Sliding vs Deciding: Scott Stanley's Blog: Changes in Family and Opportunity in Our Society: Three Media Stories

Thursday, March 28, 2013

Changes in Family and Opportunity in Our Society: Three Media Stories

Kay Hymowitz, Brad Wilcox, and Kelleen Kaye wrote a thoughtful piece that appeared on March 15^th in the Wall Street Journal. Their article, entitled The New Unmarried Moms, talks about the fact that childbearing is now exploding among unmarrieds in their 20s.

If you read my blog regularly, you know that there is a constant, running argument about the chicken and egg dynamics between family structure, family stability, commitment between two parents, and economic opportunities and outcomes. If you have not already seen their piece, I encourage you to read it because it is an excellent example of putting all these variables in one place, with a considered analysis of how they intersect.

If you want to go further on these themes, there was an excellent presentation at The Brookings Institute on March 20^th. This too, I highly recommend for those you who are interested in these societal trends and thoughtful discussions about them. There are two presentations, both under the theme Knot Yet (here and here), and they include noted experts and commentators: Ron Haskins (moderating), David Lapp, Brad Wilcox, Isabel Sawhill, Andrew Cherlin, Jared Bernstein, Ross Douthat, and Jamelle Bouie.

And finally, I want to recommend a third, recent article the media, entitled Study of Men’s Falling Income Cites Single Parents in the New York Times on March 20^th. This one focuses on the economic plight of men in the context of family trends. Among the major points raised by Binyamin Appelbaum in this article is that “the economic struggles of male workers are both a cause and an effect of the breakdown of traditional households.” The piece is related to a growing concern about the place of men in all of the societal changes. One of the important points Applebaum makes is that, for those at the advantaged part of the spectrum, women have gotten the message that education is crucial for getting and keeping good jobs, but men do not seem to be seeing or taking the same opportunities.

It is very concerning that a growing number of men not to have an important place in either economic or family roles. Advances made by women are terrific, but something of great importance is simultaneously happening to men who are economic (and family wise) disadvantaged.

There you have it: Three, recent, important doses of information about important family and economic trends. I encourage you to take in all three sources if you have the time and the interest.

Why Sliding vs. Deciding?

Sliding vs. Deciding is a theme that comes out of my study of commitment and my work with my major colleague in this area, Galena Rhoades, and the work of other scholars on how couples go through important relationship transitions. I believe “sliding vs. deciding” captures something important about how romantic relationships develop. The core idea is that people often slide through important transitions in relationships rather than deciding what they are doing and what it means, especially regarding commitment. An important paper by Wendy Manning and Pamela Smock (2005) was influential in our thinking about how couples transitioned into living together. They conducted a qualitative study of cohabiting couples and found that over one half of couples who are living together didn’t talk about it or make any decision, but simply slid into doing so. Another paper having a large influence on this thinking was written by Jo Lindsey (2000). She found that the cohabiting couples she interviewed could not articulate how they came to be living together. In fact, as she puts it, it seemed like they had no agency in how it happened. Lindsay concluded that the fundamental characteristic of cohabitation was ambiguity, a theme we often discuss. Manning and Smock, Lindsay, and other researchers have noted that, for most couples, moving in together was nothing like a clear decision about what the couple was doing. Thus, it very often is not anything like a how people form a clear commitment. In one of our quantitative studies of cohabitation, we have found that most cohabiters report a process more like sliding into cohabitation than talking about it and making a decision about it.

We believe this sliding vs. deciding dynamic which is quite obvious in how couples come to live together is common in many important relationship transitions, including pregnancy, having children, work, as well as in how couples drift into regular patterns of who does what. In contrast to sliding, commitments that we are most likely to follow through on are based in decisions. In fact, commitment is making a choice to give up other choices. A commitment is a decision. Do we always need to be making a decision about things? I hope not. But when something important in life is at stake, I believe that deciding will trump sliding in how things turn out.

One of the most important implications of the concept of sliding vs. deciding is when this theme is married to our work and thought on the depths of ambiguity in relationship formation these days and our ideas about inertia. What people are often now seeing is that they are sliding through relationship transitions that cause them to increase constraints and lose options before (or without) noticing that they have just entered a more constrained pathway. As a result, we believe that many people are too often giving up options before they have made a choice. That is far from making a choice to give up other choices. That's losing options because one is not noticing an important, or even potentially high cost slide, is not what solid commitment formation is about.

Three theory papers written by me and Galena Rhoades are accessible above at the links: "Sliding vs. Deciding: Inertia and the Premarital Cohabitation Effect", "Commitment: Functions, Formation, and the Securing of Romantic Attachment," and the link labeled "SvD Transition and Risk Model."

Sliding vs Deciding: Scott Stanley's Blog

Thursday, March 28, 2013

Changes in Family and Opportunity in Our Society: Three Media Stories

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