There is nothing quite so satisfying than having your preconceptions scientifically confirmed. Of course, when they are so confirmed, you don't question the solidity of the science.
I've written numerous times about the fact that there is a clear difference between red states and blue states. By almost any commonly agreed metric, we are better than them, and to boot, statistics seem to show that the red states in particular fail to practice what they preach. They preach fiscal austerity and personal responsibility, for instance, but absorb far more tax dollars than they emit. They preach religious virtue, but in practice, well…
Among other things the rate of divorce, teen pregnancy, etc., are all higher in the red states than the blue. How can this be, you might ask, when those states are full of devout family values Christians. Well, it is no surprise that divorce and teen pregnancy rates in the red states are higher because those states are full of devout family values Christians:
In a new study titled “Red States, Blue States, and Divorce: Understanding the Impact of Conservative Protestantism on Regional Variation in Divorce Rates,” which will be published later this month in the American Journal of Sociology, demographer and University of Texas at Austin professor Jennifer Glass set out to discover why divorce rates would be higher in religious states like Arkansas and Alabama – which boast the second and third highest divorce rates, respectively – but lower in more liberal states like New Jersey and Massachusetts.
It was previously thought that socioeconomic hardships in the South were largely to blame for high divorce rates, however Glass and her fellow researchers concluded that the conservative religious culture is in fact a major contributing factor thanks to “the social institutions they create” that “decrease marital stability.”
Specifically, putting pressure on young people to marry sooner, frowning upon cohabitation before marriage, teaching abstinence-only sex education and making access to resources like emergency contraception more difficult all result in earlier childbearing ages and less-solid marriages from the get-go, Glass writes in the paper.
“It’s surprising,” W. Bradford Wilcox, director of the National Marriage Project, told The Los Angeles Times. “In some contexts in America today, religion is a buffer against divorce. But in the conservative Protestant context, this paper is showing us that it’s not.”
Unlike Mr. Wilcox, I'm not at all surprised. I would, however, be interested in knowing the “contexts in America today” in which religion really is “a buffer against divorce”.
So, as I said, this confirms my preconceptions, so it must be correct. Actually, you could probably arrive at the same result through the process of induction (or is it deduction? …whatever) without the rigorous science that I'm sure went into this study.
In any event, yet more proof, if any were needed, that we don't need no religion round here.
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