Friday, February 03, 2006

$1 Million for Better Dads







That is my idea of a worthwhile fatherhood initiative.

Thursday, February 02, 2006

Married Touch Cures Fear

A fascinating study put wives in the anxiety-inducing MRI machine to make their brains fire stress! stress! stress! Then the researchers watched what happened to the women's brains when their husbands took their hands for reassurance. Immediately, the wives calmed down and their brains reduced their fear shots. Having strangers hold the women's hands did not have the same effect.

Even more fascinating, the anxiety-reducing effect was stronger for the closest couples. Dr. James A. Coan, a psychologist at the University of Virginia, the study's lead author, and his co-authors, Dr. Hillary Schaefer and Dr. Richard J. Davidson of the University of Wisconsin, said that "supercouples," who scored at the highest end of emotional closeness on the study's screening questionnaire, showed the biggest effects.

This leads to the natural question: when husbands are in the MRI machine and their wives are holding their hands, do we see the same anxiety and same anxiety reduction? I asked Dr. Coan, who reports that the team is busily conducting the complementary study. He added that they will also be testing homosexual couples to see if there is a similar effect.

Here is my hypothesis: wives are more reassured by their husbands' touch than vice-versa. This goes back to the discussion of protection as one of the jobs that husbands normally do. The great thing about a scientific hypothesis is that it can be tested, and a disconfirmation is as valuable as a confirmation. So we will see what the Coan team (Coan-heads? Surely not) report next year. I will keep an eye out for it.

Wednesday, February 01, 2006

Serial Monogamy, Serial Polygamy, or Worse?

Kate Zernike's story in the New York Times on rich guys who dump their wives for younger models over and over again, "The Ex-Ex-Ex-Men," is sad.

It does raise the question, though, of whether we should think of this phenomenon as serial monogamy, or serial polygamy. Since polygamy is illegal in our country, these relations have the form of monogamy. Often these deluded playboys imagine that they are in love and that this is really for life. For a while.

Still, polygamy seems to be a closer model. In formally polygamous societies, only rich men can afford multiple wives, leaving poor guys without any. In those societies, each woman and her children typically has their own house, while the husband moves from one wife's house to another. In our society, the rich man pays off the old wife so she and her children can set up their own household, while he moves on to the next. The lead example in the Zernike story is Ron Perelman, who recently dropped wife number four, Ellen Barkin. The story noted that Perelman had paid off his four exes, according to their prenuptial agreements, in the amounts of, respectively, $8 million, $80 million, and $30 million, while Ms. Barkin got $20 million. Evidently wife number two understood her man the best.

The theory of the prenuptial agreement is that it removes any temptation for the poorer party (unless you're Oprah, that would be "her") to try to get half through a divorce, while it costs the richer party (read: "him") enough to make him think twice about dumping her and moving on. And a $20 million payout to his most recent blonde might give the average millionaire pause. To a billionaire like Perelman, though, it is just another business expense.

In Perelman's case – or Donald Trump's, or any number of hugely rich guys who give themselves "weddings" every few years -- this sequence of payoffs, though, suggests another way of thinking about what these relations amount to: prostitution.

Sad, sad, sad.

Tuesday, January 31, 2006

Who Sets the Housework Standards, Anyway?

[Today we welcome our first guest blogger, Sporcupine (Mrs. Gruntled).]

The more I think about it, the more I wonder if those housework studies assume that whatever the wife does is needed housework, and I wonder if that's fair.

If he's happy with a cleaning service vacuuming every other week and she insists on vacuuming every other day, is someone "right" in that debate?

If he'd alternate franks-and-beans with mac-and-cheese forever, backed with proper vegetables, and she wants to cook from scratch four times a week, what's fair? Does it matter how many cookbooks they each purchase and read?

If he'd serve company on plastic plates on the porch and she likes to get down the heirloom china, set the table with all the pieces, and later wash the china by hand to protect the gilded edge, what's the deal? We know she's elegant and he's practical, but what's an equitable split on washing up?

Home decorating is especially open to different expectations. What if she changes to different slipcovers for each season of the year, and he doesn't even notice the change? What if she carefully selects a different Longaberger basket to display in each room of the house, and he doesn't remember ever hearing the word "Longaberger"?

When the issue is adding grace, beauty, and style to a family's life, I can admire the spouse who wants to set a high standard, without saying the other spouse should do half the work to meet that goal. If the studies don't offer any distinction between necessities and niceties, I think that's a flaw.

Monday, January 30, 2006

Protection is Housework, Too








Sunday, January 29, 2006

Hurrah for The Bible and Its Influence




