Passage Two

Dr. Mary Jo Bane is the associate director of the Center for Research on Women. Her recent study found “surprising evidence of the persistence of American commitments to family life”, which cast doubt on some common myths about American family.

Myth 1: The American Family is Dying Because of the Soaring Divorce Rate.

According to Dr. Bane’s study, the American family is changing, not dying. It is becoming smaller and the divorce rate is high. But Dr. Bane says that despite the high divorce rate, marriage has never been more popular. The majority of divorced people re-marry, but only 2%marry more than twice. Most marriages last a long time, and a large proportion of divorces are from age marriages. Depending on the specific situation, there’s often good reason for age marriages to break up.

Myth 2: Working Mothers are Destroying the Family by Neglecting Their Children.

“There’s no evidence that children receive less attention from mothers who work outside the home than from mothers working inside the home,” says Dr. Bane. “You have to divide the time into different categories: physical function and educational time or development time when a mother plays with the child. So far we haven’t seen the amount of educational or development time vary much, whether or not the mother works outside the home.” In fact, Dr. Bane finds evidence that working mothers, especially in the middle class, try to compensate for working by setting aside time exclusively for their childre n. “They probably read more to their children and spend more time in planned activities with them than nonworking mothers do.” says Dr. Bane.