274 ■ NOTES
equal, stable monogamous couples are able to provide better psychologi
cal as well as financial resources for their children. Just from a strictly
economic point of view, serial monogamy (or the frequency of divorce)
seems to be an inefficient way of redistributing income and property. For
the plight of one-parent families, economic and otherwise, see, for in
stance, Hetherington (1979), McLanahan (1988), and Tessman (1978).
Cistothorus palustris. The marital practices of the marsh wren are
described in the Encyclopaedia Britannica (1985, vol. 14, p. 701).Cicero’s quote about freedom was printed in my seventh-grade school
assignment diary, but despite several attempts I have been unable to find
its source. I sincerely hope it is not apocryphal.180 Family complexity. Following the lead of Pagels’s (1988) definition of
complexity, we could also say that a family whose interactions are more
difficult to describe, and whose future interactions are more difficult to
predict on the basis of present knowledge, is more complex than a family
that is easier to describe and to predict. Such a measure would presum
ably give very similar results to a measure of complexity based on differ
entiation and integration.183 Suburban teenagers. The anthropologist Jules Henry (1965) gave a
profoundly insightful description of what growing up in suburban com
munities entailed a generation ago. More recently Schwartz (1987) com
pared six Midwestern communities in terms of what opportunities they
gave adolescents for experiencing freedom and self-respect, and found
striking differences from one community to the next, which suggests that
sweeping generalizations about what is involved in being a teenager in
our society might not be very accurate.If parents talked more. In one study of adolescents at a very good
suburban high school, we found that although teenagers spent 12.7
percent of their waking time with parents, time alone with fathers
amounted to an average of only five minutes a day, half of which was
spent watching television together (Csikszentmihalyi &. Larson 1984, p.
73). It is difficult to imagine how any deep communication of values can
occur in such short periods. It might be true that it is “quality time” that
counts, but after a certain point quantity has a bearing on quality.184 Teenage pregnancy. The United States now leads other developed
countries in teenage pregnancies, abortions, and childbearing. For
every 1,000 girls between the ages of 15 and 19, 96 get pregnant in the
United States each year. Next is France, with 43 pregnancies per 1,000
(Mall 1985). The number of out-of-wedlock births to teenagers has
doubled between 1960 and 1980 (Schiamberg 1988, p. 718). At pre
sent rates, it has been estimated that 40 percent of today’s 14-year-old