others can't access the drug anymore so they stop taking it too. The drug company now focuses on a subset of the group that first signed up for the drug - only those who are still taking the drug. So they set aside the 40+ percent who hated the drug, and they set aside the others who also took the drug but can't get it anymore, and just look at the people who are left. "Hey, look," they proclaim, "those people are doing better than the ones who started taking the drug and then stopped! Everyone should take our drug!"
I'm not kidding. This is what passes as scientific evidence for the case for marriage. Waite and Gallagher (and way too many others) look at the people who are currently married (the drug group) and compare them to the people who once married but then became divorced (hated the drug) or widowed (could no longer access the drug). The people in the currently married group typically do fare better than the people in the divorced or widowed group - but it's not because they got married. Everyone in all three groups got married. What proved hazardous was getting married and then unmarried. Even those detrimental effects of divorce and widowhood do not occur in all groups of people in all studies, and often the negative effects subside over time.
Typically, the smallest differences in these studies are between the currently married people and the people who have always been single. In some (though not all) studies, it is the singles who do better. Again, what is most likely to be hazardous is having been married, not staying single.
Still, I'm sometimes asked, isn't it fair to say, on the basis of these kinds of studies, that people who are currently married are generally doing better than people who are currently unmarried? Then, isn't it okay to speculate about why married people are doing better than unmarried people?
Well, think again about the drug study. Suppose a company advertised its drug (I like to call it Shamster) by saying that people who are currently taking Shamster are doing better than people who are currently not taking Shamster. Would you take that drug, knowing that more than 40% of the people who started taking Shamster hated it and refused to continue taking it, and that the drug company took those people out of their drug group? Would you take the drug, knowing that the people who never did try the drug did better than the people who tried it and hated it or tried it and couldn't access it anymore, and not much differently from the people who continue to take the drug? What would you think of a drug company that tried to sell you Shamster on the basis of only those people for whom the drug was effective? Would you then want to hear their speculations as to why people on Shamster were doing better than people not on Shamster?
If you are an academic reading this, what would you think if you were an editor of a journal and asked to publish a claim for the advantages of getting married based on a study like this? If you are a researcher, imagine that you could remove from your key experimental condition more than 40% of the people who were least compliant with your hypothesis, and still publish your work! Wouldn't that be fun! Everyone into the tenure pool.
Of course, people cannot ethically be randomly assigned to get married or get divorced or stay single. The next best approach, methodologically, is to follow people over the course of their lives as they get married, get divorced, become widowed, stay single, or some other permutation. There are, understandably, many fewer of these longitudinal studies than of the studies of marital status at one point in time. The longest-running study of marital status and happiness (now ongoing for more than 2 decades and described here) has shown that people who get married and stay married enjoy just a brief increase in happiness around the time of the wedding, then go back to being about as happy as they were when they were single. Remember, that brief honeymoon effect was enjoyed only by those who got married and stayed married over the entire course of the study. Those who married and later divorced were already becoming a bit less happy as their wedding day approached. Attention Waite and Gallagher: Getting married did NOT generally result in lasting increases in happiness. Similarly, as I review in Singled Out, there is no compelling evidence for the simple-minded conclusion that getting married makes you lastingly healthier, either.
In Singled Out, I critiqued the claims about getting married and getting happy, healthy, living longer, and getting sex, and explained what the evidence really did show. I did the same for the implications for children of being raised by single parents. Studies continue to be published, and I review them at the Huffington Post or my Living Single blog at Psychology Today. The bottom line is that the case for getting married is still second rate. (See, for example: The case for marriage is a sham.) Next, I'll point you to some of the more detailed critiques.
Getting Married and Getting Sex
I reviewed Waite and Gallagher's claim that married people have more sex and better sex on pp. 52-55 of Singled Out, and also in this post. Do take a look if you are interested in tracking a trail of slime. In just a few pages, you can see how the authors compare married people to cohabiting couples when that makes their case, and then switch to comparing them to single or divorced people when those data fit their argument better. Notice also how they ignore data inconsistent with their case that comes from the very same report they are citing. Oh, and one of their "sources" is a survey conducted by the Family Research Council (think Tony Perkins and his ilk).
Getting Married and Living Longer
This is great fun, too. I critiqued Waite and Gallagher's case on pp. 48-52 of Singled Out. Here you will find an example of a new cheater trick. Don't just look at the subset of all the people who got married who then stayed married; within that select group, look only at those who are HAPPILY married. Because if you can't show -- even with the cheater method of setting aside everyone who got married and then got unmarried -- that getting married enriches and extends your life, then get even more selective and look only at the happily married. What's more, don't be even-handed about this. When you are discussing single people, don't look only at those who want to be single or who are happily single, as you do when you are talking about married people.
You will also find in this section a great example of a relevant study that Waite and Gallagher ignore - a study of longevity that has been ongoing since 1921. Do I need to tell you that the results were inconsistent with their case for marriage?
Claims that getting married translates into a longer life continue to be made, and I continue to critique them. Click here for an example.
Getting Married and Getting Healthy and Happy
The relevant section of Singled Out on happiness is on pp. 30-42, and the health section is on pp. 43-48. When I wrote about health, I described a CDC study showing that currently married people are fatter than everyone else. Using the same standards to evaluate that claim, though, that I use to evaluate the other claims, I said that comparing currently married people to other people at one point in time is not evidence that getting married makes you fatter. Since then, however, a 10-year longitudinal study has provided evidence that, among women without kids, those who had a partner gained more weight than the ones who stayed single.
Here are critiques of a few more studies of marital status and health. Others can be found in the collection Single with Attitude.
The Myth that the Children of Single Parents Are Doomed
Waite and Gallagher have a lot to say about the fate of children raised by single parents. So do I. The relevant section of Singled Out is Chapter 9 (pp. 169-184). I also addressed the issue in these posts:
1. It Takes a Single Person to Create a Village
2. Children of Single Mothers: How Do They Really Fare?
3. TIME's Misleading Cover Story on Marriage
Getting Married and Getting More Money
Waite and Gallagher are right about this claim. Getting married is financially advantageous. But it is not, as the authors would have you believe, because married men are so much worthier workers than single men. It is largely a matter of discrimination in pay and in the law, as I described in Chapter 12 of Singled Out and in these posts:
1. The economy: A single person's vulnerability that is real
2. The Marriage-Promotion Claim that Is Right - for All the Wrong Reasons
What Have I Missed?
Have I missed the definitive studies showing that getting married results in lasting advantages (other than financial ones)? If so, send them my way and I'll take a look at them.
Melissa Lafsky: Why "Settle" For Lori Gottlieb's Narrow View Of Life? Live Your Own
Not once in her endless lovelorn musings does Gottlieb ask: What about what my potential partner wants? What about considering how I could work on myself, find my own peace?
Lesley M. M. Blume: Why "Marry Mr. Good-Enough" is Dark Ages Nonsense in a Modern Disguise
Ms. Gottlieb argues that we're here to procreate -- in an unhappy union with a mismatched partner, if need be; below, Lesley M. M. Blume begs to differ.
Bella DePaulo: Get Married, Live Longer? It's a Myth
When the authors of The Case claimed that getting married saved men's lives, they did so by acting as if the men who got divorced or widowed did not actually get married.
Now, I do have friends who have great marriages so I know it can happen. I also know that bad marriages happen as well.
As a fellow professor at a prestigious university and researcher of marriage and singlehood, I have to respectfully disagree. The evidence for the positive physical and mental health benefits of marriage and negative effects of divorce are overwhelming. The benefits for children are even clearer. To argue against the evidence is like arguing against the impact of humans on global warming or cigarettes on cancer.
Marriage certainly comes with negatives, but you are simply setting a generation of young people up for misery with your irrational and emotional rants against marriage. I understand that misery enjoys company, but can you please try and be miserable alone.
Dr. DePaulo would do well to remember that her own reputation hangs in the balance. Mutiple independent sources and proffesionals now back up the case made by Gallagher for traditional marriage.
Actually, I'm not telling anyone how to live their lives. I am saying that we should all avoid singlism and matrimania, and give more respect to science than to ideology. It is true that my primary interest is in singles. However, if what I want actually happened -- that is, if there were less stereotyping and caricaturing of single people (reread your own comment) -- that would result in stronger marriages. That's because the people who DID want to be coupled would approach it from a position of strength -- as something they want in a positive way, and not just something they are headed toward because they think they need to escape the supposed horrors of single life.
It strikes me that your book and your concerns are, when weighed against the very real social problems society faces and that marriage confronts, simply anothger attempt to burden marriage beyond our ability to rehabilitate it.
Thanks for your lucid and critical analysis. I don't think either state (married or non-) is superior or preferable (I'm 10 years married), but the decision should be made for reasons of personal fulfillment rather that meeting society's expectations. I feel the same way about religion vs. non-religion (I'm an atheist but have no beef with people of faith so long as they practice what they preach and don't harm others with their practice). However, it seems that both choices are so heavily influenced by what others think that it can be difficult or impossible for many people to make a truly free and informed decision, and that is unfortunate.
It can be argued that a couple can find the same kind of friendship without marriage. But I find this argument disingenuous. If you aren't willing to marry, then you aren't really growing together with the same intimacy. If you were, then you'd want to get married. There would be no real reason not to. Avoidance of marriage is a distance two people put between themselves to maintain independence and autonomy. That's fine, but it's not as intimate.
I've been married to my best friend for over a decade now. There are pros and there are cons, but mostly, I can't imagine living any other way. I wouldn't want to. This is the intimacy my wife and I share and I would choose it even if it meant I wouldn't life as long. It's the life I want and that's all the benefit I need.
If you feel as though you're falling short of the standards you expect of yourself, you'll be dissatisfied. So the shortest route to satisfaction is always to lower your expectations, and the biggest influence on level of satisfaction is likely to be via level of expectations. I suspect that a committed long-term relationship (with or without legal recognition) is likely to raise people's expectations for various aspects of their well-being. If you only want to be good at clawing your way up the heap at work, you're likely to succeed at that and to judge yourself as having succeeded at it. If you want to actually relate to another human being and sustain that relationship amicably for fifty years, you're less likely to meet your benchmark. But partial success at the latter is more rewarding than complete success at the former.
Seems like the general emotional state of singles would then range from miserable (lonely and love-starved) to serenely content (either because you enjoy being alone or because you enjoy being partnered but unmarried).
Guess I'll have to read the book - DePaulo's, not the phony one.
But just going on raw experience and non-statistical observation, I can't imagine that "traditional marriage" - which is probably the kind of marriage The Case for Marriage writers are promoting - would be the most happy-making arrangement, considering all the alternatives. Nor are children necessarily happier and better raised in a traditional-marriage framework.
I've also been reflecting on the differences between the U.S. and The Netherlands, since I'm an American who's been living in the latter country for the past few years and have become acclimated to the Dutch lifestyle. Here you have marriage (hetero and homo) and civil partnerships (hetero or homo). Plus legalized prostitution, which is not particularly frowned upon here, especially for single men. Holland definitely has more socially accepted alternatives to traditional marriage and to "getting sex" than the U.S.
You make me proud to be one of your fellow alumni (unlike our former President).
I come from a large extended family where nearly half of us are single and have been for generations. Those who live the longest, are the most affluent, and healthiest and happiest are those who are single. My aunt just died at 103, happy and fullfilled. My ex wife, who was never without a relationship, died at 53, angry and unhappy. I have made a case for being single throughout my life and at 63, in spite of spending three tours of duty in Vietnam, am happier, healthier, and emotionally better off than nearly all of my married friends, both female as well as male.
And yet, our culture constantly hammers away at the idea that the ONLY way to be happy is marriage and kids, no matter how many miserable dysfunctional families we see in our neighborhoods and in the news, every movie and TV show no matter how "edgy" or "indy" has marriage and kids as the goal of it's sympathetic characters. If you're single, surrounded by hilarious caring friends, a great career and lots of hot sex, you're life is "empty", even though most married guys would give up a testicle for one night of it (see "Funny People" and a million other movies).
This is an attempt to take away the freedom part with an oppressive conformity, and results in single people who are miserable because they aren't married even though they have a great life, and married people who are miserable because they only got married and stayed married to conform.
Marriage is about how the couple relates to the rest of the world. It ranges from the dramatic and obvious -- when one of us is dying some day, the other should be the first person the doctors talk to -- to the obscure details of contracts no one reads. Yes, we could set that up with a thousand pages of ad-hoc legal documents, but there's no reason we should have to when it's much more efficient to have a one-size-fits-many legal status that about half the population finds basically satisfactory.
Marriage has varied hugely from generation to generation and place to place. But it has almost always been about legalities, with property first and foremost among them. The stuff about God and love has been there too, but has only gained prominence in recent generations.