Elizabeth at the Family Scholars Blog writes:
This is the problem. I’m not opposed to SSM because of the couples who want to marry. I understand their desire. I know what love is. I know what it means to want to grow old with somebody. I know the fear of being alone.
My problem is that I don’t want all marriage and family law, across the nation, to be rewritten in gender neutral terms that make the law unable to affirm that children, whenever possible, need to be raised by the mother and father who gave them life.
First of all, I’m happy that Elizabeth calls me her friend – and I’m quite sure she has feelings. :-)
As for gender neutral marriage, we’ve been moving in that direction for quite a long time; more wives and mothers work, stay-at-home-Dads are increasing (although still a small group), and coverture laws are an archaism. I’m curious to know if Elizabeth would like to undo any of the previous legal steps towards gender-neutral marriage, and if so, which ones.
Elizabeth goes on:
Here’s how I’d sum up the argument in the above paragraph (Elizabeth was nice enough to confirm by email that my paraphrase is accurate):
- If SSM is allowed, society will be less able to affirm the importance of being raised by two bio-parents.
- This will likely result in more heterosexual parents either never marrying, or marrying and then divorcing. (This is what Elizabeth means by “more [children] will grow up lacking that key security”).
- Therefore, we should not allow SSM.
For the sake of this post, I’m going to ignore my disagreements with statements 1 and 2 (and trust me, they are legion). Instead, I want to point out that something’s missing from Elizabeth’s argument. 1 and 2 do not logically lead to 3. There’s something missing – a step between 2 and 3 which justifies the conclusion in step 3.
For example, let’s look at one possibility – let’s call it 2.5.
2.5 Whatever leads to more bio-parents not marrying, or getting divorced, should not be legal.
If we add that, then 1 & 2 logically lead to 3. 1 & 2 together establish that SSM will lead to more bio-parents not marrying, or getting divorced; 2.5 establishes that everything that leads to more unmarried bio-parents should not be legal. Once that’s established, then Elizabeth’s conclusion – that same-sex marriage shouldn’t be allowed – logically follows.
But it’s fairly obvious that Elizabeth – like most opponents of SSM – does not really believe in statement 2.5.
After all, if “whatever leads to more bio-parents not marrying, or getting divorced, should not be legal,” then Elizabeth should logically want to refuse to legally recognize divorce. She should logically favor coverture. She should also be against legal interracial marriage, since interracial marriages are among the most likely to divorce.
It’s safe to assume that Elizabeth doesn’t favor banning divorce, or banning interracial marriage, or bringing back coverture laws. But if Elizabeth doesn’t favor those things, then Elizabeth doesn’t beleive everything that makes it less likely that bio-parents will get married and stay married should not be allowed by law. Which means that she can’t fill in the gap in her argument with statement 2.5, or anything like it.
I think Elizabeth must be using some method of categorization to fill in the gap in her argument. Some things – such as the Marriage Initiative, which I think Elizabeth favors – are acceptable ways of promoting marriage. Other ways – like refusing to legally recognize divorce – are not. And, in Elizabeth’s view, legally recognizing same-sex marriage falls into the “acceptable” catagory.
Putting aside the SSM question for a moment, my guess is Elizabeth’s categories look something like this:
| Category A – Things the government MAY NOT do to discourage unmarried bio-parents | Category B – things the government MAY do to discourage unmarried bio-parents |
|---|---|
| *refuse to recognize interracial marriage *refuse to recognize divorces *bring back coverture *refuse to recognize marriages of the infertile and the elderly *refuse to recognize second marriages which create stepparents (that is, non-biological parents) *throw non-resident parents into prison *refuse to recognize marriages to prisoners |
*create marriage education programs *create legal benefits for married people *allow marriage to create American citizenship *use the “bully pulpit” to talk up marriage *supply free marriage counseling for couples in trouble *support research into what makes marriages strong |
There’s a genuine pattern here, I think. Elizabeth and others would like to use the government’s powers to make it more likely that children will be raised by their own, married, biological parents. However, there’s a general consensus – even, I think, within the marriage movement – that some ways of doing this (category A) are unreasonable and shouldn’t be pursued. No one at the Institute for American Values (Elizabeth’s employer) is suggesting that we bring back coverture or outlaw divorce, for example.
So what differentiates category A from category B? The general principle seems to be that although the government should encourage childrearing by married bio-parents, in the name of the common good, it shouldn’t do so at the expense of removing civil rights or endorsing outright discrimination.
Instead, the government is allowed to use the methods in category B: the government can cajole, the government can persuade, the government can educate.
Here’s what puzzles me: I’m sure that Elizabeth would agree that the government should be doing a lot to encourage a society in which more children are raised by married bio-parents. I’m sure that she would also agree that some means of doing this are acceptable, and some are not. I suspect that if she made a list of acceptable and unacceptable methods, it might look pretty similar to my two lists above.
It seems obvious to me that refusing to recognize same-sex marriage belongs in catagory A, similar to refusing to recognize divorce, refusing to recognize interracial marriage, and so forth. But Elizabeth must think it belongs in category B, similar to providing tax breaks and marriage education programs. And I genuinely don’t understand why.
This is, I think, the issue I’d like to see Elizabeth address – the missing piece of her argument. She clearly doesn’t favor everything the government could do to reduce the number of divorced bio-parents – for instance, she doesn’t favor the government refusing to legally recognize divorce. So I’d like to know the rules she uses to catagorize things which are, and things which are not, acceptable ways for the government to encourage married bio-parenting; and why refusing to recognize same-sex marriages belongs in the “acceptable” category.
P.S. Many thanks to “Alas” reader Tina for emailing me a solution to my table formatting problem!
The problem with the ‘essentialist’ argument is that we are not talking about philosophy, but about law. Law changes, and is not fixed to ‘essentialism.’ Otherwise we’d all be scratching our heads in bafflement about the idea that women can vote, own property, have equal rights with their husbands, etc. because ‘essentialist’ arguments about Woman’s Nature would have carried the day.
Very, very nicely done Amp.
What is so infuriating to me, personally, is that whether you are a fence sitter or an “essentialist” it is doubtful that you would want to put up with laws or policies that required you to conform to biblical norms, and yet, this is what underlies most anti-ssm reasoning. You are willing or even happy to prohibit ssm because you can, because it affects a minority of people, and it will never, you believe, come back to bite you, and therefore, you need not plumb the consquences of the “logical construct” that “marriage” is a union between male and female created to enable and support the continuation of society through child rearing.
I recently read a commentary by Dr. Albert Mohlers of the Southern Baptist Convention (please don’t insult SBs as a group, my sweet husband is an SB who does not oppose ssm)– railing against what he calls the “willful barrenness” of married heterosexual couples. And if Elizabth keeps railing against the evils of “non-bio” parents perhaps we will finally cause an epiphany for the fence sitters: The anti-ssm forces will increasingly, I believe, begin to make arguments, and perhaps try to make policy, based on the biblical “norms” that we as a society have rejected — the exclusivity of patriarchal family arrangements, revulsion at the childless (Remember the paradigmatic biblical hearoine, Rebecca, Sarah, Rachel, Hannah, Elizabeth — all made whole and holy by miraculous childbirth), and obsession with genetic or biological lineage.
If you think society has “moved beyond” those ideals and made them much more nuanced so that you would be outraged if the government tried to deny contraception to married couples who hadn’t fulfilled their childbearing responsibility (in accordance with OT norms that married couples should “be fruitful and multiply”), then please open your mind just a little bit further.
Amp: No one at the Institute for American Values (Elizabeth’s employer) is suggesting that we bring back coverture or outlaw divorce, for example.
monica: No one suggests we ban marriage for people who do not want or cannot have children and call that “civil union” instead, right?
Sadly, I think that this is just the direction that we are headed. I give you this scary article, that was mentioned by Barbara above:
http://www.christianpost.com/dbase/editorial/173/section/1.htm
I think that the anti-SSM arguments are just the tip of the iceberg in what will become a battle at this primordial level of retro-Biblical morality. No-fault divorce, the right of people to choose not to have children (do you see the threat to birth control behind that?), and eventually the human status of women as individuals. It may be that if this agenda becomes obvious, it will be stopped by an outraged backlash, but it’s also possible that they will do a lot of damage under the radar . . .
. . . since interracial marriages are among the most likely to divorce. Really?
Amp: IMO she is not saying that there are no problems with marriage. I think she is trying to say that we should not pile more problems onto a institution that values the desires of the individual more than the needs of the children for whom the institution was developed to protect.
We have over the last 25 years experimented with easier divorce laws. The changes in divorce laws benefitted those individuals who wanted to easily end their relationships. However, in the long run it has proven a disaster for children and the meaning of committment, community and marriage.
More lax divorce laws have proliferated “blended faimilies”. The blended family harks back to the days of polygamous relationships, without the “amore” because it is forced and generally contentious. SSM in my opinion would is a far better model than the divorced family couplings. SSM would fair better if it focuses on the benfits the children will reap from the polyamorous families created. I see blended families of SS couples that are far better than the blended families of homosexual couples. There is more love and benefits for the children in a purposeful blended family than one forced from divorce.
For instance, a male couple can provide sperm for a female couple (which is common in male relationships who want a child). The female couple can raise the children while the male couple use their combined resources and “male privilege” to economically benefit the children.
This model is far better than the heterosexual model of one man and one woman , or the blended family that was produced by divorce. We used to raise children as a community; I think SSM will bring back the days where we raised children as a “village” for the benefit of our society and not the individual.
Monica: “As if biological parents were automatically good parents”. I don’t think Elizabeth is saying that they’re *automatically* good parents. She’s saying that she has evidence that convinces her that, for whatever reason, children just are (as a matter of statistical fact, and not as a moral or any other sort of judgement) better off when they are raised by the people who are their biological parents.
(I haven’t made any kind of detailed study of that evidence; my gut and probably biased suspicion is that, like so many other bodies of evidence, it may support correlation but not causation, and therefore it may tell us little or nothing about whether or not increasing bioparenting per se would increase child welfare. But for clarity I think it’s important to note the existence of this putative evidence, and realize that Elizabeth and friends are relying on it, and not just on some theoretical pro-bioparenting assumption.)
RE marriage for the children or for the male hier: I think both Mythago and Robert are correct.
Both arguments use marriage, but I think Mythago is more on point regarding the true historical purpose of “marriage”. I think Robert’s argument goes more to the precursors of marriage and lend itself more to the purpose of male:female relationships instead of marriage as a legal institution.
DJW spoke about female- female marriages in the Sudan. I think those relationships are more of a polygamous model of community and the benefits/necessity of raising children in a community of women.
On further consideration, I disagree with Robert’s fundamental premise; I think the issue of essentialism v. constructivism is really a red herring.
“So the conflict seems to be between people who have a constructivist view and people who have an essentialist view.”
If this were really true, then it seems to me that there’d be no controversy over fully marriage-equivalent civil unions that didn’t have the word “marriage” applied to them. But of course there is controversy over those, and my impression is that to a very large extent the same people who oppose same-sex marriage also oppose marriage-equivalent (i.e. having all the same legal rights and responsibilities as marriage) same-sex civil unions.
If the only issue was whether or not the word “marriage” refers essentially (whatever that might mean) to the different-sex case, then there wouldn’t be an issue with same-sex civil unions with all the rights and privileges of (but not the name of) marriage.
Since there pretty clearly *is* an issue with such civil unions, I think we can conclude that the underlying disagreement here is *not* about whether the definition of the word “marriage” refers essentially to a relationship between people of different sexes.
(Now of course there are some people,and Robert may be one of them, who oppose same-sex marriage (or just think it’s impossible as a matter of word meanings), but would have no problem with full fledged same-sex civil unions. My impression, though, is that such people are a small minority of the anti-ssm population, and that their opinions are not representative of the main stream of anti-ssm opinion.)
If Elizabeth used clarity she might have said that there are studies that show that in the context of divorce, a child (whether adopted or biological) tends to lose the tight bond with a noncustodial “original” parent without developing a comparably tight bond with a step parent, which means that it is less likely that there is a parent – step or bio – who is heavily vested in that child’s welfare. Probabilities are what they are, obviously, individuals vary tremendously. It’s not the biological link that matters, since I would imagine that adopted children are just as valued by their adoptive parents as biological children are by their biological parents. The issue is family break up in a society that, unlike European counterparts, is highly mobile, and thus particularly vulnerable to lessened contact between children and their non-custodial parents. Out of sight out of mind, to put it bluntly. That issue has nothing to do with ssm. It is a trend that has proceeded apace without regard to the legality of ssm.
I agree with those who say marriage was originally constructed as a way to preserve the male’s genetic ties to his offspring, but hand in hand with that goes the need to control the promiscuity of the mother. In most polygamous societies (which the Bible rose from), wives were typically cloistered from other fertile men. In upper classes those wives (& all other “owned” women be they concubine or slave) were isolated in harems, with castrated keepers. In lower classes (like Afghanistan) women are confined to their tents and can only go outside with a male escort who is related to the woman. Christianity did take a monogamous turn but you still see evidence of cloistering of women, especially in the Middle Ages when the current “institution” of marriage was really set. You had chaperones and chastity belts, and proof of the bride’s virginity was of paramount importance. These are all tools intended to insure that any children the wife bore genetically belonged to her husband.
And if you need any more evidence that this belief is still alive and kicking in today’s society, just turn on Jerry Springer sometime. Each episode is one shocking paternity revelation after another. And the key to the shock value is the promiscuity of the mother.
This is exactly why systematic rape of women is such a persistent & effective war tactic even today (i.e. Africa and Bosnia). It strikes at the very heart of what is most sacred to patriarchal societies: the sexual purity of their women. So much so that married victims will usually refuse to admit the rape because they know their husbands will likely divorce them or worse if it becomes known; and unmarried victims know no man will marry them if they’ve been ‘soiled’.
“That issue has nothing to do with ssm.”: Well, *I* agree with you. *8)
But as Amp’s post says, the argument is that ssm will cause fewer children to grow up with their bioparents, and therefore it’s a bad thing that shouldn’t be allowed. So we who think that that’s a bad argument need to specifically counter that claim.
I don’t think the data that Elizabeth is relying on are all in the context of divorce (although as I said I haven’t studied them in any detail)…
Hey Amp,
For what it’s worth, I love reading your arguments, even if some people can’t get past their own entrenchments to appreciate them. I especially love them because it usually means the next time I end up talking about a given subject I have another beautiful cohesive position to wrap myself in.
And then I tell my partner, and my friends, and then your one clear and cogent post has become a part of a whole bunch of people’s personal views. And that is, indeed, a great contribution.
leen
acm – OMG, that’s really scary. I started reading that article and when I got to “Clearly, children aren’t a part of their interior design plan” I was already with my jaw to the floor, when I got to the scriptural condemnation I had to stop reading… Please tell me there’s only a few nutcases like that.
You know, I honestly cannot *believe* that kind of attitude. Takes the definition of bigoted and reactionary to new levels…
It may be that if this agenda becomes obvious, it will be stopped by an outraged backlash, but it’s also possible that they will do a lot of damage under the radar . . .
Yes, exactly, that’s what I find scariest. For instance, on abortion – I don’t think any country which has already a law granting the right to choose will ever literally go back to banning it, at the very least I think it’d be very hard, and I think even those on the anti-abortion side must know that (at least those who are not completely detached from reality), but in the meantime, it’s being used as tool for attracting votes from the ultra-conservatives and religious right and in turn reinforcing those views in the public debate and so on, with anything that comes attached to them, even the most unpleasant bits. It’s the kind of populism that in some ways reminds me of Le Pen or Haider. Not even they ever seriously thought they could literally ban immigration, of course, but in the meantime they milked (and in turn encouraged) the whole spectrum of attitudes from simply close-minded to paranoid to xenophobic to outright racist… Even if it’s a minority, it always drags down the level of public debate becauyse other political forces have to deal with that, they can’t ignore it or pretend it’s not there. But they can’t deal with that in the rational manner of public discourse, because those views have already placed themselves outside of it. Yet, and here comes the trick, if you do stress that anyone who puts the bible in such a literalist way above modern laws and rights and systems of democracy, then you get accused of not respecting other people’s “points of views” and being anti-religion or a fanatical secularist or some crap like that. (Just like the anti-immigration parties in Europe accuse their critics of being the dictatorial-minded ones). As if it was only points of view, as if our societies had no legal and social principles and frameworks and anybody could suggest anything even if it goes completely against those principles.
I think politicians who exploit this sort of mentality are very cynical, very sly and utterly scrupleless. A combination which I find especially worrying.
oops, should have been “…if you do stress that anyone who puts the bible in such a literalist way above modern laws and rights and systems of democracy is placing themselves outside of rational public discourse, then…”
David, here is how I would respond:
1. Out-of-wedlock births and divorce, coupled with a high degree of social mobility, are the overwhelming causes of children not growing up with their “bio” parents.
2. Whether SSM increases the likelihood of children not growing up with bio parents can be characterized as a theoretical risk on a day when you are feeling exuberantly charitable, and as illogical speculation premised on self-serving results oriented reasoning on a day when you are feeling like your normal skeptical self. No matter how you characterize it, it could never be more than a minor contributing factor compared to the forces identified in #1.
3. Denying gay couples the status of marriage results in certain harm, in the sense that gays are actively prohibited from enjoying legal protections that are derived solely from marital status.
4. In a society where the rights of minorities are not taken as disposable commodities, it is wrong to deny them privileges of the majority under almost any circumstance, and it is grossly wrong to deny those privileges when the a priori rationale for doing so is no better than avoiding a highly speculative harm to other people. If heterosexual parents, who are first and foremost responsible for the welfare of their children, take a major risk with their children’s well-being by getting divorced or never marrying in the first place, then the “cure” for their risk taking should be aimed squarely at them. It is not just and makes almost no sense to deny legal status to gay people as a way of providing what would be under the best case scenario a theoretical minor benefit to children for whom THEY have no legal or moral responsibility whatsoever.
My father gave my brother and I life, and then spent the next 18 years trying to beat it out of us. I fail to see how his biological tie to me was beneficial. Similarly, most of the women I now who have been raped were either raped by their bio-fathers or passed to the friends of their bio-fathers by their bio-fathers. Again, I don’t see how the biological tie is beneficial.
In fact, I would argue (as I have argued about the institution of marriage) that insisting on a casual link between biology and the needs of children increases (and solidifies) the belief of men that they have some intrinsic ownership right over their children. Which, of course, is why marriage as we know it arose. So, I am highly suspicious of any claims to “baby needs both mommy and daddy”. Seems mostly to be a White middle-class ideal anyhow.
Q Grrl, I can’t vouch for your experience, but there are studies that show that stepfathers are more likely than biological fathers to sexually abuse daughters. I would guess (but don’t know) that the likelihood increases the older the child is when the stepfather is introduced into the family, because he is less likely to feel “parental” towards a maturing girl. I believe that there are both social and economic advantages to being raised by two parents, but that’s not to say that every two-parent family is ideal or reflects those advantages. Single parents have also been known to beat their children. The main point is, none of this is relevant to ssm, except in an “if a, therefore b, probably c, potentially d, and maybe, maybe e, and gays are icky, and this is the way things have been so why even risk e” kind of way.
And I also meant to say that the “bio” connection is not the issue — as in, I have known many adoptive families who are as loving towards and invested in their children as I am. However, the reality is that a male may or may not feel parental towards a maturing girl — he may just feel like she’s any other girl, and one he has particularly good access to. What studies show is that a parent who is a continuous parent to a child beginning at a very young age is less likely to develop that kind of feeling.
I agree with Barbara. If children are so essential, then we should make divorce more difficult. Other ways to strengthen marriage — stiffer fines for adultery (like the military, both parties should be held equally liable). Additionally, there should be civil suits allowed for intentional interference with contract for those people who come in between a wife and her husband.
In many states the disincentive for men with children to get divorced are already pretty harsh so they should remain and the other states should come up to the plate. I especially like Wisconsin’s law. They do not take future children in to account when formulating child support. As one of the CSE case workers told me — if he can’t afford to pay the child support for this child he should not have anymore. I told her that he could pay for the new child with his raise, but you increased his child support payments because of the raise and now he cannot support that child. She said oh well. Too bad I was representing the husband, because I completely agreed with her.
If heterosexual couples see the need to protect the children then we need to get rid of the laws that have created incentives to break your vows, especially after you have children. Too many people have put their happiness over and above the innocent child they brought into the world.
I think Elizabeth made a big mistake in raising the bio-parent issue. Yes, having both mother and father raising children is probably the optimal situation in the absence of abuse. But where are the studies showing that children raised by step-parents, single parents, same-sex parents are measurably and predictably far worse off?
“If heterosexual couples see the need to protect the children then we need to get rid of the laws that have created incentives to break your vows, especially after you have children”
….or redefine our concepts of family so that if one person leaves it doesn’t make or break the nurturing that a child receives. Before men decided they needed ultimately to know if a child was theirs or not, children were raised in communal families. Today’s family is not predicated on the welfare of children, but the welfare of the capitalistic state. We have come to interpret the “wellbeing” of children within the framework of capitalism, not the family. The family is ultimately a tool: serving as support for the father and the creation of a larger labor pool. Certainly, within capitalism, if one parent leaves there is a dramatic change in economic welfare which ultimately effects children.
I am frustrated by these arguments about two parent households. Most children spend the majority of their time away from home under the nuturance of private or state institutions (daycare/schools) — I figured that out when I was 9 (that I saw more of my teachers than I did of my parents). But again, this is a social construct and the best way to make uniform and standardized citizens. The claims to needing mommy and daddy to raise baby are really just feel-good middle class dreams. IMO.
Well, except that Barbara doesn’t really agree that divorce should be made much more difficult. Certainly, however, child support should be of paramount importance. I just don’t think you can legislate morality, and in reality, making divorce more difficult is just as likely to make marriage as divorce less frequent. It just won’t solve the problem. I don’t even really agree with mandatory counseling, though I believe it should be strongly encouraged. As in all things, what I really believe is in a stronger safety net, because economic consequences of divorce are (I believe) just as likely to have negative emotional consequences for children as having your parent move out.
I don’t think Elizabeth is saying that they’re *automatically* good parents. She’s saying that she has evidence that convinces her that, for whatever reason, children just are (as a matter of statistical fact, and not as a moral or any other sort of judgement) better off when they are raised by the people who are their biological parents.
David, there is no difference between those two statements.
That belief Elizabeth is basing her ‘argument’ on is indeed the belief that biological parents are automatically good, ie. *better* than non-biological parents.
Where is that evidence? what statistics? what facts? It’s just her belief, and it’s very overtly a moral judgement. That’s the entire point of her ‘argument’. Moral concern over the poor children who don’t grow up with both biological parents.
You can’t pretend it’s only a neutral claim, and not a negative judgement of: adoptive parents and children, single parents and their children, separated/divorced parents and their children, and, last but not least, gay parents and their children.
That belief that it’s always better to grow up with biological parents is a pure abstraction, which does not take into account many factors, many different situations, individual differences and cases, the very ideal of what makes good child-rearing – which has nothing to do with biology. Being a responsible enough parent to raise children in a sufficiently healthy manner is not something that magically happens at the moment of conception or birth – that, I think we can all agree is a fact. You don’t become a parent in the fullest sense of the word simply by virtue of conceiving and giving birth. It’s something people do for years, and learn to do along the way. Some people are better than others at it, but it’s only up to what kind of individual character and skills they have. Not to mention a little thing called love and affection. Which again, is not a gift bestowed on children only by virtue of DNA.
Elizabeth’s belief also does not take into account the fact that children do not live in a bubble with their parents, isolated from the rest of the world.
Even in the most “traditional” families, kids will most likely have siblings, relatives, friends, teachers, classmates, possibly activities outside the school, etc. etc.
Yet, it seems to me that, too often in this sort of debate, this is overlooked and there’s this obsession with the nuclear family as if it was a biological unity existing on its own. In a little house on the prairie where the kids don’t see anybody else for days and when they do, it’s a creepy stranger with an axe… you know, the perfect setting for a horror movie. :)
Seriously, what’s with this myth? it conveniently does away with that little thing called society. A lot of the things that do influence how children grow up also extend beyond the sacred trinity of mom and dad and child. Funny how the conservatives remember this when it’s about denouncing the decadence of modern culture, but completely forget it when it’s about essentialist views of the family.
Q Grll — I completely agree with the communal aspect of raising children. My neighbor and I were talking about that the other day. It is ridiculous that everyone stays home with their significant other “watching” the children, wishing they could go out and do something. It would make more sense if parents shared watching children — if you are going to be there you might-as-well watch after the other kids too.
This scenario has been frowned upon by modern society. I am not a proponent of polygamy, but that is the premise of polygamy and polyandry. If it were not for the fact that men inherently will fight, dominate and attempt to collect more than the other guy it would work out well.
“This scenario has been frowned upon by modern society. I am not a proponent of polygamy, but that is the premise of polygamy and polyandry. If it were not for the fact that men inherently will fight, dominate and attempt to collect more than the other guy it would work out well.”
Hmmmm. Well, you posit polygamy and polyandry within Patriarchy, so maybe that’s what would happen. You still put men in the dominant, chest beating role, and I’m not convinced that is what would happen in extended families.
However, the reality is that a male may or may not feel parental towards a maturing girl — he may just feel like she’s any other girl, and one he has particularly good access to.
Barbara, that’s supposing the two basic conditions that make it more likely for a man to abuse a child is to have access to her/him, and not be restrained by the incest taboo.
By that standard, no male should ever become a schoolteacher, or a pediatrician, or a social service worker, and anything that puts them at grabbing distance from children not their own.
That’s a terribly reductive view of men, and human behaviour in general, don’t you think?
Men aren’t the only issue in those kinds of relationships, j. Women are jealous, too. We have traditionally stifled it because our choice has been a)live with the other women or b)die in the cold.
Q Grll: That statement was tongue in cheek. I also think the extended family format is not male dominant.
At least in my experience the woman or matriarch held all the power. Perhaps that is because I grew up in an “ethnic” household. Any “chest beating” by men was basically the bird’s feathers. The men did nothing in our family without the consent and approval of the leader — Nana. Anything they said was basically bravado. They all went home after the card game and did their wife’s bidding.
Amanda, I think you are correct about the jealousy aspect, but as you say, necessity kept those feelings hidden, but not without justice/revenge.
Monica, I don’t have a reductive view of men. Most men are not abusive, including most step parents and boyfriends. I am referring to studies that definitely show an increased risk of sexual abuse by step parents or boyfriends as opposed to “original parents” and I am theorizing why that is. And yes, access plays a big role. I have set up compliance programs for day care centers, which are generally staffed by women, and I can tell you that anyone who has supervisory contact with children, including pediatricians and school teachers, almost always follows specific protocols to avoid accusations of abuse, both founded and unfounded. You have to assume, like it or not, that abuse could occur, even though it is much more likely that it won’t. Operating under different assumptions, for instance, as the Catholic Church has, is a recipe for disaster.
In many states the disincentive for men with children to get divorced are already pretty harsh
You don’t have a choice about divorce. There aren’t many judges who will refuse to grant a no-fault divorce because only one party wants it.
Making divorce more difficult is no solution–then we go back to the days celebrated in vintage detective novels, where people killed off their spouses because “s/he won’t give me a divorce,” or simply abandoned their families, or dragged their kids through knock-down-drag-out fights about who fucked around or who was ’emotionally abusive.’
People simply need to take their responsibility to childre seriously. You can’t legislate that easily.
Barbara, I think you’ll agree being a priest (or nun) in a Catholic Church is quite different from being an adoptive parent or stepfather or stepmother (females can abuse children too, sexually or otherwise) or partner to someone with children not your own. Or even a school teacher or paediatrician. The abuses by Catholic priests did not occur simply in a condition of access to children, but in environments where sexuality is totally repressed and demonized, control and authority over other people can be exercised in unrestrained and unhealthy ways, due to the priest being a religious figure. As a consequence those religious enviroments where abuses occurred most often probably attracted a higher percentage of people with disturbed behaviour than the average. That, aside from individual factors of course. The incidence of abuses is still a minority of the total, so at the root there’s got to be a personal “trigger” for that behaviour.
Then, even if the risk was unequivicall proven to be consistently higher in the case of non-biological parents, abuse in the family occurs heavily with biological parents anyway (or close relatives). The incest taboo clearly doesn’t stop people who are seriously disturbed in that sense. Maybe having and raising children is in itself a factor in facilitating abuse? Come on.
And how is this an argument against SSM anyway? If that’s the reason you object to SSM, then you’d have to also be against adoption, and against divorce. Do you want to ban those things too?
Regarding stepfamilies, there’s actually a lot of evidence that children – and especially girls – are more likely to be abused in families with stepfathers. See “Children at Risk: The Sexual Exploitation of Female Children after Divorce,” in Cornell Law Revew, Vol 86, Jan 2001, Number 2, for a review of some of the literature on this subject.
Monica, I have said many times (see previous posts) that in fact, this has nothing — not a thing — to do with ssm. But Qgrrrl seemed to be making the point that there is zero advantage to being raised by one’s biological parents, which is something that has not been borne out by studies. I don’t have stats and studies filed verbatim in my brain, but in fact, the “child sexual abuse hysteria” (please note the quotes — I don’t think it’s hysteria) began with day care centers and schools, which quickly adopted protocols to avoid abuse and unfounded allegations of abuse. The sentinel step for avoiding abuse is to make sure that an adult is never alone with a young child, that is, to avoid giving adults private “access” to children. The rules vary by the age of the child, so, for instance, a teacher can be alone with a class full of five or six year olds, but in general, all the doors have windows, etc.
The Church (or many parishes) never adopted these safeguards, or if they did, they didn’t enforce them with regard to priests. If you read accounts of adolescent boys, in particular, who were abused, this is clearly the case. The good thing about the safeguards is that when they are in place, it doesn’t matter how sexually repressed father is if he has no access to children. People who violate the rules are fired. The Church won’t fire priests, and unconscionably relocated known predator priests where they were able to continue causing harm. And of course, no current safeguard makes up for past abuse.
An additional problem is that if you “underperform” and don’t adopt these rules, you can attract predators. And on and on. (Note that pediatricians are at low risk for a different reason — there are alot of walls to climb to become a pediatrician, not so many to become a scout leader or a daycare worker. Pediatrics therefore doesn’t attract alot of opportunistic predators.)
But do not think that pediatricians and teachers as well as scout leaders, daycare workers and lots of others haven’t changed the way they do things in response to increased awareness of child sexual abuse. They definitely have.
Barbara, I am not honestly familiar with those studies, sorry if I got your position mixed up with that of Elizabeth’s. I’m just not sure I understood your position, actually.
I am not arguing against adopting practical safeguards and policies in those environments like schools. (Even if I think personnel selection and education and cultural factors are more important especially in the long term than glass windows in class doors.) But I do think there is another big step involved in going from practical measures, to views that are heavily biased against any form of family that is not biological mom, biological dad, forever married for “the sake of the children”. That’s what I’m arguing against.
Ensuring schools and kindergartens are places where child abuse will be very unlikely to occur or go unreported, is not the same thing as declaring that biological parents are essentially the best people to raise a child. That seems to me to leave out of the picture a lot of things, like for instance the different emotional involvement of bringing up a child in your own family, whatever kind of family it is, and teaching to a bunch of other people’s children.
I don’t know, I’m not too familiar with a mentality that places such emphasis on the biological / non-biological differences in terms of parenting. Even if there are studies who say there is a difference in terms of incidence of abuse, I think it’s quite a different kettle of fish from passing a priori judgement on any parent who is not a biological parent.
That’s what Elizabeth was saying, and that’s why I find her position very biased, an why I agree with the point Q Grrl raised. She was responding to Elizabeth’s views, and you responded to her by citing the studies, but they are not a counter-argument to the main point really.
For one thing, I suppose the studies you refer to are not international. Has anyone consistently examined cases across different contries? Do they study other factors that contribute to a higher risk, or have they just isolated being a stepfather/stepmother? From what I read on the matter, a lot of cases of abuses within the family – any kind of family – are still hugely under-reported. So, like for rape, official statistics are totally skewed anyway. What kind of definitive worldwide-tested and recognised conclusion can there be about one single isolating factor? And again, how does this relate to Elizabeth’s argument?
Monica, your points are fair — and if it weren’t so tiresome I would keep repeating that, for me, the issue is also not one of “biology” but one of continuity — a step parent who gets involved early in a child’s childhood probably forms just as close a relationship with the child as the “original” parent (the one that had legal custody from birth or near after, in the case of adoption). I do not mean to suggest that I agree with Elizabeth’s focus on biological or genetic connection, I definitely do not. But I also don’t agree with any blanket statement that divorced or reconstituted families, statistically, confer an equivalent experience to that of growing up in a a family structure where a break up never occurs. I would feel the same if the parents were a mom and a dad, two men, two women, adoptive, etc. As for international statistics, here again, I think that even in the face of divorce, in a less mobile society a non-custodia parent is able to maintain more continuous contact. Therefore, I am sure that differences exist. I would be shocked if they didn’t.
There is no serious doubt that, statistically speaking, a child is at much greater risk of abuse from a stepparent than from a biological parent. And there’s an obvious evolutionary explanation for this. A biological parent has a genetic investment in his child; a stepparent does not.
Not that this is a serious argument against stepparenting (or same-sex marriage, or adoption, or anything else). But facts are facts and must be acknowledged whether convenient or not.
Barbara – …for me, the issue is also not one of “biology” but one of continuity… I do not mean to suggest that I agree with Elizabeth’s focus on biological or genetic connection, I definitely do not.
Ok, fair enough. Thanks for clarifying. Am I wrong, though, in understanding that your view on continuity still, like Elizabeth’s view on biology, defends the ‘traditional’ family as the ‘best’ for children?
I don’t want the discussion to get tiresome either, but let me also clarify my view, on this:
But I also don’t agree with any blanket statement that divorced or reconstituted families, statistically, confer an equivalent experience to that of growing up in a a family structure where a break up never occurs.
See, my problem is that I do not agree with any blanket statement that all those families offer a worse experience.
In fact, I do not agree with any blanket statement on which “kind” of family – in terms of structural makeup – offers the “best” experience for children. Because I do not believe anyone can make such blanket statements and defend them as applying across the board, irrespective of the huge amount of different factors that determine the experience of each child, each partner, each family. Those beliefs only come from taking an ideological stance before considering different realities and views.
Also, abuses and violence aside, they imply there is a universally true definition of “best for children”. There isn’t. A conservative strictly religious family will believe it’s “best for the children” to be taught rigid moral codes of behaviour. A more open-minded non-religious or non-strictly religious family will believe rigid moral codes suffocate autonomy, independence, and critical thinking. Who is more right? Each parent makes those choices for their children. Some people think divorce is the ultimate evil for children, others think it’s far worse to keep up a failed marriage and that their children suffer more by living in a family environment kept together only by pretense. Who is right? again, the law gives a choice to everybody. But no one has the right to say that in all cases, divorce is universally “bad for the children”, because there are a lot of instances when it’s not. Finally, to back on topic, some people believe single parents or gays bringing up children is the worst possible scenario. Others disagree.
I mean, we all agree a parent with alcohol or drug abuse problems, or even a criminal record, is not the ideal healthy environment for a child, even if they love them dearly and treat them right (ie. no child abuse).
But since when has being divorced, single or gay become equivalent with being mentally unstable or a criminal?
It’s not a statistical matter, it’s a cultural matter.
As for international statistics, here again, I think that even in the face of divorce, in a less mobile society a non-custodia parent is able to maintain more continuous contact. Therefore, I am sure that differences exist. I would be shocked if they didn’t.
I’m afraid I genuinely don’t get your point here?
If I can offer an anecdotal data point, I have a friend who married a woman with a very cute teenaged daughter; my friend was rather concerned about living with the daughter and what issues that may have raised. To his relief, she does not register on his libido at all, and their biggest source of concern is the fact that she stole quite a bit of his weed.
Robert:
a waffling constructivist comes around to the notion that some things are built-in and immutable, and reluctantly concludes that SSM doesn’t fly. (That’s me.)
How is restricting marriage to male-female couples any more “built-in and immutable” than restricting it to couples of the same race or the same religion? You offer no argument in your “essentialist-constructivist” discussion to justify this restriction, and the assertion that it is somehow “built-in” to the institution of legal marriage is just factually incorrect. The laws governing marriage are obviously just as mutable as the laws governing any other social institution.
Don P, you may call it “genetic investment”, others call it “incest taboo”, and like all taboos, it’s maintained and upheld by cultural norms and traditions. Tolerance of incest hasn’t always been universally homogenous across different cultures and eras. The taboo has less to do with a supposed genetic sixth sense than with the need to preserve family roles and structures. It can break down when societies break down – see the infamous recent Pitcairn island case for an instance of widespread child and sexual abuse in a tiny isolated society where everyone was related to each other.
I’m not looking for anything convenient and I’m not arguing anything particularly earth-shattering except this: the quality of child-rearing in any given family is not dependent on biological ties. We’ve got thousands of years of human development behind us. Essentialists may (conveniently…) choose to ignore that, but culture and society still mean something to us all, doesn’t it?
Okay, I am busy but I’ll spend a few more minutes at this. All things being equal, I think children are better off if they have continuous contact with their parents from birth or early childhood forward. I don’t care who the parents are, they can be gay, they can be unmarried, they don’t even have to be living together, and they could be remarried. They can be a threesome. I don’t care, but continuity is valuable, and, I happen to believe, is the setting in which a tight parental bond is most likely to be forged to the lasting benefit of the child. I grew up in a traditional family, and I am part of a traditional family. I would never presume to tell anyone what’s best, in fact, I didn’t — I pointed out in response to a blanket statement to the contrary that studies don’t support a complete lack of differentiation between “original” and “step” parents. Children are less likely to be as well cared for by step parents, as a matter of probabilities. You would have an inkling of this even if you read the Brothers Grimm. However, we all know wonderful stepparents and there’s no point making an across the board statement. Abraham Lincoln, for instance, was raised by a stepparent who adored him. So was my cousin Dorie and my nephew. All parents nurturing children deserve support for their efforts, in a general kind of way.
Re international etc.: Studies from other countries will show different results from those conducted using U.S. population because social conditions are very different. There is less mobility and a bigger safety net, and, I am guessing, first marriage at a later age. All of which will, I believe, generally result in a finding that divorce is not nearly as detrimental to children in those countries as in the U.S. Proximity to grandparents and others will also, I think, lessen the impact. FWIW, based on my own experience of having au pairs from three different European countries, I believe all of these to be sound assumptions.
Monica:
See, my problem is that I do not agree with any blanket statement that all those families offer a worse experience.
You’re not disagreeing with her, because she didn’t say that “all” those families offer a worse experience. She said that “statistically” they offer a worse experience. The fact that children tend to do better when raised by their biological parents than by stepparents obviously doesn’t mean that that general rule is true in every instance.
Nor is it a serious argument against stepparenting or adoption or gay marriage. It’s just a red herring. Even if the “ideal” environment for raising children is a family consisting of those children and their two married, biological parents, it obviously does not follow from that ideal that marriage must be reserved exclusively for couples who can satisfy it. And opponents of SSM who harp on this ideal obviously don’t support such a restriction in other contexts. They don’t oppose marriage by divorced single parents. They don’t oppose marriage by people with adopted children. They don’t oppose marriage between infertile man-woman couples. And so on. That’s why this argument is specious. It’s just a pretext for anti-gay bigotry. (Unlike ampersand, I have no problem calling people like Elizabeth Marquardt bigots.)
Monica:
Don P, you may call it “genetic investment”, others call it “incest taboo”, and like all taboos, it’s maintained and upheld by cultural norms and traditions.
They’re not the same thing, and conflating the two just confuses the issue. The genetic investment of a parent in his biological offspring is a fact of biology. An innate revulsion at the idea of sex with one’s immediate biological family members, including one’s children, is also a fact of biology. The incest taboo is a social norm that arose in part because of those biological facts.
Tolerance of incest hasn’t always been universally homogenous across different cultures and eras. The taboo has less to do with a supposed genetic sixth sense than with the need to preserve family roles and structures.
The practical benefits of preserving family roles and structures is also a likely source of support for the social taboo, but the fundamental imperative behind it is biological (that is, genetic). A child produced by sex between a parent and child is much more likely to suffer genetic defects than a child produced by sex between two unrelated people. Thus, human beings, like all other sexually-reproducing species, evolved an innate revulsion to such sexual relationships.
I’m not looking for anything convenient and I’m not arguing anything particularly earth-shattering except this: the quality of child-rearing in any given family is not dependent on biological ties.
The quality of parenting in families in general is dependent on biological ties between parent and child. In general, biological parents are better than stepparents. There is a mountain of sociological evidence for this. The fact that you can cite exceptions (wonderful stepparents and awful biological parents) does not invalidate the general rule. But, again, this is irrelevant to the SSM debate. We don’t restrict marriage to “ideal” family arrangements in other contexts and we shouldn’t restrict it on that basis in the context of gay marriage, either.
Don P,
Um, speaking as an academic sociologist, where is this mountain of sociological evidence?
And, again, speaking as an academic sociologist, there are two sociological mantras that I would bring to what you stated above.
1) It’s not that simple
2) Context is everything
To simply say that the majority of biological parents are better than those of adoptive/step parents is a false conclusion. You could only say that if all other conditions are held equal. This only works in a hypothetical situation.
In reality, there are so many complex contexts and variables that as sociologists we never openly say that one family form is better than any other. In particular we will not infer any superiority as via any ‘intrinsic’ quality that a parenting arrangement is supposed to have.
You will notice that sociologists tend to be at the forefront of advocating for the recognition of the validity of alternate family forms. That’s because we tend to notice that any differences in quality between different parenting and family forms has more to do with social stigma and stereotyping than anything about the actual form itself.
Of course, there are exceptions to this rule of not valuing different family forms. But they certainly do not privilege the biological.
That all said however, I DEFINITELY agree that this is a red herring in the marriage debate.
Sarah
Don P., I would quibble a little bit on the biological connection — I think that caring for an infant is a fairly sound proxy for biological connectedness. I once read a fascinating study of the Chinese custom of families adopting girls as very young children to groom them as brides for their sons. A high percentage of boys rejected the girls because they viewed them as being too much like sisters (and therefore subject to an incest taboo). I guess what I’m saying is that biology isn’t like a magnetic field such that two related people will always repel each other, but that those who are biologically connected are much more likely to forge the kind of familial bond that makes sexual contact between them repellant.
Sarah:
Um, speaking as an academic sociologist, where is this mountain of sociological evidence?
“In one study of emotionally healthy middle-class families in the United States, only half of the stepfathers and a quarter of the stepmothers claimed to have “parental feelings” toward their stepchildren. The enormous pop-psychology literature on reconstituted families is dominated by one theme: coping with antagonisms. Many professionals now advise warring families to give up on the ideal of duplicating a biological family. Daly and Wilson found that stepparenthood is the strongest risk factor for child abuse ever identified. In the case of the worst abuse, homicide, a stepparent is forty to a hundred times more likely than a biological parent to kill a young child, even when confounding factors–poverty, the mother’s age, the traits of people who tend to remarry–are taken into account.”– Steven Pinker, How The Mind Works
1) It’s not that simple 2) Context is everything
In what way is it “not that simple?” What “context” are you referring to? It’s kind of hard to respond to these claims unless you explain what you mean more fully.
To simply say that the majority of biological parents are better than those of adoptive/step parents is a false conclusion.
It’s not a false conclusion, it’s a correct conclusion supported by a mass of data. If you think there is evidence to the contrary, please present it. However, it’s important to distinguish the categories “stepparent” from “adoptive parent” even though the two overlap.
You could only say that if all other conditions are held equal. This only works in a hypothetical situation.
No, it works in the real world. In the real world, stepparents are more likely to abuse their children than biological parents. The fact that many other factors obviously also affect the quality of parenting does not invalidate this relationship.
In reality, there are so many complex contexts and variables that as sociologists we never openly say that one family form is better than any other. In particular we will not infer any superiority as via any ‘intrinsic’ quality that a parenting arrangement is supposed to have.
I love the “we.” You obviously do not speak for the community of professional sociologists, and also obviously, many sociologists do say that some family forms are better than others. But however you describe the data, it is simply an empirical fact that children are more likely to be abused by stepparents than by biological parents.
Barbara:
I guess what I’m saying is that biology isn’t like a magnetic field such that two related people will always repel each other, but that those who are biologically connected are much more likely to forge the kind of familial bond that makes sexual contact between them repellant.
If you’re suggesting that the revulsion people feel about having sex with their close biological relatives is the result of socialization rather than biology, the evidence does not support that claim. The feeling exists even amoung biological kin raised or living apart, is much weaker (or non-existent) between non-biological kin, is ubiquitous in animal species, and has obvious adaptive benefits (offspring of biological kin are much less likely to survive and reproduce than offspring of biological strangers). Amoung human beings, the biological imperative is reinforced by culture (the incest taboo), but the foundation is biological nonetheless.
All things being equal, I think children are better off if they have continuous contact with their parents from birth or early childhood forward. I don’t care who the parents are, they can be gay, they can be unmarried, they don’t even have to be living together, and they could be remarried. They can be a threesome. I don’t care, but continuity is valuable
Barbara: thanks for explaining, your view is a lot clearer now, and there’s nothing in there I really disagree with.
I’m sorry again for mixing up your views with Elizabeth’s, I had genuinely got the impression that even if from a different point of view, you were still favouring similar conclusions. I did not mean to be polemical, I was arguing with her rigid view of what’s “best” more than yours, which is, I understand, not so rigid as I’d thought.
Thanks also for clarifying your point about international studies. I would agree those assumptions are generally rather sound too, as I do live in Europe, but then I don’t have experience of living in the US, so I wouldn’t know as well about the extent of differences in terms of safety nets, extended families and social mobility. I hear different takes on the whole issue of child rearing and divorce and family structure, and especially now that SSM enters the picture, the debate can be so heavily influenced by political views, it gets hard to figure out what is what.
Don P: the “she” I was disagreeing with in that sentence was Elizabeth, rather than Barbara. Elizabeth does make a blanket statement of that kind. Of course blanket statements are never literally about “all” people of a given group. When someone says, to take a silly example, the French are snobs, they don’t literally mean “all”, each and every single French person, is a snob. But they’re still making a generalisation and passing judgment.
Nor is it a serious argument against stepparenting or adoption or gay marriage. It’s just a red herring.
Exactly. That’s what I meant, too.
And opponents of SSM who harp on this ideal obviously don’t support such a restriction in other contexts… That’s why this argument is specious. It’s just a pretext for anti-gay bigotry.
Absolutely. Coherence is not a requirement for bigotry.
Don, I am not disagreeing with you. What I am saying is that for many if not most peoople, the “socializing” reinforcement of the biological imperative is sufficiently strong to establish comparable feelings, particularly if it’s an enduring relationship that begins early in a child’s life. Studies of adopted children would be a useful counterpoint here.
Don P: “it obviously does not follow from that ideal that marriage must be reserved exclusively for couples who can satisfy it.”
Actually marriage is not reserved exclusively for couples who can satisfy the requirment of having children. Anyone can get married. The question is should the government encourage it and or recognize it. A by-product of providing incentives for biological parents to marry is that you cannot provide a “rational basis” for discriminating against infertile couples. It has been held an unlawful invasion of privacy to determine their reproductive intents prior to the government providing incentives reserved for biological parents.
BTW — Bigot: “a person who is intolerant of opinions which conflict with his own.”
Actually, on second thought, Don P., I do disagree with you a bit — if two children are separated at birth, do you really think that if they meet 25 years later that they would feel a biologically based repulsion? I am not saying the foundation isn’t biological, just that I believe that it can be forged through conditioning, and broken through separation.
Also, regarding less heart wrenching matters, studies also show that a child’s non-custodial parent is less likely to voluntarily pay college tuition on the child’s behalf, and the child’s step parent is unlikely to make up the difference. It isn’t just the likelihood of sexual abuse by step parents that makes divorce problematic for children.
Don P: the “she” I was disagreeing with in that sentence was Elizabeth, rather than Barbara.
Ah. That helps clarify things. If Marquardt also opposed legalized opposite-sex marriage for divorced or widowed single parents and for infertile couples I might be more willing to accept that she is being honest about her reasons for opposing same-sex marriage. But she obviously does not oppose such opposite-sex marriages. So the whole “children do best with their biological parents” claim is just a pretext, a cover, a rationalization for her position.
PS – Don P, on the matter of biological parents, genetic investment and incest taboo, I actually am closer to Barbara’s view that biological ties are not like “a magnetic field such that two related people will always repel each other, but that those who are biologically connected are much more likely to forge the kind of familial bond that makes sexual contact between them repellant.
Even though I don’t think that’s all there is. I do believe that the social and cultural aspect of the taboo is a lot more important than what you acknowledge.
I’m not getting into the studies and evidence, to be honest this is the first time I hear about it, it’s one study and it’s limited to the US, so, personally I’m not going to draw universal categorical conclusions from it.
jstevenson:
Actually marriage is not reserved exclusively for couples who can satisfy the requirment of having children.
Since I never suggested that it is, I’m not sure why you felt the need to say this. Not only is there no such requirement, but Marquardt obviously is not endorsing such a requirement for opposite-sex marriages, which is why the fact that gay couples cannot biologically reproduce is essentially irrelevant.
Anyone can get married. The question is should the government encourage it and or recognize it.
No, the question is whether the government should continue to exclude same-sex couples from legal marriage. If you think it should, then offer your argument in support of that position.
BTW — Bigot: “a person who is intolerant of opinions which conflict with his own.”
Well, I think that’s a worthlessly vague definition. What does it mean to be “intolerant” of an opinion, for example?
The feeling exists even amoung biological kin raised or living apart
Not if they don’t know that they’re brother and sister. They obviously have to be told, for that revulsion to be even triggered. That makes it impossible to neatly separate the biological / cultural implications of the taboo as you’d like to do.
I was going to name a film with a story on these lines… but then I realised it’d be a spoiler to mention it here :)
In reality, there are so many complex contexts and variables that as sociologists we never openly say that one family form is better than any other. In particular we will not infer any superiority as via any ‘intrinsic’ quality that a parenting arrangement is supposed to have. … That’s because we tend to notice that any differences in quality between different parenting and family forms has more to do with social stigma and stereotyping than anything about the actual form itself.
Sarah, that’s exactly the kind of mentality and framework I’m more familiar with in terms of studies and conclusions on these matters.
That’s all, just wanted to add that.
Barbara:
Actually, on second thought, Don P., I do disagree with you a bit — if two children are separated at birth, do you really think that if they meet 25 years later that they would feel a biologically based repulsion?
If they know that they are biological siblings, yes. (Even if they don’t know, they may sense it. Siblings share half their genes, and physical similarities between them are obviously commonly recognized).
I am not saying the foundation isn’t biological, just that I believe that it can be forged through conditioning, and broken through separation.
Okay, but so what?
Monica:
Not if they don’t know that they’re brother and sister. They obviously have to be told, for that revulsion to be even triggered.
That is not at all obvious.
That makes it impossible to neatly separate the biological / cultural implications of the taboo as you’d like to do.
I never suggested they could be “neatly” separated. I’m not sure why you even raised the issue of incest in the first place. My point is that human beings, in common with other animals, have a strong, innate, biological revulsion to sex with their close biological kin, and that that revulsion exists whether reinforced socially or not. The social taboo, by reinforcing the biological revulsion, may serve to make incest even more rare than it would otherwise be, but it would still be rare even without that cultural factor. Incest is also rare amoung animals, who obviously lack any such cultural elaboration. It is also obviously biologically maladaptive, so natural selection is likely to favor a gene that codes for incest revulsion.
“No, the question is whether the government should continue to exclude same-sex couples from legal marriage. If you think it should, then offer your argument in support of that position.”
No, they should not be excluded from these benefits. However, my reasoning is based on “just because”. That is the same reasoning SSM opponents give for excluding SSC from marriage incentives.
As for a legal justification, I have not heard a valid argument as to why SS couples cannot be discriminated against with regards to marriage. SSM oppponents give “procreation” as the government reason for excluding gays from the incentives of marriage. The arguments against this are that step-parents, infertile couples, etc are not excluded from marriage. In reality you cannot fashion a legal status to exclude these types of couplings without running afoul of the positions set forth in PP v. Casey. However, in the case of SSC you can fashion an argument against SSM without running afoul of the right to determine your reproductive decisions. The problem with this argument is that the government does not have to question or invade your privacy to determine whether or not a SS couple will produce a child of the relationship.
The other argument is equal protection. In that sense a SSC would have to argue that the government cannot discriminate against me because of my “class”. That class is defined by whom a person has sexual “relations” with. So it would be an equal protection violation to discriminate against a person, with regards to marriage, based on whom they wish to have sex with. If that were the case, I do not think the government could come up with a “compelling argument” that supports the discrimination. But, as of now, sexual preference is not a protected status and therefore I can only say that SSM should be allowed — “just because”.
The “so what” is that we shouldn’t assume too much that a parent would be more likely to break an incest taboo just because they aren’t biologically connected to the offspring, assuming that they do have parental feelings. As you pointed out, step parents often do not have those feelings, and I believe that is because they often enter the picture at a point that is too late in a child’s development. This is why it would be interesting to know what studies of the bond between parents and adoptive children might show. That is, to really understand the relationship between biological connectedness and loyalty to the offspring.
I wonder, though, if she puts so much emphasis on bio parents raising their kids, would she support banishing the ill named Child Protection Service or whatever pseudnym it goes by in any given area which takes kids from their biological parents (or adoptive or other legal guardians) on the flimsiest of ‘evidence’ without any clear showing that leaving them where they are is more harmful than the violent wrenching of them from their families, and ignoring that kids in ‘foster care’ are 8 to 10 times (or more) likely to be abused physically, mentally, psychologically or sexually, grossly neglected or even killed than in unmolested families as a whole?
Just have to wonder.
For more details on cps see :
http://home.comcast.net/~neal.feldman/cps.htm
Silverstorm
Barbara:
I didn’t assume that stepparents are more likely to break the incest taboo. I said that stepparents are more likely to abuse their stepchildren than biological parents are likely to abuse their biological children, period. As Pinker notes, the research indicates that stepparenthood is the strongest risk factor for child abuse ever identified. That probably includes sexual abuse as well as other kinds of abuse, but even if it does not the fact remains that biological parents tend to be better than stepparents.
As for why stepparents feel and behave like this, the obvious explanation is their lack of genetic investment in the child coupled with their relative lack of social commitment to the child. A stepchild acquired through marriage is often not something that is particularly wanted by the stepparent, but, rather, baggage that comes along with the new spouse. In contrast, the decision by a couple to jointly adopt a child that is not biologically related to either of them represents a commitment to the child itself, rather than to a spouse who happens to have a child already.
Barbara:
This is why it would be interesting to know what studies of the bond between parents and adoptive children might show. That is, to really understand the relationship between biological connectedness and loyalty to the offspring.
The choice to adopt itself demonstrates a highly unusual level of commitment to raise a child to which the parent is not biologically related. The vast majority of potential parents would much rather acquire a child through biological reproduction, a child who inherits their own genes, than through the adoption of a genetic stranger, no matter how suitable the potential adoptee may be in other respects. That is a measure of the strength of the biological imperative.
Another illustration comes from animal studies. In most animal species, parents exhibit levels of commitment to their biological offspring at least as great as those exhibited by human beings. But “adoption” of one animal’s offspring by another is virtually unknown.
My point is that human beings, in common with other animals, have a strong, innate, biological revulsion to sex with their close biological kin, and that that revulsion exists whether reinforced socially or not.
You never met my mother’s cat and her littermate. They had a couple of litters of kittens together before we figured out that the neighbors had adopted the littermate.
Along similar lines, I just met a young woman last week who was telling me about her pet rats, and she mentioned that the rat she let me hold (who was quite cute) had mated with its mother. I’m sure I’ve read about bitches (that is, female dogs) quite willingly breeding with their own sons, too.
Maybe being domesticated messes up normal breeding patterns?
Domestication certainly messes up normal mating patterns, especially when accompanied by selective breeding. But so does simply removing an animal from its natural environment and placing it in captivity. Whatever is going on with your friends’ pet rats and dogs, incest in wild animal populations is rare. Again, given the clear maladaptive effect of incest, this is hardly surprising. The evidence that incest avoidance is an evolutionary psychological adaptation really is pretty overwhelming (just like the evidence for, say, fundamental differences between male and female sexual psychology).
Don P – “I’m not sure why you even raised the issue of incest in the first place.”
In response to your theory that “a child is at much greater risk of abuse from a stepparent than from a biological parent” because of “obvious evolutionary reasons” that “a biological parent has a genetic investment in his child; a stepparent does not.
Incest – sexual relations between close relatives, consensual or not, obviously, in the case of parent to young children, not, ie. sexual abuse. (Even sexual abuse has more to do with other things, of course, but sex is a part of it, someone mentioned sexual attractions between step parents and young or teen girls, for instance. That’s what I was referring to).
You are maintaining that there’s some kind of genetic radar that kicks into action even for siblings that have never met before, don’t know that they’re siblings, and, contrary to your assumption, may not necessarily look alike. A lot of brothers and sisters don’t! If these hypothetical siblings separated at birth met by pure chance later in life and felt an attraction to each other, there’s no way they would be restrained by any taboo, because no one would have told them they’re siblings.
The cultural factor and what Barbara called continuity, living together or close, as a family, is a lot more important than only the biological aspect.
That revulsion applies to people you’ve grown up with since a very early age and always viewed as your close relatives, whether they are or not. Of course, if they are, and you know it, then the taboo is reinforced. But in the total absence of knowledge and living together as a family, we don’t have a microchip in our brains that tells us who is our close relative and who isn’t. Pheromones? Psychic powers? How would you know?
By the way, DP, since you said there is a “mountain of evidence” and “no serious doubt that, statistically speaking, a child is at much greater risk of abuse from a stepparent than from a biological parent”, here’s a reference to disagreement with those studies you mentioned in evolutionary psychology (which in itself, I’m sure you’ll know, is not such a non-controversial approach on which the entire scientific community is in agreement with “no serious doubt”):
http://philosophy.wisc.edu/sullivan/CinderellaPaper.pdf
some excerpts (emphasis mine):
3 surveys are listed which contradict those claims. Also, interestingly in relation to the point I was making about studies across different countries:
Summary:
So, at the very least, there does indeed seem to be among different researchers “serious doubt” on any categorical conclusion about a higher risk for children living with non-biological parents.
See also these references – from the site of the Australian Institute for Family Studies:
http://www.aifs.gov.au/nch/discussion1.html#STE
“But in the total absence of knowledge and living together as a family, we don’t have a microchip in our brains that tells us who is our close relative and who isn’t. Pheromones?”
Well, yeah, perhaps. Nothing spooky or supernatural about pheromones. I remember hearing about a study in which people found the body odors of genetically similar people significantly more repulsive than the body odors of genetically different people. (I don’t have a citation; wish I did. But it seems at least plausible in any case.)
I’m not saying that in fact siblings raised apart who don’t know they’re siblings definitely *are* less likely to be attracted to each other, but the idea isn’t as obviously ridiculous as it might seem. Both genes and scents are powerful things…
Have we wandered a bit off-topic here, or what? *8)
Whatever is going on with your friends’ pet rats and dogs, incest in wild animal populations is rare.
Young males tend to be driven out of the herd/pride/pack.
“(just like the evidence for, say, fundamental differences between male and female sexual psychology).”
Don, you say this as if it has some significance… Since you injected it into a thread on marriage and child rearing, I can only suggest that the *OVERWHELMING* evidence suggests that children should not be raised with a male in the family at all (since there is such an important difference between male and female “psychology”.) Who knows, maybe the answer to ending rape and war and poverty and corporate greed is because we’ve so heavily endowed (yes, pun intended) the male sexual psychology as to give it a life and meaning of it’s own that transcends individuals and becomes incorporated in our most basic approaches to politics, economics, foreign policy and social welfare.
I’ll posit that children should be immune from this male sexual psychology until they are mature enough to parse fiction from reality.
Don P.,
In what way is it “not that simple?” What “context” are you referring to? It’s kind of hard to respond to these claims unless you explain what you mean more fully.
Okay, you’re obviously not a sociologist. By saying “context is everything” I am not refering to a specific context. THAT’S THE POINT. What this means is that the specific mileau around the social phenomenon being discussed pretty much dictates the characteristics of what’s occuring. This does not mean we cannot make generalisations, just that we really need to be aware of what is going around the occurance.
As to “it’s not that simple”, what that means is that anytime anyone ever says something to the extent of “this is the way it is” it raises a red flag to a sociologist, because more often than not, it’s not: “the way it is” is an oversimplification.
It’s not a false conclusion, it’s a correct conclusion supported by a mass of data. If you think there is evidence to the contrary, please present it. However, it’s important to distinguish the categories “stepparent” from “adoptive parent” even though the two overlap.
It is a false conclusion, because while it can be a generalisation drawn, it is not a good descriptor. It’s like saying “Christian families are more likely to be abusive” because under your criteria, we can draw such a conclusion. However, I would not state such because it is a false conclusion.
As to the step/adoptive parent divide, well, duh.
No, it works in the real world. In the real world, stepparents are more likely to abuse their children than biological parents. The fact that many other factors obviously also affect the quality of parenting does not invalidate this relationship.
Erg. Yes it does. It means that there is far more going on here than making a blanket statement like the one you are making adequately describes.
I love the “we.” You obviously do not speak for the community of professional sociologists, and also obviously, many sociologists do say that some family forms are better than others.
I’m sure there are. In fact, would be surprised if there weren’t. Doesn’t stop the fact that they get eyebrows cocked at them when they do. I don’t speak for all sociologists, but I’ve been in this field for long enough that I can claim a certain grip on the ‘we’ and feel that I can take a punt at knowing what I am on about.
Sarah
Both genes and scents are powerful things.
And it’s important to have more than ‘sounds plausible’ as evidence before calling the case proven.
Evolutionarily speaking, one man and woman living in the same home is unusual. If we want to do what our genes tell us, we’d probably be back to men’s and women’s villages.
I remember hearing about a study in which people found the body odors of genetically similar people significantly more repulsive than the body odors of genetically different people.
If only!! that would make my train journeys in rush hour a bit more bearable :-)
Have we wandered a bit off-topic here, or what? *8)
Well, I guess that’s what happens when someone brings up evolutionary psychology. It’s just so entertaining! Not even research into crop circles is as full of amazing claims.
Monica:
Incest – sexual relations between close relatives, consensual or not, obviously, in the case of parent to young children, not, ie. sexual abuse. (Even sexual abuse has more to do with other things, of course, but sex is a part of it, someone mentioned sexual attractions between step parents and young or teen girls, for instance. That’s what I was referring to).
I said “abuse,” not “sexual abuse.” Most abuse of stepchildren by stepparents is probably non-sexual. I didn’t say anything about incest until you raised it.
You are maintaining that there’s some kind of genetic radar that kicks into action even for siblings that have never met before,
No, I suggested that biological siblings who are unaware of their relationship may sometimes sense that they are related anyway from shared physical and mental characteristics.
If these hypothetical siblings separated at birth met by pure chance later in life and felt an attraction to each other, there’s no way they would be restrained by any taboo, because no one would have told them they’re siblings.
If they sense that they are brother and sister, the incest avoidance instinct and the taboo would likely affect their behavior.
The cultural factor and what Barbara called continuity, living together or close, as a family, is a lot more important than only the biological aspect.
You are making up claims for which you have no evidence. How, pray tell, have you determined that living arrangements are more important than the biological instinct to avoid incest in regulating sexual behavior between biological kin? Where is your evidence? Where is your data?
Qgrl:
Don, you say this as if it has some significance…
It does.
Since you injected it into a thread on marriage and child rearing, I can only suggest that the *OVERWHELMING* evidence suggests that children should not be raised with a male in the family at all (since there is such an important difference between male and female “psychology”.)
What overwhelming evidence is that? Produce it.
Your statement “since there is such an important difference between male and female ‘psychology'” is a complete non-sequitur. How does the fact that there are big differences in male and female sexual psychology support your claim that “children should not be raised with a male in the family?”
Who knows, maybe the answer to ending rape and war and poverty and corporate greed is because we’ve so heavily endowed (yes, pun intended) the male sexual psychology as to give it a life and meaning of it’s own that transcends individuals and becomes incorporated in our most basic approaches to politics, economics, foreign policy and social welfare.
I don’t know what you mean by male sexual psychology having “a life and meaning of its own.” Sexual psychology probably does have some influence on non-sexual aspects of life. And your point is…?
I’ll posit that children should be immune from this male sexual psychology until they are mature enough to parse fiction from reality.
How do you propose to render children “immune” to male sexual psychology? Why should children be made “immune” to it?
Sarah:
Okay, you’re obviously not a sociologist.
I don’t think you’re one either.
By saying “context is everything” I am not refering to a specific context. THAT’S THE POINT. What this means is that the specific mileau around the social phenomenon being discussed pretty much dictates the characteristics of what’s occuring. This does not mean we cannot make generalisations, just that we really need to be aware of what is going around the occurance.
My statement was that stepparents are much more likely to abuse their stepchildren than biological parents are likely to abuse their biological children. The difference is not small, it is huge. There is a mountain of sociological evidence attesting to this fact. The difference is present even after controlling for other risk factors for abuse. I have no idea how you think “context” alters this fact.
As to “it’s not that simple”, what that means is that anytime anyone ever says something to the extent of “this is the way it is” it raises a red flag to a sociologist, because more often than not, it’s not: “the way it is” is an oversimplification.
Here is the fact in question: Statistically speaking, stepparents are much more likely to abuse their children than biological parents. Explain to what you believe to be an “oversimplification” in that statement.
It is a false conclusion,
No, it is a true conclusion, and simply claiming otherwise over and over again will not make it false. If you believe it to be false, show me your evidence that it is false. Show me your data. Show me your studies. Show me your science. Stop making unsupported claims, and try actually substantiating what you are saying. If you really are a professional sociologist, you ought to be aware of the crucial importance of evidence.
because while it can be a generalisation drawn, it is not a good descriptor. It’s like saying “Christian families are more likely to be abusive” because under your criteria, we can draw such a conclusion.
If there is evidence that Christian families are more likely to be abusive, of course we can draw that conclusion. That’s how science works. Don’t you know that?
mythago:
And it’s important to have more than ‘sounds plausible’ as evidence before calling the case proven.
No one here has called that particular hypothesis (that close biological kin may recognize each other through various non-verbal physical and mental cues) proven. In fact, no one here has suggested that it is anything more than plausible speculation.
Evolutionarily speaking, one man and woman living in the same home is unusual. If we want to do what our genes tell us, we’d probably be back to men’s and women’s villages.
We don’t always want to do what our genes tell us. Much of our culture is concerned with regulating or suppressing drives and desires we acquire from our genes. There’s a difference between arguing that a genetic desire should be suppressed, and denying that it exists at all.
Monica’s posts citing evidence from other countries, and crticism of the Daly & Wilson methdoology, was (to me) a convincing rebuttal to this claim. Unless you have a convincing refutation of Monica’s citations and quotes, I think the “mountain of evidence” doesn’t appear to entirely support your case.
In particular, if it’s true that in Sweden stepparents are no more likely to murder their stepchildren than natural parents are to murder their natural children, that provides a very strong blow to the “stepparents are by nature more likely to abuse” theory, since the homicide statistics have always been (imo) the most convincing evidence in support of that theory.
Keep in mind that I was on your side when this discussion began; I’ve long believed that stepparents are more violent (on average). However, Monica’s counter-citations are compelling.
* * *
Barbara, this is a really interesting point. Do you know if anyone’s conducted studies of this – for instance, comparing outcomes of children raised by parent-and-stepparent since age 1 or below compared to those rasied by parent-and-stepparent at older ages?
Intuitively, I suspect your point is right, but I wonder if there’s any applicable evidence about it.
In my free time I’ll look for evidence. I certainly have observed this phenomenon, that is, extremely close stepparent-child relationships when the mother remarried and the child was under five. The existence of other, biological children, whether the biological parent is widowed or divorced (as in, is the other parent still in the picture) and sex of the child, probably all play a role. And I’ll try to locate the Chinese adopted sibling study, which I read many years ago.
I would also say that, notwithstanding the Swedish study, Don P. is probably right as far as the U.S. is concerned (I’m sure he’ll be back to fend for himself). Certainly, I have seen the evidence regarding sexual abuse and in my forays with CPS, most of the abuse reports do involve non-biological custodians. I will say it again at the risk of being tiresome, if your mom remarries and your dad is still very much involved in your life and in close physical proximity, then I would bet money that even a non-parental step parent who actively doesn’t like the kids is going to think many times over before engaging in abuse. It also means that the kid can take himself or herself out of the situation much more easily. In addition, in Sweden, a mother has a much deeper safety net and will not be deterred by the prospect of poverty from leaving a man who is a poor step parent, and will not feel coercion to marry an unsuitable parent to begin with. I know this is awful, but many women overlook abuse because they feel like they have to in order to keep a roof over their head. Equality between the sexes just solves so many problems.
This is such a complicated subject. I never meant to demonize stepparents. But I will say that whether or not stepparents are abusive, for most children who are over the age of 6, I doubt that they are able to forge the same kind of bond with a stepparent that they would have with an original parent. And that’s not the stepparent’s fault.
ampersand:
Keep in mind that I was on your side when this discussion began; I’ve long believed that stepparents are more violent (on average). However, Monica’s counter-citations are compelling.
They may be compelling to you, but I suspect that is more a reflection of your ideological bias against biological, and especially evolutionary, accounts of human psychology and behavior than a serious evaluation of their merits. I doubt they would be compelling to most professional scientists.
The first link Monica provides is to an (apparently unpublished) paper written by a University of Wisconsin student. The paper contains no serious rebuttal of Daly and Wilson’s findings. The author speculates about various possible methodological problems, but provides no evidence to support those speculations. For instance, he suggests that abuse by stepparents may be overreported, on the basis of the assumption that stepparents presenting abused children for medical treatment are more often assumed to be abusers than biological parents. But he offers no evidence to support this assumption.
His arguments are also implausible. For instance, he claims that, if Daly and Wilson are correct, we would also expect to see higher levels of abuse by adoptive parents. But this ignores the obvious difference in commitment between stepparents and adoptive parents that I pointed out in an earlier post and that Daly and Wilson themselves are careful to note. Stepparenthood results from a commitment to a new spouse or sexual partner, not to the stepchild. Adoptive parenthood results from a commitment to the adopted child itself. It is therefore silly to claim that we should necessarily expect to find elevated levels of abuse for adopted children as well. The act of adopting a child demonstrates a level of committment to non-genetic offspring that is extremely rare amoung human beings and virtually non-existent in other species, so you cannot draw reliable conclusions about parental psychology in general from studying adoptive parents, at least with respect to this aspect of parenting.
As for the supposedly contradictory studies he cites, he simply does not provide enough information to support his claims, and what he does provide suggests that he is misinterpreting the results. For example, his quote from Malkin and Lamb refers to “non-biological” parents, not to stepparents, so is not comparable to Daly and Wilson’s research, and most likely includes a large number of adoptive parents or surrogate parents from the child’s own family (siblings, grandparents, aunts and uncles) who would not necessarily be expected to exhibit higher levels of abuse.
These are just a few of the problems I found in this “compelling” critique. You might want to read it again.
The larger point here is that the evidence of the lack of parental committment to non-biological offspring does not consist of just the one Daly and Wilson study on abuse by stepparents that I cited (by way of Pinker). It is a big tapestry of consistent evidence from evolutionary biology, from anthropology, from sociology, from zoology and from other disciplines. Studies of child abuse are just one component of it.
ampersand:
In particular, if it’s true that in Sweden stepparents are no more likely to murder their stepchildren than natural parents are to murder their natural children, that provides a very strong blow to the “stepparents are by nature more likely to abuse” theory, since the homicide statistics have always been (imo) the most convincing evidence in support of that theory.
This is silly. You’re making a ridiculously extravagant claim about the significance of that study, far beyond the modest conclusion of its own authors that “our results do not support the conclusion that step-parenthood is the most important risk factor for child homicides in families.”
One important reason to suspect that this study is anomalous, apart from the fact that American and Canadian studies contradict it, is that the sample size is so small. Sweden is a small country with, by American standards, an extremely low crime rate. The entire sample size was only 139 homicides. The sample size for stepchild homicides was only 7. Those samples are far too small to provide confident conclusions about parental psychology. Even a single-digit change in the number of stepchild homicides would dramatically affect the results. I suspect that is one reason why the authors themselves are so cautious in their interpretation.
ampersand:
Barbara, this is a really interesting point. Do you know if anyone’s conducted studies of this – for instance, comparing outcomes of children raised by parent-and-stepparent since age 1 or below compared to those rasied by parent-and-stepparent at older ages?
Daly and Wilson’s homicide studies examined stepchild homicide rates by age of victim, to test the hypothesis that the massive homicide rate disparity between stepchildren and biological children might be caused by the stepchild’s own behavior towards the stepparent. They found that the biggest risk is to the youngest stepchildren, those under 3. Older stepchildren were at lower risk of being killed by their stepparent. Obviously, this finding contradicts Barbara’s hypothesis. A stepchild is at higher risk, not lower risk, of being killed by a stepparent if the stepparent arrives when the child is very young.
Interesting–I have seen reports that find the opposite (that is, stepchildren are less likely to be victims of violence if the stepparent is present from infancy). Of course, that is all violence, not limited to homicide.
Barbara:
In addition, in Sweden, a mother has a much deeper safety net and will not be deterred by the prospect of poverty from leaving a man who is a poor step parent, and will not feel coercion to marry an unsuitable parent to begin with. I know this is awful, but many women overlook abuse because they feel like they have to in order to keep a roof over their head. Equality between the sexes just solves so many problems.
Yes. The authors of the Swedish study themselves suggest that cultural differences between Sweden and the U.S./Canada may account for the different findings. It is simply much easier for a single parent to raise a child alone in Sweden than it is in the U.S., so Swedish single parents can afford to be much more choosy when picking potential stepparents for their children than can American single parents.
I never meant to demonize stepparents.
You didn’t, and neither am I. The point here is not to suggest that stepparenting in general is a bad thing or that it should be discouraged. The majority of stepparents do not abuse their stepchildren. But the fact that stepparents engage in abuse at much higher rates than genetic parents is strong evidence that quality of parenting is strongly dependent on whether the parent has a genetic investment in the child. And that link is itself part of the broader parental investment theory that also accounts for differences in sexual psychology and behavior between males and females.
Interesting–I have seen reports that find the opposite (that is, stepchildren are less likely to be victims of violence if the stepparent is present from infancy).
Such as?
Don P – I said “abuse,” not “sexual abuse.” Most abuse of stepchildren by stepparents is probably non-sexual. I didn’t say anything about incest until you raised it.
Like I said, I raised it in response to someone mentioning sexual attractions between step parents and young or teen girls as an instance of that. That someone was (I couldn’t remember at first) Barbara, who wrote:
However, the reality is that a male may or may not feel parental towards a maturing girl — he may just feel like she’s any other girl, and one he has particularly good access to. What studies show is that a parent who is a continuous parent to a child beginning at a very young age is less likely to develop that kind of feeling.
However, she was talking of continuity rather than biological ties.
In any case, sexual abuse is part of abuse cases studied by researchers on the matters, so I don’t see what you’re arguing with. The discussion revolved around that biological / non-biological difference so it seems to me incest (which, again, in the case of children easily becomes sexual abuse, unless we accept the Pitcairn Island “ethics” of sexual relations) is not that irrelevant.
You are making up claims for which you have no evidence.
That is a bit rich, coming from someone who claimed there was “no serious doubt” and a “mountain of evidence” about a claim on which a 15-minute google search showed there was indeed serious doubts among researchers and no mountain of evidence supporting one categorical conclusion at all.
How, pray tell, have you determined that living arrangements are more important than the biological instinct to avoid incest in regulating sexual behavior between biological kin?
That’s not exactly what I meant. I do indeed believe culture and what Barbara called continuity are more important factors in influencing the wellbeing of families, parents and children, whatever kind and structure those families are. That’s my opinion, I don’t think it’s that weird since families are made by individuals who don’t exist in a vacumm, but do live in societies to which they contribute and by which they are influenced. On the specific matter of biological ties and incest. Of course the biological tie and the cultural taboo go hand in hand, when you are being raised with your own natural parents and siblings. It’s impossible to separate them, that was *exactly* my point. In the hypothetical situation in which we could “separate” the biological element, by removing *knowledge* of it – ie. siblings growing up separated without knowing they’re related – then the cultural taboo would also be removed, because these people wouldn’t know they’re siblings, so, if the met and developed a sexual attraction, nothing would stand in the way of that except uncovering the truth about the biological link. Doh. It’s obvious. Instead, you continue to insist on the totally weird idea they may “sense” they’re biologically related. Even if they don’t look anything like brother and sister? What kind of “sensing” is that?
Don P, you’re the one making absolute claims based on a belief in psychic powers of perception which you simply expect people to accept without questioning; you ignore mention of existing studies that prove there is indeed a lot of doubt and disagreement about the claims you supported as absolutely unarguably true and proven; you also rudely dismiss the view of a sociologist because it doesn’t fit with your own. I don’t see exactly what you expect with that attitude, everyone to simply say, oh yes, you’re right, because you say so?
I suspect that is more a reflection of your ideological bias against biological, and especially evolutionary, accounts of human psychology and behavior
Well, then, it’s all clear. You, Don P, have no bias, so your claims should be accepted at face value, everyone else has a bias, so their claims should be arrogantly dismissed. Glad you have such a high standard about what constitutes evidence (not to mention, discussion…). You should be lecturing us all.
The first link Monica provides is to an (apparently unpublished) paper written by a University of Wisconsin student.
First, it’s a University of Wisconsin Professor, not a student. Here, you can check his CV:
http://philosophy.wisc.edu/sullivan/cv.htm
From which you can also notice the paper was indeed published.
Or rather, presented:
He is a member of the International Society for the History, Philosophy, and Social Studies of Biology (ISHPSSB).
Recent work page: http://philosophy.wisc.edu/sullivan/recent.htm
Including a paper in which he argues against evolutionary psychology. Maybe that is enough for your high standards to dismiss anything he writes. But in the paper I linked and quoted, he is not so much stating his own beliefs just like that, but *citing* reference to several studies that contradict claims about a clear cut higher risk of child abuse from non biological parents. That’s why I linked it.
The paper contains no serious rebuttal of Daly and Wilson’s findings. The author speculates about various possible methodological problems, but provides no evidence to support those speculations…
Because you say so. Must be true…
Again, the paper contains references to several studies – research, not just arguments and speculations – which do contradict Daly and Wilson’s findings, and do highlight several methodological problems which Daly and Wilson themselves recognised, only they insist on maintaining their conclusions in spite of that. See excerpts above.
And again, it’s not the author per se making any claims out of the blue. It’s a summary of different studies.
Just like the Australian government-sponsored Institute for Family Studies page has reference to several studies with different and contrasting conclusions – such as often happens in these area of studies, like Sarah said, like anyone who has had anything to do with studies on social issues knows.
If you are interested in research and evidence, you should be all the more interested in contradictions. If you are interested only in stubborn reinforcement of your own a priori categorical claim, they do feel free to narrow your focus to one study only. But don’t expect anyone to take you seriously.
The authors of the Swedish study themselves suggest that cultural differences between Sweden and the U.S./Canada may account for the different findings. It is simply much easier for a single parent to raise a child alone in Sweden than it is in the U.S., so Swedish single parents can afford to be much more choosy when picking potential stepparents for their children than can American single parents.
Barbara, the point of such differences is that they further contradict categorical claims about biology being the main factor. They also make it harder to support claims about “step parents”, “biological parents”, as if they were an abstract category that does not live in a precise society.
In highlighting how cultural factors may play such a relevant role, they warn us against making such absolute claims about human nature and biology when it comes to family and social relationships.
I’m not getting into the nature and extent of differences between the US and Sweden in that respect, but what is interesting is that it’s precisely those differences that make a comparison between different studies in different nations all the more significant and necessary. I don’t live in either the US or Sweden, so neither study comes first in my mind in terms of relevance. If they highlight differences, that’s all the more interesting to me, because after all humans are biologically identical everywhere, but cultures are not, and cultures, unlike biology, are the things we can change. That’s what research into social issues should be for, after all. To give a reference to decisions on what can be improved at social and cultural level. Not to provide talking points to people like Elizabeth who clearly are more interested in attacking windmills from an ideological position, than in advocating and supporting what is more likely, at social and cultural level, to effectively improve the context in which families and children live.
Also, what Sarah said about social stigma – one factor which may be a significant difference between US and Sweden is also that there is probably a lot less stigma attached to the situation of children raised by parents who are not married. Remember that debate a few months ago about that study purporting that SSM had somehow “damaged” Swedish society (I think it was Sweden, at least) by reducing marriage? It was rebutted on this site, if I remember correctly. And I remember one of the factors the supporter of the SSM as “damage” claim did not take into consideration is precisely how marriage had already been declining before the introduction of SSM, also because in Sweden there is probably less of a semi-religious belief that marriage alone is the ideal to be put on a pedestal in terms of family structure. I don’t know how this affects child rearing in the specifics, but I would guess that it probably is a contributing factor in facilitating life for single parents and their partners, and divorced parents and their new partners, and their children.
Ie. the opposite of what people like Elizabeth are doing. Sticking to such rigid “ideals” only reinforces stigma for for anyone “deviating” from that “ideal”. Which, when it becomes a significant cultural attitude, cannot be a good thing for real people in real life. So much for all their talk of caring about children and families, they’re just an abstraction to them.
Here, another 15 minutes of my google time:
from the Center for Law and Social Policy: Children and stepfamilies: a snapshot, a summary of conclusions from different studies, not taking any definitive position itself, in fact, it presents some rather negative findings but also warns against generalisations, see:
and finally, specifically on abuse, some interestingly contrasting findings:
Don P., Paradoxically, I think both a higher risk of death and a greater potential for close ties are possible. I certainly don’t think they’re mutually exclusive (but I am not arguing from evidence, and I admit that). Basically, it is much easier to harm young children — they can’t talk or seek help and they can’t fight back. Step parents who are never going to form a bond, who don’t try, or just can’t are probably likely to do the most physical harm to a younger child. But those step parents who are not homicidal (the vast majority) are more likely to form a parental bond if they live with the child for a longer period of time. As you have said, the issue isn’t simply one of abuse, it’s long term commitment to the child. It doesn’t happen in a minute, not even for biological parents, and it certainly wouldn’t happen that way for step parents. Also, I believe studies show that biological parents, for instance, are less likely to show the same degree of commitment (college assistance, for instance) if they are non-custodial. So proximity is to some extent an independent factor from biology in determining the extent of social commitment to a child.
monica, as I said to Don P., I believe that several apparently contradictory principles can be present at the same time. It is possible for step parents, as a matter of evolutionary biology, to be less likely to form parental bonds and to have a greater tendency to abuse stepchildren AT THE SAME TIME that it is also possible for an established society (not to mention an individual person) to possess other characteristics that seriously inhibit the likelihood that those tendencies are expressed.
Some things may be intentional: greater law enforcement efforts to combat all forms of child abuse by any adult, better education, better social safety net.
Other factors may not be easily replicated or even identified: the role of cultural homegeneity so that, in general, there is greater group identification among members, including unrelated members, of society; or lack of mobility so that there is a relatively high degree of involvement of both biological parents or other adults who are more loyal to the child than the step parent (which the mother may or may not be).
And finally, there may be very “soft” factors — such as the degree to which physical violence of any sort is tolerated in the society (i.e., a “little bit” of tolerated violence, such as spanking, can lead to a lot more — if a society doesn’t tolerate spanking by anyone, then this risk is definitely reduced); or the degree to which social conditioning teaches people to turn depression or negative thoughts inward rather than outward — that dramatically affect the rate of abuse that is directed at stepchildren.
I think it’s wrong to make blanket statements, but it’s also wrong to tell parents that there is no risk associated with remarriage (a heightened risk of sexual abuse of a daughter is a rather profound risk). At a minimum, you want people to be aware of the risks and take due care for the welfare of their children. It’s not an indictment of all step parents to tell the truth. It also means that it provides additional evidence for why it is that we should pursue policies (i.e., safety net) that are good for other reasons as well.
Monica:
Okay, let’s dispose of your relatively trivial errors first:
First, it’s a University of Wisconsin Professor, not a student. Here, you can check his CV: http://philosophy.wisc.edu/sullivan/cv.htm
I did check his CV. You apparently did not. Nowhere does it state or suggest that he is a professor. He is a student, a PhD candidate, and has been a teaching assistant for a course in philosophy and ethics. You need to read your own sources more carefully.
From which you can also notice the paper was indeed published.
No, it was not published. The only published work listed in his CV is a book review.
At a minimum, you want people to be aware of the risks and take due care for the welfare of their children. It’s not an indictment of all step parents to tell the truth. It also means that it provides additional evidence for why it is that we should pursue policies (i.e., safety net) that are good for other reasons as well.
Yes, of course, I agree there, and with much of what you write in terms of principles, Barbara. I just don’t believe statistics are that clear, and I think there is a danger also in the way they are used. Aside from the above quoted contradictions in studies, a big problem is that a lot of child abuse doesn’t get reported. Some of it, indeed, may still be considered normal and acceptable in certain enviroments. (And not just spanking) Not too long ago, after all, disciplining a child was something that included corporal punishment. There was no child protection agency, no government campaigns, child abuse was just not a matter of public policy and concern yet. Today it is, but even today, a lot of people still don’t report cases. From what I read, this is a factor in all countries, in varying degrees, but still a factor. That’s also why we should keep in mind that official statistics are inevitably skewed.
That’s why I can also relate to the point raised about methodological problems. It’s obvious it can be relatively easier, for the child and/or for the other partner, to report a stepfather or stepmother than a biological parent. It’s easier to acknowledge and denounce. Reporting your own natural parents – or, the father/mother of your children – can involve more feelings of guilt and betrayal. It can be more of a taboo. It can get swept under the carpet. (Depending a lot on the kind of context – culture and mentality and social class etc.)
That’s why, I think, it’s important to discuss the issue in the fullest context, not by emphasising one (possible) risk factor attached to one category. What’s needed is also to encourage people to be brave and report all cases, including the hardest ones to report, and to create a culture in which they will not risk a further stigma. I am not convinced this kind of effort is helped by focusing too much on one kind of family structure, especially when studies are saying contrasting things.
I would find it rather sad if, like other fields of research (gender, sexual orientation, etc.), even the issue of child abuse became less of a political and social concern, and more of an academic battle ground between conservative essentialists or evolutionary psychologists on the one hand, and psychologists and sociologists of a different persuasion on the other. Because that, I think, would be missing the point of doing social studies in the first place.
Monica:
Like I said, I raised it in response to someone mentioning sexual attractions between step parents and young or teen girls as an instance of that.
No, in your post to me, you raised it in response to my statement about the link between genetic investment and parental abuse. You said: “Don P, you may call it ‘genetic investment’, others call it ‘incest taboo’.” That statement not only confuses a biological fact with a cultural norm, but also misrepresents my statement as referring to sexual abuse. What I said was “abuse,” period. This includes violence, sexual abuse, and non-assaultive abuse (neglect).
That is a bit rich, coming from someone who claimed there was “no serious doubt” and a “mountain of evidence” about a claim on which a 15-minute google search showed there was indeed serious doubts among researchers and no mountain of evidence supporting one categorical conclusion at all.
You haven’t provided any evidence of “serious doubts amoung researchers.” You’ve provided evidence of serious doubts by a philosophy student with an anti-evolutionary ax to grind. The overwhelming mass of data from the research supports the conclusion that stepparents are much more likely to abuse their children than biological parents. This finding is consistent across different kinds of abuse, consistent cross-nationally and cross-culturally, has been confirmed by multiple independent studies, and is consistent with evidence of parenting differences from other scientific disciplines, including anthropology, zoology and evolutionary biology.
I am still waiting for you to offer a shred of evidence to support your claim that the incest taboo is a more important influence on sexual relations between genetic kin than the biological adaptation I have described. You made this claim as if you have some basis for asserting it as fact or likely fact, but you have offered nothing to support it.
Furthermore, the incest taboo itself is classified by anthropologists as a “human universal,” meaning that it is found in all human cultures ever studied, and is thus very likely to be the social codification of a strong and universal biological instinct. The probability of all cultures creating, by chance, a strong social norm against incest in the absence of such a biological instinct is astronomically low. The incest taboo codifies and institutionalizes the biological adaptation.
Of course the biological tie and the cultural taboo go hand in hand, when you are being raised with your own natural parents and siblings. It’s impossible to separate them, that was *exactly* my point.
No, it’s not impossible to separate them. One is a biological instinct and the other is a cultural norm. One is genetic, the other is environmental.
In the hypothetical situation in which we could “separate” the biological element, by removing *knowledge* of it – ie. siblings growing up separated without knowing they’re related – then the cultural taboo would also be removed, because these people wouldn’t know they’re siblings, so, if the met and developed a sexual attraction, nothing would stand in the way of that except uncovering the truth about the biological link.
Your statements just get more and more confused. A cultural taboo is a characteristic of a culture, not of particular individuals within that culture. The incest taboo is not “removed” when two siblings meet without knowing they are siblings. The taboo may simply not influence their behavior in that situation because they lack the knowledge necessary to activate it.
Instead, you continue to insist on the totally weird idea they may “sense” they’re biologically related. Even if they don’t look anything like brother and sister? What kind of “sensing” is that?
There’s nothing “weird” about it. Siblings share half their genes, and thus often exhibit strong physical and mental similarities, ranging from obvious physical characteristics like facial features to more subtle ones like body language and odor, hence the common observation that parents and children or brothers and sisters “have the same nose/eyes/chin/whatever.” Such non-verbal cues play an important role in kin recognition in animal species, and it would be surprising if human beings were completely lacking in this ability. Much of it is probably unconscious and automatic. Thus, biologically related individuals who are not formally aware of their relationship may nevertheless develop a sense or feeling that they are related as a result of these similarities, and that awareness is likely to reduce any sexual desire they might otherwise feel for each other. And even without any such ability, sexual selection may favor genes that dispose individuals to find others who resemble them unattractive, precisely to reduce the risk of unknowing incest.
I am not a social scientist, but here’s the best article I could find describing (and trying to test) the Chinese adoptive bride study. Sorry, I don’t do html:
http://www.maslow.org/sub/m_today/Biologyandmorality.pdf
Monica:
Barbara, the point of such differences is that they further contradict categorical claims about biology being the main factor. They also make it harder to support claims about “step parents”, “biological parents”, as if they were an abstract category that does not live in a precise society.
The text you quoted is mine, not Barbara’s. The cultural differences I mentioned tell us nothing about the relative contribution of genes and environment to differences between stepparents and biological parents. The relevance of U.S./Swedish cultural differences is that they provide a plausible explanation for the failure of the Swedish researchers to reproduce the findings of American, Canadian and British studies that found much higher levels of abuse by stepparents. The sample size for the Swedish study was tiny. The smaller the sample, the more vulnerable it is to confounding factors, such as, in this case, the highly-developed Swedish social welfare system.
In highlighting how cultural factors may play such a relevant role, they warn us against making such absolute claims about human nature and biology when it comes to family and social relationships.
I don’t know what “absolute claim” is supposed to mean. The claim I am making is that there is a ton of evidence, from multiple, independent scientific disciplines, including studies of child abuse, supporting the conclusion that quality of parenting (and the willingness to even act as a parent at all) is strongly dependent on the genetic investment of the parent or potential parent in the offspring. This is true for human beings just as it is for other species.
You seem to think that because human behavior is influenced by both genes and environment, we cannot separate the two kinds of influence or investigate the type and magnitude of their relative contribution to behavior. That idea is just nonsense. The fact that a behavior may have more than one cause makes analysis of those causes more difficult and complicated, but it does not prevent us from designing studies and experiments that can isolate and measure them to a high degree of confidence. And that is precisely what researchers like Daly and Wilson have done here.
“…. a philosophy student with an anti-evolutionary ax to grind”
See above, my December 3, 2004 02:31 AM post about it being a professor, not a student; about the paper (and the AU govt site and the other CLASP site) citing several different studies, such as Malkin and Lamb, which of course you chose to dismiss. You confirmed exactly my point about your standards of intellectual honesty.
I’d also like to note you’re arguing with a bunch of straw men there. I’m not the one making any categorical claims, I’ve stated my own views already and all I’ve said is I’m not going to take anything as indisputable truth, particularly when other conclusions and researches dispute it. By the way, just so it’s clear: I’m not saying one study and its conclusions need to be “more right” than the others, I don’t view these matters as a question of fixed religious truth, and as far as I know, nor do serious researchers; I’m saying the claim that there is no disagreement and “no serious doubt” on *any* one conclusion is a lie, because there is indeed doubt and disagreement among researchers, and it doesn’t matter if you don’t like it and don’t want to acknowledge it, it exists all the same. That is all.
Monica:
Here, another 15 minutes of my google time:
See, that’s the problem here, Monica. You obviously have strong opinions about this issue, but no familiarity with the scientific literature or the state of expert opinion, and think that trawling the internet with a search engine for 15 minutes will somehow rectify this deficiency. And when you find something that you think supports your views, you invariably seem to misread it or misunderstand its implications for the claims of mine you are challenging. Here is yet another example:
from the Center for Law and Social Policy: Children and stepfamilies: a snapshot, a summary of conclusions from different studies, not taking any definitive position itself, in fact, it presents some rather negative findings but also warns against generalisations, see: Despite the fact that children in stepfamilies seem to be at greater risk of adjustment problems, most of these children are doing fine.
The fact that most stepchildren are not abused or maladjusted is irrelevant. Since the issue here is the relationship between parenting and genetic kinship, it is not the absolute percentage of abused stepchildren that matters, but the difference in rates of abuse between stepchildren and genetic children. And that difference, as documented by Daly and Wilson and others, is enormous. For homicide, the risk factor from stepparenthood is on the order to 50 to 100. And that is after controlling for potential confounding factors such as poverty, age of parent, and pre-existing tendencies to violence.
In addition to the abuse statistics themselves, Daly and Wilson cite a mass of other sociological data pointing to a crucial link between genetic relatedness and quality of parenting, such as:
– Human cultures consistently portray stepparents as less loving, less caring, less involved, and more likely to harm or abuse their children than biological parents.
– Human cultures consistently portray stepchildren as a liability in marriage negotiations, a cost that suitors must accept rather than an asset or a neutral item.
– Marriages involving stepchildren are demonstrably more likely to fail than marriages without them.
– Stepparents who abuse their children consistently display greater levels of violence and anger towards their victims than biological parents who abuse their children. Daly and Wilson found that “a substantial proportion of the children killed by genetic parents, but virtually none of those killed by stepparents, are slain in the context of a suicide, and the distraught parent may even construe the homicide as a ‘rescue'”.