This news won’t shock many parents: Having a kid puts a sudden, drastic strain on a marriage, according to new research from the University of Denver. For 90 percent of couples, marital bliss dives within a year after the birth of their first child. But don’t assume staying childless is the secret to making a marriage happier over the long haul. The eight-year study of 218 Denver-area couples found that while those who had a child experienced an immediate dip in marital satisfaction, couples who did not also became less happy - just gradually. Couples who were the most romantic before children got the ‘biggest jolt at baby time,’ said Scott Stanley, a DU psychology professor. Couples who had babies right away, within a year or so of getting married, and couples with lower incomes also had more substantial drops in marital satisfaction. ‘Declines are somewhat normal in marriage,’ Stanley said. ‘For those having children, they are going to be more concentrated around the time that you have children.’ What the study doesn’t capture: the richer, longer-lasting contentment that comes with building a family, he said. ‘While there is a strain on the […]
Georgia has largely failed to reduce the number of illnesses caused by food-borne contamination during the past four years, officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Thursday. The Atlanta-based CDC also noted that Georgia had the second-highest rate of salmonella in a 10-state study for 2008, which also included previous years. ‘In Georgia, as in other states, there has been very little evidence of progress in food safety over the past four years, said Dr. Robert Tauxe, a top food safety official at the CDC. Food-safety advocates said the report highlights the need to develop better practices. ‘The CDC has opened the window and revealed that food-borne illness is a far more difficult problem to address than we had thought, said Carol Tucker Foreman of the Consumer Federation of America’s Food Policy Institute. ‘Government and industry have to live up to their roles in assuring our food is safe. Georgia agriculture officials, who oversee food safety, say they have made progress in recent years. Agriculture Commissioner Tommy Irvin said the agency has increased the testing of Georgia foods, modernized the testing, and -- in the face of budget constraints -- shifted […]
Only 53% of American adults believe capitalism is better than socialism. The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey found that 20% disagree and say socialism is better. Twenty-seven percent (27%) are not sure which is better. Adults under 30 are essentially evenly divided: 37% prefer capitalism, 33% socialism, and 30% are undecided. Thirty-somethings are a bit more supportive of the free-enterprise approach with 49% for capitalism and 26% for socialism. Adults over 40 strongly favor capitalism, and just 13% of those older Americans believe socialism is better. Investors by a 5-to-1 margin choose capitalism. As for those who do not invest, 40% say capitalism is better while 25% prefer socialism. There is a partisan gap as well. Republicans – by an 11-to-1 margin – favor capitalism. Democrats are much more closely divided: Just 39% say capitalism is better while 30% prefer socialism. As for those not affiliated with either major political party, 48% say capitalism is best, and 21% opt for socialism. (Want a free daily e-mail update? If it’s in the news, it’s in our polls.) Rasmussen Reports updates also available on Twitter. The question posed by Rasmussen Reports did not define either […]
Yvo de Boer spends most of his time on the move, so it makes sense that he has a predilection for running metaphors. The head of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), de Boer was in Bonn over the past two weeks, helping to run the latest round of international negotiations on global warming action, which concluded April 8. (See pictures of the effects of global warming.) More than 2,700 delegates from 180 countries met in the German city for the talks, intended to set the stage for the main event: the U.N. summit in Copenhagen in December, where nations are expected to hammer out a successor to the expiring Kyoto Protocol. ‘If this were a marathon I think I’d say the runners were gathering their stamina for the final sprint,’ de Boer told reporters on the closing day. (See the top 10 green ideas of 2008.) But while the deadline may be getting nearer every day, the world seems to be largely running in place. The Bonn talks were the first international meeting to be attended by President Barack Obama’s climate negotiators - along with palpable relief from the rest of the world that […]
Migration. The word evokes for me, and perhaps for you, images from the Bible. Charlton Heston’s Moses leading the Jews out of Egypt, across the Red Sea, and into the desert that lies beyond. Masses of people collectively on the move with common purpose, bringing with them all their goods and chattels. Never expecting to return. More than war, more than climate catastrophe, more than pandemics-migrations are a force for change. And this is as true for first world countries like the United States, Europe, or Japan, as it is for developing nations like China or Third World countries such as the nations of Africa. Migrations come in two varieties: glacial and volcanic. The 1994 Tutsi flood that poured out of Rwanda and the several million non-Islamic Sudanese forced from their villages by the progovernment Janjaweed militias are volcanic migrations-violent ejections of populations based on immediate crisis. The volcanic time frame is short term, because just as the Rwandans-both Hutu and Tutsi-came back as soon as it was possible, those ejected by a volcanic migration do not surrender their allegiance to their homeland and always hope to return. Theirs is the commonsense response of simple people caught in the […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
