Africa - Analysis and practice of Information

A marriage proposal

Leading marriage scholars have come up with an index for monitoring the health of marriage in society.

Spring has sprung in the southern hemisphere and the wedding season is under way. A billboard in my city advertises a wedding “expo”, a sign of the trend that has turned a simple but dignified community event into a commercial extravaganza of daunting proportions. A young couple from abroad told me that it would cost at least forty thousand pounds to get married back home. That was one reason, apparently, why they had been cohabiting for six years.

Weddings are big, yes, but there are fewer of them, they happen later and in circumstances that often lead to marital conflict, divorce, and misery for any children of the union. The bad statistics are aired from time to time, governments step in to limit the damage, and things go on much as they did before. It is true that many community groups and, increasingly, scholars and even a few politicians voice concern about the state of marriage, but there is no agreed way of monitoring its health -- nothing like, for instance, the economic indicators that keep the state of the economy constantly before our eyes, so that we know every little rise or fall in GDP and, therefore, in our collective fortunes.

It is precisely this lack that one of the leading marriage research and advocacy institutions in the United States proposes to rectify. This week the Institute for American Values, together with the National Center on African American Marriages and Parenting, has launched The Marriage Index, a set of five key indicators that can be used to monitor the health of American -- and, of course, other -- marriages. As IAV scholar David Blankenhorn and colleagues authors point out, “no social progress is possible without widely shared, trackable goals”, and, “for any society that cares about its future, leading marriage indicators are as important as leading economic indicators”.

What are these indicators? Taking the baseline year as 1970, they look, decade by decade until 2008, at the percentage of adults married; happiness in marriage; the percentage of first marriages intact; the percentage of births to married parents; and the percentage of children living with their own married parents. There are charts on the institute’s website setting these figures out clearly in grid form for both the general and African American populations. Overall they show that the health of marriage in the US sits at 60.3 per cent -- better than many countries, no doubt, but notably worse than four decades ago and no cause for complacency.

Percentage of adults married. The age range here is from 20 to 54 years, to take account of (a) the large number of non-marital unions amongst the youngest age group and (b) the distortions that would arise from including the population older than 54 and its increasing proportion of widows. The marriage trend, as we know, is down. In 1970, 78.6 per cent of adults were married; in 2008 the figure had dropped to 57.2. Cohabitation, by contrast, has grown enormously: from 439,000 couples in 1960 to 6.4 million in 2007.

Married persons “very happy” with their marriage. Theoretically, the easy access to divorce that has existed for several decades should mean that those who are married are, on average, happier. But this is not the case; surveys show a moderate but significant decline in marital quality between 1970 and 2000. Ironically, this is partly to do with divorce -- the ideal of permanence has declined, and with it a sense of security in marriage.

Marriages intact. The decline here has also been marked -- from 77.4 per cent of first marriages intact in 1970 to just under 60 per cent in 2000. The good news is that there has been a slight increase in marital stability since then -- a sign that “we can renew marriage as lifelong commitment,” say the authors of the index.

Births to married parents. In 1970, 89.3 per cent of children were born to married parents, while today the figure is 60.3 -- a dramatic decline. More children are born into cohabiting or single-parent homes.

Children living with their own married parents. While the percentage of children living with their biological or adoptive mother and father has dropped since 1970 (from 68.7 to 61.0 in 2007) this trend has also levelled off over the past decade -- another encouraging sign.

Article by: Carolyn Moynihan

tags : cohabitation, divorce, marriage

Raining on their parade

Who is responsible for China's infamous one-child policy? Surprisingly, it is not 60 years of Communist rule.

Today China celebrates the 60th anniversary of Communist Party rule. The Party is highlighting the nation’s huge and powerful military, its international influence, its towering role in the world economy, and its growing prosperity, at least in the large coastal cities. It has left behind the barbarities of Mao Tse-tung and has become a "civilized", "harmonious", "prosperous" and "democratic" country.

But one barbarity persists: the one-child policy. On September 25, 1980, the Communist Party announced that, with very few exceptions, couples were permitted to have only one child. Party officials insisted that the population had to be capped at 1.2 billion by the year 2000.

This policy has not only blackened China’s reputation as a human-rights abuser. It also is leading to economic and social disaster. China’s population is ageing so rapidly that care for the elderly will impose a crushing burden on its economy. And because Chinese have a traditional preference for sons, infant girls are often aborted or murdered, which means that as many as 15 percent of Chinese men will never find wives.

How was this insane idea endorsed by the government of the world’s largest nation?

This is the question raised by anthropologist Susan Greenhalgh in her valuable book Just One Child: Science and Policy in Deng’s China. Greenhalgh reads and speaks Chinese and used to work for a US-based NGO which promotes birth control, the Population Council. With this background, she won the confidence of many high-ranking government officials involved in forging the policy. Her detective work yielded a surprising answer.

Article by: Michael Cook

tags : China, one-child policy, population control

Russia looks to its religious culture

The Orthodox Church has won its battle to make religious education compulsory in schools, but secularists have won concessions too.

Church of the Resurrection, St Petersburg Patriarch Kirill's public triumph in Ukraine in July was preceded with another achievement no less important for the Russian Orthodox Church. This took place in the much more intimate atmosphere of the presidential residence in Barvikha, in the Moscow Oblast. There Dmitry Medvedev met with the leaders of Russia's traditional religions, and responded to two appeals from them.

He agreed that the history and culture of the country's main religions should be included in the core school curriculum. He also agreed that the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation should have military priests.

Patriarch Kirill was the first to sign both documents. The Muslim and Jewish religious communities supported the Orthodox position, despite previous objections from some muftis and rabbis.

What will this decision mean in practice for schools? Twice a week from the spring of next year, pupils in the fourth and fifth classes will study one of three new subjects. They and their parents will be able to choose between the religious culture of one religion (Orthodox, Islam, Judaism or Buddhism), the history and cultural background of the world's great religions, or the foundations of secular ethics. It will be compulsory for pupils to choose one of these three modules.

To start with, it will be introduced in 18 regions in six of the seven federal regions of Russia. The three-year experiment will be introduced in 12,000 Russian schools, 20,000 classes, 256,000 children and 44,000 teachers, according to the Ministry for Education and Science. From 2012, the new modules will be introduced to all Russian schools.

These three modules, "Foundations of religious culture", "Foundations of history and culture of world religions" and "Foundations of secular ethics",- will be taught by teachers who have taken a special training course, though most of them will probably have had a secular education. The rector of Moscow's State University V.A. Sadovnichy has already expressed a desire to put the resources of the country's leading university behind the re-training of these specialists. But it is clear that at first the main problem will be a serious lack of qualified teaching staff.

The contents of the textbooks for these modules is also likely to prompt public debate. Consequently, the Church has already declared its readiness to work with the Ministry of Education and Science, the Russian Academy of Education, and a number of other institutes in order to inspect the new textbooks and study materials. This has already been announced by the head of the Synodal Department for Religious Education, Bishop Zaraisky Merkury.

Article by: Viktor Malukhin

tags : Orthodox Church, religious education, Russia

Parents wonder if cancer jabs are worth the risk

Natalie Morton Debate over vaccinating girls against the human papillomavirus to prevent cervical cancer is running hot in Britain after a 14-year-old schoolgirl died and an older teen developed epileptic seizures and brain damage following the jabs.

A couple of weeks ago the UK’s drug safety watchdog, the Medicines and Health care products Regulatory Agency (MHRA), reported that over 2000 individuals had suffered adverse reactions, some more than once, giving a total of 4602 suspected reactions to the vaccine Cervarix. They ranged from mild (rashes, pain in the arm, and allergies) to serious (convulsions, eye rolling, muscle spasms, seizures and hyperventilation). A similar report about Gardasil was published in the United States in August.

Anti-vaccine groups are warning parents off the Cervarix programme, which has been rolled out through schools (on a voluntary basis) starting in April last year, while professionals and cancer charities are urging people to continue. The latter argue that, given the millions of girls and young women vaccinated so far, serious reactions are extremely rare and are far outweighed by the benefits of reducing the risk of developing cervical cancer from the now very widespread and sexually transmitted HPV.

Drug companies manufacturing and promoting the vaccine (and profiting handsomely from it) are naturally rejecting the assumption that it caused particular reactions until there is proof. They -- and public health officials -- say that 14-year-old Natalie Morton most likely had “a serious underlying medical condition” that caused her death. The chaplain at the Anglican school she attended said there was nothing on her file to indicate that she suffered from epilepsy or any health problem.

Here is how one public health number cruncher sees it:

Even if the girl’s death proves to be a consequence of the vaccination, and it is still a big ‘if’, only one death would be prevented for every 500,000 girls who decided not to be vaccinated – albeit at the cost of 700 deaths to cervical cancer.

That is no comfort to her bereaved parents, however, or the parents who now have brain damaged daughter to look after. And, really, we have to come back to the truth that the HPV and cervical cancer epidemics -- like AIDS -- are basically very preventable with a change in behaviour. But rolling back the sexually permissive society seems to be the last thing on the minds of health authorities.

Posted by: Carolyn Moynihan

tags: cervical cancer, HPV, vaccination

Working mums have less healthy kids

Last night on New Zealand television the British female lead of the live show Mamma Mia! joked about how she went to work to get away from her four young children -- a firstborn plus triplets who are on tour with her. Great for her, but how are the kids doing?

Research just published in her homeland suggests that the children of working mothers are less healthy and are more likely to have poor dietary habits and a more sedentary lifestyle. They eat less fruit and vegetables, watch more television and consume more crisps and fizzy drink than the children of mothers who stay at home.

This is bad news for British authorities, whose crowded social agenda includes fighting childhood obesity and getting women to return to work. It looks as though the two goals are at loggerheads. Flexible working arrangements for mothers in full-time work seem to make no difference, and children of part-time working mums were still not as healthy as those whose mothers stayed home. Variables such as socio-economic background, single parenthood and household income were taken into account in the results, which are based on 12,000 British children born between 2000 and 2002.

Researchers on the latest paper concluded that with approximately 60 per cent of British women with a child aged 5 or younger in employment, more support was needed. “For many families the only parent or both parents are working. This may limit parents’ capacity to provide their children with healthy foods and opportunities for physical activity,” they said. “Policies and programmes are needed to help support parents and create a health-promoting environment.”

To say nothing of emotional health and character development.

Nobody, of course, is rushing to say that mothers of young children should not go out to work. The authors of the study suggest that the quality if childcare needs looking at; they are not sure whether the link they found was associated with what the kids did while the mother was at work, or with time pressure on parents when they are back in the home -- that is, whether it’s the staff at the daycare centre or the grandparents allowing bad habits, or the parents themselves being too busy and exhausted to insist on good habits.

All the same they hint that there may be something wrong at policy level:

“What policymakers need to understand is that what might be a solution to some issues may create others. There are upsides and downsides.”

Posted by: Carolyn Moynihan

tags: children's health, working mothers

China’s stolen babies

Girl babies adopted by American and other overseas couples from orphanages in China in recent years may have been forcibly taken from their parents, not abandoned, as the adoptive parents were told. The Los Angeles Times reports at length on a scandal that can be laid at the door of China’s inhuman population control policy and corrupt local family planning officials.

It seems that many couples in China have been left distraught by what amounts to baby trafficking, and couples who have adopted the babies are left wondering whether their little girl was snatched from a sobbing mother or tricked away from a bewildered father or grandparent.

Since the early 1990s, says the LA Times, more than 80,000 Chinese children have been adopted abroad, the majority to the US. Many, perhaps, were abandoned, but some parents are coming forward to report that they were coerced to give up an unauthorised baby by government officials motivated by the $US3000 per child that adoptive parents pay orphanages.

The Times puts its finger on the basic problem:

The problem is rooted in China's population controls, which limit most families to one child, two if they live in the countryside and the first is a girl. Each town has a family planning office, usually staffed by loyal Communist Party cadres who have broad powers to order abortions and sterilizations. People who have additional babies can be fined up to six times their annual income -- fines euphemistically called "social service expenditures," which are an important source of revenue for local government in rural areas.

Where people are too poor to pay the fine, officials often punish them by ransacking their homes or confiscating cows and pigs. That’s how it was for the residents of Tianxi, a village in the mountains near Zhenyuan, during the 1980s and 1990s.

Then, in 2003, things changed. The year after the Social Welfare Institute in Zhenyuan was approved to participate in the burgeoning foreign adoption program, family planning officials stopped confiscating farm animals. They started taking babies instead.

The villagers, by the way, “resent the suggestion by some that they don't love their daughters and readily abandon them.

"People around here don't dump their kids. They don't sell their kids. Boy or girl, they're our flesh and blood," said Li Zeji, 32, a farmer who says his third daughter was taken in 2004.

In Gaoping, a small town in Hunan province, officials have used family planning laws to confiscate even first-born children on the ground that a couple did not meet all the requirements. These include having a birth permit before conceiving, the woman being at least 20 and the man 24, and having a marriage certificate -- itself dependent on each partner having a proper residency permit.

The officials, of course, deny forcibly taking children:

"It's a lie that they took babies away without their parents' permission. That's impossible," said Peng Qiuping, a party official and propaganda chief for Zhenyuan. "These parents agreed that the children should be put up for adoption. They understood that they were greedy and had more children than they could afford."

"They're better off with their adoptive parents than their birth parents," argued Wu Benhua, director of Zhenyuan's civil affairs bureau.

They claim the money all goes to improve conditions in the orphanages, but theTimes could not verify that, noting that “most of the babies had been housed with families who were paid only $30 a month for their services, according to one foster parent.”

Some people blame international adoption itself, saying that the money involved creates the opportunity for abuse. With China there are obviously reasons to be extra careful -- the lack of freedom for a couple to found and raise a family, and the absence of a free press that might thoroughly investigate the whole question of “abandonment” of baby girls.

Since most of those adopted overseas go to the US, it is certainly an issue for the government there to investigate and put the heat on Beijing if necessary.

Article by: Carolyn Moynihan

tags : adoption, China, one-child policy, trafficking,