Anti-abortion Crisis Pregnancy Centers

Number 10, a true/false designed statement on the "Sexual Health/Knowledge Pretest Game" says, "Couples who live together are just as happy and satisfied with their lives as married couples are." Of course the Alpha Center's answer is false.

First, as has been pointed out throughout this report, the Alpha Center deliberately makes false and or absolute general sweeping statements rather than tempering such statements with language that reflects important nuances that, if included, change the meaning entirely, as with their statements about condoms.

This is a statement that also goes directly to the fundamental Christian religious and moral bias of the Alpha Center. Cohabitation by couples is considered by their religious beliefs to be a sin and while that would be the value they would impart to our students if they thought they could, they settle instead for

misleading and untrue statements as the one above to subtly convey their Christian religious belief.

The Alpha Center should have left room in that statement for the reality that some cohabitating couples are indeed just as happy and satisfied with their lives as some married couples and they should have acknowledged that some married couples are less satisfied with their lives than some cohabitating couples. The Alpha Center should have also made room in that statement for the many different variables that have been shown to affect the satisfaction cohabitating and married couples feel about their lives, relationships, and relationship choice and variables that researchers admit needs further consideration before such a general sweeping statement is undertaken. In fact the evidence the Alpha Center cites for their statement makes that point.

"The Alpha Center should have left room in that statement for the reality that some cohabitating couples are indeed just as happy and satisfied with their lives as some married couples and they should have acknowledged that some married couple are less satisfied with their lives than some cohabitating couples."

The Alpha Center said the evidence for the statement in Number 10 on their Sexual Health/Knowledge Pretest Game, is a "study" of a 17-nation study conducted by Steven Stack and J. Ross Eshleman of Wayne State University and published in the Journal of Marriage and The Family, in May 1998. Stack and Eshleman explains the study,

"The literature on marital status and happiness has neglected comparative analysis, cohabitation, and gender-specific analysis. It is not clear if the married-happiness relationship is consistent across nations, if it is stronger than a cohabitation-happiness link, and if it applies to both genders. We address these issues using data from 17 national surveys. A multiple regression analysis determined that the relationship between marital status and happiness holds in 16 of the 17 nations and the strength of the association does not vary significantly in 14 of the 17 nations. Being married was 3.4 times more closely tied to the variance in happiness than was cohabitation, and marriage increases happiness equally among men and women."

As I said Stack and Eshleman admitted there are some variables that need further scrutiny saying in their conclusion "Two of the

standard, intermediary processes that increase happiness for the married did not do so for the cohabiting population. Unlike marriage cohabitation was negatively associated with both financial satisfaction and health. Still compared with remaining single, cohabitating was associated with modest gains in happiness. Evidently, the gains of cohabitation in areas such as social integration and emotional support must offset losses in areas such as financial satisfaction and health. Possibly there are selection processes at work, and cohabitants are fundamentally different from married persons to begin with. Perhaps cohabitants' levels of happiness fall short of those of married persons before marriage. Clearly more work is needed on these unanticipated findings."

And this statement, "Separate analyses for men and women determined that there was not a significant difference between the coefficients for marriage's effect on happiness by gender.Nevertheless, this finding needs to be taken with some caution. Although the relationship of happiness and martial status did not differ by gender, other measures of well-being (life satisfaction, anxiety) may follow a gendered pattern. More comparative research is needed on these matters."

And this, "Although much of the impact of marriage is mediated by its associations with health and financial satisfaction, a substantial and direct effect remained when these two processes were controlled. The residual variance unexplained by these intermediary processes may be due to social selection (Mastekaasa, 1992). That is, happier healthier persons are more likely to enter marriage in the first place. Happy, cheerful, positive and optimistic people are regarded as more attractive partners than unhappy, negative brooding and depressed ones. That is, selectivity in partners operates before, during and after marriage. When an alternative to a traditional or existing marital arrangement exists that appears to be better or more desirable, that alternative may be selected. Single persons may decide to simply live together (cohabit) rather than to marry. Unhappily married persons may choose to divorce rather than to remain married, resulting in a net effect of higher rates of happiness among those remaining married."

Beyond the shortcomings of the study that the author's spoke of, a look at Stack and Eshelman's multiple regression analysis reveals other shortcomings. They didn't adjust the data for example for age, where there might be significant differences in the perception of happiness in either or both living situations.

In January 2003 a study was done by Alois Stutzer and Bruno S. Frey at the Institute for Empirical Research in Economics, at the University of Zurich, titled: The question they posed was: Does Marriage Make People Happy, or Do Happy People Get Married? The study "analyzed the causal relationships between marriage and subjective well-being in a longitudinal data set spanning 17 years. We find evidence that more happy singles opt more likely for marriage and that there are large differences in the benefits from marriage between couples."

"Stack and Eschelman also did not adjust for how long persons had been married or had been cohabitating, which too may significantly effect the perception of
happiness in one or both living situations."

In that study the authors said, "There is a strong age pattern in this selection effect {social selection}. Those who marry young are on average singles with above average life satisfaction. By the age of 30, singles who will marry report no different subjective well-being than those who will not marry. After 30, the prospective spouses are again as systematically more satisfied selection. It is unlikely that these selection effects can explain the entire difference in well-being between singles and married people. Until age 34, married people, on average, report higher life satisfaction scores than those singles who will get married later. As the gap between the two groups is substantial, it is unlikely to be due to time patterns in selection, i.e. due to the larger selection effects for those marrying at a young age." And they found an indication "that the difference in reported subjective well-being between singles and married people diminishes with age."

Stack and Eschelman also did not adjust for how long persons had been married or had been cohabitating, which too may significantly effect the perception of happiness in one or both living situations.

For example, Stutzer and Frey's study showed a noticeable pattern: "As the year of marriage approaches, people report, on average, higher satisfaction scores. In contrast, after marriage, the average reported satisfaction with life decreases.Several concepts may explain this pattern," adaptation for example. "Adaptation in the marriage context means that people get used to the pleasant (and unpleasant) stimuli they get from living with a partner in a close relationship, and after some time experience more or less their baseline level of subjective well-being. Whether this adaptation is truly hedonic, or whether married people start using a different scaling for what they consider a satisfying life (satisfaction treadmill), is difficult to assess."

Also it isn't clear if Stack and Eshelman factored in religious background, even though they acknowledged that few studies have included religion and when they have it has often showed "powerful effects on happiness." Stack and Eshelman said, "Given that married people tend to be more religious and healthier than people who are not married, it is not clear if some of the past research is reporting a spurious relationship between marriage and happiness."

But religion can be a very important factor for many reasons. For example, it may be a pressure on cohabitating couples to marry adversely affecting their satisfaction with their lives or religion may place pressure on a couple in a troubled marriage to remain married adversely affecting their satisfaction with their lives, and not taken into account can skew findings that claim a huge, overwhelming, too general of or decisive bias for marriage and against person's who cohabitate or remain single. Where in the United States or the world you live for that matter, may also play a major role in how the religious factor plays out in explaining how happy and satisfied a cohabitating or married couple may or may not be.

From above you'll remember Stack and Eshelman said social selection was a variable they did not account for and which they concluded should probably be considered. "In a longitudinal data set, we compare singles who remain single with singles who marry later as well as with people who are already married," says Stutzer and Frey. "In a panel spanning a period of 17 years, we find that selection of happier people into marriage is pronounced for those who marry when they are young and again

becomes an important factor for those who marry later in life. Moreover, a retrospective evaluation shows that those who get divorced were already less happy when they were newly married and when they were still single. This indicates substantial selection effects of generally less happy individuals into the group of divorced people."

But most notably, Stutzer and Frey found that "among the not married, persons who cohabit with a partner are significantly happier than those who live alone. {common sense says that is reasonable} But this effect is dependent on the culture one lives in," (also mentioned above as a factor to be considered). "It turns out that people living together in individualistic societies {such as the United States} report higher life satisfaction than single, and sometimes even married persons. The opposite holds for collectivist societies." Interestingly, Stack and Eshelman, in wanting to address the question of whether married-happiness is consistent across nations, never addressed individualistic societies verses collectivist societies, a seemingly important factor when addressing whether married-happiness is consistent across nations.

"So the Alpha Center took a study that made a case for a trend but which itself acknowledged that other important factors or variables should be considered.and made a false statement alleging for a fact, that married couples are happier and more satisfied than cohabitating couples."

Also most notably Stutzer and Frey continue by saying, "The difference in happiness between married people and people who have never married has fallen in recent years. The 'happiness gap' has decreased both because those who have never married have experienced increasing happiness, and those married have experienced decreasing happiness. (Gary R. Lee, Karen Seccombe, and Constance L. Shehan, 1991) This finding is consistent with people marrying later, divorcing more often and marrying less, and with the increasing number of partners not marrying, even where there are children."

Finally, Stutzer and Frey also said, "A first step in order to get more reliable estimates is to take advantage of the fact that the same people are re-surveyed over time. A panel allows for estimating the effect of a change in the marital status for one and the same person. These within-the-individual effects are independent of time-invariant personality factors and can be averaged across individuals. Technically, the estimator takes a time-invariant base level of happiness for each individual into account (fixed effect)."

However, the 17-nation study Stack and Eshelman's own study covered, collected data only during 1981-1983 and results were released in 1991. The 18,000 adults in those 17-nations were not re-surveyed or followed-up with which certainly limits the ability of their study to be as thorough or

encompassing as Stuzer and Frey's and certainly undeserving of the general sweeping statement the Alpha Center made from its conclusion.

So, the Alpha Center took a study that made a case for a trend but which itself acknowledged that other important factors or variables should be considered that they did not consider or which was not able to be considered with the type and scope of data they had to work with, most notably social selection, and made a false statement alleging for a fact, that married couples are happier and more satisfied than cohabitating couples. The statement is more about articulating the Alpha Center's Christian religious and philosophical beliefs about marriage than it is about presenting students with correct and accurate information. But there is another very troubling problem with the Alpha Center's statement; "Couples who live together are just as happy and satisfied with their lives as married couples are." The statement does not at all reflect the district's commitment to respect the variety of belief systems of students, expressed, for example, in the Senior High Health Course Description handed out in my daughter's health class at Rocky Mountain High in 2001, that I spoke of earlier which states, "The High School Health Course will provide current, accurate information regarding human sexuality throughout the life span, acknowledging a variety of belief systems to promote responsible personal sexual decisions."

"So not to acknowledge both the truth and reality that non-traditional family living situations, including that of cohabitating parent or parents, may very well report as much or greater satisfaction with their lives than some married couples, is to be dishonest and deceptive with students."

In a public school setting there are students who live in both traditional and non-traditional family structures. There are students who live in a home with both parents, parents who are a cohabitating couple or a married couple. Some students live with a single parent or a single parent who is cohabitating with an individual who has never had children or who may have children that either visit regularly or even live within that home. Clearly, those students' other parent lives elsewhere and may be re-married or cohabitating or single. Some students live in a home with a parent who has re-married and they may be living also with stepsiblings.

So not to acknowledge both the truth and reality that non-traditional family living situations, including that of a cohabiting parent or parents, may very well report as much or greater satisfaction with their lives than some married couples, is to be dishonest and deceptive with students while presenting a judgmental tone from a public educational body that should not be engaged in such and fails to reflect the district's stated commitment to respect a variety of belief systems among the student body.

When the Alpha Center was to present their abstinence-only till marriage STD/HIV curriculum in my daughter's ninth grade health class at Blevins in 2000, I spoke with the teacher and told her of my concerns about the Alpha Center's belief that the only option teens should be given is to remain abstinent until married. I told her I thought the better statement that would include an acknowledgement of the variety of family situations that students in her class experience, would be to say that we expect teens to remain abstinent until they are in an adult committed relationship. Students who live with cohabitating couples would not be left feeling that the teacher or the school was making moral judgments about their family's lifestyle choice, them or their parent or parents. The teacher agreed and expressed real concern herself about the message that would be relayed to students who did not live with both parents in a marital relationship and as a result she instructed the Alpha Center to not use the wording abstinent or abstinence until marriage.

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