Why women have less to gain from marriage

Marriage is more damaging to a woman's well-being than a man's because it offers her fewer immediate personal benefits, says research by a Government-funded group.

The One Plus One Marriage and Partnership Research organisation said that while married men appeared physically better off than single men, the same could not be said for married women.

Furthermore, single men were more likely to regard themselves as unhappy compared to married men. The same was not generally true of single women.

Research among more than 2,000 divorced couples found that women had to make a greater adjustment to marriage than men.

"The greater part of the husband's day will continue to be spent much as it was before his marriage, whereas this is rarely so for the wife," said Penny Mansfield, director of One Plus One.

"If she continues to work, she is likely to have to combine the job of housewife with that of full-time worker. This in itself may be a source of stress because she will have less opportunity for relaxation.

"Even if the wife does not work following marriage, there may be adjustment difficulties for her since she has to learn to adopt a completely different lifestyle.

"The absence of colleagues, workmates and the loss of an independent income will require varying degrees of adaptation which may all contribute to a sense of increasing isolation."

Half of those surveyed reported difficulties of sexual adjustment, particularly after the birth of a baby, while about the same (48 per cent) spoke of adjustment difficulties connected with housing and finance.

Most (73 per cent) said the problems which led to marital failure started within the first five years but for a third they surfaced within the first 12 months. The duration of marital "happiness" among the couples, whose marriages lasted an average of 10-14 years, was only 3.87 years.

The Government is spending millions of pounds on research into why marriages fail and what can be done to help couples stay together.

Family campaigners blame marital breakdown on Labour policies which have stripped away the tax benefits and most of the legal privileges that go with staying married.

In August the Lord Chancellor's department acknowledged that the number of couples who divorced rose for the first time in almost a decade. There were 860 more decrees absolute - the legal measure that finalises divorce - last year than in 2000, making a total of 137,270 completed divorces.

The organisation pointed to American research which showed that couples who did manage to stay married allowed each spouse to retain some sense of autonomy.

That meant being careful about what was argued about and accepting compromises. The basic components of long-lasting marriages were love, trust and respect.

Hmmmm..... Men get shafted by marriage too. I saw this posted recently:

„h Pro-choice only refers to the woman. The child and father have no rights.
„h A pregnant woman can force a man to be a father, but a man cannot force a woman to be a mother. She may terminate a pregnancy at any time, but a man has no means of compelling her to save a child he wants.
„h To some women you are worth nothing more than a donor and checkbook
„h The courts do not really give a damn about the child or father
„h The courts do not care if you are not the father once you have begun paying child support (see http://www.paternityfraud.com )
„h It is much easier to be declared an "unfit father" than an "unfit mother"
„h As far as everyone else cares, there is no special bond between father and child. A child without a mother lives a tragic existence. A child without a father is going to be just fine

by Raymond Hughes (RR 2 Box 475, Claremont, NH 03743; 603-542-2708); published Father's Day, 1995 in the News Leader, Claremont, NH
What do you say we thumb through some statistics for Father's Day? Here's a good one--twenty-five million children in the U.S. (40%) living without fathers. What's shocking about that, given all the hype about deadbeat dads?
Except, those 25,000,000 children weren't exactly abandoned by their fathers since over 80% of the divorces are filed by women, who get custody 90% of the time. Or the fact that fathers pay child support in full 90% of the time when both parents are awarded joint custody. Modify that to visitation "privileges," and the rate drops to 78%. Take away all fatherly contact and that's when the deadbeat dads show up--only 40% pay support.
Gee, how surprising, take a guy's kids completely away and he stops paying for them. Further inflating deadbeat dad statistics are things like the fact many of them actually are, dead, others have moved back in but the files haven't been upgraded, not to mention, about 690,000 of the 1.2 million-plus prisoners in this country are fathers.
But, male bashing in the media is such popular sport, dads as a whole are routinely maligned. We've just lived through the worst of what I call the "Disposable Dad" decade, just now abating. A telling interview was that of Princeton researcher Sarah McClanahan on Peter Jennings recently.In 1980 she began research to prove women could single parent without fathers--you know, the Murphy Brown myth. After a decade's research, she was forced to rewrite her thesis statement and admit that parenting without fathers is on par with child abuse.
The most insulting thing is that anyone ever assumed you could do it without fathers. The reality is that 70% of American prisoners grew up without fathers, and teen pregnancies are over double in fatherless families. A host of other social ills follow suit.
But, when the current socio-legal mind set is to throw the bum out if he isn't a perfect guy, it's no wonder so many aren't home.
I wrote a tongue-in-cheek column not long ago about spousal abuse. The serious joke is that advocates actually believe it's abusive if a man yells, or is emotionally abusive if he withholds affection, and that these things are grounds for battering charges.
These same advocates mislead the public into thinking domestic violence is a male trait, never mentioning studies like that by the Journal of Marriage and Family which found1.8 million women annually, but 2 million men annually are subject to one or more assaults from their spouse or live in.
Or the Children's Rights Coalition survey of state child-protective service agencies which found that mothers abuse children at a rate almost double men.
Or a widely-quoted study by UNH researcher Murray Straus that concludes women are more likely to be initiators of violence. Yet, it is women who can almost get a restraining order over the phone, then fathers who are sentenced without a trial to the gutter.
In Claremont, if a woman gets a restraining order, and according to one local lawyer, "they give them out like candy," the man is simply presumed guilty, given about 15 minutes to get his personal belongings and left out on the street. And, if he violates that restraining order, say, by going to see his children, he could be thrown in jail.
New Hampshire's most famous "batterer," Stephen Sarno, who hit his wife when he caught her in bed with another man, got 90 days in jail six months later for writing her three letters--three letters she said he could write, then turned him in for violating the restraining order. In the letters, by the way, Steve is merely asking his wife to bury the hatchet enough to work out what is best for the children. of course, Stephen is up against the same unit millions of other fathers are up against, and what father's rights advocates call "malcontent moms." These are mothers who routinely interfere with whatever meager visitation the father gets. Mothers who routinely falsely accuse fathers of stalking, sexual assault, abuse, non-payment of support.
Between 1989 and 1991 false accusations of child molestations against fathers rose almost 500%. A previous study found that up to 90% of all child molestation accusations against fathers were unfounded. There is almost never a penalty for false accusations.
Is it any wonder many dads simply drop out?
And, if the father does get the children, he'll probably get no support. According to the U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services, of 2,000,000 custodial fathers in the country caring for 3,000,000 children, and 488,000 rearing children born out of wedlock, only 80,000 receive any child support at all. That's about three percent.
So, when you read that Gordon and Marcia Clark are having custody problems, remember, it's probably not Gordon the deadbeat dad who didn't want the children, but Marcia the malcontent mom who didn't want him to have them. Though he had time and desire, she wanted him to pay a babysitter.
Next time you hear about deadbeat dads, come down to Monadnock Park and meet some dads who can't work on their kid's skills at home because they don't live in that home with their kids.
Somehow, the state and media got together and decided the only thing dads were good for was support money, and they buried the real story--fathers systematically denied access to their own flesh and blood. Since women control most purchasing decisions in families, perhaps this is why the media has tailored sponsorship-luring content accordingly?

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