98 DIVorCe wItH DeCenCY
for fathers and sons to spend large chunks of time away together
doing “real men’s” activities such as camping, sports, or nature
activities. These types of times spent together appear to be more
valuable than how frequently the dad visits—especially if the fre-
quent visits are short or shallow.
Are kids the key to a good marriage? As we conclude this chap-
ter on the Children of Divorce, it may be interesting to review
the findings of a Pew Research Center study which found that
having children has dropped to one of the least-cited factors in
a successful marriage. When today’s Americans were given a
list of nine features to consider as part of a successful marriage,
only 41 percent said children were “very important,” compared
with 65 percent in 1990. The Pew report calls this drop of 24 per-
centage points “perhaps the single most striking finding of the
survey.”
This nonprofit Pew Research Center also found that on the list
of nine key contributing factors to success in marriage, children
were surpassed by faithfulness, a happy sexual relationship,
household chore-sharing, economic factors (such as adequate
income and good housing), common religious beliefs, and shared
tastes and interests. The bottom line, at least according to Pew,
would seem to be that kids are no longer viewed as being the top
factor in ensuring a good marriage.
Another fascinating finding that comes at this issue from a
completely different angle was a recent study of people’s estate-
planning practices conducted by Thomas Dunn and John Phillips
for Economic Letters. They made the seemingly astonishing, but
perhaps telling, discovery that 10 percent of all parents ultimately
wind up disinheriting at least one of their children.