Since the last presidential election, "values" has been a buzzword for political pundits and talking heads. Politicians on both sides of the aisle have rushed to affirm their commitment to strong family values and the traditional value of marriage.
But people's expressed values don't necessarily predict how they actually behave. Otherwise, the televangelist Rev. Jimmy Swaggart would not have been caught three times with prostitutes and Spokane Mayor Jim West -- perhaps Washington state's foremost opponent of gay rights -- would not have had to admit to sexual relations with men he picked up through an online gay chat room or found himself also facing accusations of molesting two young boys.
The disconnect between who values marriage and who actually practices it is especially striking. The 10 states with the highest divorce rates are all red or conservative states whose voters overwhelmingly support "values" candidates. Born-again Christians are as likely to divorce as other Americans, and the Bible Belt has the highest divorce rate in the nation. By contrast, the Northeast, noted for liberal politics and greater tolerance for alternative lifestyles, is the region where marriages are most likely to last. Massachusetts, the poster state for nontraditional family values with its legalization of same-sex marriage, has the lowest divorce rate in the country.
Educated elites are often accused of undermining the family with their liberal, relativist values. On average, it's true that affluent, highly educated Americans are far more likely than less-educated or lower-income Americans to see divorce, cohabitation and unwed motherhood as acceptable behavior. But in practice they are far more likely to marry, less likely to divorce and less likely to have kids out of wedlock than their poorer brethren.
We see the same pattern internationally. Germans are much more accepting of teenagers engaging in sex than Americans are. But Germany has much lower rates of teen pregnancies and teen births than the United States. Norwegians consider out-of-wedlock births much more acceptable than do most Americans and a higher proportion of children are born to unmarried women in Norway than in the United States. But unmarried Norwegian mothers are much more likely than their U.S. counterparts to live with the father of their child. On average, Norwegian children spend 90 percent of their youth living with both parents, while U.S. children average just two-thirds of their youth living with both parents.
Strongly held moral values about marriage, sex and family life can backfire when they collide with reality. Several researchers have found that although individuals who have strong moral beliefs about the sanctity of marriage are slightly less likely to divorce than other Americans, if they do divorce, they are more likely to see it as a conflict that must be settled by winning or disengaging, and they find it more difficult to work out a new parenting relationship with the ex-spouse.
A recent study of teenagers who pledged in the '90s to remain virgins until marriage found that 88 percent of them had since violated their pledge. The study also found that their behavior, both before and after losing their virginity, was more risky than that of teens who had not committed to such an absolute value. While they were still virgins, pledgers were six times more likely than non-pledgers to engage in oral and anal sex, probably out of concern for preserving their "technical virginity." Teens who took the pledge did start having sexual intercourse a little later, on average, than teens who didn't, and they had fewer sexual partners. But they were much less likely than the other teens to use contraception and ended up with the same rates of sexually transmitted diseases.
As a historian who has studied marriage through the ages, I recognize the relevance of moral and ethical values to people's behavior. But what really counts is how one translates one's values into healthy personal relationships. One of the best predictors of happiness and a sense of purpose in life is a person's ability to contribute to the lives of others, whether family members, neighbors or the less fortunate.
People find many sources of inspiration for making such contributions -- their religious commitments, the sense of accomplishment they find on the job or at school, their political beliefs, their union activities, or their neighborhood involvements. And still others use their religion, their politics, their associations, or their sense of personal accomplishment to deny compassion and help to others.
What really matters in family and community life are not the abstract principles people give lip service to but the real relationships they enter into and how they handle commitments, whether those commitments are legally recognized or not. In today's changing family and marital landscape, we should spend less time passing judgment on people's theoretical "family values" and more time helping people build healthy relationships in their daily lives.
Stephanie Coontz, who teaches history at The Evergreen State College, is director of research at the Council on Contemporary Families. She wrote "Marriage, A History: From Obedience to Intimacy, or How Love Conquered Marriage" (Viking, 2005).