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Crossfire

Is Being Married Better Than Being Single?

Aired December 29, 2000 - 7:30 p.m. ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

MARY MATALIN, CO-HOST: Tonight, if a short walk down the aisle could add years to your life while making you wealthier and happier, then why are more women saying "I do" to staying single?

ANNOUNCER: From Washington, CROSSFIRE. On the left, Bill Press. On the right, Mary Matalin. In the crossfire, Maggie Gallagher, author of "The Case for Marriage," and in San Francisco, Margot Magowan, co-founder of Women Count and a Voter.com columnist.

MATALIN: Good evening and welcome to CROSSFIRE. Tonight, the American marriage. A spate of new books has stirred up an old debate: When we vow for better or worse, do we end up better or worse?

On behalf of matrimony, advocates cite not just healthier individuals but a healtheir culture as well, not to mention better- adjusted kids. Despite the evidence supporting marriage, more people are divorcing or never marrying in the first place.

The sexy single life has made the cover of national magazines and produced cult TV hits, and in the 21st century the definition of "family" is not June and Ward Cleaver.

So tonight, to tie the knot or not? Do we need the institution of marriage for us, our kids and our nation, or are nontraditional unions or nonunions just as good? -- Bill.

BILL PRESS, CO-HOST: Maggie, I have to say -- first of all, I have been married for 31 years, Carol (ph) and I, probably longer than anybody on this panel, maybe longer than anybody watching...

(LAUGHTER)

I don't know -- which is a miracle in and of itself. So I'm a strong proponent of marriage. I start out wanting to -- thinking I'm going to agree with everything in your book, "The Case for Marriage." I found out I disagreed with almost everything in your book.

MAGGIE GALLAGHER, AUTHOR, "THE CASE FOR MARRIAGE": Well, that's because it's got so much new stuff here. It's not the same old same old.

PRESS: Well, here's the first problem I have with it -- is I think that you and your co-author go overboard, if I may suggest, in making your case. Let me start at the beginning. I want to start on page 1, where you set up the premise. And here is a quote from your book. Quote: "For perhaps the first time in human history, marriage as an ideal is under a sustained and surprisingly successful attack."

Now, No. 1, I don't see any sign of marriage under attack. And No. 2, if there are some problems with marriage, isn't that really as old as humankind?

GALLAGHER: Well, sure, having problems with marriage, talking about how to deal with them, there's nothing new about that. But what is new is that particularly among people like us, who chatter for a living, marriage is controversial. You have to decide what position: Are you for marriage? Are you against it? Are you for it in some positions or not?

And the reality is that among the cultural elite there's a pretty powerful negative attack on marriage, ranging from if you've got a daughter in school right now, all of the textbooks are teaching her that marriage has an adverse impact on women's mental health. You have a very well-developed school now of legal theory, which is saying we should not -- there should be no benefits attached to marriage: that people who live together should get the same benefits.

You have a popular culture which portrays divorce as the entryway into a wonderful, happy lifestyle, especially for women. I think women's culture is a lot more -- portrays marriage more negatively and divorce more positively.

And this is really kind of very new, as is the evidence that marriage is in trouble as an institution: our high divorce rates and rates of unmarried child bearing.

PRESS: Well, as I recall from reading the book, you cite one textbook that indicates that marriage may be bad for women's mental health, not all of them. But let me point also, if I may turn the page to page 2 now, in your own book you say that 93 percent of Americans say having a happier marriage is one their most important goals. In 1992, among high school seniors, their No. 1 goal was listed as having a good marriage.

So if there are some people who are banging on marriage, it's not having much of an impact, right?

GALLAGHER: Well, it is having an impact...

PRESS: According to you.

GALLAGHER: No. What we're saying is that marriage is a really widely shared aspiration. People want marriage. But one of the things we're in the process of doing is removing some of our cultural, institutional, legal, policy, community, religious supports for marriage. And in the process, we're making it less likely that people will achieve -- will achieve a happy marriage.

PRESS: Wouldn't you have to agree, though, that for most people marriage is still the ideal marriage and marriage is still on the pedestal for most Americans, right?

GALLAGHER: People -- most ordinary Americans like the idea of marriage. But the idea of marriage is being -- and again, I mean, we're a complicated culture; we have more than one thought in our heads at the same time.

PRESS: I hope so.

GALLAGHER: And one of those thoughts is increasingly you hear -- I think young people in particular are wrestling with how important that piece of paper is. They still want marriage, and marriage -- but marriage is a word that means like a really loving, happy relationship plus a big party with a big white dress, and I don't think that's true.

Every young person -- it may not be true of the majority, but we have a lot less faith than people of 50 years ago that the act of getting married changes something, that it makes an enormous difference in the -- in the -- in the expression of love, in the likelihood the relationship will last, in whether or not two people can be good mothers and fathers. We don't have as much confidence in that idea as we used to.

MATALIN: And you know why, Margot -- and thank you for joining us. Maybe Bill doesn't think marriage is under attack, but maybe he hasn't followed the feminists for as long as you and I have. And I think this attack on marriage goes back to the beginning of this third wave of feminism, whatever it was, where -- and for all the good of feminism, one of the most destructive distracting tangents was this attack on men. A women needs a man like a fish needs a bike. And in turn, obviously, the attack on marriage.

Here's Gloria Steinem, the recently married Gloria Steinem, on the institution of marriage. Quote: "I don't think marriage has a good name. Legally speaking, it was designed for a person and a half. You become a semi-non-person when you get married."

Isn't this a feminist copout, Margot? If you're a centered, whole person, how can a marriage or a man turn you into a nonperson? It's a feminist copout, and it has been from the beginning.

MARGOT MAGOWAN, CO-FOUNDER, WOMEN COUNT: Well, I'm really glad, Mary, that you brought up Gloria Steinem, because she did just get married. And the reason Gloria just got married is because of the hard work she and feminists have done for the past 30 years to make marriage equal.

Marriage didn't use to be equal. When you got married, you had to give up your career, you had to give up your name. You basically became, you know, a housekeeper and a child caretaker. And now if you get married, you can have a full career, you know, and also be a good mom.

What we still need to do, what we have shown is that women can do what men can do out in the professional world. Men need to come home and be fathers. They need to be nurturers just as much as mothers are, and they need to be valued for that in society.

Look, if a guy takes paternity leave today, he'll be looked down on by his fellow workers. But...

GALLAGHER: Not to mention...

(CROSSTALK)

MATALIN: Well, OK, look, I mean, I just -- I grew up in a pretty traditional home, and the facts then are as they are today. In terms of wealth, in terms of health, both mental and physical, it is true that those things occur in greater frequency in a marriage. And wealth -- couples make more. The statistics today, the average household wealth for married couples is 132,000 versus 33,700 for divorced -- in a divorce situation.

In health, unmarried people are far more likely to suffer from every kind of disease: from coronary disease, from cancer, murder- suicidal. All kinds of premature deaths accrue to unmarried people, not to mention mental health. That was the case when I was growing up, and it's even more so today.

MAGOWAN: Look, these conservative think-tanks are always coming out with new statistics that show that we need to go back to the days of "Ozzie and Harriet," you know, that women aren't happy, in spite of feminism, young women are more unhappy than they've ever been.

It's simply not true. What is true is that the Cinderella fantasy is still fed to us, especially young women, and then we go out into the word -- we either go out professionally and we don't advance as quickly as we thought we would. We don't get paid the amount that men do for doing the same work. And so then we choose to get married and then we see a marriage: The men aren't coming home, they're not taking care of the kids. Things still aren't equal.

And what we need to do is, look, the marriage contract is a living document. It needs to continue to evolve.

MATALIN: OK...

MAGOWAN: Women started -- women started...

MATALIN: Margot, this is not a feminist treatise here. I'm just giving you the facts. OK. If there's something that women and men both enjoy -- and data shows is better in marriage -- that is sex. Both men and women report having greater occurrence of sex, twice a week, in marriage. And they both, men and women, also report...

MAGOWAN: Mary...

MATALIN: ... having better sex in marriage.

It's just the data! I'm not asking you about your sex life, but come on, I mean, if it's right there, it's right there.

PRESS: I want to hear about Margot's sex life. Let's hear about Margot's sex life.

MATALIN: You're the only single one. What's it like?

PRESS: Go Margot. Go Margot.

MAGOWAN: I will say it is common sense that when people get married and have kids, their sex life goes down. Everybody knows that. You know, you can read those statistics, but when you've got children you're not having sex like you were before you had children.

GALLAGHER: Well, try having sex as a single mother. I mean, yes, children do put a dent in your sex life, but it's not the marriage that's the issue there.

PRESS: I want to talk about sex, too, but first of all, I want to talk about health. And I want to come back to my thesis that, you know, I love your premise, but I just think you go over the top in trying to sell it, making things you can't back up.

And I want to turn now to this issue of health, page 48 in your book, where you say, you know, quote: "Being unmarried can actually be a greater risk to one's life than having heart disease or cancer."

I mean, come on. Are you suggesting you put the wedding band on and cancer disappears? The magic cure. It doesn't hold up.

GALLAGHER: What you're -- what you're deriding is actually a very wide and deep body of research. My co-author, Linda Waite, is one of the nation's top family scholars. And in fact, this is based on lifetable expectancies.

When you look at guys with heart disease who are married and how long they're likely to live versus single men of the same age who have healthy hearts, the married guys just live longer. In fact, marital status is, particularly for men, but it's also a benefit for women, emerging as one of the single-best predictors of who dies prematurely.

And you may not like it -- I mean, if you want me to explain to you why it's true, I can tell you some of the facts, but it is in fact true. You do -- you -- you know -- put it this way: We looked at -- we looked at 50,000 people and looked at who died. And if you take two middle-aged guys and you say they're as like as we know how to make them except one's married and one's single or divorced -- didn't matter which in the research -- and you ask, "What are the odds that middle-age guy is still going to be alive at 65?" And the answer is nine out of 10 husbands versus six out of 10 single and divorced guys.

PRESS: Now, let me -- let me just say, I just think your research is totally bogus. You know, Arm & Hammer once offered a million dollars to somebody who would come up with a cure for cancer. Nobody said get married. I mean, I asked my doctor. I asked me -- pardon me -- I asked me doctor about your this morning. I mean, he just laughed. He said why am I -- if I may finish, please -- he said why am I treating so many married couples. You tell me. Why are so many married couples -- why do they have cancer? Why do they have heart attacks? Why do they have the flu? (CROSSTALK)

GALLAGHER: Because everybody gets sick and dies and just like not ever smoker gets lung cancer, but if you smoke, you have a lot bigger risk. The fact is that if your doctor was working an organ transplant theory, he would be putting -- he would be giving -- and you were married guy, you would be moving up the list. This is actually well-known in the medical profession.

Maybe you could -- should consider whether it's -- it may not be relevant to your doctor's practice because he's going to treat you whether you're married are not. But where it becomes relevant, in fact, those doctors are aware of it. And it's interesting because, like -- the -- if you want to know why it happens, it's a lot of things. It's single guys do a lot of really dumb things. They stay out at late night -- oh, I'm sorry.

PRESS: Go ahead, jump in.

MAGOWAN: I want to know if the pro-marriage movement is saying all these things that marriage makes you healthier and happier, why doesn't this conservative, pro-marriage movement work more towards valuing marriage in a way that makes marriage more fulfilling for both men and women? You know, so men are encouraged to stay home and be fathers.

Why can't -- why can't your movement do that and also, why does the conservative movement say they want to make it harder for people to get divorced, and create more laws when the conservative movement's basic premise is that we should have small government? You know, that we should -- we shouldn't leave decisions to the bureaucrats. I don't understand and your health statistics are basically disputed across the board so they don't really make sense to argue -- an argument based on that but why don't you value marriage...

(CROSSTALK)

GALLAGHER: You have to read the book to see how deep wide they are. But, the answer the answer -- the answer to your first question is that the marriage movement is not conservative or liberal because marriage is not a conservative or liberal idea. People of all ideological persuasions get married.

All children need mothers and fathers whether you're right wing or left wing and it's just really not relevant, and I don't think that -- that and I'll get on to the gender issue. One thing I'm really disappointed is that young -- apparently young women who identify themselves as feminists are still saying as nasty things about women who are home with children, calling them housekeepers who take care of kids...

(CROSSTALK)

MAGOWAN: That's absolutely not true.

GALLAGHER: But that's what you said and I picked up on it very strongly even though I...

(CROSSTALK)

MAGOWAN: ... child care.

GALLAGHER: I really want to...

(CROSSTALK)

PRESS: Can we have one at a time? I'll tell you what. I'll tell you what. We'll a break and then we'll come back and when you are talking to each other, please just one at a time so we hear you both because you both have important things to say. OK, when we come back, marriage is definitely a good way but is it the only way for couples to live together? We'll get into that coming back up on CROSSFIRE.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

PRESS: Welcome back to CROSSFIRE. On good days and bad days; in sickness and in health, most of us married folk agree there's nothing better than a good happy marriage. But, is that what's best for everybody? Aren't some people better off just living together? And if a marriage isn't working, is getting a divorce better than keeping your kids at a hellish household?

Tonight, so many questions about how we choose to live together or not for our guests: Maggie Gallagher, a syndicated columnist and co-author with Linda Waite of "The Case For Marriage," and Margot Mcgowan, co-founder of Women Count and the Woodhull Institute for Ethical Leadership. She's in San Francisco -- Mary.

MATALIN: Margot, let me pick up on that point about kids, and let me stress that I'm not -- if the marriage is violent or a high conflict one, of course, it is better to be removed children or -- remove yourself from the marriage, not to mention your children. But there is a myth propagated by feminists and other nontraditional -- I'm not saying there's a liberal-conservative argument, but there's a myth that children are better in a divorce situation than an unhappy marriage and that is just simply not so.

The children of divorce are more likely to participate in crime, in drug use. They're more likely to be depressed or suicidal. And that's just the -- that is that is statistically -- this is not just in Maggie's book. Across-the-board you can't dispute those statistics, and kids that stay in marriages whether they're happy or not, are less likely to have self-destructive lives themselves.

MAGOWAN: Well, Mary, you can dispute those statistics because what makes kids happy across-the-board is love and attention, and there are stats that come out that say kids shouldn't have gay parents, you know. There shouldn't be older mothers. Right now, nobody should be a mother over 40 years old and stats come out to show that that's not good for kids. Kids need love and attention and obviously, it's ideal to have a good marriage and a happy marriage and happy kids. But what's more important, is if parents get divorced, don't have a divorce be acrimonious. Don't make -- let's not go back to the days of, you know, having private eyes, tail your spouse around so you can get divorced from them. Let's have peaceful divorces with mediation. Let's encourage dads to be active parts of their kid's lives and that's going to make for happy kids.

MATALIN: Before we get to that, Margot, why don't we encourage trying to stay together, if not just for good of the kids -- you know, bad marriages can turn into good marriages. That happens all the time. Look at the Clintons. Everybody was saying, oh, they're trying to work it out.

MAGOWAN: Right and they did. and that's a -- Hillary Clinton's a wonderful role model that way because they worked it out and Bill supports his wife out on campaign trail and that's great.

MATALIN: But the ease with which proponents such as yourself are advocating a release from marriage are making it that much easier to release from marriage. It is discouraging trying to stick it out for the sake of the kids or the sake of each other. And you are making in a public policy way less likely that people will stick it out.

MAGOWAN: Mary, in order to make marriage work we've got to value marriage. We have to value women. You know, we have to up the status of women in the society. We have to value motherhood and child care, and unlike what Maggie said, feminists have always fought to value the work that women do. What we need is we need society to value that also.

You know, if you're a dad and you go out for a job and you say you have four kids, your potential employer is going to say, oh, he's going to make a great employee, let's hire him. If you're a mom and you go out for a job and you have four kids, they're not going to hire you, because they think you're going to be too busy with your home life.

So, that's what we need to change.

MATALIN: Maybe you should be. If you have four kids, you might want to consider busying yourself at home.

PRESS: Maggie Gallagher, first I have to say I never thought I'd hear the day when Mary Matalin cited the Clintons as the role model for marriage in this country. But you know, you've moved -- you've moved a long way.

MATALIN: I was pointing out the ludicrousness of (UNINTELLIGIBLE) your argument.

PRESS: But I want to get to my second problem with your -- with your book, if I may, which is to me there's a little bit too much Dr. Laura here, which is sort of an attitude that sneaks through page after page that we're married, they're not, therefore, we're superior to them.

GALLAGHER: I think you're reading that completely into...

PRESS: Well, I want to ask you: Am I reading that wrong?

GALLAGHER: I think you're completely reading that in, and my experience in the marriage movement is that it's a fact many of its leaders are either divorced women or like me -- I was single mother for 10 years. This is not about saying we're better people than you because we're married.

PRESS: OK...

GALLAGHER: It's about whether we want to do better for the next generation than was done for this generation.

PRESS: All right. Well, I'm glad to hear you say that, but let me go then to the next step. Wouldn't you say that since marriage is certainly as important as buying a new car, that it might make sense and probably is a good idea to go for a test drive before you get married?

GALLAGHER: Well, you know, that's been...

PRESS: Meaning living together ain't necessarily all bad.

GALLAGHER: It sounds really logical, and a lot of the people who are living together are trying to do that, trying to figure out if this is a good marriage. The problem again is that it doesn't really work. It really increases -- it does not decrease and it probably increases your risk of divorce. And the reality is that sharing a bed and a kitchen with somebody is really not the core of what marriage is about. And when you when you -- when you're testing someone out and seeing if they're good enough, you're actually not testing the habits that really make marriage work.

PRESS: But you see, I don't think -- I don't think you're being honest about what co-habitation is all about it. It's not just sleeping together. These are people who have made a commitment, these are people who are sharing the...

GALLAGHER: Some of them are.

PRESS: ... their responsibilities, they're sharing their rent, they're paying the bills together, they're traveling together. They're everything that a married couple is and they're committing to each other. Why are you looking down on them?

GALLAGHER: Because they're not. People co-habit in this country either because they're trying to figure out whether to marry, but usually, if it -- because at least one of them does not want either with this person or at this time the full commitment that marriage represents. They say, well, I may share my bed but I'm going to keep my bank account. I'm going to reserve the right to figure out whether you're the right person or somebody else that comes along might be the right person.

To call them as being the same thing is to -- I mean, co-habiters themselves, people who co-habit and then marry will tell you that being married is very different.

PRESS: Margot...

GALLAGHER: People who co-habit are trying to do something different than marry. That's why they're co-habiting.

PRESS: Quick final word, Margot: Co-habitation?

MAGOWAN: Co-habitation is great. It's a great experience. It teaches you to share, to share your life, and it's wonderful preparation for marriage. And I think people should do it. And I think marriage is great, too, if that's the choice you want to make.

MATALIN: Well, I've done both, Margot...

(LAUGHTER)

... and you know, the second works better than the first, but you know, to each his own. Thank you once again for joining us from the "left coast" out there, where your views are right in line with everybody else's. Maggie, terrific book. Thank you very much.

Bill and I will be back to get a divorce, here, live on CROSSFIRE. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

MATALIN: You know...

(PRESS HUMMING WEDDING CHANT)

(LAUGHTER)

In your dreams, buddy. In your dreams.

(LAUGHTER)

Can I -- as a public policy matter, we should encourage marriage, all kinds of marriage, all kinds of unions, because the best argument in fact for gay marriage is that it promotes stability. Stability promotes productivity. And we are producing -- again, we're perpetuating the next productive generation.

It's the bedrock of the foundation of all great cultures.

PRESS: Not to mention the bed. But I have...

(LAUGHTER)

MATALIN: I knew you'd turn this into sex.

PRESS: No, I want to agree with you there, and I think that's one of the problems that I have with the book, is I believe that marriage obviously is a great institution and a great way of life. But the same protections that go to married couples ought to go to couples that happen to live together, don't decide to get married for whatever reason, and for gay couples -- men and men or women and women -- who make that commitment and live together. We should recognize them and salute them.

And you know, the proof of marriage, Mary, is your marriage. I mean, I figure if you and James, if that marriage can work, any marriage can work.

MATALIN: No, I think the proof of marriage is Carol putting up with you night after night.

PRESS: But how does it work? That's what I want to know!

MATALIN: Mr. Spin. Because he's not half as bad as you.

PRESS: Ohh...

MATALIN: He's a dream-boat compared to you.

PRESS: Whoo! From the left, I'm Bill Press. Good night for CROSSFIRE.

MATALIN: And from the right, I'm the happily married Mary Matalin. Thank you for joining us and join us tomorrow for more CROSSFIRE.

PRESS: That makes two of us. Good night.

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