Last week, when USA Today ran a story titled, "Federally funded ad campaign holds up value of marriage," I immediately blogged about it here. The person who wrote that story, Sharon Jayson, called to talk to me yesterday about my post. So the first thing I want to say to Sharon Jayson and to USA Today is thank-you. I'm not trained in journalism but I have little doubt that responsiveness to criticism is a hallmark of high professional standards in that field.
I want to thank Jayson and USA Today, too, because blogs are still disputed territory in the media, so responding to a blog post is a way of taking this form of expression seriously.
Jayson and I discussed two issues: Was USA Today really coming down on the side of marriage or marriage-promotion? And, what does the science really say about the implications of getting married? I think that she was right about the first and I was right about the second.
Was USA Today really coming down on the side of marriage or marriage-promotion?
I said in my post that the headline, "Federally funded ad campaign holds up value of marriage," and the colorful graphic alongside it, was "pom-pom raising." I also noted that the SmartMarriages group took the USA Today story and ran with it as a celebration of their own marriage-promotion positions.
Jayson said that the headline was meant to convey the position of the federal ad campaign and not the position of USA Today. The illustration showed the statue of liberty holding a giant wedding cake in her hand, adorned with the typical bride-and-groom cake-topper. Jayson said that in the meeting that USA Today held to discuss the article and accompanying graphics, no one ever expressed a desire to promote marriage or marriage-promotion. (I still think the image is matrimaniacal, but I'll let it go.) Finally, she said that she has no control over what groups such as SmartMarriages do with her articles, and I surely agree with that.
What does the science really say about the implications of getting married?
My major objection to the USA Today story was Jayson's summary statement about the science of marriage: "Research suggests a bevy of benefits for those who marry, including better health, greater wealth and more happiness for the couple, and improved well-being for children."
About that statement, I said in my original post, "Actually, it doesn't, except for the wealth part. That claim is true.... What are vastly overstated or just plain wrong are the claims that getting married makes you healthier and happier and rescues your children from doom."
It has been one of the primary purposes of Singled Out and of this blog to show that many of the claims about getting married are exaggerations, misrepresentations, or flat-out falsehoods.
One of Jayson's responses to my claim was to acknowledge that there are studies here and there in which the currently married people do not look happier or healthier than the currently unmarried people. Basically, she was suggesting that any studies showing that marrying does not improve health or happiness are the exceptions.
I don't think those kinds of studies say ANYTHING about the implications of marrying. They can't, because they use a cheater methodology. They compare people who got married and stayed married to others, including those who got married and then got unmarried. They then say, "Look, people who are currently married are happier and healthier than other people, including people who got divorced. So hey, everyone, get married and stay that way!" As I've explained before (here and here), that would be like a drug company making claims about the effectiveness of its new drug, based on a study in which only those people who took the drug and liked it were included in the drug group!
I offered a challenge to Jayson, and now I will offer it to everyone else as well - all other reporters, scientists, marriage-promoters, marriage skeptics, and interested disinterested readers. Here it is: Find one study - just one - that shows, using a non-cheater methodology, that getting married results in greater health or happiness. I think that if you can find one or two (and I don't know that you can), they will be the exceptions.
Here's what such a study would need to look like. It would follow people over the course of their lives as they transitioned from being single to getting married. The group of people who got married would have to include all people who ever got married - not just the ones who got married and stayed married. Why? Because that's the claim that is being made. Look again at the quote from the USA Today article: "Research suggests a bevy of benefits for those who marry." The claim is that marrying makes you happier or healthier. Where's the evidence?
In Chapter 2 of Singled Out, I discussed in some detail, complete with graphs, the results of what is probably the largest and longest-lasting study of the happiness implications of getting married. The study has been going on for more than 20 years. The results showed that for those people who got married and stayed married, their happiness increased about a quarter of a point (on a 0 to 10 scale) around the year of the wedding. Within a few years, though, they went back to being about as happy as they were when they were single. So they got just a temporary blip in happiness, and that was only for those who got married and STAYED that way. Those who would eventually divorce did not experience the happiness honeymoon - on the average, they were already becoming less happy, not more so, as their wedding day approached. Their happiness continued to decline until the year before their divorce became official.
The authors did not report any analyses in which all of the people who ever got married were included (the proper test of the claim that if you get married, you get happy). Putting together the results of the people who stayed married and those who divorced, though, clearly does not add up to scientific evidence that getting married means getting happy. It may even suggest the reverse - we'd need to see the graph.
Conclusion
I'm not saying you shouldn't get married if that's what you want to do. I am saying, though - based on the scientific evidence, properly analyzed and interpreted - that you should not expect the act of marrying to transform you, magically, into a happier and healthier person. (And also, federal government, don't use my taxpayer money to try to persuade people to marry, based on bogus science. In fact, don't do it at all. The Chicago Sun-Times is polling on the matter; if you want to vote, click here.)
About the claim that getting married makes you happier and healthier, I'm not just saying that there are exceptions here or there. I'm saying something much bolder: If there are any properly-conducted and analyzed studies showing that getting married makes you happier or healthier, THEY are the exceptions!
Finally, thanks again to Sharon Jayson and USA Today for following up on my critique of their story.
