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Strollerderby
Do marriage vows matter for parenting?
Many people believe that parents should be married. Raising kids together is such a big commitment, it stands to reason that you had best be committed to each other before you launch into that high-stress period of your lives. Traditionally, kids follow marriage, and a lot of people still feel that’s the best, maybe even only, way to do it.
Yet over 40 percent of kids today are born to unmarried mothers. Clearly, plenty of people feel fine about having babies out of wedlock. Lots of kids are being raised in loving homes by parents who, for whatever reason, haven’t gotten married. Maybe they don’t want to. Maybe they haven’t done it yet. Maybe they’re a same-sex couple and can’t marry in their home state. Maybe they’re single parent households. There are as many reasons as there are families.
Are kids born out of wedlock missing out on something?
A new British study says no.
What compelled you to get married?
For me, it was a simple decision: I was pregnant, and my boyfriend wanted to marry me. I’d been against marriage, but he made a persuasive case based on details like sharing health insurance and being able to make medical decisions for each other. Yes, we could have recreated a lot of the benefits of marriage without tying the knot, but marrying him was a simple, practical solution to a host of problems I had little energy to solve while battling morning sickness and making ready for the huge change a baby would bring to our lives.
In other words, it was very pragmatic. There was little romance to our quiet elopement, no fancy dress or giant cake. I never got the big white wedding little girl’s often dream of, and I minded only a little.
For other women though, apparently, the need to be married can take hold with a fever akin to baby lust. They become irrational with the burning need to Get Married. Baby lust I understand. There’s a biological drive to reproduce. Bridal fever, though, is beyond me.
Think you’re happy living with your partner? Don’t see any reason to get married?
Survey says couples who share housekeys but don’t tie the knot aren’t quite as happy as their married counterparts. At least the women aren’t.
A worldwide study of 22,000 women showed that married women are a little happier than those who live with their unmarried partners.
Why the difference? The correlation between a wedding band and extra joy was strongest in countries with strong, traditional views on marriage. This leads researchers to think women are happier when they feel like society approves of their relationships.
A pastor in Memphis says no baptisms for babies born out of wedlock
A Baptist pastor in Memphis is taking a misguided stand against teen pregnancy by refusing to baptize babies born to unwed mothers.
Ralph White hopes to shame young men into marrying their baby mamas, by refusing to baptize their babies. It’s hard to see how this is supposed to work. Isn’t it the babies and mothers who are being punished here? I thought baptism had something to do with saving your eternal soul. Refusing it seems like a pretty harsh punishment for something your parents did (or didn’t do) before you were born.
The Rev. White isn’t really consigning little babies to the inferno if their parents won’t get hitched. He’s open to the possibility of doing the baptisms – just not in church. We need to make sure we don’t condone this kid’s behavior in front of people, you know. Or something.
Do families look like this?
So what is a family? Does it have kids? Married partners? Same sex partners?
According to the new Time/Pew poll, the country’s definition of family is changing. Last week, Sierra wrote about how the poll found most people still think kids are best served by growing up in a house with married parents, even if many children aren’t being raised that way.
Similarly when it comes to defining “family” it seems we as a culture are welcoming in an era of mix and match. Or, as I like to think of it, “If it feels like family, who am I to say it isn’t?” And there are a lot of family arrangements to consider. Continue reading »
180 alert!
Less than a year ago, parents were buried under an avalanche of studies that concluded kids don’t make you happy. In fact, these studies showed that people raising kids reported lower levels of happiness — life satisfaction, marital satisfaction, and mental well-being — than their childless counterparts.
Oh, and that lower level of happiness? Never. Goes. Away.
Okay, but now out of the U.K., the Journal of Happiness Studies reports that not only do kids not lower their parents’ level of happiness, they actually raise it — a little bit with the first kid. Even more with the second. And (I’m looking at you, Baby Earl!) significantly more with the third!
There’s a catch, though. Continue reading »
My perma-crush on actor dad Johnny Depp just suffered a big blow. In a run down of Hollywood couples who are happily unmarried (most of them parents), The Frisky quotes Captain Jack Sparrow himself saying he’ll marry long-time love and mother of his kids Vanessa Paradis “if the kids want us to.”
Sweet? I guess, but what’s the point? Continue reading »
Joslyn Gray 
Amber Doty 
Julianna Miner 
Monica Bielanko 
Sierra Black 
Meredith Carroll 
Carolyn Castiglia 
Sunny Chanel 
Madeline Holler 
Wendy Michaels 
Rebecca Odes 
Danielle Smith 
Danielle Sullivan 
Katherine Stone 
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