Ben Caldwell

How to get the divorce rate wrong

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Do what a CNBC reporter did: Ask divorce lawyers.
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           

Wedding ringsI’ve mentioned here in the past that estimates of the divorce rate are notoriously difficult to make well. There’s some inherent guesswork involved, unless you just wait for an entire annual cohort of marriages to reach either death or divorce. And that would take a long time. To simply compare a given year’s number of marriages with that year’s number of divorces is to compare different cohorts, making estimates of the divorce rate done that way wildly inaccurate.

Instead, demographers and social scientists do the best-educated guesswork they can based on past data and current trends. (Government data does not do forward-looking prediction, but rather focuses on divorces that have already occurred.) As new divorce-rate studies are released, you can keep up with them on the Divorce Statistics and Studies Blog. Reasonable people can disagree about the best scientific ways to determine the divorce rate, and there is probably some value to several different approaches. So news reporters, talking to scientists, will sometimes come up with different numbers, and that’s okay. They tend to wind up in that least the same neighborhood. (That neighborhood, by the way, projects the divorce rate for people getting married this year in the low 40s, percentage-wise.)

What is not okay — what shows rather extreme laziness in news reporting — is to ask a scientific question of someone who is in no place to answer it, and then not bother to check the accuracy of their statement. What’s even worse is when that person can directly benefit from providing misinformation.

So it went with CNBC.com in September, when reporter Cindy Perman opened her story about affairs (reprinted by USA Today) by providing an estimate of the divorce rate — a measurable, objective, scientific thing — helpfully volunteered by the director of the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers.

The problems with this are so obvious that I’m stunned the article was printed. I don’t even blame the lawyer, at least not any more than I blame spokespeople from the National Association of Realtors for suggesting that any economic news, good or bad, means it’s a great time to buy a home. They’re lying, but that’s their job. I just wish reporters would subject those claims to actual scrutiny.

Like, fact-checking.

I’ll say it here again: The divorce rate in the US probably never got as high as 50%, and is currently declining. The best current estimates of the divorce rate place it in the low 40s, and the divorce rate is much lower for well-educated couples than for less-educated couples.

It’s a topic taken on quite well by Tara Parker-Pope in her book For Better, which dissects the science surrounding a number of elements of marriage and divorce.

Any time you see the lazy and wrong estimate that half of all marriages end in divorce, go ahead and — nicely — say something to correct it. I suppose as a couples therapist I might also benefit from inflating the divorce rate, but I’d rather let facts speak for themselves — and I think effective, widely-available therapy would bring down the divorce rate even further. It would save us all some money, too.

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If you know of egregious repeat offenders with the half-of-all-marriages-end-in-divorce nonsense, email examples to me at ben[at]bencaldwell.com, post a comment below, or send me a link to it on Twitter. Of course, other comments are always welcome.

The myth of the portable license

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California’s new LPCC isn’t any more of a “national license” than the MFT license is: not at all. Why do rumors persist that it is?                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            

Cloth SuitcaseHere in California, we’re currently in the middle of the grandparenting period for licensed MFTs and LCSWs who want the state’s new Licensed Professional Clinical Counselor (LPCC) license. One of the most common reasons I hear from MFTs for wanting the LPCC is the notion that it, unlike the MFT, is a “national license.”

Except it isn’t.

For clarity: An LPCC license is no more of a national license than an MFT license, which is to say, neither is a national license at all. Both are state licenses only. Both professions now have licensure laws in all of the 50 United States (and DC), but for both, the licensing laws from state to state differ. How portable your license is — that is, how easily you could get licensed in a new state once you move — depends on a number of factors, including which state you move to. (For more on this, see my earlier post on MFTs and license portability.) But neither license has true reciprocity, which is automatic recognition of another state’s license.

The only reason I know of that could explain the myth of a portable LPCC license is that California’s Board of Behavioral Sciences is recognizing the National Clinical Mental Health Counselor Exam for LPCCs, while for MFTs, we use state-based exams. Admittedly, that can make moving into or out of California with an MFT license slightly more challenging: If you move into California, even if you have been licensed elsewhere for decades, you will need to take California’s MFT licensing exams. And if you move out of California, even if you have been licensed here for decades, you will need to take the National MFT Exam (many states also require a state-based law and ethics exam) to get licensed in your new home state. But the BBS has already gotten legislative approval to restructure the MFT license exam process, and is working with the folks who develop the National MFT Exam to have that exam offered and recognized in California. So that difference between the professions will hopefully be vanishing in the not-too-distant future.

There are good reasons for some MFTs to pursue the California LPCC license. Unfortunately, the ones I hear most often from MFTs as their motivators are falsehoods, and this portability issue is a great example.

If you are interested in hearing more about the LPCC license (including debunking of more myths!), differences between the philosophies of MFT and LPCC, scopes of practice, legal and workplace recognition, and much, much more, please consider attending “The California LPCC,” a presentation I’m giving with Angela Kahn, MA. Angela has helped develop the LPCC curriculum for Antioch University in Los Angeles, and is going through the grandparenting process; I helped AAMFT-CA negotiate what became the LPCC licensing bill, and I’m probably not going to go through grandparenting. So we present an informed perspective from both sides of that question. We’re giving the talk at Antioch in LA this Saturday, November 19 (that one’s just for Antioch students, faculty and alumni, so contact the school for more info or to RSVP). We’re also giving the talk in San Diego on December 3. Use this link for more information or to register: The California LPCC, Dec. 3, San Diego.

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Your comments are always free to cross state lines. Offer them here, by email to ben[at]bencaldwell[dot]com, or through my easily-portable Twitter feed.

Boy trouble

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A discussion of Kay Hymowitz’s Manning Up and Leonard Sax’s Boys Adrift.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            

The Strong Man of the Police School (1906) - TIMEAWhile men have long been stereotyped as perpetual teenagers, a swath of recent books and articles have expressed rising concern about the failure of boys and young men in the United States to achieve traditional markers of adulthood. Young men appear to be falling behind young women in educational achievement, meaningful careers, and social relationships, and often seem unmotivated to move forward in their lives.

I have been reading both Kay Hymowitz’s Manning Up and Leonard Sax’s Boys Adrift, two books that take jarringly different perspectives on what is happening to boys and young men in America, and what needs to be done about it.

As a social critic, Hymowitz is unconvincing. Manning Up reads like more like the off-the-rails final essay from her Marriage and Caste in America than the sharp, concise and well-supported other essays that led up to it. In Manning Up, Hymowitz far too frequently relies on anecdotes as evidence, as if Sex and the City reflected the average American woman’s daily life. Manning Up displays assumptions about feminism and suggestions about men that Hymowitz never bothers to defend, like the notion that men marrying at later ages is bad for women and society. The book is not as shrill as some of its Amazon reviews would have you believe, but neither is it particularly strong in landing its argument. That argument essentially is that feminism is to blame for the struggles of boys and young men, but it is up to men to adapt to the changing world, and they’re dropping the ball so far.

Boys Adrift is a welcome contrast. It frames the problems American boys are facing in the context of five causes: Video games, teaching methods, prescription drugs, environmental toxins, and devaluation of masculinity. Some of those proposed causes may strike you as questionable at first (that was certainly my reaction), but Sax lays out the research on each quite well.

Perhaps more importantly, the tone of the book is right. Sax strikes the difficult balance between objective researcher and social activist, landing somewhere in the neighborhood of a concerned, but not panicked, parent. Boys Adrift is clear and convincing, and while it makes a number of public policy arguments, it focuses primarily on what parents and family members can do to ensure their own sons are the motivated and active young men we would all want them to be.

By simply confirming what some may want to believe about men, Hymowitz is likely to enjoy higher sales. But Sax wrote the better book.

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What are your thoughts on the struggles boys are facing in the United States? Have either of these books, or others, changed your thinking? Your comments are welcomed. You can also email me at ben[at]bencaldwell[dot]com, or share your reactions via Twitter.

Four myths about MFT licensing exams

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Go ahead and be anxious about your licensing exam process — it’s a big deal! But don’t buy into grumbling falsehoods about it. Test items are written by actual MFTs, and there are no trick questions.

Every person who becomes a licensed marriage and family therapist has to go through an examination process. In most states, that means passing the National MFT Exam. Many states also supplement the national exam with a second exam covering areas of state law (for example, ensuring that therapists are familiar with that state’s requirements for child abuse reporting). In California, the exam process is a bit different; California MFTs must pass two state-run exams, the MFT Standard Written Exam and the MFT Written Clinical Vignette Exam. [Update: The California MFT licensing exams change structure on January 1, 2016.] The overall content and structure of California’s exams are similar to the National MFT Exam — they’re multiple-choice tests that use a combination of factual questions and case-vignette-based questions.

Regardless of what state you’re in, if you haven’t taken the exam(s) yet, you may be dreading them. Even if you have gone through the exam process, you may not have fond memories of it. I hear complaints about the licensing exam process on a regular basis — most of them based on total mythology. It’s as if we (quite understandably) have anxiety-based associations with our testing process, past or future, and then (far less understandably) conjure up rational-sounding but totally baseless complaints about the process in an attempt to justify those fears.

It’s okay to be anxious about the process on its own merits. The exams are high-stakes; if you fail, you typically have to wait several months to try again. That impacts your standing among your peers, your employment options, and potentially your income. I still remember completing California’s Written Clinical Vignette exam and feeling certain I had failed. In a matter of moments, I was mentally planning how I would explain the failure to my employer, and how I would plan to do better next time. It turned out I had passed, but the memory of those anxious moments before getting my results stays with me.

If I had failed, I wanted to blame someone else: How dare that test be too hard for me! It must be the test’s fault! I’m glad I didn’t take much of a walk down that road, but if I had, I would have had plenty of company. Once a rumor has started that serves to explain why the tests feel so frightening and why we feel so unsure of ourselves going into them, it is easy for that rumor to be perpetuated. Such stories are factually wrong, and ultimately do more of a disservice to future test-takers by making the exams look cruel and unpredictable. But to someone who has failed a test (or is worried they might), the stories offer comfort — and someone else to blame. So they live on each year.

Here are the four myths I hear about MFT licensing exams the most:

  1. There are trick questions. Simply put, a licensing exam that uses trick questions would not be legally defensible. Test developers go to tremendous lengths to make sure any potential exam item works well, through several layers of review and pilot testing. If too many people are missing a question, it gets flagged for even more review. If a question appears to be tricking people, either by design or by accident, it is removed.
  2. There is secret knowledge. Test-prep companies make a lot of money perpetuating the mythology that they can provide you with “secrets” or other insider knowledge to help you pass the tests. Nonsense. Both California and AMFTRB (developers of the national exam) offer study guides that say what will be covered on the exams, and they ultimately draw their questions from the same textbooks and journal articles that graduate programs use to teach their students.
  3. They are meant to assess whether you are a good therapist. If I may be blunt, your licensing board does not care whether you are a great therapist or a lousy one. They only care about whether you can practice marriage and family therapy competently enough so as to not be a danger to the public. That’s what the exams are meant to assess. Yes, it is sometimes true that ineffective therapists pass their licensing exams, and effective therapists fail. But effectiveness and potential dangerousness are two different things. If you want an outside evaluation of your quality as a therapist, look elsewhere. (Back in 2008, I examined in more detail the question of whether licensing exams lead to better quality therapists.)
  4. They are written by people who aren’t therapists. Both California and the AMFTRB use licensed therapists to write their test items. In California, you can apply to be a subject matter expert involved in writing the exams. Elsewhere in the country, AMFTRB intermittently recruits MFTs with relevant expertise. Every test item on both the California and National MFT Exams is written by one or more practicing MFTs.

If you’re anxious about your own upcoming exams, instead of buying into the falsehoods above, you’ll likely be better off to do something about that anxiety. Maybe that means simply more studying, or maybe it means more directly addressing the anxiety through meditation, therapy, or other means. (Test-prep programs may be of questionable value overall, but if they can help you feel more knowledgeable and less anxious as you take the tests, they may well be worth your time and money.) Rest assured the exam process, and those who designed it, are not out to get you or to trick you. With the right preparation, you can do well on exam day.

If you know someone else who is anxious about their exams, or even who has failed an exam, by all means, comfort them and empathize with them. Sometimes we just have bad days. But please don’t support any of the mythology above — those ideas just make the testing process look bigger, scarier, and less under your control than it really is.

MFT student alleges racial discrimination kept her from degree

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A former MFT student at Southern Mississippi has sued the university, claiming their discrimination made it impossible for her to complete her practicum hours.

JudgesTools IconAccording to a report in Monday’s Hattiesburg American, former MFT student Maria Salcido has sued the University of Southern Mississippi over alleged racial discrimination. Salcido, who is Hispanic, alleges that she was told by faculty that she needed to secure a practicum working with Hispanic clients, and that the program then failed to find her such a placement. Salcido left the program in 2009 and moved to Wisconsin, though it is unclear from the newspaper report whether she left the program voluntarily or was kicked out.

Salcido appears to have completed all the rest of her academic coursework; the report indicates that both sides agree she only needs to complete the practicum to complete her masters degree. Salcido is seeking compensation, punitive damages, and the opportunity to finish her degree.

The newspaper attempted to reach the university’s lawyer for a response, but had not been successful as of Monday. According to a response the university filed in court, the university and its employees consistently acted legally and properly within their professional roles, and Salcido’s claims of racial discrimination are not accurate.

The case is currently at the District Court level as Salcido v Southern Mississippi et al. I’ll be keeping an eye out for more information as the case progresses.

Update: Salcido’s case was dismissed.

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Comments are welcome below. In addition, you can email me at ben[at]bencaldwell.com, or educate me via my Twitter feed.