a response to keith ablow
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8/3/2019 A Response to Keith Ablow
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Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse • 663 S. Rancho Santa Fe Road Suite 222 San Marcos CA 92078
www.jennifer-roback-morse.com • email: [email protected] • 760/295-9278©2007 No part of this document may be reproduced or disseminated in any way without the expressed written consent of theRuth Institute.
A Response to Keith Ablow
By Jennifer Roback Morse
This article was first published December 29, 2011, at www.nationalreview.com.
Celebrity therapist and “life coach” Dr.Keith Ablow just jumped on the “let’s get
the government out of the marriage
business” bandwagon. I have been writingagainst the “privatizing marriage” mantra,
going all the way back to 2005. (See also
here and here.) I do not wish to rehearse
those arguments here. But Dr. Ablow’scontribution to this unfortunate genre is
doubly regrettable. He is, first of all, deeply
mistaken about the government’s role indiscouraging people from marriage. As a
psychiatrist, he has no particular expertise in
policy analysis, and I am sorry to say, itshows. My second regret about his foray
into policy analysis is that he forsakes the
area of his greatest expertise, namely,helping people live happier lives. His
proposal to “get the government out of the
marriage business” substitutes an easy exit
strategy for the genuine work of building upmarriage and family relationships.
Dr. Ablow claims that government intrusion
is the cause of marriage decline because
marriage amounts to signing a “draconian
contract with the state to manage thedivision of your estate in the event of a
divorce.” Now he is certainly correct thatunder the current divorce regime, the familycourt micro-manages people’s private lives.
But his argument is completely backwards.
He has no explanation for why people are
less inclined to marry now, and whygovernment is more intrusive now than in
say, 1960. I can answer that: no-fault
divorce.
California instituted the first “no-fault”
divorce in 1968, with other states quicklyfollowing suit. The state no longer
recognized marriage as a lifelong union,
dissolvable only for cause. Under no-fault,either party could get divorced for any
reason or no reason. The current “marriage
contract,” if you want to call it that, is less
binding than a contract to purchase a homeor to take delivery for a load of concrete. For
sure, it is easier to end a marriage than for
the L.A. Unified School District to fire atenured teacher.
Most importantly, the legal change to the
no-fault regime created unilateral divorce:
The state now permits one party to break the
marriage contract, regardless of the wishesof the other. This means that the divorce has
to be enforced against the reluctant spouse.
Somebody has to be separated from the jointassets of the marriage, most often, the
family home and the children. The coercive
machinery of the state is wheeled into place.The state begins the micromanaging of
divorcing couples that Dr. Ablow rightly
decries.
Dr Ablow is correct that people are not
getting married because they are afraid of divorce, including the state’s involvement in
their post-divorce lives. State governments
undermine marriage by siding with the least
8/3/2019 A Response to Keith Ablow
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Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse • 663 S. Rancho Santa Fe Road Suite 222 San Marcos CA 92078
www.jennifer-roback-morse.com • email: [email protected] • 760/295-9278©2007 No part of this document may be reproduced or disseminated in any way without the expressed written consent of theRuth Institute.
committed spouse. Unilateral divorce was a
policy change that just happened to increasethe power of the state over people’s lives.
No-fault, unilateral divorce is the policy that
ought to be reversed. That is not “getting thegovernment out of the marriage business.”
But Dr. Ablow’s ill-advised foray into policy analysis is not the least of the
problems with his article. He comments, in
an off-hand way, that in his clinicalobservations, “the vast majority of married
people consider their unions a source of
pain, not pleasure, and that too few of them
are equipped with the psychological and behavioral tools to achieve true intimacy or
maintain real passion.” Translation: People
don’t have good enough relationship skillsto get and stay married, so let’s give them an
easier way out.
This statement is both illogical and
appalling.
It is illogical because a therapist typically
treats people who are having problems.
Happily married people don’t usually go to atherapist. He really shouldn’t draw
conclusions about the “vast majority of
married people,” based on a sample of clients in his own practice.
But suppose his clients really and truly don’t
have good relationship skills. His job as a
life coach is precisely to give them those
tools. It is appalling that he abandons thatfield, where he undoubtedly has something
to contribute. Instead, he goes off on a
tangent of abolishing marriage as a public
institution. His policy proposal
accommodates the present instability of marriage, when he should be leading the
charge to combat it.
But, Dr. Ablow, isn’t it your clinical
observation that people actually want to get
married and stay married? Don’t peoplewant intimacy and passion? And, don’t
children want and deserve parents who
remain committed to each other?
This is where our current debate over the
definition of marriage has led us. A noted psychiatrist joins the parade of people
celebrating a cockamamie scheme for
destroying marriage as an object of publicconcern. In the process, he is diverted from
the serious business of helping people
develop their capacity for love andrelationship.
What a loss.
Jennifer Roback Morse, Ph.D. is an
economist and the Founder and President of
the Ruth Institute , a nonprofit educational
organization devoted to bringing hope and encouragement for lifelong married love.She is also the author of 77 Non-Religious
Reasons to Support Man/Woman Marriage , Love and Economics: It Takes a Family to
Raise a Village and Smart Sex: Finding
Life-Long Love in a Hook-Up World and 101 Tips for a Happier Marriage: You can
improve your marriage even if your spouse
doesn’t change a bit.