marriage

CAMFT articles supporting traditional marriage: A detailed response

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CAMFT’s latest issue of The Therapist claims to provide a somewhat balanced look at perspectives for and against same-sex marriage. The articles opposing same-sex marriage deserve a detailed response.

Full disclosure: I personally support same-sex marriage, and also believe a meaningful argument can be made against it, based primarily on the strange intertwining of marriage as both a religious and governmental institution. As you’ll see below, I believe there are genuine ethical issues that will need clarification from mental health associations as gay marriage moves forward, to ensure that religious counselors are not discriminated against. In other words, there is a worthwhile discussion to be had here, on issues of ethics, law, and spirituality. Unfortunately, most of the articles presented in CAMFT’s magazine feature irrelevant or inaccurate arguments, which is too bad. I’ve previously discussed why I believe the “debate” as CAMFT presents it is fundamentally flawed, but that was more of a broad-brush response. Below are more detailed responses to each article in the “Supporting Traditional Marriage” section.

An Inside Look at Gay Parenting

The lead article in the section details one woman’s horrific childhood with a father who had horrible boundaries around his daughter and many male partners, but notably, stayed in a heterosexual marriage. Without a doubt, she genuinely suffered in her home, and I feel for her. Her plight, though, cannot be taken as an indictment of all gay parents any more than one case of horribly abusive, boundary-free heterosexual parenting can be taken as an indictment of all mother-father couplings. The author’s experience was clearly very painful, but it is not the norm for any parents, gay or straight. It also does nothing to advance the marriage argument, given that her mother and father apparently remained married through the traumatic childhood she recounts.

Developments Ensuing Upon the Legal Recognition of Same-Sex Marriage in Massachusetts

To his credit, author Scott FitzGibbon gets his facts mostly right, and his article is well-referenced from relatively objective sources. I simply don’t understand his alarmism.

As legalization of same-sex marriage in Massachusetts was arriving, Boston Public Schools developed a zero-tolerance policy for hate speech, including speech that would result in bias against gay or lesbian students. (“Bias” being a fairly vague term, the Boston policy has since been clarified to apply only to speech or action that results in a “hostile or discriminatory environment,” a fairly important fact to be excluded from the article.) Zero-tolerance policies are generally bad policies, but this policy is neither especially egregious nor especially gay-friendly. Yes, teachers would be subject to discipline if their speech or actions resulted in a hostile environment against gay or lesbian students. They would be equally subject to discipline if their speech resulted in a hostile environment against straight students, or religious students. It’s bad policy, but it’s equal treatment.

The US District Court for Massachusetts has held that the state’s schools have a responsibility to present students with materials that will foster respect for diversity. While the decision focused on same-sex families, its principles apply equally to religious diversity. FitzGibbon warns of the “absence of a reference to promoting critical thought,” as though teaching respect for diversity somehow excludes critical thinking; again, consider the parallel with religious diversity. Schools should be teaching students to honor and respect classmates whose religious viewpoints differ from their own. School is not the place for students to be taught that one religious viewpoint is better than another. The ruling seems both appropriate and appropriately limited.

Apparently readers are supposed to be shocked and alarmed by a partial transcript of a teacher providing eighth-graders with medically accurate sex education. I wasn’t. That kind of open discussion is exactly what reduces unwanted pregnancies and sexually transmitted disease. If it reduces stigma for gay students at the same time, all the better.

The author goes on to equate same-sex marriage with abortion:

“which, like same-sex marriage, was imposed by the courts against the wishes of many Americans, and in conflict with the religion and morality by which many citizens have been guided, and which has therefore been made available through school clinics without parental involvement.”

This is inaccurate – schools don’t provide abortions through school clinics, they typically don’t even provide contraceptives; and parental notification/consent laws for abortion are the norm, not the exception – but more importantly, this is irrelevant. The only connections between abortion, comprehensive sex education, and gay marriage appear to be that the author doesn’t like any of them.

The article concludes with its second reference to Parker v Hurley, a Massachusetts case where a parent sought to have his child excluded from (or at least that he have notification of) “any materials or discussions featuring sexual orientation, same-sex unions, or homosexuality.” In other words, the parent wanted to remove his child from any and all activities that even acknowledged the existence of gay and lesbian people. The father’s argument was rejected in court because it’s ridiculous on its face. Should any child be kept out of, or a parent given pre-notification of, all classroom discussions or activities that acknowledge the existence of African-Americans? Or that acknowledge the existence of Baptists? Of course not. No matter how strong one’s racial, sexual orientation, or religious bias, you can’t avoid the existence of those who differ from you.

Treating Marriage as Discrimination Threatens Religious Counselors and Therapists

I know, like, and greatly respect co-author Jerry Harris, and I think there is a valid argument to be made about the possibility that some therapists could be unduly punished if non-discrimination clauses in ethical codes are improperly applied. Harris and coauthor William Duncan make their case using flawed case examples.

An Eastern Michigan student was supposedly dismissed from her counseling program because she refused to affirm a client’s homosexuality. Contrary to what the article suggests, the student was not dismissed over her religious beliefs; the university would have honored the student’s religious assertion if she were consistent with it. She was actually dismissed for violating the ACA ethical code (by selectively using her religious beliefs to justify refusing treatment to gay clients, but saying she would willingly treat those involved with abortion, child abuse, or murder), and then saying she didn’t think the ethical code applied to her. “Who’s the ACA to tell me what to do,” a quote from the student, are magic words pretty much guaranteed to get anyone kicked out of their graduate program. A lawsuit is pending.

Separately, a Purdue student suffered “continually poor treatment” because of his opposition to same-sex marriage. This case is not cited and I could locate no other discussion of it in print or online. Even if true, every student has a right to their own opinions, but no right to expect that other students will agree with those opinions or like them; in this case, the only harm the student appeared to suffer was social ostracizing.

The authors state that

“Conflicts with religious liberties will be unavoidable when the state and professional governing bodies begin to endorse the idea that same-sex marriage or equivalent unions are mandated by principles of non-discrimination.”

While conflicts may be inevitable, resolutions are certainly possible. APA and NASW have clearly endorsed the notion that refusing to allow same-sex couples to marry is discrimination, and they have strong subgroups of religiously-oriented professionals.

The ethical committees of each professional association do, certainly, need to provide greater clarity on when a therapist’s refusal to treat clients based on the therapist’s religious belief is discriminatory, and when it is simply proper clinical care reflective of the therapist’s scope of competence. Taken at face value, I agree with Harris and Duncan that some of the therapists discussed here may have faced consequences they shouldn’t have. But that ethical clarity can be provided, and we can move forward.

I see here a legitimate concern about the consequences of gay marriage, and how we can ensure that religious therapists will be able to continue to practice in accordance with their beliefs. But I believe that concern can be resolved to everyone’s satisfaction, and I’m not convinced that it amounts to an argument against the existence of gay marriage.

Gay Marriage and Injustice

In case we needed a reminder that The Therapist is not a scholarly publication, here we have an article that mentions lots of studies while giving full references for exactly none of them. Author Walter Schumm starts by moving the target (emphasis in original):

“The argument for gay marriage is not about marriage but about benefits… The question is whether they [gay and lesbian couples] should be entitled to the same benefits granted to married mixed-gender couples.”

If that were the question, it could be settled with civil unions. Gay and lesbian couples want marriage.

After making a slew of arguments completely irrelevant to what he says is the question at hand (at least one of which, the notion that gay parents are more likely to have gay children, has been thoroughly and repeatedly debunked), Schumm settles on the notion that same-sex couples do not have or raise children as often as opposite-sex couples, so they do not provide the same benefit to society and should not be supported in the same manner.

Two problems here. One, it’s an equally valid argument for keeping the elderly or the infertile from marrying, and I don’t see Schumm or anyone else opposed to gay marriage encouraging those additional restrictions. Two, for many gay and lesbian couples, they don’t raise children because they’re not allowed to, which presents a beautifully circular argument: Because same-sex couples are not given equal benefits under the law, they can not raise children as often as heterosexual couples. Because same-sex couples do not raise children as often as heterosexual couples, they should not be given equal benefits under the law. This is not an argument that makes enough sense to be debated.

Same-Sex Marriage: Not in the Best Interest of Children

“Proponents of same-sex marriage believe love is all children really need.” This is fundamentally not true, and another logical fallacy. At least this article aims to look scientific, with dozens of references. However, the scientific community is largely in agreement that gay parenting is not harmful to children, and many in the community believe that allowing gay parents to marry will improve family stability and child functioning, not undermine it. For much more thorough, and more scientific, summaries of the research than what this article contains, just flip to the “Supporting Same-Sex Marriage” section of the same magazine. Or, see the following: ACLU summary (starts on page 24, runs for 50 pages) | APA 2005 research summary | APA policy statements | AAMFT consumer update (brief) | AAMFT task force full report (members only).

Among the few reliable research findings presented here and in Schumm’s article, many of the comparisons are not related to the discussion at hand, a point well-made at the Independent Gay Forum:

“[W]hether or not gay marriage is allowed, children will continue to be raised by gay parents. The only question is, Will these children be raised in homes that may enjoy the protections and benefits of marriage? If it’s better for children to be raised by a married opposite-sex couple than by an unmarried opposite-sex couple, it would surely be better for children to be raised by a married same-sex couple than by an unmarried same-sex couple. That’s the relevant comparison, not the comparison of married straight couples to gay couples. If it’s really concern for children that’s motivating opponents of gay marriage, they ought to rethink their conclusion. They should be pounding the table for gay marriage.”

Proposition 8 and the Attack on the Religious

Author Austin Nimocks starts by asserting that no matter what one’s religious beliefs, he or she is accorded the right to “hold those beliefs and order your life accordingly.” No argument there. He goes on to cite an example of someone forced from his role because his views opposing gay marriage became a distraction — a phenomenon that cuts both ways, though I tend to agree that it’s unfair on either end.

Nimocks goes on to cite the case of a marriage counselor in Georgia fired from her position for refusing to counsel a same-sex couple(1); it’s also one of the cases Harris and Duncan cite, and I would respond the same way here: There is a genuine ethical issue that professional associations will need to resolve in ensuring they do not simply exchange one form of discrimination (against same-sex clients) for another (against religious therapists). It is resolvable, and doesn’t advance or detract from arguments around gay marriage.

Most of the article, in fact, isn’t relevant to the marriage argument; it’s just fear-mongering. Gay marriage, he asserts, will lead religious therapists to be fired from their jobs, perhaps sued by clients. Yet of all the case examples in both this and the Harris & Duncan article, only one of them took place in a state where same-sex marriage was legal. So it’s unclear how these articles advance the argument against such legalization.

Ultimately, religious leaders of various faiths in Massachusetts have said that the legalization of gay marriage has not impacted their religious freedom.

Why Marriage Matters

It’s about the children, writes William Jeynes. He warns

“Same-sex marriage will mean the law, the government, and and the public schools of California will educate the next generation that our older marriage tradition was based on bigotry and was discriminatory.”

It was discriminatory, and we already teach precisely that: Our older marriage tradition was based on bigotry and discrimination. Ending race-based restrictions on marriage did not destroy the institution of marriage or weaken families. Instead, after Loving v Virginia, interracial couples who would not have enjoyed the institutional support of marriage were able to receive it, and I know of no one who in restrospect believes that Supreme Court ruling was a bad one.

Ironically, Jeynes goes on to make an argument that works better as an argument in favor of gay marriage than one in opposition: “Marriage, as it has existed through countless centuries, has stood as an institutional act of compassion that protects the present and future welfare of children and promotes physical and mental health.” I agree wholeheartedly. If you want to protect the welfare of thousands of children who now lack certain protections, let their gay parents get married.

Excerpts from the Amicus Brief of Iowa

This section from an amicus (“friend of the court”) brief submitted by about a dozen academics is straightforward enough, discussing the historical context of marriage as a union designed around procreation. This argument is demonstrably false, and more importantly: it lost. The Iowa Supreme Court decision takes apart the research cited in the amicus brief in far greater detail than I could here, so I’ll simply direct you there.

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So we’re left with a section of articles that distort facts, make irrelevant arguments, and would be quickly rejected by any kind of scholarly journal. Yet these articles are given equal time and weight with peer-reviewed, scientific articles supporting gay marriage that are copied from academic journals, as the though the two somehow have equal validity (or, on a more basic level, quality). A meaningful discussion could have taken place here, with religious articles as a counterweight to the scientific ones; but that isn’t what is presented. Too bad. Genuinely written articles on the difficulties religious therapists have when confronted by a situation where they need to balance their empathy with their religion — those would have been worth reading.

Footnote:

(1) There is some source material online in both the Eastern Michigan case and the Georgia case.
Eastern Michigan: News story 1 | News story 2 | Transcript of formal hearing | Letter dismissing student from program | Lawsuit.
Georgia: Initial legal complaint | News story

Cohabitation not so harmful to marriage, new studies show

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A trio of studies in the May Journal of Marriage and Family may be leading indicators of a fundamental shift in how cohabitation impacts eventual marriage. It may not be as harmful as previously thought.

It has been well-established for years that cohabitation before marriage increases eventual chances of divorce. (A good-albeit-old summary of this research, including possible explanations, is here.) This has been such a clear and consistent finding, in fact, that its opposite is featured in my 2008 article as a “myth about marriage” that research has convincingly debunked.

Now, all that may be changing. A study of marriages in Australia finds that the gap between cohabiting couples and non-cohabitors in later risk of divorce has been shrinking as cohabitation has become more common. The correlation may even have flipped. In one of the study’s predictive models, for couples married since about 1987, non-cohabitors have been more likely to eventually separate than those who cohabited prior to marriage. (In the study’s other predictive model, the lines have not yet crossed, but since the late 1990s there has been essentially no difference between cohabitors and non-cohabitors in risk of separation.)

There’s more. A separate national (US) study examining marital quality rather than simply separation looked at nearly 4,000 women born between 1957 and 1965. The authors found that

The negative correlation between premarital cohabitation and marital quality is largely driven by the nonmarital parents in the cohabiting population. […] Furthermore, marital quality is “locked in” at the start of marriage, with lower quality marriages neither catching up nor deteriorating more rapidly than others. (p. 313, emphasis mine)

In order to put meaning to these numbers, it is important to understand how couples today are looking at marriage and cohabitation. That’s exactly the purpose of a third study in the journal, titled “The Social Construction of Marital Commitment.” The researcher interviewed 75 women and men between ages 28 and 35, most in New York state. Based on their own descriptions, participants’ commitment to marriage was made of two parts: How they saw marriage as a “life style option” that had value compared with other options like cohabitation, and how (or whether) they saw themselves actually achieving married status. Speaking to the first element (value), most of those who were not in a relationship “were reluctant to assign a value to marital commitment that distinguished it from other forms of attachment” (p. 324, emphasis mine). Even among those who did place value on marriage, there appeared to be varying degrees of belief that the kind of marriage they envisioned was actually achievable.

Together, these three articles show in stark relief just how out-of-date our knowledge about marriage could be. Mind you, it’s not that we haven’t been doing the work. Rather, it appears that generational shifts in both attitudes and behavior toward marriage have been occurring much more rapidly than we’ve been able to effectively monitor. I wonder how many more of those supposed myths about marriage may be shifting to truth, and how long it would take for those shifts to be detected.

On same-sex marriage, CAMFT stands quietly alone

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Around the country, state governments have wrestled with questions of how to best recognize relationship commitments among same-sex couples. To provide guidance and respond to questions from legislators and the public, most mental health organizations have developed clear and specific policy statements that show where the organizations stand:

Of course organizations of marriage and family therapists (MFTs) are uniquely qualified and well-positioned to address this issue. The positions we stake can be particularly important to policymakers.

The American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy (AAMFT) went through a thoughtful, open process of debating the issue a few years ago. The result of that process is the following policy statement (emphasis mine):

AAMFT believes that all couples who willingly commit themselves to each other, and their children, have a right to expect equal support and benefits in civil society. Thus, we affirm the right of all committed couples and their families to legally equal benefits, protection, and responsibility.

That policy statement was developed through careful deliberation, member comments (about 800 pages’ worth), and importantly, a very extensive report (on their web site, but restricted to members) on the state of the research around same-sex couples and their children.

The California Association of Marriage and Family Therapists (CAMFT) has taken a very different approach to the question: Avoidance. Even after a great deal of member protest, at its most recent board meeting CAMFT only went so far as to put out a generic anti-discrimination statement that sidestepped any and all meaningful questions: Is refusal to allow same-sex marriage discrimination? Should same-sex parents be allowed to adopt and raise children? How does the term “marriage” relate to the work of MFTs, particularly our work with same-sex couples? They don’t say.

Officially, CAMFT’s refusal to step in has been on the grounds that it is not the best use of their resources. Get caught up in this social cause, the argument goes, and you wind up caught in many more, and they distract from the mission of the organization.

This is hogwash, of course. Professional associations in mental health usually have specific policies for addressing social issues, and processes for determining which social issues to get involved with. They understand that these issues need to be addressed, because social issues inherently impact the health and well-being of individuals, families, and communities. The dilemma for CAMFT — and I’m guessing here, trying to give the benefit of the doubt — must revolve around whether to risk alienating a significant portion of their membership. MFTs come in many stripes, from those who adamantly support same-sex marriage and see it as a human rights issue, to those who just as adamantly believe marriage is a religious institution and therefore needs to be restricted. Take a stand on either side of the debate, and in an instant, you’ve shown a major portion of your membership that you do not share their value.

As a worker in an evidence-based field, I would hope that my colleagues would be willing to be guided by the best available research at the time. The policy statements of other organizations make it clear that they are trying to do just that, even over the objections of a portion of their membership. To be sure, each organization likely lost a few members when they took the stands they did. Silence, however, does not seem like the ideal answer.

CAMFT members are now pushing back, organizing petitions and trying to encourage change from within the organization — or, failing that, suggesting that therapists quit CAMFT entirely (here are just a few resignation letters to CAMFT). Since CAMFT board members were this year selected by a committee (the most recent member “election” was a perfunctory exercise, with only one candidate put on the ballot for each open position), such actions may be the only way members feel they can have a voice in the organization, short of actually serving on the board.

It is interesting that California, which was the first state to license MFTs, now houses the group of psychotherapists last to recognize the harm done by staying silent about what “marriage” means.

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A quick aside: I haven’t mentioned the American Counseling Association (ACA) here because I can’t quite tell where they stand. I found an obtuse reference to a 1997 resolution the organization debated, but I can’t find the resolution or indications of whether they adopted it or not. They do have an active division on lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender issues in counseling, which by itself is a step above CAMFT on the issue.

Calculating the divorce rate

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My Twitter (@benjamincaldwel) went all atwitter a couple of days ago with news that Russia’s divorce rate peaked in 2002 at more than 800 divorces for every 1000 marriages. Does this mean the country has a whopping 80% divorce rate?

In a word, no. While there are lots of ways to calculate the divorce rate, each of them flawed in some way, simply comparing one year’s number of divorces with the same year’s number of marriages is among the worst ways to do it. From a 2005 New York Times article on the topic, which also debunks the longstanding myth that half of US marriages end in divorce:

[Researchers note that] the people who are divorcing in any given year are not the same as those who are marrying, and that the statistic is virtually useless in understanding divorce rates. In fact, they say, studies find that the divorce rate in the United States has never reached one in every two marriages, and new research suggests that, with rates now declining, it probably never will.

Russia’s actual divorce rate is surely high, and does appear to be higher than the US. But I would ballpark Russia’s divorce rate in the 50-60% range for couples getting married this year. I’ll explain how I got there momentarily.

The difficulty in calculating the divorce rate is that it necessarily involves speculation. The only way to avoid some kind of speculating would be if you took a sample of people married in the same year (1930, let’s say) and then waited for everyone married that year to have their marriages end, either through death or divorce. You’d get a pretty accurate rate that way, you would just have to wait a long time to get it.

Most of us are interested in more current numbers. For example, how many of the couples getting married this year (or at least, some year in the not-too-distant past) can we expect to see end their marriages in divorce? Since not all of those couples have divorced yet, we’re into speculative territory.

What some researchers do is what they call a “life table” approach. They may take an estimate of the time frame in which half of divorces occur — usually between 0 and about 7 years of marriage, though the exact timeframe varies — and work from there. For example, let’s say we have a sample of 100 US couples married in 2002, and of those 21 have divorced as of today. If we have reason to believe that half of the couples married in 2002 who will divorce have now done so, we could estimate the divorce rate for couples married in 2002 to be around 42%. But that is an educated guess. We don’t really know where that midway point of divorces takes place, we just guess based on past history and currently identifiable trends. And if we want really current numbers, like an estimate for couples who are only now getting married, we need to be even more speculative: We now must also guess about where that midpoint in the distribution of divorces is going to be. Such an approach, even when done as well as possible at the time, runs an inherent risk of making you look foolish in retrospect.

Further complicating matters, divorce rates are influenced by a variety of factors, some more easily predictible than others. Demographic, economic, and other social changes are just three examples, and all of these have had major impacts on Russia in the past two decades.

Ultimately, no one knows precisely what the divorce rate for couples marrying this year will be, because it’s all based on speculation about possible future divorces that haven’t happened yet.

Now, back to Russia. As I said at the beginning of this post, even though they can document 800 or more divorces per 1000 marriages in 2002, that is absolutely, unequivocably not an 80% divorce rate. It is an inappropriate comparison of two very different cohorts. The population is different. That same article on Russia notes that from 1980 to 2005, the number of marriages decreased by one-fourth. So, relative to the population of couples available to be married, the population of couples available to be divorced has been growing significantly.

For the purposes of demonstration, I’m going to make up some numbers to show how flawed it is to compare a given year’s number of marriages with that same year’s number of divorces to try to calculate a divorce rate.

First, let’s assume an actual divorce rate of 60%, and that the rate breaks down to 10% per year in the 1st through 6th years of marriage. (This is wrong, of course, but used for demonstration purposes.) Second, let’s assume that the marriage rate declined 25% from 1988 to 2002, and declined evenly in that time. This is a small exaggeration, since the actual 1/4 decline took from 1980 to 2005. Finally, let’s assume the actual divorce rate had held constant at 60% since the dawn of time. If we use 1333.3 marriages in 1988 as our starting number (you can use any number there, since it’s the percentages that matter), what we would see would look something like this:

1995
Marriages: 1167
Divorces: 750
Apparent divorce rate: 64.29%
Actual divorce rate: 60%
Difference: 4.29%

2002
Marriages: 1000
Divorces: 650
Apparent divorce rate: 65%
Actual divorce rate: 60%
Difference: 5.00%

Three key points here: 1, notice how this exaggerates the “apparent” divorce rate for those simply comparing the number of marriages to the number of divorces in a specific year. 2, notice how the systematic exaggeration of the “apparent” divorce rate as compared with the actual divorce rate gets worse over time. This is always going to be true when the marriage rate is in decline. 3, our process here assumed that all divorces were done by the seventh year of marriage because it makes the math easier. Making this more real by assuming that half of divorces are done by the seventh year of marriage, and the other half take place at gradually dwindling frequency rates after that, would make the systematic exaggeration of the “apparent” divorce rate much worse.

We can demonstrate this with a different set of assumptions. Let’s again assume a 60% divorce rate since the dawn of time, but now let’s assume a more realistic distribution of those divorces. Let’s say that half of divorces take place in years one through six, and the other half are evenly distributed between years 7 and 16 of marriage. Let’s assume the same marriage rate decline as what’s actually scientifically justified — 25% from 1980 to 2005. Starting from a good-for-easy-math number of 2000 marriages in 1980, we then see numbers that look like this:

1996
Marriages: 1680
Divorces: 1096
Apparent divorce rate: 65.36%
Actual divorce rate: 60%
Difference: 5.36%

2002
Marriages: 1560
Divorces: 1026
Apparent divorce rate: 65.77%
Actual divorce rate: 60%
Difference: 5.77%

These show that the “apparent” and actual divorce rates are not the same thing, and they show how comparing one year’s number of marriages with the same year’s number of divorces creates worse comparisons over time. Admittedly, they do not account for the full scope of that 800-versus-1000 number. I say the actual current rate is in the 50-60% range because (1) by presuming an end point to divorces after a specific number of years, my examples here do more to deflate the difference in actual-vs-apparent divorce rates than to inflate them; the distinction becomes greater when you model the numbers in ways that more closely approximate reality. And (2) these statistical models do not account for other social and economic changes in Russia that may be throwing off the divorce curve, that is, how divorces are distributed over time among those couples who do divorce. With those in mind, I would ballpark the expected divorce rate for couples getting married in Russia this year in the 50-to-60 percent neighborhood, though again, social and economic conditions can influence the numbers greatly in either direction.

Thankfully, there are lots of people out there who do this kind of work for a living, and can do both the detail work and the explantion better than I can. Andrew Cherlin and David Popenoe are two worth reading. More information on the flaws inherent in estimating divorce rates is here.

Marriage and the economy

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Slate engaged in a bit of a bogus trend story earlier this week, usually something the online magazine makes a habit of mocking. Under the title “Unwashed coffee mugs,” the story aims to educate us on the toll that the faltering economy has taken on marriages.

Let’s start with what the article gets right: 82 percent of the recession’s job losses have been suffered by men. As of last year, 25 percent of wives out-earned their husbands, a number that almost certainly has climbed with recent layoffs. And time-use data does indeed show that after men lose their jobs, they don’t suddenly find themselves inspired to do more housework; instead, “they spend more time sleeping, watching TV, and looking for a job.”

Getting to what that means for marriage, of course, is trickier.

To be sure, money is a common source of conflict in marriages. But the actual effects of recession on divorce rates are not that large:

Census Bureau figures show that over the past 2 1/2 decades, recessions have had only minor effects on divorce rates, which have been slowly waning since the early ’80s after 20 years of steadily rising. Those trajectories have been influenced more by the rise of the women’s movement and women’s earning power, lower fertility and changes in divorce laws than by dour Dows. The only recorded spike in divorces in the past 75 years came right after World War II.

Expect to see a lot more speculation about money and marriage over the next few months — it’s a common (and easy) theme to strike in writing about family life. But bear in mind that there are contradictory forces on families in a recession; they may suffer greater stress as a result of financial woes, sure. They also may be more likely to come together as a family to make it through a difficult time. Beware of stories that draw conclusions beyond what their data can support.