Dueling Marriage Quizzes

In Sunday’s The New York Times non-traditional relationships advocate Stephanie Coontz ran a pop quiz on relationships that, not surprisingly for the author of The Way We Never Were, repeated the argument of her book that the 50’s ideal of Father Knows Best has never been the norm in human families. And anyway, “Born-again Christians are just as likely to divorce as more secular Americans.”

So National Review Online rolled out conservative marriage advocate Maggie Gallagher with her pop quiz. Not surprisingly for the author of The Case for Marriage, her pop quiz shows that traditional marriage of the kind celebrated in Father Knows Best and Leave It to Beaver is best.

The statement “Divorce has always been a disaster for women and children” Coontz says is false because while divorce does cause a “sharp drop in
the economic standard of living for women and children” it also reduces women’s suicide rates and only marginally damages children’s emotional wellbeing by 55 percent to 45 percent.

On the question “Divorce impoverishes women and children” Gallagher writes:

True. The majority of children raised outside of marriage experience poverty. As many as one-third of divorced women slip below the poverty level after divorce.

Take your pick. And read the whole thing.