The Bonus Years of Adulthood

Remarriage Is More Fragile Than First Marriage

Maggie Scarf — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 20:41:12 +0000

Are second marriages more fragile than first marriages?

Are later marriages generally more successful and stable than first-time marriages? And, given that most remarriages (some 90 percent) follow upon divorce rather than death, do the disaffected ex-partners tend to make smarter, more mutually satisfying choices in a second or higher-order relationship?

Apparently not. The rate of marital breakup is spectacularly high in America--currently, over half of all first marriages end in divorce; but the rate of marital breakup in subsequent marriages is 10% higher—some 60%. As sociologists Frank Furstenberg and Andrew Cherlin point out in Divided Families, many remarried families simply don't make it through their early years together; about one fourth of all second marriages break apart within a five year period. This is a rate of marital disruption which is "significantly higher than the level among first marriages" according to Furstenberg and Cherlin.

But curiously enough, this enhanced risk of re-divorce exists only for the first five years of the remarried family's existence. At that point in time, the new family's chances of remaining together are roughly the same, or even better, than those of a family living in an intact, first-time-ever nuclear household.

The Emergence of the Marriage Gap

Maggie Scarf — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 19:53:14 +0000

What is the "marriage gap"?

Since the great social ferment of the 1960s, a number of alternatives to old-fashioned, traditional marriage have emerged on the social scene. Relationships that once were viewed as morally offensive - sexual partners living together before marrying; out-of-wedlock births; single-parent child rearing - are now both acceptable and commonplace. Couples enter wedlock with a more light-hearted attitude ("If this doesn't work out, I can move on). A reflection of this is the fact that between the 1960s and the 1990s, the divorce rate tripled; it has now flattened, and gone down a slight amount, but at the present time, there is little social stigma in the wake of a divorce. Paradoxically, it seems that the only people putting up a desperate fight for the right to get married are members of the gay community - and they're not having an easy time of it.

Less obvious to the population at large is a phenomenon that sociologists have termed "the marriage gap." This "gap" refers to the ever-widening chasm between poor, uneducated mothers - who often have their babies without getting married - and their more affluent sisters, who have the means and the impetus to get educated and start their careers before marrying and starting to create their families. Scholars of the family tell me that, at present, the divorce rate is going down among these more advantaged couples and up among those poorer, less-educated couples who do decide to tie the marital knot. As social scientist Andrew Cherlin suggests, the marriages of the financially stressed are more fragile from the get-go. "They never have enough money ; they have health problems; they have to deal with the trying, difficult lives of poverty."Obviously, this can cause tensions in a marriage; it can also cause people to forego getting married in the first place.

It should be added that cultural factors are also intertwined with these economic factors, for whites and Latinos are more likely to be married than are African-Americans, in the same way that wealthier people are more likely to be married than are the poor.

For an excellent discussion of "the marriage gap" and related issues, see:

CHERLIN, ANDREW J.THE DEINSTITUIONALIZATION OF AMERICAN MARRIAGE
Journal of Marriage and Family 66 (November 2004): 848-861

Have we foreknowledge of our fates?

Maggie Scarf — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 21:44:28 +0000

Is there such a thing as foreknowledge of one's fate? Carl Jung thought that such a phenomenon existed. A patient of his dreamed of being in a skiing accident in which he was killed, and Jung advised him sternly to cancel plans for a forthcoming ski holiday. The patient ignored that advice and went ahead with his plans: He actually did die in a ski accident during that ski trip!
I am thinking of this because a friend of mine used to tell me that her greatest fear was of becoming a bag lady in her old age. I laughed at the suggestion: The woman was in her early fifties at the time, and was the editor-in-chief of a well-known magazine. She lived in an elegant apartment in Manhattan, commanded a substantial salary and was a staple of the New York social scene. That was fifteen years ago. Since then, she has been retired from her job, lives on her accumulated savings and has wanted for nothing. But I just heard that all of her money was invested with that scoundrel Bernie Madoff. She is broke. The destiny she most feared is upon her. What made her so sure it awaited her? Was there something ineffable - something that she just knew in her bones?

Interview with a Pentecostal

Maggie Scarf — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 15:51:03 +0000

He identified himself as a Pentecostal on my e-mail, and asked for an interview in regard to my recent book, September Songs. My book is about "young-old" adult long-marrieds (couples 50-75 yrs), so I thought the topic of our talk would be clear. But should I identify myself as Secular in advance, or just let the subject come up in our talk? I decided on the latter course.
However when he called, at the appointed time, he didn't want to talk about "senior marriage"; he wanted to talk about sex. Sex with a capital S. He asked me what I thought about sex between older singles? I said I hadn't studied older singles. He asked me what I thought about the new ways in which older singles "hooked up" these days? I said "hooking up" could mean anything from becoming acquainted to having sexual intercourse; he decided to let that question go by without further comment. Then he wanted to know what I thought of the new medications such as Viagra? Next he asked if I could comment on the degree of knowledge that seniors had in regard to the spread of STD's?
I told him I wasn't a physician and hadn't encountered sexual acting out in the older married adults in my research sample.

When our conversation was over, I went to Wikipedia and looked up "Pentecostal." I learned that it was a charismatic form of Christianity which emphasized the "direct personal experience of God through rhe baptism of the Holy Spirit."
Well, okay....I'm still trying to figure out what that conversation was really about.

Is This Really Worth Fighting About?

Maggie Scarf — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 19:41:31 +0000

The intensity of arguments change over time. In 1980, I wrote a book about marriage - Intimate Partners - in which the oldest couple interviewed was in their late forties. I got a lot of flak about that from older readers, who wrote to me and said, "Hey, what about us? We're still alive and kicking! Why exclude the marriages of older people?

I recognized the validity of that complaint, but for the next twenty years I never really returned to the subject of couples' relationships. When I finally decided to do so, and began talking with couples in their older adult years - including some of the pairs that I'd interviewed two decades earlier - I was in for some surprises! I was finding a lot of contentment and well-being in marriages that had been tense and stormy the first time around.

I was buffaloed. Much of my writing life has been devoted to identifying and solving problems - but the folks I was talking to were in an unexpectedly good place. It wasn't that they were without issues and differences - but they seemed to be on the same page when it came to resolving them.

Here's an example from my own long-married life. My husband and I were lunching with dear friends when the issue of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict arose. The discussion became very heated very quickly when my husband raised his hand and said "I have a proposal. Let's stop this discussion now." The other couple laughed, and so did we, and we turned to other subjects, including political ones upon which we agree.

The interesting aftermath of this incident is that whenever my husband and I get into a heated discussion - and we just had one about where we should spend our next vacation - one or the other of us raises our hand and simply says the word "Palestine." We laugh, and we drop the subject right there. It's become our magic word for respecting the fact that each of has espoused a strong position - and it's really not worth fighting about.
It took us a long time - believe me - to get here.

The Bonus Years of Adult Life

Maggie Scarf — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 16:09:40 +0000

Exploring this new stage of the life-cycle.

Something truly miraculous has happened in the course of the last century; which is that 25-30 years have been added to the life-span. If you’d been born in1900, your average life expectancy would have been fifty years of age. At the present time, average life expectancy hovers around eighty years, and that figure continues to rise. Just think of it! A whole new phase has been added to the human life-cycle. A new period of adulthood that never even existed before is now with us!. And it’s unfamiliar in many ways, because most people (and therefore, most couples) simply didn’t live this long. In the twinkle of an evolutionary eye, more years have been added to the life span than were added in the past 5000 years of recorded history.
As a result, we now have more couples aged 65 and over who are living together than ever before. These are among the folks I studied - spouses in the 50 to 75 year old age-range - whom gerontologists call the “young old.” This demographic includes the first wave of the baby boomers, who are now turning 62. I found that while folks in this group often do have some health issues, they are generally in pretty good shape, vital, and engaged in the world around them. But astonishingly little research attention has been lavished upon them, despite the fact that we live in aging world.- one in which a boomer will be reaching age sixty every seven seconds for the next two decades.