Case Nos. 14-35420 & 14-35421: Plaintiffs-Appellees

Case Nos.
14-35420 & 14-35421

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT

SUSAN LATTA, et al.,
Plaintiffs-Appellees,
vs.
C.L. BUTCH OTTER, et al.,
Defendants-Appellants,
and
STATE OF IDAHO,
Defendant-Intervenor-Appellant.

On Appeal from the United States District Court
for the District of Idaho
D.C. No. 1:13-cv-00482-CWD
(Dale, M.J ., Presiding)

OPENING BRIEF OF APPELLANTS RICH AND IDAHO

LAWRENCE G. WASDEN
ATTORNEY GENERAL
STEVEN L. OLSEN
Chief of Civil Litigation Division
W. SCOTT ZANZIG, ISB NO. 9361
CLAY R. SMITH, ISB NO. 6385
Deputy Attorneys General
Statehouse, Room 210, Boise, ID 83720
Telephone: (208) 334-2400
Fax: (208) 854-8073
Counsel for Appellants Christopher Rich and State of Idaho

J une 19, 2014
Case: 14-35420 06/19/2014 ID: 9138829 DktEntry: 21-1 Page: 1 of 75 (1 of 858)

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION .............................................................................................. 1

J URSIDICTIONAL STATEMENT .................................................................... 2

STATEMENT OF THE ISSUES ........................................................................ 3

ADDENDUM OF PERTINENT AUTHORITIES ............................................. 3

STATEMENT OF THE CASE ........................................................................... 4

STATEMENT OF FACTS ................................................................................. 6

SUMMARY OF ARGUMENT ........................................................................... 8

ARGUMENT .................................................................................................... 10

I. Standard of Review ..................................................................... 10

II. Baker v. Nelson Forecloses Plaintiffs Claims ............................ 10

III. Even in the Absence of Baker, Idahos Marriage Laws
Satisfy the Rational Basis Test, Which Governs
Plaintiffs Claims ......................................................................... 17

A. The Rational Basis Test Governs Plaintiffs Due Process
Claim Because Same-Sex Marriage Is Not a Fundamental
Right ................................................................................... 18


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B. The Rational Basis Test Governs Plaintiffs Equal Protection
Claim Because Idahos Marriage Laws Do Not
Classify on the Basis of Sexual Orientation and
Are not the Product of Intentional and Irrational
Discrimination .................................................................... 21

C. Rational Basis Review Is a Deferential Standard
That is Satisfied as Long as the Challenged Law
Is Reasonably Related to a Legitimate
Governmental Objective .................................................... 23

D. Idahos Interest in Furthering the Stability of Family
Structures Through Benefits Targeted at Couples
Possessing Biological Procreative Capacity Is
Substantial and Satisfies the Rational Basis Standard ....... 27

1. Relevant Idaho Demographic Data ............................ 28

2. Focusing Governmental Resources to Encourage
Stable Biological Parent Households ......................... 31

3. Application of the Rational Basis Standard to
Article III, Section 28 and 32-201 .......................... 36

4. The District Courts Rejection of the States
J ustification Does Not Withstand Scrutiny
Under Traditional Equal Protection Standards ......... 39

5. The Full Faith and Credit Clause Provides
Additional J ustification for Section 32-209 ............... 43

CONCLUSION ................................................................................................. 45

STATEMENT OF RELATED CASES ............................................................. 46

CERTIFICATE OF COMPLIANCE ................................................................. 47


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TABLE OF AUTHORITIES

CASES

Agostini v. Felton, 521 U.S. 203, 237-38 (1997) .............................................. 13

Andersen v. King County, 138 P.3d 963 (Wash. 2006) .................................... 25

Baehr v. Lewin, 852 P.2d 44 (Haw. 1993) ........................................................ 27

Baker v. Nelson, 191 N.W.2d 185 (Minn. 1971) ....................................... passim

Baker v. Nelson, 409 U.S. 810 (1972) ....................................................... passim

Bishop v. United States ex rel. Holder, 962 F. Supp. 2d 1252
(N.D. Okla. 2014) ............................................................................................. 25

Bostic v. Rainey, 970 F. Supp. 2d 456 (E.D. Va. 2014) ................................... 25

Bowen v. Gilliard, 483 U.S. 587 (1987) ........................................................... 34

Citizens for Equal Protection v. Bruning, 455 F.3d 859 (8th Cir. 2006) ......... 25

City of Cleburne v. Cleburne Living Ctr., 473 U.S. 432 (1985) ....................... 23

Cleveland Board of Education v. LaFleur, 414 U.S. 632 (1974) ..................... 30

Collins v. Brewer, 727 F. Supp. 2d 797 (D. Ariz. 2010), affd, 656 F.3d
1008 (9th Cir.), rehg denied, 676 F.3d 823 (9th Cir. 2012) ............................ 42

Collins v. Harker Heights, 503 U.S. 115, 125 (1992) ...................................... 19

Dandridge v. Williams, 397 U.S. 471, 485 (1970) ........................................... 31

DeBoer v. Snyder, 973 F. Supp. 2d 757 (E.D. Mich. 2014) ............................. 26

DeLeon v. Perry, 975 F. Supp. 2d 632 (W.D. Tex. 2014) ................................ 25

Department of Agriculture v. Moreno, 413 U.S. 528 (1973) ..................... 22, 43

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Diaz v. Brewer, 656 F.3d 1008 (9th Cir. 2011) .......................................... 41, 42

FCC v. Beach Commcns, Inc., 508 U.S. 307 (1993) ....................................... 23

Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U.S. 479 (1965) ................................................. 30

Heller v. Doe, 509 U.S. 312 (1993) .................................................................. 24

Herbert v. Kitchen, 134 S. Ct. 893 (2014) .................................................. 16, 17

Hernandez v. Robles, 855 N.E.2d 1, 6-9 (N.Y. App. Div. 2006) ..................... 17

Hicks v. Miranda, 422 U.S. 332 (1975) ............................................................ 11

In re Duncan, 83 Idaho 254, 360 P.2d 987 (1961) ........................................... 44

In re Kandu, 315 B.R. 123 (Bankr. W.D. Wash. 2004) ................................... 12

Jackson v. Abercrombie, 884 F. Supp. 2d 1065, 1111-16 (D. Haw. 2012),
appeals pending, Nos. 12-16995 & 12-16998 (9th Cir.) ................ 25, 30, 36, 46

Kadrmas v. Dickinson Pub. Schs., 487 U.S. 450 (1988) ................................. 14

Kitchen v. Herbert, No. 13-4178 (10th Cir. Dec. 24, 2013) ............................. 17

Kitchen v. Herbert, No. 2:13-cv-217, 2013 WL 6834634
(D. Utah Dec. 23, 2013) .................................................................................... 17

Lawrence v. Texas, 539 U.S. 558 (2003) .......................................................... 14

Lopez-Valenzuela v. County of Maricopa, 719 F.3d 1054 (9th Cir. 2013) ...... 10

Loving v. Virginia, 388 U.S. 1 (1967) .............................................................. 20

M.L.B. v. S.L.J., 519 U.S. 102 (1996) ............................................................... 30

Mandel v. Bradley, 432 U.S. 173 (1977) .......................................................... 12

Maynard v. Hill, 125 U.S. 190 (1888) .............................................................. 27

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Minnesota v. Clover Leaf Creamery Co., 449 U.S. 456 (1981) ....................... 24

Moore v. City of East Cleveland, 431 U.S. 494 (1977) .................................... 19

Morrison v. Sadler, 821 N.E.2d 15, 22-31 (Ind. Ct. App. 2005) ...................... 25

Nevada v. Hall, 440 U.S. 410 (1979) ................................................................ 44

Nguyen v. INS, 533 U.S. 53 (2001) ................................................................... 23

Obergefell v. Wymyslo, 962 F. Supp. 2d 968 (S.D. Ohio 2013) ....................... 25

Packwood v. Select Comm. on Ethics, 510 U.S. 1319 (1994) .......................... 17

Plyler v. Doe, 457 U.S. 202 (1982) ............................................................. 41, 42

Rodriquez de Quijas v. Shearson/Am. Express, Inc., 490 U.S. 477 (1989) ...... 13

Romer v. Evans, 517 U.S. 620 (1996) ....................................................... passim

Sevcik v. Sandoval, 911 F. Supp. 2d 996, (D. Nev. 2012), appeal pending,
No. 12-17668 (9th Cir.) .............................................................................. 25, 46

Silveira v. Lockyer, 312 F.3d 1052 (9th Cir. 2002) .......................................... 25

Skinner v. Oklahoma ex rel. Williamson, 316 U.S. 535 (1942) .................. 27, 40

SmithKline Beecham Corp. v. Abbott Laboratories, 740 F.3d
471 (9th Cir. 2014) ............................................................................ 9, 21, 22, 23

Snyder v. Commonwealth, 291 U.S. 97, 105 (1934) ......................................... 19

South Carolina State Highway Dept v. Barnwell Bros.,
303 U.S. 177 (1938) .......................................................................................... 41

Tully v. Griffin, 429 U.S. 68 (1976) .................................................................. 13

Turner v. Safley, 482 U.S. 75 (1987) .................................................... 20, 21, 28


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Tutor-Saliba Corp. v. City of Hailey, 452 F.3d 1055 (9th Cir. 2006) .............. 24

United States R.R. Ret. Bd. v. Fritz, 449 U.S. 166 (1980) ................................ 25

United States v. Windsor, 133 S. Ct. 2675 (2013) ..................................... passim

Washington v. Glucksberg, 521 U.S. 702 (1997) ............................. 9, 18, 19, 20

Wolf v. Walker, No. 14-cv-64-bbc, 2014 WL 255844, at *29
(W.D. Wis. J une 6, 2014) ........................................................................... 25, 30

Wright v. Incline Vill. Gen. Improvement Dist., 665 F.3d 1128 n.8
(9th Cir. 2011) ................................................................................................... 24

Wright v. Lane County Dist. Ct., 647 F.2d 940 (9th Cir. 1981) ....................... 11

Zablocki v. Redhail, 434 U.S. 374 (1978) .................................................. 20, 21

CONSTITUTIONAL PROVISIONS

U.S. Const. amend. XIV, 1 ...................................................................... passim

Idaho Const. art. III, 28 ............................................................................... 4, 36

STATUTES

1 U.S.C. 7 ...................................................................................................... 15

28 U.S.C. 1291 ................................................................................................. 2

28 U.S.C. 1331 ................................................................................................. 2

28 U.S.C. 1343 ................................................................................................. 2

Idaho Code 32-201 ..................................................................... 4, 7, 36, 43, 46


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Idaho Code 32-202 ....................................................................................... 6, 7

Idaho Code 32-209 ............................................................................. 43, 44, 45

1864 Idaho Terr. Sess. L. 613 ....................................................................... 6, 28

1889 Idaho Terr. Sess. L. 40 ............................................................................... 6

1901 Civ. Code Ann. 1990 .............................................................................. 6

1995 Idaho Sess. Laws ch. 104 ........................................................................... 7

1996 Idaho Sess. Laws ch. 331, 1 .................................................................... 7

2006 Idaho Sess. Laws H.J .R. No. 2 ................................................................... 7

RULES

Fed. R. App. P. 4(a)(1)(a) ................................................................................... 2

Fed. R. App. P. 28 (f) .......................................................................................... 3

Ninth Circuit Rule 28-2.7 ................................................................................... 3

OTHER AUTHORITIES

Paul R. Amato, The Impact of Family Formation Change on the Cognitive,
Social, and Emotional Well-Being of the Next Generation, 15 Future
of Children No. 2 at 79 (Fall 2005) .................................................................. 32

Saby Ghoshray, Dual Rationality of Same-Sex Marriage: Creation of
New Rights in the Shadow of Incomplete Contract Paradigm,
28 New Eng. Roundtable Symp. L.J . 59, 82 (2007) ......................................... 34


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Kristen Anderson Moore et al., Marriage from a Childs Perspective:
How Does Family Structure Affect Children, and What Can We
Do About It?, Child Research Brief at 1-2 (J une 2002) ................................... 32

W. Bradford Wilcox et al., Why Marriage Matters: Thirty Conclusions
from Social Sciences at 7 (3d ed. 2011) (ER 511, 516) .................................... 31

Elizabeth Wildsmith et al., Childbearing Outside of Marriage: Estimates
and Trends in the United States, Child Research Brief at 5 (Nov. 2011) ........ 33

Benjamin Scafide, Principal Investigator, The Taxpayer Costs of Divorce
and Unwed Childbearing: First Ever Estimate for the Nation and All Fifty
States at 9 (2008) ............................................................................................... 33

Ellen Shapiro, Til Death Do Us Part: The Difficulties of Obtaining
a Same-Sex Divorce, 8 NW J . L. & Soc. Poly 208, 226 (2013) ...................... 35

Restatement (Second) of Conflict of Laws 283 .............................................. 44


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INTRODUCTION
This is one of many cases filed by plaintiffs around the country challenging
a states right to maintain the traditional definition of civil marriage. Since its
territorial days, Idahos marriage laws have consistently limited civil marriage to
its traditional definition: a union between one man and one woman.
Four same-sex couples challenged Idahos marriage laws. They contend that
the Equal Protection and Due Process Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment
require Idaho to expand the definition of civil marriage to include same-sex
couples.
The Supreme Court has never held that the Constitution requires all States to
make this uniform change to their marriage laws to recognize the recent
phenomenon of same-sex marriage. Quite the contrary, the Court has consistently
recognized that the power to define marriage resides with the States, not the federal
government. See, e.g., United States v. Windsor, 133 S. Ct. 2675, 2690-91 (2013).
And the only time the Court has decided claims like those plaintiffs advance here,
it rejected them. Baker v. Nelson, 409 U.S. 810 (1972).
Nonetheless, the district court granted plaintiffs summary judgment motion,
declaring Idahos marriage laws unconstitutional to the extent that they do not
permit or recognize same-sex marriage. The court reached this result by
determining that: (1) the Supreme Courts Baker decision is no longer good law;

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(2) the Due Process Clause gives same-sex couples a fundamental right to civil
marriage; and (3) because Idaho has not changed its traditional definition of
marriage to include same-sex partners, it discriminates on the basis of sexual
orientation in violation of the Equal Protection Clause.
The State of Idaho and Christopher Rich, Ada Countys Recorder,
respectfully submit that the district court erred on each of the three determinations
set forth above. This Court should reverse the district courts judgment, either by
enforcing the precedent set by the Supreme Court in Baker, or by determining that
Idahos traditional definition of marriage does not offend the Due Process and
Equal Protection Clauses.
JURISDICTIONAL STATEMENT
The district court had subject matter jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. 1331
and 1343. The district court entered judgment on May 14, 2014. ER 67.
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That
same day, all defendants filed notices of appeal. ER 61; 67. The appeals are
timely under Fed. R. App. P. 4(a)(1)(A). This Court has jurisdiction over the
appeals under 28 U.S.C. 1291.
/ / /

1
All references to the Excerpts of Record (ER) are to the ER filed by appellants
Rich and Idaho.

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STATEMENT OF THE ISSUES
1. Whether the district court erred by refusing to follow the precedent
established by the Supreme Court in Baker v. Nelson, 409 U.S. 810 (1972): Neither
the Equal Protection Clause nor the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth
Amendment requires a State to alter the traditional definition of civil marriage to
include same-sex couples.
2. Whether the district court erred by concluding that Idahos marriage
laws violate the Due Process Clause because same-sex couples enjoy a
fundamental right to marry.
3. Whether the district court erred by concluding that Idahos marriage
laws violate the Equal Protection Clause because traditional marriage laws
discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation and that such laws are subject to
heightened scrutiny, which they cannot withstand.
Idaho and Rich raised all these issues in their briefing on their motions to
dismiss and plaintiffs summary judgment motion. See Dist. Ct. Dkt. 30-1, 41-1,
73, 75. This Courts review of these issues is de novo.
ADDENDUM OF PERTINENT AUTHORITIES
Pursuant to Fed. R. App. P. 28(f) and Ninth Circuit Rule 28-2.7, Idaho and
Rich have set forth pertinent constitutional provisions and statutes in an addendum
to this brief.

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STATEMENT OF THE CASE
Plaintiffs filed their complaint challenging the constitutionality of Idahos
marriage laws on November 8, 2013. Dist. Ct. Dkt. 1. Plaintiffs challenged the
validity of Article III, Section 28 of the Idaho Constitution and Idaho Code 32-
201 (which limit civil marriage to unions between one man and one woman), and
Idaho Code 32-209 (which prohibits recognition of out-of-state marriages that
violate Idahos public policy). Plaintiffs contended that these laws violate the
Equal Protection Clause and the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth
Amendment. Id.
Plaintiffs named Idahos governor, C.L. Butch Otter, and Ada County
Recorder Christopher Rich as defendants. The district court granted Idaho leave to
intervene to defend its laws on J anuary 21, 2014. ER 417.
Defendant Rich filed a Rule 12(b)(6) motion to dismiss on J anuary 9, 2014.
ER 604. The State of Idaho joined the motion. ER 414. The motion to dismiss
asserted that the Supreme Courts decision in Baker v. Nelson, 409 U.S. 810
(1972), required dismissal of plaintiffs claims. It also argued that even in the
absence of Baker, Idahos marriage laws satisfy the rational basis standard, which
should govern plaintiffs equal protection and due process claims. Dist. Ct. Dkt.
30-1.

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Governor Otter and plaintiffs filed cross-motions for summary judgment.
ER 209; 376. Governor Otter advanced a number of additional justifications for
Idahos laws, which he contended satisfy not only the rational basis test, but also
heightened scrutiny. Dist. Ct. Dkt. 57-2. Plaintiffs sought a declaration that
Idahos laws violate the Equal Protection and Due Process Clauses, as well as
injunctive relief prohibiting defendants from enforcing the laws. ER 377-78.
The district court held oral argument on the dispositive motions on May 5,
2014. Dist. Ct. Dkt. 96. On May 13, 2014, the court issued a Memorandum
Decision and Order granting plaintiffs motion. ER 1. The district court held that
the right to same-sex marriage is a fundamental right protected by the Due Process
Clause and that, therefore, laws prohibiting such marriage are subject to strict
scrutiny. ER 19-28. It also held that discrimination on the basis of sexual
orientation affects a suspect class and is therefore subject to heightened scrutiny.
ER 28-36. The court then found the justification proffered by Recorder Rich and
Idaho, as well as the justifications proffered by Governor Otter, for the laws
insufficient under the applicable review standards. Given these determinations, it
declared Idahos marriage laws unconstitutional and permanently enjoined their
enforcement. ER 57.
On May 14, 2014, the district court denied Governor Otters motion for a
stay pending appeal. Dist. Ct. Dkt. 100. That same day, the court entered

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judgment in plaintiffs favor consistent with its May 13, 2014 memorandum
decision and order. ER 67.
All defendants filed notices of appeal on May 14, 2014. ER 61; 64. They
also filed emergency motions with this Court seeking a stay of the district courts
judgment pending appeal. Dkt. 2-1, 3-1. Governor Otter filed an amended notice
of appeal on May 19, 2014. ER 58. On the following day, this Court granted the
emergency motions and entered a stay. Dkt. 11. This Court entered an order
consolidating the appeals on J une 2, 2014. Dkt. 17.
STATEMENT OF FACTS
Since its territorial days in 1864, Idahos marriage laws have always defined
civil marriage as a union between one man and one woman. ER 92 1. See also
1864 Idaho Terr. Sess. L. 613; 1889 Idaho Terr. Sess. L. 40; 1901 Civ. Code Ann.
1990; Idaho Code 32-202. Civil marriage between members of the same sex
has never been authorized under Idaho territorial or state law. See id.
Idaho Code 32-202, which was last amended in 1981, and which plaintiffs
have not challenged in this lawsuit, specifies the persons who may marry under
Idaho law. It identifies those qualified to marry as [a]ny unmarried male . . . and
any unmarried female of specified age, and not otherwise disqualified. Based
on this statute, the Idaho Attorney General issued a formal opinion in 1993
concluding that Idaho law did not permit persons of the same sex to marry. Idaho

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Atty Gen. Op. No. 93-11, 1993 WL 482224, at *10 (Nov. 3, 1993) (citing 32-
202 for the principle that [t]he State of Idaho does not legally recognize either
homosexual marriages or homosexual domestic partnerships. By statute, marriage
is limited in Idaho to the union between a man and a woman).
In 1995, Idahos legislature amended Idaho Code 32-201 to eliminate
recognition of common law marriages. See 1995 Idaho Sess. Laws ch. 104. The
amendment also affirmed Idahos longstanding traditional man-woman definition
of marriage. See id. 3. Section 32-201 currently provides in relevant part:
Marriage is a personal relation arising out of a civil contract between a man and a
woman.
In 1996, Idahos legislature amended Idaho Code 32-209, which governs
recognition of foreign or out-of-state marriages. See 1996 Idaho Sess. Laws
ch. 331, 1. Section 32-209 provides:
All marriages contracted without this state, which would be valid by
the laws of the state or country in which the same were contracted, are
valid in this state, unless they violate the public policy of this state.
Marriages that violate the public policy of this state include, but are
not limited to, same-sex marriages, and marriages entered into under
the laws of another state or country with the intent to evade the
prohibitions of the marriage laws of this state.
Ten years later, the Idaho legislature proposed Article III, section 28 (2006
Idaho Sess. Laws H.J .R. No. 2), and the Idaho electorate approved it as a
constitutional amendment in November 2006. The constitutional amendment

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affirmed Idahos traditional definition of marriage. Article III, section 28 provides:
A marriage between a man and a woman is the only domestic legal union that
shall be valid or recognized in this state.
Plaintiffs are four same-sex couples who reside in Idaho. ER 390-93 15,
17, 19, 20. Two of the couples allege that they wish to marry in Idaho. ER 392-93
19, 20. The other two couples allege that they were married in other States
while they were Idaho residents. ER 92 2. They wish to have their out-of-state
marriages recognized in Idaho. ER 411 D.
SUMMARY OF ARGUMENT
The Supreme Courts decision in Baker v. Nelson, 409 U.S. 810 (1972),
established that neither the Equal Protection Clause nor the Due Process Clause
requires a State to alter its traditional definition of civil marriage to include same-
sex couples. Lower courts are bound by Baker unless and until the Supreme Court
instructs them otherwise. The district court, like a number of other district courts,
rejected Baker based on a misreading of the Supreme Courts decision in United
States v. Windsor, 133 S. Ct. 2675 (2013). Windsor did not overrule or even
undermine Baker; in fact, Windsor is consistent with the principle underlying
Baker. The definition of civil marriage is a matter to be determined by State, not
federal, law.

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Even in the absence of Baker, Idahos marriage laws satisfy the rational
basis test, the appropriate standard by which to judge those laws. The rational
basis standard applies to plaintiffs due process claim because same-sex marriage
cannot be a fundamental right under Washington v. Glucksberg, 521 U.S. 702
(1997). Same-sex marriage is a new phenomenon, not deeply rooted in this
Nations history and tradition, as Glucksberg requires.
Similarly, the rational basis test should govern plaintiffs equal protection
claim. Contrary to the district courts conclusion, this Courts decision in
SmithKline Beecham Corp. v. Abbott Laboratories, 740 F.3d 471 (9th Cir. 2014),
does not require the application of heightened scrutiny to Idahos marriage laws.
SmithKline read Windsor to require some heightened level of scrutiny to apply to
the intentionally discriminatory act of striking a juror solely because he was gay.
The discrimination in SmithKline was based on a false stereotype: an assumption
that the juror could not impartially evaluate the case because of his sexual
orientation. Thus, the discrimination in SmithKline was akin to the animus or bare
desire to harm an unpopular group decried in Windsor.
Idahos marriage laws present a very different issue. The laws do not
classify based on sexual orientation. Nor are they the product of animus or false
stereotypes. Idahos marriage laws have consistently maintained the traditional
man-woman definition for 150 years. There is no evidence that Idahos adoption

10
of the traditional definition of marriage was intended to discriminate against
anyone based on sexual orientation. And the decision to provide civil marriage
benefits to opposite-sex couples, but not same-sex couples, is based on biological
realities, not false stereotypes.
The traditional rational basis standard applies here, and Idahos marriage
laws satisfy it. The laws are reasonably related to a legitimate government
purpose. Idaho has an undeniable interest in promoting the welfare of children.
The State has chosen to do so by focusing its limited resources on promoting stable
relationships between opposite-sex couples, whose biological ability to procreate
makes them parents of virtually all children in Idaho.
ARGUMENT
I. Standard of Review
This Court reviews de novo a district courts grant or denial of summary
judgment. Lopez-Valenzuela v. County of Maricopa, 719 F.3d 1054, 1059
(9th Cir. 2013).
II. Baker v. Nelson Forecloses Plaintiffs Claims
Plaintiffs contend that the Equal Protection and Due Process Clauses require
every State to expand the traditional definition of marriage to include same-sex
couples. The Supreme Court rejected these very arguments in Baker v. Nelson,

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409 U.S. 810 (1972). Baker is the only case in which the Supreme Court has
addressed those issues.
In Baker v. Nelson, 191 N.W.2d 185 (Minn. 1971), appeal dismissed for
want of substantial federal question, 409 U.S. 810 (1972), Minnesota interpreted
its marriage statute to prohibit same-sex marriage. A same-sex couple challenged
the constitutionality of the statute as applied. They argued, among other things,
that they were deprived of due process and equal protection guaranteed by the
Fourteenth Amendment. Id. at 186. The Minnesota Supreme Court rejected these
arguments. It held that there is no fundamental right to marry without regard to the
sex of the parties. Id. at 186-87. The court also held that limiting marriage to
opposite-sex couples did not violate the Equal Protection Clause. Id. at 187.
The plaintiffs appealed to the United States Supreme Court, which dismissed
the appeal for want of a substantial federal question. 409 U.S. 810. The Supreme
Courts summary dismissal constituted a decision on the merits. Hicks v. Miranda,
422 U.S. 332, 343-44 (1975). As such, lower courts are bound by summary
decisions by [the Supreme] Court until such time as the Court informs [them] that
[they] are not. Id. at 344-45 (internal quotation marks omitted); see also Wright v.
Lane County Dist. Ct., 647 F.2d 940, 941 (9th Cir. 1981) ([s]ummary dismissals
for want of a substantial federal question are decisions on the merits that bind
lower courts until subsequent decisions of the Supreme Court suggest otherwise).

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The core, and dispositive, question here is whether the Supreme Court has
inform[ed] the lower courts that Baker is no longer binding. It has not.
Summary . . . dismissals for want of a substantial federal question . . .
reject the specific challenges presented in the statement of jurisdiction and do leave
undisturbed the judgment appealed from. They do prevent lower courts from
coming to opposite conclusions on the precise issues presented and necessarily
decided by those actions. Mandel v. Bradley, 432 U.S. 173, 176 (1977) (per
curiam). The jurisdictional statements presented to the United States Supreme
Court in Baker were:
1. Whether appellees refusal to sanctify appellants marriage deprives
appellants of their liberty to marry and of their property without due
process of law under the Fourteenth Amendment.
2. Whether appellees refusal, pursuant to Minnesota marriage statutes,
to sanctify appellants marriage because both are of the male sex violates
their rights under the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth
Amendment.
3. Whether appellees refusal to sanctify appellants marriage deprives
appellants of their right to privacy under the Ninth and Fourteenth
Amendments.
In re Kandu, 315 B.R. 123, 137 (Bankr. W.D. Wash. 2004). The first two issues
presented in the jurisdictional statement in Baker are identical to the issues
plaintiffs raise in their claims challenging Idahos laws that limit marriage to a
union between a man and a womani.e., whether the States refusal to permit
same-sex marriage violates the Fourteenth Amendments Due Process and Equal

13
Protection Clauses. Accordingly, Baker required the district court to dismiss
plaintiffs claims.
Instead, the district court accepted plaintiffs invitation to reject Baker. In so
doing, the court improperly ignored Supreme Court precedent. As the Supreme
Court has instructed:
We do not acknowledge, and we do not hold, that other courts should
conclude our more recent cases have, by implication, overruled an
earlier precedent. We reaffirm that [i]f a precedent of this Court has
direct application in a case, yet appears to rest on reasons rejected in
some other line of decisions, the Court of Appeals should follow the
case which directly controls, leaving to this Court the prerogative of
overruling its own decisions.
Agostini v. Felton, 521 U.S. 203, 237-38 (1997) (quoting Rodriquez de Quijas v.
Shearson/Am. Express, Inc., 490 U.S. 477, 484 (1989)). Even a summary
disposition such as Baker remains controlling precedent unless and until re-
examined by [the Supreme] Court. Tully v. Griffin, 429 U.S. 68, 74 (1976).
The district court acknowledged that, prior to Windsor, courts were
reluctant to depart from the precedent the Supreme Court set in Baker. ER 18.
To the extent that the district court read Windsor to have somehow overruled
Baker, the court erred by reading Windsor far too broadly. Nothing in Windsor
undermines Baker.
The Supreme Court has addressed substantive due process and equal
protection claims involving sexual orientation three times since Baker: Romer v.

14
Evans, 517 U.S. 620 (1996); Lawrence v. Texas, 539 U.S. 558 (2003); and
Windsor. Of the three, only Windsor has true relevance, and its analysis supports
the proposition that the Court is reserving to itself the question whether the
Constitution has changed to now require all States to abandon the traditional
definition of marriage.
Romer invalidated a Colorado constitutional amendment that prohibited
enactment or enforcement of any law or policy designed to protect . . .
homosexual persons or gays and lesbians. 517 U.S. at 624. The Court expressly
applied the rational basis standard in reaching its holding. Id. at 631 (if a law
neither burdens a fundamental right nor targets a suspect class, we will uphold the
legislative classification so long as it bears a rational relation to some legitimate
end); id. at 635 (a law must bear a rational relationship to a legitimate
governmental purpose, . . . and Amendment 2 does not) (citing Kadrmas v.
Dickinson Pub. Schs., 487 U.S. 450, 462 (1988)). The Courts opinion makes no
mention of same-sex marriage or Baker.
In Lawrence, the Court held that a Texas statute forbidding persons of the
same sex to engage in intimate sexual conduct violated the Due Process Clause.
The Court noted that the case did not involve whether the government must give
formal recognition to any relationship that homosexual persons seek to enter.
539 U.S. at 578. The decision instead focused on the right of two adults who,

15
with full and mutual consent from each other, engaged in sexual practices common
to a homosexual lifestyle . . . without intervention of the government. Id. Here,
plaintiffs seek such intervention to secure access to certain governmental benefits
through formal recognition of their private relationship through marriage.
In Windsor, the Court held that a federal statute, section 3 of the Defense of
Marriage Act (DOMA), 1 U.S.C. 7, was unconstitutional as a deprivation of
the liberty of the person protected by the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution.
133 S. Ct. at 2695. DOMAs section 3 provided a federal definition of marriage
and spouse that applied to all federal laws. It provided that the word marriage
means only a legal union between one man and one woman as husband and wife.
Id. at 2683. The Court noted that the definition and regulation of marriage is
within the authority and realm of the separate States, id. at 2689-90; certain
States have chosen to recognize same-sex marriage; and section 3 of DOMA
impermissibly deprived same-sex couples married in those States of the rights and
responsibilities that should have come along with their State-sanctioned same-sex
marriages. Id. at 2694; see also id. at 2693-94 ([t]he Act's demonstrated purpose
is to ensure that if any State decides to recognize same-sex marriages, those unions
will be treated as second-class marriages for purposes of federal law) (emphasis
added).

16
Windsor did not mention Baker. It also did not hold that all States are
required constitutionally to permit or recognize same-sex marriage. Quite the
contrary, the Court went out of its way to make clear that the flaw in section 3 was
Congress failure to give effect to a Statesthere, New Yorksdetermination as
to who is eligible to enter into the marriage relationship. It neither held nor
suggested that States have no choice in the exceptionally sensitive area of whether
marriage should be limited to opposite-sex couples.

Windsor reiterated the States
primacy in determining the contours of civil marriage and rebuffed Congress
attempt to interfere with that primacy. It is thus ironic indeed to draw from
Windsoras did the district court in concluding that it implicitly overruled Baker
(ER 18-19)the rule that a States choice to recognize a quite recent social and
political phenomenonsame-sex civil marriageenjoys protection from
congressional override but that another States determination to maintain in place
the historical limitation of civil marriage to opposite-sex couples may be
disregarded. Whatever else Windsor may stand for, it did not alter Bakers control
over the issues in this case.
Following its decision in Windsor, the Supreme Court sent another signal
indicating that Baker remains good law. The Court granted the application filed by
Utahs governor and attorney general to stay enforcement of a district courts
injunction determining that Utahs marriage laws are unconstitutional. Herbert v.

17
Kitchen, 134 S. Ct. 893 (2014) (mem.). The stay request had been denied by the
district court (Kitchen v. Herbert, No. 2:13-cv-217, 2013 WL 6834634 (D. Utah
Dec. 23, 2013)) and by the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals (Kitchen v. Herbert,
No. 13-4178 (10th Cir. Dec. 24, 2013)). In granting the stay, the Supreme Court
necessarily concluded that eventual certiorari review is likely, and that there is a
significant possibility the Court will uphold Utahs marriage laws. See, e.g.,
Packwood v. Select Comm. on Ethics, 510 U.S. 1319 (1994) (Rehnquist, J ., in
chambers) (The criteria for deciding whether to grant a stay are well established.
An applicant must demonstrate: (1) a reasonable probability that four J ustices
would vote to grant certiorari; (2) a significant possibility that the Court would
reverse the judgment below; and (3) a likelihood of irreparable harm, assuming the
correctness of the applicant's position, if the judgment is not stayed. . . . Because
this matter is pending before the Court of Appeals, and because the Court of
Appeals denied his motion for a stay, applicant has an especially heavy burden.)
(citation omitted). The Supreme Courts extraordinary determination to issue a
stay indicates that the Court recognizes the need for it to resolve the issues in this
and related litigation and to maintain the status quo until it speaks.
III. Even in the Absence of Baker, Idahos Marriage Laws Satisfy the
Rational Basis Test, Which Governs Plaintiffs Claims
Even if Baker did not require dismissal of plaintiffs claims, Idahos
marriage laws would satisfy the rational basis standard. Under the doctrine of

18
substantive due process, state laws that do not implicate a fundamental right are
subject to rational basis review. Washington v. Glucksberg, 521 U.S. 702, 722
(1997). Similarly, the rational basis test applies to equal protection challenges
unless the challenged law burdens a fundamental right or targets a suspect class.
Romer, 517 U.S. at 630. Idahos marriage laws neither deny plaintiffs a
fundamental right nor target a suspect class.
A. The Rational Basis Test Governs Plaintiffs Due Process
Claim Because Same-Sex Marriage Is Not a Fundamental
Right
Neither the Supreme Court, this Court, nor any other federal appellate court
has ever held that same-sex couples have a fundamental right to civil marriage.
Indeed, to declare same-sex marriage a fundamental right would require a court to
overrule or ignore well-established Supreme Court authority requiring that the
right at issue be objectively, deeply rooted in this Nations history and tradition.
Glucksberg, 521 U.S. at 720-21 (internal quotation omitted). The district court
refused to follow [t]he restraint exercised in Glucksberg. ER 22. That refusal
was error and should be reversed.
The doctrine of substantive due process is not favored in the law.
[B]ecause guideposts for responsible decisionmaking in this unchartered area are
scarce and open-ended, courts should be reluctant to expand the concept of

19
substantive due process. Glucksberg, 521 U.S. at 720. As the Supreme Court has
explained:
By extending constitutional protection to an asserted right or liberty
interest, we, to a great extent, place the matter outside the arena of
public debate and legislative action. We must therefore exercise the
utmost care whenever we are asked to break new ground in this field,
lest the liberty protected by the Due Process Clause be subtly
transformed into the policy preferences of the Members of this Court.

Id. (quoting Collins v. Harker Heights, 503 U.S. 115, 125 (1992), and citing Moore
v. City of East Cleveland, 431 U.S. 494, 502 (1977)). Before a court will recognize
a right as fundamental, it must undertake a careful, two-step analysis.
First, in order to warrant heightened protection, a right or interest must be,
objectively, deeply rooted in this Nation's history and tradition. Glucksberg,
521 U.S. at 720-21. It must be implicit in the concept of ordered liberty such
that neither liberty nor justice would exist if [it was] sacrificed. Id. at 721.
Second, the fundamental liberty interest at stake must also be subject to a careful
description. Id. The crucial guideposts for responsible decision-making in
evaluating the existence of a fundamental right are the nation's history, legal
traditions, and practices. Id. The question is whether the right is so rooted in the
traditions and conscience of our people as to be ranked as fundamental. Snyder v.
Commonwealth, 291 U.S. 97, 105 (1934).
The district court accepted plaintiffs argument that they do not seek to
establish a new right, but rather seek to extend to same-sex partners the right to

20
marry the Supreme Court has found to exist between opposite-sex partners. See
ER 25-27. That conclusion ignores a basic tenet of Supreme Court substantive due
process jurisprudence. The alleged fundamental interest at stake must be subject to
a careful description. Glucksberg, 521 U.S. at 721. In view of the Supreme
Courts direction that courts should be reluctant to expand the concept of
substantive due process, id. at 721, the district court erred by accepting plaintiffs
request to expand the right to civil marriage. It additionally bears emphasis that
nothing precludes States from eliminating civil marriage, and it makes no sense to
argue that a right whose very existence is subject to legislative grace is
fundamental. Cf. Windsor, 133 S. Ct. at 2691 (The definition of marriage is the
foundation of the States broader authority to regulate the subject of domestic
relations with respect to the [p]rotection of offspring, property interests, and the
enforcement of marital responsibilities. . . . [T]he states, at the time of the
adoption of the Constitution, possessed full power over the subject of marriage and
divorce . . . [and] the Constitution delegated no authority to the Government of the
United States on the subject of marriage and divorce.) (citation omitted).
2

2
Reliance on Turner v. Safely, 482 U.S. 75 (1987), and Zablocki v. Redhail,
434 U.S. 374 (1978), for the proposition that civil marriage is a fundamental right
misses the point. In each of those cases, as well as in Loving v. Virginia, 388 U.S.
1 (1967), the challenged statute or regulation conditioned access to civil marriage
for persons otherwise entitled to marry because of a specific status. Turner,
482 U.S. at 82 (prison warden approval required for inmates to marry non-

21
B. The Rational Basis Test Governs Plaintiffs Equal
Protection Claim Because Idahos Marriage Laws Do Not
Classify on the Basis of Sexual Orientation and Are Not the
Product of Intentional and Irrational Discrimination

Based on this Courts decision in SmithKline Beecham Corp. v. Abbott
Laboratories, 740 F.3d 471 (9th Cir. 2014), the district court held that Idahos
marriage laws would be subject to heightened scrutiny, even in the absence of a
fundamental right to marry. ER 35-36. The heightened scrutiny applied in
SmithKline does not apply here.
SmithKline held that heightened scrutiny applied to an act of intentional
discrimination: a peremptory challenge of a prospective juror because he was gay.
Abbotts counsel provided no valid justification for his strike, 740 F.3d. at 477, and
the evidence of discriminatory motive was unrefuted. Id. at 479. In the absence

inmates); Zablocki, 434 U.S. at 375 (judicial approval to marry required for non-
custodial parents with child support obligations). The lesson of these decisions is
not that civil marriage itself is a fundamental right but that the decision to enter
into an otherwise lawful civil marriage cannot be encumbered by an individuals
status, at least in a non-prison context, unless [the encumbrance] is supported by
sufficiently important state interests and is closely tailored to effectuate only those
interests. Id. at 388; see Turner, 482 U.S. at 97-98 (although [n]o doubt
legitimate security concerns may require placing reasonable restrictions upon an
inmate's right to marry, and may justify requiring approval of the superintendent[,]
. . . the Missouri regulation . . . represents an exaggerated response to such security
objectives). However, neither of these decisions affects a States right to
determine what constitutes civil marriage or gives credence to the argument that
any such determination is subject to heightened scrutiny. Plaintiffs have no
fundamental right under the Due Process Clause to redefine marriage to their
liking. They can, and do, challenge their exclusion from Idahos definition, but
that exclusion raises potential equal protection concerns that are entirely discrete
from substantive due process-based privacy rights.

22
of any valid explanation for the strike, the court concluded that it was the result of
a false stereotype: a discriminatory assumption that the juror could not impartially
evaluate the case because of his sexual orientation. Id. at 478.
Prior to SmithKline, this Court did not apply heightened scrutiny to sexual
orientation discrimination claims. See id. at 480 (We have in the past applied
rational basis review to classifications based on sexual orientation). The
SmithKline court determined that Windsor justified departure from this rule.
Although the Supreme Court did not state that it was applying heightened scrutiny
in Windsor, the SmithKline court examined the analysis in Windsor and concluded
that it required application of heightened scrutiny to classifications based on
sexual orientation. Id. at 483.
The intentional and irrational discrimination in SmithKline was similar to the
animus and bare desire to harm an unpopular group noted by the Supreme Court in
Windsor, 133 S. Ct. at 2693, Romer, 517 U.S. at 634-35, and Department of
Agriculture v. Moreno, 413 U.S. 528, 534 (1973). Idahos marriage laws present a
completely different case. Idahos marriage laws do not classify on the basis of
sexual orientation. Idaho has defined marriage as a union between a man and a
woman not based on a false stereotype or discriminatory assumption, but on
irrefutable biological facts. It confers the benefits of civil marriage on opposite-
sex couples because they are biologically able to procreate and responsible for

23
virtually all children being raised in Idaho households, not because of their sexual
orientation. And there is no evidence that animus toward gays and lesbians
motivated Idaho when it adopted the traditional definition of marriage in the 1860s.
Idahos marriage laws are based on legitimate and longstanding legislative choices,
not irrational stereotypes or animus. Accordingly, plaintiffs equal protection
challenge of Idahos marriage laws should be reviewed under the rational basis
standard, not SmithKlines heightened scrutiny.
As the Supreme Court has explained:
[W]here individuals in the group affected by a law have distinguishing
characteristics relevant to interests the State has the authority to
implement, the courts have been very reluctant, as they should be in
our federal system and with our respect for the separation of powers,
to closely scrutinize legislative choices as to whether, how, and to
what extent those interests should be pursued. In such cases, the
Equal Protection Clause requires only a rational means to serve a
legitimate end.
City of Cleburne v. Cleburne Living Ctr., 473 U.S. 432, 441-42 (1985). See also
Nguyen v. INS, 533 U.S. 53, 73 (2001) (To fail to acknowledge even our most
basic biological differences . . . risks making the guarantee of equal protection
superficial, and so disserving it.).
C. Rational Basis Review Is a Deferential Standard That Is
Satisfied As Long as the Challenged Law Is Reasonably
Related to a Legitimate Governmental Objective.

Rational basis review is a deferential standard. It is not a license for courts
to judge the wisdom, fairness, or logic of legislative choices. FCC v. Beach

24
Commcns, Inc., 508 U.S. 307, 313 (1993). The rational basis standard is satisfied
so long as there is a plausible justification for the classification, the legislative facts
on which the classification is apparently based rationally may have been
considered to be true by the governmental decision-maker, and the relationship of
the classification to its goal is not so attenuated as to render the distinction
arbitrary or irrational. Tutor-Saliba Corp. v. City of Hailey, 452 F.3d 1055, 1061
(9th Cir. 2006). The Supreme Court further has made clear that a legislature need
not strike at all evils at the same time or in the same way, . . . and that a legislature
may implement [its] program step by step, . . . adopting regulations that only
partially ameliorate a perceived evil and deferring complete elimination of the evil
to future regulations. Minnesota v. Clover Leaf Creamery Co., 449 U.S. 456, 466
(1981) (internal citation and quotations omitted)); accord Wright v. Incline Vill.
Gen. Improvement Dist., 665 F.3d 1128, 1142 n.8 (9th Cir. 2011).
A State has no obligation to produce evidence to sustain the rationality of a
statutory classification because a legislative choice is not subject to courtroom
factfinding. Heller v. Doe, 509 U.S. 312, 320 (1993). It is thus entirely
irrelevant for constitutional purposes whether the conceived reason for the
challenged distinction actually motivated the legislature. Beach Commcns,
508 U.S. at 315. The test is simply whether the involved distinction or
classification is at least debatable. Clover Leaf Creamery, 449 U.S. at 464.

25
Once plausible grounds are asserted, the inquiry is at an endi.e., rebuttal is not
permitted. United States R.R. Ret. Bd. v. Fritz, 449 U.S. 166, 179 (1980). The
rational basis test, in short, is a relatively relaxed standard reflecting the awareness
that the drawing of lines that create distinctions is primarily a task of the legislative
branch. Silveira v. Lockyer, 312 F.3d 1052, 1088 (9th Cir. 2002).
Courts have repeatedly held that rational bases validly support marriage laws
that limit marriage to opposite-sex couples. See, e.g., Citizens for Equal Protection
v. Bruning, 455 F.3d 859, 867-68 (8th Cir. 2006); Sevcik v. Sandoval, 911 F. Supp.
2d 996, 1014-18 (D. Nev. 2012), appeal pending, No. 12-17668 (9th Cir.); Jackson
v. Abercrombie, 884 F. Supp. 2d 1065, 1111-16 (D. Haw. 2012), appeals pending,
Nos. 12-16995 & 12-16998 (9th Cir.); Andersen v. King County, 138 P.3d 963,
982-83 (Wash. 2006); Hernandez v. Robles, 855 N.E.2d 1, 6-9 (N.Y. App. Div.
2006); Morrison v. Sadler, 821 N.E.2d 15, 22-31 (Ind. Ct. App. 2005).
3

3
Post-Windsor decisions invalidating state laws that restrict marriage to opposite-
sex couples often have applied heightened or non-traditional rational basis
review. The district court below did so. ER 36-55; see also, e.g., Wolf v. Walker,
No. 14-cv-64-bbc, 2014 WL 255844, at *29 (W.D. Wis. J une 6, 2014) (applying
intermediate scrutiny standard to sexual orientation discrimination). Others,
however, have concluded that such restrictions do not satisfy the traditional
rational basis test. E.g., DeLeon v. Perry, 975 F. Supp. 2d 632, 652-56 (W.D. Tex.
2014); Bostic v. Rainey, 970 F. Supp. 2d 456, 482 (E.D. Va. 2014); Bishop v.
United States ex rel. Holder, 962 F. Supp. 2d 1252, 1288-96 (N.D. Okla. 2014);
Obergefell v. Wymyslo, 962 F. Supp. 2d 968, 991-95 (S.D. Ohio 2013); Kitchen,
961 F. Supp. 2d at 1211-15. The pre- and post-Windsor divide makes little sense
because the traditional rational basis standard has remained unchanged. See

26
The Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit summarized some of the valid
rational bases for opposite-sex marriage laws in Bruning:
By affording legal recognition and a basket of rights and benefits to
married heterosexual couples, such laws encourage procreation to
take place within the socially recognized unit that is best situated for
raising children. . . . The argument is based in part on the traditional
notion that two committed heterosexuals are the optimal partnership
for raising children . . . . But it is also based on a responsible
procreation theory that justifies conferring the inducements of
marital recognition and benefits on opposite-sex couples, who can
otherwise produce children by accident, but not on same-sex couples,
who cannot.
. . .
[U]nder rational-basis review, Even if the classification . . . is to
some extent both underinclusive and overinclusive, and hence the line
drawn . . . imperfect, it is nevertheless the rule that . . . perfection is by
no means required. . . . Legislatures are permitted to use
generalizations so long as the question is at least debatable. . . . The
package of government benefits and restrictions that accompany the
institution of formal marriage serve a variety of other purposes. The
legislature-or the people through the initiative process-may rationally
choose not to expand in wholesale fashion the groups entitled to those
benefits. We accept such imperfection because it is in turn rationally
related to the secondary objective of legislative convenience.
455 F.3d at 867-68 (citations omitted). As discussed below, moreover, [t]he
package of government benefits are not cost-free, and States therefore may

SmithKline, 740 F.3d at 480-84 (distinguishing the heightened scrutiny deemed
applied in Windsor from traditional rational basis review). One may question
whether the post-Windsor cases faithfully adhere to the minimal requirements of
rational basis review. So, for example, one court held an evidentiary hearing and
made factual findings before holding that no rational basis existed. DeBoer v.
Snyder, 973 F. Supp. 2d 757, 770-75 (E.D. Mich. 2014).


27
rationally elect to direct their resources to those relationships that account for
nearly all children in their jurisdiction.
D. Idahos Interest in Furthering The Stability of Family
Structures Through Benefits Targeted at Couples
Possessing Biological Procreative Capacity Is Substantial
and Satisfies the Rational Basis Standard

Until the Hawaii Supreme Courts construction of its States equal
protection provision in Baehr v. Lewin, 852 P.2d 44, 56 (Haw. 1993), the notion of
same-sex marriage would have been deemed oxymoronic. The reason is obvious:
Marriage has served traditionally as the primary societal basis for ordering
conjugal relationships whose purpose or practical effect lie in the creation of new
human life. As the Supreme Court recognized in Maynard v. Hill, 125 U.S. 190
(1888), [i]t is an institution, in the maintenance of which in its purity the public is
deeply interested, for it is the foundation of the family and of society, without
which there would be neither civilization nor progress. Id. at 211. The Court
reiterated this fundamental proposition in Skinner v. Oklahoma ex rel. Williamson,
316 U.S. 535 (1942), with the observation that [m]arriage and procreation are
fundamental to the very existence and survival of the race. Id. at 541.
/ / /
/ / /
/ / /
/ / /

28
This is not to say that the only purpose for civil marriage laws lay in
encouraging family stability for rearing the couples biological offspring;
4
it is to
say, however, that such stability furthers a core and uncontested public interest in
the childs wellbeing. Civil marriage is simply another arrow in a quiver of
statutory mechanisms used to advance that interest. The question here is whether
Idahos determinationwhich dates back to the first Territorial code (1864 Idaho
Terr. Sess. L. 613)to target its finite resources on fostering long-lived opposite-
sex relationships through the availability of marital status benefits is rational when
those relationships produce almost all children and also account for a sizable
majority of family households in the state. That determination plainly is rational.
1. Relevant Idaho Demographic Data. Several demographic
facts inform Idahos marriage policy choice. First, 2010 Census data reflect that
husband-wife households in Idaho constituted 55.3 percent of all householdsthe
second highest of any state. ER 591. Idaho also ranked second at 24 percent as to
husbandwife households with their own children under 18 years of age, or 73.4
percent of all family households with such children. Id. The national averages
were 20.2 and 68 percent respectively. Id. Second, these percentages are
unsurprising because the Idaho marriage rate in 2011 was 8.6 percentthe third

4
See Turner v. Safley, 482 U.S. 78, 96 (1987) (recognizing that marriages are
expressions of emotional support and public commitment to which spiritual
significance and governmental benefits may be attached).

29
highest of any State in the nation if the matrimonial destination outliers of Hawaii
and Nevada are excluded (ER 580)and its 2012 preliminary data birth rate was
14.4 percentthe fifth highest State in the nation (ER 572). Third, the preferred
percentages derived from the 2010 Census reflect that same-sex couples account
for .4 percent of all households in Idaho. ER 597. Given these data, one may
conclude reasonably that a minute fraction, presumably less than .2 percent of total
households, of same-sex couples in Idaho have resident children under the age of
18.
5

The distinguishing characteristics of opposite-sex and same-sex couples for
marriage purposes are the procreative capacity of the former and the statistically
minute fraction of the latter, not the participants sexual orientation. The Idaho
Legislature in 1995, as well as the Idaho electorate in 2006, thus had a rational
basis to conclude that targeting the tangible legislative benefits of marriage to
opposite-sex couples would further the states interest in encouraging stable
families for child-rearing purposes and that extending such benefits to same-sex
couples was not warranted in light of the miniscule number of households affected

5
The United States Census Bureau estimated [a]bout 0.1 percent of all
households in the United States in 2010 . . . [were] same-sex partner households
with own children of the householder present. ER 590. That percentage, if
applied to Idaho, equals 579 households. ER 591.

30
and the corresponding de minimis likely impact on the public interest.
6

No reason
existed to change over a century of pre-statehood and post-statehood practice by
making civil marriage available to individuals who desire to access the
governmental benefits of such status but who lack the capacity to procreate with
one another.
7

6

Census Bureau data indicate a national increase in the preferred estimate of
same-sex couples from .03 percent in the 2000 Census to .06 percent in the 2010
Census. ER 596. Thus, although the number of same-sex couples roughly doubled
between the 2000 and 2010 Census counts, it remained a miniscule portion of all
family households generally and, as explained above, an even smaller portion of
those households with children under 18.
7

The fact that not all opposite-sex couples may desire to have children or may be
capable of having them does not negate the reasonableness of Idahos policy
choice. Any inquiry into the issue of why two persons, other than minors, wish to
marry or whether they intend to raise a family would be precluded by substantive
due process-based privacy rights. See, e.g., M.L.B. v. S.L.J., 519 U.S. 102, 116
(1996) ([c]hoices about marriage, family life, and the upbringing of children are
among associational rights this Court has ranked as of basic importance in our
society, . . . rights sheltered by the Fourteenth Amendment against the State's
unwarranted usurpation, disregard, or disrespect) (citation omitted); Cleveland
Board of Education v. LaFleur, 414 U.S. 632, 639-40 (1974) ([t]his Court has
long recognized that freedom of personal choice in matters of marriage and family
life is one of the liberties protected by the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth
Amendment). The recent decision in Wolf v. Walker, No. 14-cv-64-bbc, 2014
WL 2558444 (W.D. Wis. J une 6, 2014), thus goes seriously astray in suggesting
that a state could require . . . applicants for a marriage license to certify that they
have the intent to procreate and are not aware of any impediments to their doing
so. Id., at *36. The very idea is repulsive to the notions of privacy surrounding
the marriage relationship. Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U.S. 479, 486 (1965);
see also Jackson, 884 F. Supp. 2d at 1113. Predicating the distinction on broad
biological distinctions rationally attempts to walk between Scyllathe
constitutional privacy rightand Charybdisthe objective of encouraging stable
families composed of fathers, mothers, and their biological children. See

31
2. Focusing Governmental Resources to Encourage Stable
Biological Parent Households. Key to resolution of plaintiffs substantive due
process and equal protection claims is a single clearly reasonable, if not
uncontested, proposition: Children generally thrive best in intact family structures
where their biological parents are married. A recent report from the Institute for
American Values, National Marriage Project, stated:
Children are less likely to thrive in cohabiting households,
compared to intact, married families. On many social, educational,
and psychological outcomes, children in cohabiting households do
significantly worse than children in intact, married families, and about
as poorly as children living in single-parent families. And when it
comes to abuse, recent federal data indicate that children in cohabiting
households are markedly more likely to be physically, sexually, and
emotionally abused than children in both intact, married families and
single-parent families. . . . Only in the economic domain do children
in cohabiting households fare consistently better than children in
single-parent families.
W. Bradford Wilcox et al., Why Marriage Matters: Thirty Conclusions from Social
Sciences at 7 (3d ed. 2011) (ER 511, 516). Others have concluded that [r]esearch
findings linking family structure and parents marital status with childrens well-
being are very consistent and that it is not simply the presence of two
parents, . . . but the presence of two biological parents that seems to support

Dandridge v. Williams, 397 U.S. 471, 485 (1970) (In the area of economics and
social welfare, a State does not violate the Equal Protection Clause merely because
the classifications made by its laws are imperfect. If the classification has some
reasonable basis, it does not offend the Constitution simply because the
classification is not made with mathematical nicety or because in practice it
results in some inequality.).

32
childrens development. Kristen Anderson Moore et al., Marriage from a Childs
Perspective: How Does Family Structure Affect Children, and What Can We Do
About It?, Child Research Brief at 1-2 (J une 2002) (ER 501-02). Even if some
details of the proposition remain open for further analysis, its central premise is
plainly plausible. See Paul R. Amato, The Impact of Family Formation Change on
the Cognitive, Social, and Emotional Well-Being of the Next Generation, 15 Future
of Children No. 2 at 79 (Fall 2005) (Amato) (If cohabiting parents marry after
the birth of a child, is the child at any greater risk than if the parents marry before
having the child? Correspondingly, do children benefit when their cohabiting
parents get married? To the extent that marriage increases union stability and
binds fathers more strongly to their children, marriage among cohabiting parents
may improve childrens long-term well-being. Few studies, however, have
addressed this issue.) (ER 477, 481).
Correlative to this core proposition is the keen interest that States have in
encouraging marriage between opposite-sex partners. As Professor Amato
observed, [s]ince social science research shows so clearly the advantages enjoyed
by children raised by continuously married parents, it is no wonder that
policymakers and practitioners are interested in programs to strengthen marriage
and increase the proportion of children who grow up in such families. Amato, 15
Future of Children No. 2 at 85 (ER 487). He estimated that if the share of

33
adolescents living with two biological parents increased to its 1960 level, the share
of adolescents repeating a grade would fall to 21 percentor approximately
750,000 fewer repeaters. ER 489, 490; see also ER 492 (interventions that
increase the share of children growing up with two continuously married biological
parents will have modest effects on the percentage of U.S. children experiencing
various problems, but could have substantial effects on the number of children
experiencing them). Another set of researchers has concluded that [r]educing
nonmarital childbearing and promoting marriage among unmarried parents remain
important goals of federal and state policies and programs designed to improve the
well-being of children and to reduce their reliance on public assistance. Elizabeth
Wildsmith et al., Childbearing Outside of Marriage: Estimates and Trends in the
United States, Child Research Brief at 5 (Nov. 2011) (ER 470, 474).
A third study has concluded that [r]esearch suggests that many of the social
problems and disadvantages addressed by federal and state government programs
occur more frequently among children born to and/or raised by single parents than
among children whose parents get and stay married and leads to higher costs to
taxpayers through higher spending on antipoverty programs and throughout the
justice and educational systems, as well as losses to government coffers in
foregone tax revenues. Benjamin Scafide, Principal Investigator, The Taxpayer
Costs of Divorce and Unwed Childbearing: First Ever Estimate for the Nation and

34
All Fifty States at 9 (2008) (ER 425, 433). The study conservatively estimated
family fragmentation costs to be at least $112 billion each year for the nation as a
whole. ER 429. Family fragmentation not only imposes these very substantial
burdens on the public fisc, but also forces government policymakers to make
difficult, cost-based choices that may run counter to affected childrens best
interests. See Bowen v. Gilliard, 483 U.S. 587, 615 (1987) (Brennan, J .,
dissenting) ([t]he Government's insistence that a child living with an AFDC
mother relinquish its child support deeply intrudes on the father-child relationship,
for child support is a crucial means of sustaining the bond between a child and its
father outside the home).
There is no dispute that Idaho and other States expend substantial resources
to subsidize the institution of civil marriage. Married couples have the ability to
elect between joint and single tax income return filing and, as such, to employ that
filing route that results in the lesser tax liability. See generally Saby Ghoshray,
Dual Rationality of Same-Sex Marriage: Creation of New Rights in the Shadow of
Incomplete Contract Paradigm, 28 New Eng. Roundtable Symp. L.J . 59, 82 (2007)
(When two individuals get married, the total tax payment, in general is less than
the sum of the taxes paid as individuals. This redistribution of tax is seen as an
economic benefit to the marriage and can be seen as a cost to society.). They also
have access to the judicial system for the purpose of dissolving their marriages

35
access that necessarily imposes economic costs upon the system far beyond filing
or other administrative fees. That access and the related costs will necessarily
expand if civil marriage is extended to same-sex couples. See generally Ellen
Shapiro, Til Death Do Us Part: The Difficulties of Obtaining a Same-Sex Divorce,
8 NW J . L. & Soc. Poly 208, 226 (2013) (Although few advocates for same-sex
marriage want to talk about divorce, with such a high divorce rate, same-sex
marriage advocates should be thinking about divorce, especially if same-sex
marriage continues to be acknowledged in some states and not others. The right to
marry typically carries with it the right to divorce.).
8

8

Plaintiffs have criticized Defendants [for] never articulat[ing] what they mean
by the States limited resources. Dist. Ct. Dkt. 61 at 28 n.8. They added that
even if Defendants could demonstrate that allowing same-sex couples to marry
would negatively affect state expenditures or resources in other wayssomething
they have not even attempted to dothat still would not justify conserving
resources by singling out a disfavored set of citizens for unequal treatment. Id.
However, the rational basis standard did not require Rich and the State to
demonstrate the precise extent of the fiscal impact of extending marital status
eligibility to same-sex couples; it is enough that such an impact is plausibleas
plaintiffs themselves effectively conceded in their amended complaint. ER 397-
400 37. That standard also does not require Idaho to justify the differential
treatment accorded opposite-sex and same-sex couples; it imposes on plaintiffs the
burden to negate every conceivable rational basis for the discriminatory treatment.
Here, however, demographic data reflecting the statistically insignificant number
of same-sex households with children affected by the unavailability of marital
status more than adequately justify Idahos determination to cabin its
expenditure or loss of governmental resources by addressing those relationships
between individuals whose differing sexes are prerequisites to procreation. See
Dist. Ct. Dkt. 30-1 at 12-13 & n.5; Dist. Ct. Dkt. 34.

36
3. Application of the Rational Basis Standard to Article III,
Section 28 and 32-201. Marriages relationship to fostering stable environments
for childrearing by biological parents constitutes a rational basis for Idahos
determination to limit the availability of marital status to opposite-sex couples. See
Jackson, 884 F. Supp. 2d at 1072 (the legislature could rationally conclude that
defining marriage as a union between a man and woman provides an inducement
for opposite-sex couples to marry, thereby decreasing the percentage of children
accidentally conceived outside of a stable, long-term relationship). Heterosexual
couples possess the unique ability to create new life and, with that ability, the
responsibility for raising the offspring of their conjugal relationship. Although
same-sex partners may have a child in their household biologically attributable to
one member, they cannot have a child attributable to both. Distinguishing between
opposite and same-sex couples under this rationale relates not to their sexual
orientation but to their procreative capacity. Idaho cannot be faulted for selecting
opposite-sex couples for marital status given its function as a gateway to various
governmental benefits and an incentive for those couples to create long-lived
familial environments where both biological parents reside and which account for a
large percentage of such households.
Plaintiffs ironically proffered facts that underscore the reasonableness of
Idahos choice through the declaration of Michael E. Lamb, Ph.D. ER 211. Dr.

37
Lambs thesis is uncomplicated: Current social science research has reached a
consensus that several factors predict healthy development and adjustment of
children and adolescents. ER 216-17 18. The factors include the quality of the
childrens relationship with their parents or parent figures[,] the quality of the
relationships between parents or significant adults, and the availability of
adequate economic and social resources. Id. The research demonstrate[s] that
the correlates of childrens or adolescents adjustment . . . are important regardless
of whether children and adolescents are raised in traditional family settings or
nontraditional families and that it has been well established that children and
adolescents can adjust just as well in nontraditional settings as in traditional
settings. ER 219 23.
9

This research further demonstrate[s] that the adjustment
of children and adolescents of same-sex parents is determined by the quality of the
youths relationships with parents, the quality of the relationship between the
parents, and resources available to the families. ER 223 33.
Dr. Lamb completes his basic analysis with the conclusion that the presence
or absence of the adjustment correlates is unaffected by same-sex status of the
parent or parent figures. ER 215-16 14. He further states that [t]he children and

9

The traditional family setting consists of a middle-class family with a bread-
winning father and a stay-at-home mother, married to each other and raising their
biological children. ER 218 21. A nontraditional family is any kind of
variation from this pattern. Id.

38
adolescents of same-sex parents are as emotionally healthy, and as educationally
and socially successful, as children raised by different-sex parents. ER 223 34;
see also ER 215 13 ([c]hildren and adolescents raised by same-sex parents are
as likely to be well-adjusted as children raised by different same-sex parents,
including biological parents). These conclusions derive from approximately
30 years of scholarship and . . . more than 50 peer-reviewed reports. ER 222 32.
Dr. Lamb completes the declaration by opining that even if children in same-sex
parent families had poorer outcomes on average (which, as discussed above, they
do not), that would be a reason to encouragenot barmarriage by same-sex
couples given the fact that marriage offers families important resources and
support. ER 232 49.
In essence, therefore, Dr. Lamb sees no credible social science support for
the proposition that children or adolescents in opposite-sex families with married
parents adjust better than their counterparts in same-sex families with unmarried
partners. Marital status may have certain benefitsresources and supportbut
absence of those benefits, according to Dr. Lambs analysis, has not affected the
comparable adolescent-adjustment found in same-sex families whose parents have
not had, until quite recently, the option of civil marriage. This conclusion is
double-edged because, on one hand, it discredits the contention that opposite-sex
households represent the model for optimal childrearing but, on the other, it is

39
incompatible with the contention that a legislative determination not to spend
additional governmental resources by expanding civil marriage to same-sex
couples is unreasonable. Simply put, same-sex households are doing as well as
opposite-sex households without access to civil marriage. Plaintiffs have no
response that solves this dilemma posed by Dr. Lambs declaration.
4. The District Courts Rejection of the States Justification
Does Not Withstand Scrutiny Under Traditional Equal Protection Standards.
The district court held that, under heightened scrutiny, Idahos justification
failed because defending the States fiscal resources is not an actual purpose of
any law challenged in this case and that [e]ven assuming cost-cutting was an
actual purpose for Idahos Marriage Laws, the State and Rich do not explain how
avoiding the public cost of same-sex marriages improves child welfare. ER 49.
On the latter point, it reasoned that those laws did not create new rights for
naturally procreative couples or deny their benefits to non-procreative or unstable
heterosexual marriages. They instead arbitrarily withhold benefits from a
statistically insignificant class of households with children. Id.
a. Idahos restriction of civil marriage to man-woman couples is
not a new phenomenon; it has always been such. The restrictions roots lie not in
animus against same-sex couples but in the tight nexus between marriage,
procreation, and childrearing. That nexus does not exist for same-sex couples in

40
the same formsince procreation is impossibleor to the same extentsince the
number of same-sex couples with children is so small however measured. This is
not to say that same-sex couples children do not count. It is to say that Idahos
refusal to radically reconfigure the very concept of civil marriage and to assume
the attendant social costs falls squarely within sovereign power left unembarrassed
by the Fourteenth Amendment.
State legislatures and, on occasion, electorates must draw lines. Here,
Idahos chose not to expend governmental resources by expanding the definition of
civil marriage to include same-sex couples who, by definition, are biologically
incapable of inter sese procreation. The fact that opposite-sex couples incapable of
procreation or not desiring children remain eligible does not compromise the line-
drawings validity. The rational basis standard does not require a legislature to
address social and economic issueswhich include providing incentives for family
structures conducive to childrens thrivingin the most comprehensive manner so
long as the approach selected is reasonably calculated to achieve the desired end.
See Skinner, 348 U.S. at 489 (the reform may take one step at a time, addressing
itself to the phase of the problem which seems the most acute to the legislative
mind). Here, it is fairly debatable that the de minimis presence of same-sex
households with children does not warrant extending the marital status incentive to
those couplesespecially when plaintiffs own expert has opined that children

41
raised in same-sex households adjust equally well as children in traditional two-
parent homes. See South Carolina State Highway Dept v. Barnwell Bros.,
303 U.S. 177, 190 (1938) ([w]hen the action of a Legislature is within the scope
of its power, fairly debatable questions as to its reasonableness, wisdom, and
propriety are not for the determination of courts, but for the legislative body, on
which rests the duty and responsibility of decision).
b. The district court relied upon Plyler v. Doe, 457 U.S. 202
(1982), for the proposition that [e]ven in rational basis cases, the Supreme Court
has rejected the argument that cost-cutting is a sufficient reason for denying
benefits to a discrete group. ER 49. It also pointed to Diaz v. Brewer, 656 F.3d
1008 (9th Cir. 2011), as exemplifying an Equal Protection Clause constitutional
problem when a States attempts to cut costs [fall] on an arbitrarily selected
group. Id. (emphasis added). The court extrapolated far too much from these
decisions.
Plyler arose from the denial of a public education to the children of
undocumented aliens and the consequential imposition of a lifetime hardship on a
discrete class of children not accountable for their disabling status, 457 U.S.
at 223, despite their being basically indistinguishable from legally resident alien
children. Id. at 229. It does not stand for the broad principle that States may not
choose to allocate governmental benefits to some and not others on the basis of

42
otherwise legitimate grounds. Idahos grounds are legitimate. It distinguishes not
because of sexual orientationas to which Idaho marriage laws are indifferent
but on the unquestioned inability of same-sex couples to procreate and thereby to
implicate a prime rationale for civil marriage. Under these circumstances, the
four-J ustice dissent in Plyler has more relevance. See id. at 243 (Burger, C.J .,
dissenting) ([t]he dispositive issue in these cases . . . is whether, for purposes of
allocating its finite resources, a state has a legitimate reason to differentiate
between persons).
Diaz, a preliminary injunction appeal, turned on the trial courts factual
determination that excluding lesbian and gay domestic partners from state health
insurance coverage would have only negligible costs. Collins v. Brewer,
727 F. Supp. 2d 797, 805 (D. Ariz. 2010), affd, 656 F.3d 1008 (9th Cir.), rehg
denied, 676 F.3d 823 (9th Cir. 2012). That finding has no binding significance
here. Even were fact-finding proper in the rational basis context (it is not, Beach
Commcns, 476 U.S. at 315), plaintiffs made no such showing below. It is a
plainly plausible, indeed an indisputable, assumption that extending marital status-
related benefits to same-sex couples will require not only additional governmental
expenditures but also the loss of potential governmental revenue. The precise
amount is immaterial for rational-basis analysis purposes. What controls is the
legislative determination that one of the principal purposes for creating the

43
institution of civil marriageincentivizing stable legal relationships between
individuals with procreative capacityis absent with respect to same-sex
couples.
10

5. The Full Faith and Credit Clause Provides Additional
Justification for Section 32-209. Section 32-209 provides that Idaho will not
recognize out-of-state marriages that violate the public policy of Idaho. Such
marriages are defined to include, without limitation, same-sex marriages, and
marriages entered into under the laws of another state or country with the intent to
evade Idahos laws. The district court concluded that the purpose of section 32-
209 was to buttress Idahos traditional definition of marriage against changes in
other states marriage laws. ER 40.
Section 32-209 merely complements Idahos traditional definition of
marriage. It therefore is based on the same legitimate purposes as section 32-201

10
Any suggestion that Article III, Section 28 or 32-201 and -209 embody a
classification of persons undertaken for its own sake (Romer, 517 U.S. at 635)
ignores their historical lineage. Idaho has always limited marriage to opposite-sex
couples and, in so doing, acted within settled constitutional boundaries until, as the
district court would apparently have it, Windsor. See ER 18 ([a]lthough courts
formerly were reluctant to find these developments sufficient to overcome
Baker, . . . much has changed in just the last year). As such, this is not a situation
where a bare . . . desire to harm a politically unpopular group (Moreno, 413 U.S.
at 534) forms the basis for the challenged legislation. Marriage laws serve various
concededly legitimate purposes, and States retain the discretion to weigh the
relative importance of those purposes in determining whether to extend civil
marriage to new groups and thereby assume the additional burden on the public
fisc.

44
and should be upheld along with that statute. Otherwise, Idaho residents could
circumvent the limitation of marriage to opposite-sex couples by simply marrying
in another state. That simple workaround, in turn, would undermine and
potentially eviscerate the objective of focusing civil marriage benefits on couples
with procreative capacity. It would also eviscerate the long-established precept
that the incidents, benefits, and obligations of marriage are uniform for all married
couples within each State, though they may vary, subject to constitutional
guarantees, from one State to the next. Windsor, 133 S. Ct. at 2692; see also In re
Duncan, 83 Idaho 254, 259-60, 360 P.2d 987, 990 (1961) (States possess the
power to regulate the qualifications of the contracting parties and the proceedings
essential to constitute a marriage).
Idahos enactment of section 32-209 is consistent with the Supreme Courts
interpretation of the Full Faith and Credit Clause. U.S. Const. Art. IV, 1. [T]he
Full Faith and Credit Clause does not require a State to apply another States law in
violation of its own legitimate public policy. Nevada v. Hall, 440 U.S. 410, 422
(1979). It is not unusual for state marriage laws to refuse to recognize out-of-state
marriages that violate public policy, particularly when a resident leaves the state to
marry with the intent to evade its laws. See, e.g., Restatement (Second) of Conflict
of Laws 283 (out-of-state marriages not valid if they violate strong public policy
of a state with most significant relationship to parties).

45
The four plaintiffs in this case who challenge section 32-209 were Idaho
residents who traveled to other states to marry to evade Idahos traditional
definition of marriage. See ER 92 2. Needless to say, to allow this form of
evasion effectively negates the fundamental policy choice made by not only the
State legislature but also Idahos electorate. Only by uniformly enforcing the non-
recognition provision in 32-209 can Idaho vindicate its policy choice to limit
marriage to opposite-sex couples. Idahos prohibition of plaintiffs evasive
marriages is consistent with settled law and satisfies the rational basis test.
CONCLUSION
This Court should reverse the district courts judgment.
Respectfully submitted,

HON. LAWRENCE G. WASDEN
Attorney General

STEVEN L. OLSEN
Chief of Civil Litigation

/s/W. Scott Zanzig
W. SCOTT ZANZIG, #9361
CLAY R. SMITH, ISB #6385
Statehouse, Room 210
Boise, ID 83720
Attorneys for Appellants


46
STATEMENT OF RELATED CASES

Pursuant to Ninth Circuit Rule 28-2.6, appellants are aware of the
following related cases pending in this Court:
1. Sevcik v. Sandoval, No. 12-17668
2. Jackson v. Abercrombie, Nos. 12-16995 & 12-16998
3. Geiger v. Kitzhaber, No. 14-35427


47
CERTIFICATE OF COMPLIANCE
PURSUANT TO CIRCUIT RULE 32-1

I certify that:

The brief is

XX Proportionately spaced, has a typeface of 14 points or more and contains
11,155 words
or is
Monospaced, has 10.5 or fewer characters per inch and contains ______
words or ______ lines of text
or is
In conformance with the type specifications set forth at Fed. R. App. P.
32(a)(5) and does not exceed _____ pages

By: /s/W. Scott Zanzig
W. SCOTT ZANZIG, #9361
Statehouse, Room 210
Boise, ID 83720
Attorneys for Appellants


ADDENDUM OF PERTINENT AUTHORITIES

A-i

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page(s)

Constitutional Provisions

U.S. Const. amend. XIV, 1 ........................................................................... A-1

Idaho Const. art. III, 28 ................................................................................. A-1

Statutes

Idaho Code 32-201 ........................................................................................ A-1

Idaho Code 32-202 ........................................................................................ A-1

Idaho Code 32-209 ........................................................................................ A-2

1864 Idaho Terr. Sess. L. 613 ......................................................................... A-3

1889 Idaho Terr. Sess. L. 40 ........................................................................... A-4

1901 Civ. Code Ann. 1990 .......................................................................... A-5

A-1

U.S. Const. amend. XIV, 1

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction
thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No
State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or
immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person
of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person
within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

Idaho Const. art. III, 28

A marriage between a man and a woman is the only domestic legal union that shall
be valid or recognized in this state.

Idaho Code 32-201

(1) Marriage is a personal relation arising out of a civil contract between a man and
a woman, to which the consent of parties capable of making it is necessary.
Consent alone will not constitute marriage; it must be followed by the issuance of a
license and a solemnization as authorized and provided by law. Marriage created
by a mutual assumption of marital rights, duties or obligations shall not be
recognized as a lawful marriage.

(2) The provisions of subsection (1) of this section requiring the issuance of a
license and a solemnization shall not invalidate any marriage contract in effect
prior to J anuary 1, 1996, created by consenting parties through a mutual
assumption of marital rights, duties or obligations.

Idaho Code 32-202

Any unmarried male of the age of eighteen (18) years or older, and any unmarried
female of the age of eighteen (18) years or older, and not otherwise disqualified,
are capable of consenting to and consummating marriage. Provided that if the male
party to the contract is under the age of eighteen (18) and not less than sixteen (16)
years of age, or if the female party to the contract is under the age of eighteen (18)
and not less than sixteen (16) years of age, the license shall not be issued except
A-2

upon the consent in writing duly acknowledged and sworn to by the father, mother
or guardian of any such person if there be either, and provided further, that no such
license may be issued, if the male be under eighteen (18) years of age and the
female under eighteen (18) years of age, unless each party to the contract submits
to the county recorder his or her original birth certificate, or certified copy thereof
or other proof of age acceptable to the county recorder. Provided further, that
where the female is under the age of sixteen (16), or the male is under the age of
sixteen (16), the license shall not issue except upon the consent in writing duly
acknowledged or sworn to by the father, mother or guardian of such person if there
be any such, and upon order of the court. Such order shall be secured upon petition
of any interested party which petition shall show that the female minor under the
age of sixteen (16), or the male minor under the age of sixteen (16), is physically
and/or mentally so far developed as to assume full marital and parental duties,
and/or that it is to the best interest of society that the marriage be permitted. A
hearing shall be had on such petition forthwith or at such time and upon such
notice as the court may designate. The judge shall secure from a physician his
opinion as an expert as to whether said person is sufficiently developed mentally
and physically to assume full marital duties. If said court is satisfied from the
evidence that such person is capable of assuming full marital duties and/or that it is
to the best interest of society, said court shall make an order to that effect, and a
certified copy of said order shall be filed with the county recorder preliminary to
the issuance of a marriage license for the marriage of such person and said order of
the court shall be the authority for the county recorder to issue such license.

Idaho Code 32-209

All marriages contracted without this state, which would be valid by the laws of
the state or country in which the same were contracted, are valid in this state,
unless they violate the public policy of this state. Marriages that violate the public
policy of this state include, but are not limited to, same-sex marriages, and
evade the prohibitions of the marriage laws of this state.

CERTIFICATE OF SERVICE

I hereby certify that I electronically filed the foregoing with the Clerk of the
Court for the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit by using the
appellate CM/ECF system on J une 19, 2014.
I certify that all participants in the case are registered CM/ECF users and
that service will be accomplished by the appellate CM/ECF system.

/s/W. Scott Zanzig
W. SCOTT ZANZIG

Case Nos. 14-35420 & 14-35421


vs.
and
STATE OF IDAHO,

D.C. No. 1:13-cv-00482-CWD

APPELLANTS EXCERPTS OF RECORD, VOL. I

LAWRENCE G. WASDEN
ATTORNEY GENERAL
STEVEN L. OLSEN
Telephone: (208) 334-2400
Fax: (208) 854-8073
J une 19, 2014
TABLE OF CONTENTS
VOLUME I

DOCUMENTS
DOCKET
NUMBER
EXCERPT
PAGE
Memorandum Decision and Order 98 00001-00057
VOLUME II

DOCUMENTS
DOCKET
NUMBER
EXCERPT
PAGE
Governor Otters Amended Notice of Appeal 110 00058-00060
Notice of Appeal (by Defendant Rich and Defendant-
Intervenor State of Idaho)
104 00061-00063
Governor Otters Notice of Appeal 103 00064-00066
J udgment 101 00067-00068
Defendant Governor Otters Objections to Statement
of Material Facts in Support of Plaintiffs Motion for
Summary J udgment (Dkt. No. 45)
81-2 00069-00072
Supplemental Appendix in Support of Defendant
Governor Otters Response in Opposition to Plaintiffs
Motion for Summary J udgment (Dkt. Nos. 45, 59, 61)
81-1 00073-00207
Supplemental Expert Declaration of Dr. Michael E.
Lamb
76-2 00208-00218
Plaintiffs Statement Regarding Material Facts in
Response to Defendant Governor Otters Motion for
Summary J udgment
76-1 00219-00222
Defendant Rich and Defendant-Intervenors Request
for J udicial Notice
74 00223-00225

Defendant Rich and Defendant-Intervenors Statement
of Material Facts Re Plaintiffs Motion for Summary
J udgment (Dkt. 45)
73-1 00226-00228
Declaration of Shannon P. Minter in Support of
Plaintiffs Request for J udicial Notice
60 00229-00335
Defendant Governor Otters Statement of Undisputed
Material Facts
57-1 00336-00343
Defendant Governor Otters Motion for Summary
J udgment
57 00344-00345
VOLUME III

DOCUMENTS
DOCKET
NUMBER
EXCERPT
PAGE
Expert Declaration of Dr. Michael E. Lamb 47 00346-00495
Statement of Material Facts in Support of Plaintiffs
Motion for Summary J udgment
46 00496-00510
Plaintiffs Motion for Summary J udgment 45 00511-00515
Defendant Rich and Defendant-Intervenors Motion to
Dismiss First Amended Complaint
43 00516-00518
First Amended Complaint for Declaratory and
Injunctive Relief
42 00519-00548
Defendant-Intervenors Motion to Dismiss 41 00549-00551
Order (granting Motion to Intervene) 38 00552-00558
Attachment H to Defendant Richs Motion to Dismiss
Benjamin Scafide, Principal Investigator, The
Taxpayer Costs of Divorce and Unwed Childbearing:
First Ever Estimate for the Nation and All Fifty States
(2008)
30-10 00559-00603
Attachment G to Defendant Richs Motion to Dismiss 30-9 00604-00610
Elizabeth Wildsmith et al., Childbearing Outside of
Marriage: Estimates and Trends in the United States
Child Research Brief (Nov. 2011)
Attachment F to Defendant Richs Motion to Dismiss
Paul R. Amato, The Impact of Family Formation
Change on the Cognitive, Social, and Emotional Well-
Being of the Next Generation 15 Future of Children
No. 2 (Fall 2005)
30-8 00611-00633
VOLUME IV

DOCUMENTS
DOCKET
NUMBER
EXCERPT
PAGE
Attachment E to Defendant Richs Motion to Dismiss
W. Kristen Anderson Moore et al., Marriage from a
Childs Perspective: How Does Family Structure
Affect Children, and What Can We Do About It? Child
Research Brief (J une 2002)
30-7 00634-00643
Attachment D to Defendant Richs Motion to Dismiss
W. Bradford Wilson et al., Why Marriage Matters:
Thirty Conclusions from Social Sciences (3d ed. 2011)
30-6 00644-00692
Attachment C to Defendant Richs Motion to Dismiss
Births: Preliminary Data for 2012 National Vital
Statistics Reports
30-5 00693-00713
Attachment B to Defendant Richs Motion to Dismiss
Marriage Rates by State: 1990, 1995, and 1999-2011
30-4 00714-00715
Attachment A (Parts 1 and 2) to Defendant Richs
Motion to Dismiss Households and Families: 2010
2010 Census Briefs
30-2 & 30-
3
00716-00738
Defendant Christopher Richs Motion to Dismiss 30 00739-00741
State of Idahos Motion to Intervene 18 00742-00744
Civil Docket Sheet for Case No. 1:13-cv-00482-CWD 00745-00763

MEMORANDUM DECISION AND ORDER - 1
UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT

FOR THE DISTRICT OF IDAHO

SUSAN LATTA and TRACI EHLERS,
LORI WATSEN and SHARENE
WATSEN, SHELIA ROBERTSON and
ANDREA ALTMAYER, AMBER
BEIERLE and RACHAEL ROBERTSON,

Plaintiffs,

v.

C.L. BUTCH OTTER, as Governor of the
State of Idaho, in his official capacity, and
CHRISTOPHER RICH, as Recorder of Ada
County, Idaho, in his official capacity,

Defendants,
and

STATE OF IDAHO,

Defendant-Intervenor.

Case No. 1:13-cv-00482-CWD

MEMORANDUM DECISION AND
ORDER

I. INTRODUCTION
It is precisely because the issue raised by this case touches the heart
of what makes individuals what they are that we should be especially
sensitive to the rights of those whose choices upset the majority.
The Honorable Harry Blackmun
1

1
Bowers v. Hardwick, 478 U.S. 186, 211 (1986) (Blackmun, J ., dissenting), overruled by
Lawrence v. Texas, 539 U.S. 558 (2003).
Case 1:13-cv-00482-CWD Document 98 Filed 05/13/14 Page 1 of 57
00001
This case asks a basic and enduring question about the essence of American
government: Whether the will of the majority, based as it often is on sincere beliefs and
democratic consensus, may trump the rights of a minority. Plaintiffs are two same-sex
couples who desire to marry in Idaho and two same-sex couples who legally married in
other states and wish to have their marriages recognized in Idaho. Under the Constitution
and laws of the State of Idaho (Idahos Marriage Laws), marriage between a man and a
woman is the only legally recognized domestic union. Idaho effectively prohibits same-
sex marriage and nullifies same-sex marriages legally celebrated in other states. Plaintiffs
request the Court declare these laws unconstitutional and enjoin Idaho from enforcing
them, which would allow the Unmarried Plaintiffs to marry and the Married Plaintiffs to
be legally recognized as married in the state they consider home.
Although 17 states legally recognize same-sex marriages,
2
Idaho is one of many
states that has chosen the opposite course. Like courts presiding over similar cases across
the country, the Court must examine whether Idahos chosen course is constitutional.
Significantly, the Supreme Court of the United States recently held that the federal
government cannot constitutionally define marriage as a legal union between one man
and one woman. United States v. Windsor, 133 S. Ct. 2675 (2013). Writing for the
majority in Windsor, J ustice Kennedy reasoned the purpose and effect of the federal

2
Six states have legalized same-sex marriage through court decisions (California,
Connecticut, Iowa, Massachusetts, New J ersey, and New Mexico); eight have done so through
legislation (Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New York, Rhode Island,
and Vermont); and three have legalized same-sex marriage by popular vote (Maine, Maryland,
and Washington). See Kitchen v. Herbert, 961 F.Supp.2d 1181, 1192 n.4 (D. Utah 2013). The
District of Columbia also legalized same-sex marriage through legislation. Id.
00002
man-woman marriage definition was to disparage and injure legally married same-sex
couples in derogation of the liberty, due process, and equal protection guaranteed by the
Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution. Id. at 2696. Here, the Court considers
a related but distinct question: Do Idahos Marriage Laws deny Plaintiffs the due process
or equal protection guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States
Constitution?
After careful consideration, the Court finds Idahos Marriage Laws
unconstitutional. This conclusion reaffirms a longstanding maxim underlying our system
of governmenta states broad authority to regulate matters of state concern does not
include the power to violate an individuals protected constitutional rights. See, e.g., id. at
2691 (State laws defining and regulating marriage, of course, must respect the
constitutional rights of persons. . . .). Idahos Marriage Laws deny its gay and lesbian
citizens the fundamental right to marry and relegate their families to a stigmatized,
second-class status without sufficient reason for doing so. These laws do not withstand
any applicable level of constitutional scrutiny.
II. BACKGROUND
Marriage works a fundamental change on the lives of all who experience it. The
decision to marry is both a deeply personal expression of love and a public declaration of
commitment. For many, marriage is also a profoundly important religious institution,
cementing and celebrating a life-long union enriched by enduring traditions. These
traditions vary from faith to faith, but when most people think of marriage they think of
the ceremonythe weddingwith all of the hope and joy those pivotal moments entail.
00003
Compared to the immense personal and spiritual significance of marriage as a ceremonial
rite, the civil institution of marriage is much more prosaic.
A. Idahos Marriage Laws
A series of licensing statutes govern civil marriage in Idaho. As far as the State is
concerned, marriage is a contract evidenced by a State-issued license and a
solemnization. Idaho Code 32-201(1). The solemnization itself can be secular or
religious, and the officiant need not be an ordained minister. Id. 32-303 to -304.
Regardless of their preferred method of solemnization, opposite-sex couples are eligible
for a marriage license so long as they meet certain minimal requirements. See id. 32-
202 (age limitations); -205, -206 (consanguinity limitations); -207 (prohibition of
polygamous marriages).
A multitude of legal benefits and responsibilities flow from a valid civil marriage
contract. These marital benefits include the right to be recognized as a spouse when
petitioning to adopt a child born to a spouse, see id. 16-1503, -1506; have access to an
ill spouse at the hospital and to make medical decisions for an ill or incapacitated spouse
without a written power of attorney, see id. 39-4504; file a joint state income tax return
as a married couple, see id. 63-3031; inherit a share of the estate of a spouse who dies
without a will, see id. 15-2-102; preclude a spouse from testifying in a court proceeding
about confidential communications made during the marriage, see id. 9-203; and jointly
own community property with right of survivorship, see id. 15-6-401. These incidents
of marriage touch every aspect of a persons life. From the deathbed to the tax form,
property rights to parental rights, the witness stand to the probate court, the legal status of
00004
spouse provides unique and undeniably important protections. Opposite-sex married
couples enjoy many of these benefits by automatic operation of law.
A couple need not marry in Idaho to enjoy these benefits, as Idaho generally
follows the so-called place of celebration rule. See Morrison v. Sunshine Mining Co.,
127 P.2d 766, 769 (Idaho 1942) (Having assumed and entered into the marital relation
with appellant in Montana, the status thus established followed Morrison to Idaho and
could not be shed like a garment on entering this state.). Under this longstanding rule, a
marriage contracted outside Idaho will be valid in Idaho if the marriage is valid where
contracted. See Idaho Code 32-209. That is, unless the marriage is between two persons
of the same sex. Id.
Same-sex couples are categorically prohibited from obtaining a marriage license in
Idaho or from having their otherwise valid out-of-state marriages recognized in Idaho.
But for the fact they are same-sex couples, Plaintiffs would either be recognized as
married or be eligible to marry.
Plaintiffs challenge three specific provisions of Idaho law.
3
First, Idaho Code 32-
201 defines marriage as a personal relation arising out of a civil contract between a man
and a woman, to which the consent of the parties capable of making it is necessary. Id.

3
The Idaho Code is replete with provisions referencing husband and wife or the
traditional, opposite-sex definition of marriage. See, e.g., id. 32-202 (referring to the male
and the female parties to a marriage contract); 32-304 (requiring couple to declare they take
each other as husband and wife); 32-901 to -929 (relating to Husband and Wife Separate and
Community Property). The Court need not survey these scattered provisions because, as
discussed in Part II.D below, Plaintiffs requested relief is broad enough to cover any source of
Idaho law that would prohibit or refuse to recognize same-sex marriages, wherever contracted.
00005
32-201(1). This statute prohibits same-sex marriage regardless of whether a couple
otherwise qualifies for a marriage license.
Second, Idaho Code 32-209 provides the mechanism by which Idaho recognizes
the legal validity of marriages contracted in other states or countries. The statute
provides:
All marriages contracted without this state, which would be valid by the
laws of the state or country in which the same were contracted, are valid in
this state, unless they violate the public policy of this state. Marriages that
violate the public policy of this state include, but are not limited to, same-
sex marriages, and marriages entered into under the laws of another state or
country with the intent to evade the prohibitions of the marriage laws of
this state.
Id. 32-209. This statute creates a two-tiered system for out-of-state marriages. While
opposite-sex couples benefit from the place of celebration rule, married same-sex couples
shed their marital status upon entering Idaho. Although the States non-recognition policy
is not limited to same-sex marriages and marriages contracted with the intent to evade
Idaho law, the statute lists no other form of marriage specifically.
Third, the Idaho Constitution effectively bans legal recognition of same-sex
unions. In November of 2006, a majority of Idahos electorate voted to add the following
language to the Idaho Constitution: A marriage between a man and a woman is the only
domestic legal union that shall be valid or recognized in this state. Idaho Const. Art. III,
28.
This provision has the combined legal effect of the two statutes referenced above.
But, by virtue of its place in the Idaho Constitution, the amendment imposes powerful
restraints on Idahos Legislature and Judiciary. The provision effectively precludes a state
00006
court from finding that Idaho law requires the State to recognize any type of same-sex
union. And it precludes every legislative body in Idaho from recognizing civil unions or
any other same-sex relationship approximating marriage. Absent a superseding
constitutional amendment, no branch of state government may authorize or recognize the
marriage of two persons of the same sex. Thus, Idahos Marriage Laws prevent same-sex
couples, whether married or unmarried, from obtaining the marital status and benefits
afforded to opposite-sex couples.
B. The Plaintiffs
Plaintiffs are four same-sex couples. The Married Plaintiffs, Susan Latta and Traci
Ehlers, and Lori Watsen and Sharene Watsen, legally married in other states and wish to
have their marriages recognized in Idaho. The Unmarried Plaintiffs, Shelia Robertson and
Andrea Altmayer, and Amber Beierle and Rachael Robertson, desire to be married in
Idaho, but the County Recorder of Ada County, Defendant Rich, denied their marriage
license applications. The following undisputed facts are contained in the pleadings and in
Plaintiffs declarations.
1. Susan Latta and Traci Ehlers
Susan Latta has lived in Boise for 22 years. Traci Ehlers has resided in Idahos
Treasure Valley for 38 years. Latta is a professional artist and adjunct professor at Boise
State University, and Ehlers owns a small business in Boise. They met at a book club and
began dating in 2003. Ehlers proposed to Latta in 2004, and, in 2006, the couple
celebrated a meaningful but not legally binding wedding ceremony in Boise. (Latta
Dec. 11, Dkt. 48.) In 2008, the couple legally married in California soon after that state
00007
began allowing same-sex marriages. Neither Latta nor Ehlers had been married before,
but they decided to marry because they wanted to spend the rest of their lives together.
Although Ehlers never thought she would have children, she is now step-mother to
Lattas children and step-grandmother to Lattas grandchildren.
Both Latta and Ehlers attest that Idahos refusal to recognize their marriage
complicates and demeans their lives. They worry about the ramifications of aging without
a legally recognized marriage, a reality that implicates taxes, inheritance, Social Security
benefits, hospital visitation rights, and medical decision-making. Although they can file a
married tax return for federal purposes, Idaho law requires them to file single state
tax returns. Latta and Ehlers plan to seek professional assistance to prepare their state tax
returns. The couple also is unsure about the status of property they acquired during their
marriage because a quitclaim deed purporting to grant each of them title to community
property with right of survivorship may not be enforceable absent a legally recognized
marriage. Ehlers explains, it is painful that the state we love, the place that we have
made our home, where we vote and pay taxes, where we have our businesses, where we
participate, and volunteer, and donate, treats us as second-class citizens. (Ehlers Dec.
18, Dkt. 49.)
2. Lori Watsen and Sharene Watsen
Lori and Sharene Watsen reside in Boise, where Sharene works as a physician
assistant and Lori works as a social worker. Friends introduced the Watsens in 2009, and
the two have been together as a couple since their first date. In 2011, the couple married
in a small legal ceremony in New York. They held a larger celebration of their marriage
00008
at their church in Boise during the summer of 2012. The Watsens both describe their
marriage as an important symbol of their love for and commitment to each other, not least
because they both grew up in deeply religious families that value the institution greatly.
Also in 2012, the Watsens decided to start a family. Their son was conceived by
artificial insemination in September 2012, and Sharene gave birth in May 2013. Although
they requested that Lori be listed as their sons parent, his birth certificate lists only
Sharene. In the summer of 2013, the Watsens hired an attorney to assist Loris adoption
of their son. An Ada County magistrate judge dismissed the adoption petition and,
despite their valid New York marriage, deemed Lori to be Sharenes unmarried
cohabitating, committed partner without legal standing to adopt Sharenes son. (S.
Watsen Dec. Ex. C., Dkt. 51-3 at 5.) The couple felt demeaned by the magistrate judges
decision, and Lori plans to again petition for adoption.
4

Like Latta and Ehlers, the Watsens are concerned about the many complications
Idahos Marriage Laws add to their family life. Lori Watsen must create a new medical
power of attorney every six months, for, without one, she cannot consent to medical
treatment for her son. In addition, the Watsens have the same tax and community
property problems as Latta and Ehlers. Above all, Lori Watsen wants their son to have

4
After the dismissal of Lori Watsens adoption petition, the Idaho Supreme Court held
Idahos adoption statutes plainly allow a woman to adopt her same-sex partners children. In
re Adoption of Doe, P.3d, 2014 WL 527144, at *6 (Idaho Feb. 10, 2014). The court made
clear it would not imply . . . restrictions based on Idahos marital statutes and that sexual
orientation was wholly irrelevant to our analysis. Id.
00009
the same pride in us, as his parents, that I feel for my parents, who have been married for
50 years. (L. Watsen Dec. 36, Dkt. 50.)
3. Shelia Robertson and Andrea Altmayer
Shelia Robertson and Andrea Altmayer live together in Boise. Altmayer works as
a massage therapist. Robertson, who has advanced training in communicative disorders,
teaches deaf students at a local school district and works part-time as a video relay
interpreter.
The two have been in a committed, exclusive relationship since friends introduced
them 16 years ago. If Idaho allowed same-sex marriages, they would have married years
ago. Although the couple considered marrying outside Idaho, they did not wish to incur
the expense of traveling away from their family and friends only to return home with a
marriage not recognized in Idaho. Even so, Robertson and Altmayer decided to start a
family. Altmayer became pregnant through artificial insemination and gave birth to their
son in 2009.
Similar to the Watsens experience, Robertson and Altmayer completed birth
certificate forms identifying Altmayer as the mother and Robertson as a parent. But the
birth certificate lists only Altmayer as their sons parent. The lack of a legally recognized
parental relationship between Robertson and her son means she cannot consent to
medical treatment for him and otherwise prevents the couple from equally sharing
numerous parental responsibilities. Robertson and Altmayer worry their son will not have
the security and stability afforded by two legal parents. Both are deeply concerned their
00010
son will grow up believing there is something wrong with his family because his parents
cannot marry.
On November 6, 2013, Robertson and Altmayer submitted a marriage license
application to the Ada County Recorder. The application was denied only because
Robertson and Altmayer are both women. Demeaned but undeterred by this experience,
the couple wishes to be married so that other people understand that we are a family, in
a permanent life-long relationship. (S. Robertson Dec. 15, Dkt. 53.)
4. Amber Beierle and Rachael Robertson
Amber Beierle and Rachael Robertson both grew up, reside, and wish to marry in
Idaho. Beierle holds a M.S. in Applied Historical Research and works for the Idaho State
Historical Society. Roberston is an Army veteran, having served a tour of duty in Iraq
from J une 2004 to November 2005. During her military service, Robertson earned the
Army Combat Medal and the Soldier Good Conduct Medal. She was honorably
discharged from the Army in 2008 and now manages a warehouse in Boise.
Beierle and Robertson met in 2006 and began dating in 2010. The two have been
in a committed, exclusive relationship since Valentines Day, 2011. They bought a house
together in December of 2012. The couple plans to raise children, but they worry their
children will grow up thinking something is wrong with their family because Beierle and
Robertson cannot marry. Although they considered marrying in another state, they wish
to be married in their home state of Idaho. And, even if they were married in another
state, Idaho law would prevent them from being buried together at the Idaho Veterans
Cemetery because they are a same-sex couple.
00011
Beierle and Robertson also applied for a marriage license on November 6, 2013.
Although they otherwise qualify for a marriage license, the Ada County Recorders
Office denied the application because they are both women. This experience demeaned
Beierle and Robertson. They want to have the same freedom as opposite-sex couples to
marry the person [they] love and to share the benefits and responsibilities of marriage and
in the recognition and protections of marriage. (Beierle Dec. 19, Dkt. 54.)
C. The Defendants
Defendant C.L. Butch Otter is the Governor of the State of Idaho. He is sued in
his official capacity. As Governor, Defendant Otter is responsible for upholding and
ensuring compliance with the Idaho Constitution and statutes enacted by the Legislature,
including the marriage laws at issue in this case. See Idaho Const. Art. IV, 5 (The
supreme executive power of the state is vested in the governor, who shall see that the
laws are faithfully executed.).
Defendant Christopher Rich is Recorder of Ada County, Idaho. He is sued in his
official capacity. As the Ada County Recorder, Defendant Rich has the authority to
issue marriage licenses to any party applying for the same who may be entitled under the
laws of this state to contract matrimony. Idaho Code 32-401. On November 6, 2013,
an authorized deputy of Defendant Rich denied the Unmarried Plaintiffs applications for
marriage licenses because, as same-sex couples, they were not entitled to contract
matrimony in Idaho.
Early in this case, the State of Idaho moved and was permitted to intervene as a
defendant. (Dkt. 38.) The State, by and through the Idaho Attorney General, asserts a
00012
strong, independent interest in defending Idahos laws against constitutional attack.
Throughout this litigation, the State has joined in Recorder Richs motions and briefing.
D. Requested Relief
Plaintiffs bring suit under 42 U.S.C. 1983, alleging that Governor Otter and
Recorder Rich acted in their official capacities and under color of law to deprive them of
rights protected by the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.
5
They
request a declaration that all Idaho laws prohibiting same-sex marriage or barring
recognition of valid out-of-state same-sex marriages violate the due process and equal
protection guarantees in the Fourteenth Amendment. They also request a permanent
injunction against enforcement of any Idaho law that would prohibit or withhold
recognition of same-sex marriages. These claims constitute a facial constitutional attack
on the validity of any Idaho law that prohibits same-sex marriage in Idaho or withholds
recognition of same-sex marriages validly contracted in another state.
6

III. STANDARD OF REVIEW
The parties seek judicial resolution of this case via three motions: Defendant
Recorder Rich and Defendant-Intervenor Idahos motion to dismiss for failure to state a

5
There is no dispute that Plaintiffs have standing to bring this lawsuit or, considering the
relief requested, that Defendants are proper parties.
6
The undersigned United States Magistrate J udge has jurisdiction over this matter by
virtue of all parties express written consent. 28 U.S.C. 636(c); see also D. Idaho Loc. Civ. R.
72.1(a)(1) (authorization to decide civil cases with the parties consent), (Dkt. 40) (consents).

00013
claim (Dkt. 43)
7
, Plaintiffs motion for summary judgment (Dkt. 45), and Defendant
Governor Otters motion for summary judgment (Dkt. 57). Typically, motions to dismiss
are evaluated under different standards than motions for summary judgment. But here,
the motion to dismiss must be treated as a motion for summary judgment.
Recorder Rich and Defendant-Intervenor Idahos motion to dismiss attaches and
references numerous documents outside the pleadings. These documents include five
articles on marriage and parenting. (Dkt. 30-6 to -10.) The parties vigorously dispute the
meaning and import of the sociological literature on these points. Because the Court
considered the literature submitted with the motion to dismiss, the motion must be treated
as a motion for summary judgment. Fed. R. Civ. P. 12(d); see also Olsen v. Idaho State
Bd. of Med., 363 F.3d 916, 921-22 (9th Cir. 2004) (finding a represented partys
submission of extra-pleading materials justified treating motion to dismiss as motion for
summary judgment). The Court will evaluate all pending motions under the summary
judgment standard.
A party is entitled to summary judgment when there is no genuine dispute as to
any material fact and the movant is entitled to judgment as a matter of law. Fed. R. Civ.
P. 56(a). When parties submit cross-motions for summary judgment, the court must
review the evidence submitted in support of each cross-motion and decide each on its

7
Recorder Rich first moved to dismiss this case on J anuary 9, 2014. (Dkt. 30.) After the
Court permitted the State to intervene, the State filed a motion to dismiss that adopted all
arguments made in Recorder Richs initial motion. (Dkt. 41.) Plaintiffs thereafter filed an
Amended Complaint, (Dkt. 42), which Recorder Rich and the State jointly moved to dismiss
based on the reasons stated in their earlier motions to dismiss. (Dkt. 43.)
00014
own merits. Fair Housing Council of Riverside County, Inc. v. Riverside Two, 249 F.3d
1132, 1136 (9th Cir. 2001).
IV. ANALYSIS
The Court has considered the parties briefs and supporting materials, as well as
oral arguments presented during a May 5, 2014 hearing on all dispositive motions. As a
preliminary matter, the Court finds the Supreme Courts summary decision in Baker v.
Nelson, 409 U.S. 810 (1972), does not prevent lower federal courts from deciding the
constitutional issues in this case. With respect to Plaintiffs due process claim, Idahos
Marriage Laws are subject to strict scrutiny because they infringe upon Plaintiffs
fundamental right to marry. Under the Equal Protection Clause, Idahos Marriage Laws
are subject to heightened scrutiny because they intentionally discriminate on the basis of
sexual orientation. The Court finds that Idahos Marriage Laws do not survive any
applicable level of constitutional scrutiny and therefore violate the Equal Protection and
Due Process Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.
The reasons for these findings are discussed below.
A. Baker v. Nelson
Defendants initially argue that Baker v. Nelson is binding precedent that shields
Idahos Marriage Laws from constitutional attack. Baker was an appeal to the United
States Supreme Court from a decision of the Supreme Court of Minnesota. The
Minnesota court held that neither Minnesota law nor the United States Constitution
required the issuance of marriage licenses to a same-sex couple. Baker v. Nelson, 191
N.W.2d 185 (Minn. 1971), appeal dismissed, 409 U.S. 810 (1972). Based on a brief
00015
review of then-existing due process and equal protection jurisprudence, the Minnesota
court rejected the plaintiffs due process and equal protection claims. On appeal, the
Supreme Court summarily dismissed the case for want of a substantial federal question.
Baker, 409 U.S. at 810.
Summary dismissals have real but narrow precedential value. A summary
disposition affirms only the judgment of the court below, and no more may be read into
[the] action than was essential to sustain the judgment. Ill. Bd. of Elections v. Socialist
Workers Party, 440 U.S. 173, 182-83 (1979) (citations omitted). The dismissal
prevent[s] lower courts from coming to opposite conclusions on the precise issues
presented and necessarily decided in the action. Mandel v. Bradley, 432 U.S. 173, 176
(1977). When a case raises the precise issue addressed by a summary dismissal, the
lower courts are bound . . . until such time as the [Supreme] Court informs them that they
are not. Hicks v. Miranda, 422 U.S. 332, 344-45 (1975) (quotation omitted). Defendants
correctly note that Baker necessarily decided the precise issues presented in this case and
that the Supreme Court has not expressly overruled Baker in the four decades after it was
summarily decided.
Although Baker speaks to the precise issues presented in this case, there is good
reason to find its guidance no longer binding. The Supreme Court has instructed that
inferior federal courts had best adhere to the view that if the Court has branded a
question as insubstantial, it remains so except when doctrinal developments indicate
otherwise. Hicks, 422 U.S. at 344 (emphasis added). Defendants make forceful
arguments about the binding nature of summary dismissals, but they overlook the
00016
doctrinal developments exception stated in Hicks. In fact, Defendants cite only one case
that analyzes the doctrinal developments since Baker, and that case was decided before
Windsor. See Jackson v. Abercrombie, 884 F.Supp.2d 1065, 1085-86 (D. Haw. 2012)
(concluding pre-Windsor doctrinal developments did not overcome Baker). The Supreme
Courts due process and equal protection jurisprudence has developed significantly in the
four decades after Baker, and, in last years Windsor decision, the Court dramatically
changed tone with regard to laws that withhold marriage benefits from same-sex couples.
In 1972, the Supreme Court had not recognized gender as a quasi-suspect
classification. See Frontiero v. Richardson, 411 U.S. 677 (1973).
8
Nor had the Court
applied heightened equal protection scrutiny to gender-based classifications. See Craig v.
Boren, 429 U.S. 190 (1976). It was not until 1996 that the Supreme Court recognized
laws based on a bare . . . desire to harm homosexuals were not rationally related to
any legitimate government interest. Romer v. Evans, 517 U.S. 620 (1996) (quoting U.S.
Dept. of Agric. v. Moreno, 413 U.S. 528 (1973)). Since Baker, the Supreme Courts equal
protection jurisprudence has expanded, scrutinizing both gender and sexual orientation
discrimination in more exacting ways.
In 1972, states could constitutionally criminalize private, consensual sex between
adults of the same sex based on nothing more than moral disapproval of the homosexual

8
November 22, 1971less than a year before the summary decision in Bakerwas the
first time the Supreme Court struck down a law because it unconstitutionally discriminated on
the basis of gender. Reed v. Reed, 404 U.S. 71 (1971). Overruling the Idaho Supreme Court,
Reed held that Idahos statutory preference for male estate administrators was the very kind of
arbitrary legislative choice forbidden by the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth
Amendment. . . . Id. at 76.
00017
lifestyle. See Bowers v. Hardwick, 478 U.S. 186 (1986), overruled by Lawrence v. Texas,
539 U.S. 558 (2003). But, just 11 years ago, the Court reversed course and held the
government could not lawfully demean [homosexuals] existence or control their destiny
by making their private sexual conduct a crime. Lawrence, 539 U.S. at 574. Lawrence
reaffirmed that the Due Process Clause protects fundamental rights of personhood,
definitively establishing that individuals do not forfeit their rights because of their sexual
orientation. Id. At the very least, Romer and Lawrence strongly suggest that state-
approved discrimination based on sexual orientation is now a substantial federal question.
Although courts formerly were reluctant to find these developments sufficient to
overcome Baker, e.g., Jackson, 884 F.Supp.2d at 1085-86, much has changed in just the
last year. In J une of 2013, the Supreme Court struck down the federal man-woman
definition of marriage because, when applied to legally married same-sex couples, it
demean[ed] the couple, whose moral and sexual choices the Constitution protects.
Windsor, 133 S. Ct. at 2694. In doing so, the Supreme Court affirmed the decision of the
United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, which expressly held that Baker
did not foreclose review of the federal marriage definition. Windsor v. United States, 699
F.3d 169, 178-80 (2d Cir. 2012) (Even if Baker might have had resonance . . . in 1971, it
does not today.). Also last summer, the Supreme Court declined to review a decision
invalidating Californias voter-approved man-woman marriage definition. Hollingsworth
v. Perry, 133 S. Ct. 2652 (2013). The Supreme Court dismissed the appeal not because
Baker rendered the question insubstantial, but because the laws supporters lacked
standing to defend it after the State of California decided not to. These are doctrinal
00018
developments sufficient to overcome the narrow precedential effect of a summary
dismissal.
Since Windsor, no federal court has ruled to the contrary. In fact, every court to
consider Baker in the context of a post-Windsor challenge to laws against same-sex
marriage has found that doctrinal developments since 1972 provide ample reason to reach
the merits. Kitchen v. Herbert, 961 F.Supp.2d 1181, 1194-95 (D. Utah 2013); Bishop v.
U.S., 962 F.Supp.2d 1252 (N.D. Okla. 2014); Bostic v. Rainey, 970 F.Supp.2d 456, 468-
70 (E.D. Va. 2014); McGee v. Cole, F.Supp.2d, 2014 WL 321122 at *8-10 (S.D.
W.Va. J an. 29, 2014); Bourke v. Beshear, F.Supp.2d, 2014 WL 556729 (W.D. Ky.
Feb. 12, 2014); De Leon v. Perry, F.Supp.2d, 2014 WL 715741, at *8-10 (W.D.
Tex. Feb. 26, 2014); DeBoer v. Snyder, F.Supp.2d, 2014 WL 1100794, at * 15 n.6
(E.D. Mich. Mar. 21, 2014). Consistent with the findings of its sister courts, the Court
concludes that Baker is not controlling and does not bar review of Plaintiffs claims.
B. Due Process
The Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States
Constitution guarantees fair process and places substantive limits on the States authority
to constrain individual liberty. Many of our most cherished liberties originate in the Bill
of Rightsamong them the freedoms of speech, press, and religion; the right to be free
from unreasonable searches and seizures; and the right to just compensation when the
government takes private property. Initially, the Bill of Rights guarded against only
actions by the federal government. But, upon the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment,
a more comprehensive protection came into force: No State shall make or enforce any
00019
law which shall abridge the privileges and immunities of citizens of the United States;
nor shall any State deprive a person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of
law; nor deny to any person the equal protection of the laws. U.S. Const. amend. XIV,
1. Now, most of the Bill of Rights applies to the states by virtue of the Fourteenth
Amendment. See McDonald v. City of Chicago, 130 S. Ct. 3020, 3034-36, 3050 (2010)
(chronicling selective incorporation of the Bill of Rights and incorporating the Second
Amendment).
The Supreme Court also has recognized that the liberty guaranteed by the
Fourteenth Amendment extends beyond the Bill of Rights to the right to define ones
own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.
Beliefs about these matters could not define the attributes of personhood were they
formed under the compulsion of the State. Planned Parenthood of Se. Pa. v. Casey, 505
U.S. 833, 851 (1992).
An individuals protected liberties include certain fundamental rights of
personhood. These rights center on the most significant decisions of a lifetimewhom to
marry, whether to have children, and how to raise and educate children. Lawrence, 539
U.S. at 574. These choices are protected because they implicate associational rights . . .
of basic importance in our society, rights sheltered by the Fourteenth Amendment
against the States unwarranted usurpation, disregard, or disrespect. M.L.B. v. S.L.J., 519
U.S. 102, 116 (1996) (quoting Boddie v. Connecticut, 401 U.S. 371, 376 (1971)).
Ordinarily, laws do not offend the Due Process Clause when they are rationally
related to a legitimate government interest. Washington v. Glucksburg, 521 U.S. 702, 722
00020
(1997). But laws that implicate fundamental rights are subject to strict scrutiny, surviving
only if narrowly tailored to a compelling government interest. Reno v. Flores, 507 U.S.
292, 301-02 (1993). The essential issue for due process purposes is whether Idahos
Marriage Laws infringe on Plaintiffs fundamental rights.
The decisions of the United States Supreme Court confirm that the right to marry
is of fundamental importance for all individuals. Zablocki v. Redhail, 434 U.S. 374, 384
(1978). The freedom to marry has long been recognized as one of the vital personal
rights essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness by free men and women. Loving v.
Virginia, 388 U.S. 1, 11 (1967). It is an association that promotes a way of life, not
causes; a harmony in living, not political faiths; a bilateral loyalty, not commercial or
social projects. Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U.S. 479, 486 (1965).
Against this background, Plaintiffs wish to exercise their fundamental right to
marry. Defendants acknowledge that the fundamental right to marry exists, but they argue
it does not extend to same-sex couples. Rather, Defendants contend Plaintiffs seek
recognition of a new fundamental right, the right to same-sex marriage.
Defendants appropriately note that the Supreme Court has explicitly cautioned
against finding new fundamental rights. [T]he Due Process Clause specially protects
those fundamental rights and liberties which are, objectively, deeply rooted in this
Nations history and tradition, and implicit in the concept of ordered liberty, such that
neither liberty nor justice would exist if they were sacrificed. Glucksburg, 521 U.S. at
720-21 (quotations and citations omitted). A careful description of the newly asserted
liberty interest also is necessary. Id. at 721. Moreover, the Nations history, legal
00021
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traditions, and practices . . . provide the crucial guideposts for responsible
decisionmaking, that direct and restrain [the Courts] exposition of the Due Process
Clause. Id. (quotation and citation omitted).
The Glucksburg decision is instructive on how the Supreme Court evaluates new
fundamental rights. There, the plaintiffs asserted the State of Washingtons ban on
causing or aiding another persons suicide violated a constitutionally protected right to
choose the manner of ones own death. The Supreme Court surveyed the history of the
law regarding suicide, concluding [t]he history of the laws treatment of assisted suicide
in this country has been and continues to be one of the rejection of nearly all efforts to
permit it. Id. at 728. Given this largely unbroken tradition, the Court declined to
recognize a new constitutionally protected right to suicide or assisted suicide. The
Supreme Court then upheld Washingtons assisted suicide ban because the ban rationally
related to Washingtons legitimate interest in preserving human life.
The restraint exercised in Glucksburg is not warranted here. Although marriage is
not mentioned in the Bill of Rights, the Supreme Court has uniformly treated marriage as
an established fundamental right. A long line of cases recognize marriage as a
fundamental right, variously describing it as a right of liberty, Meyer v. Nebraska, 262
U.S. 390, 399 (1923), of privacy, Griswold, 381 U.S. at 486, and of association, M.L.B.,
519 U.S. at 116. This exalted status among personal rights is based on the recognition
that marriage involv[es] the most intimate and personal choices a person may make in a
lifetime, choices central to personal dignity and autonomy. . . . Casey, 505 U.S. at 851.
00022
In fact, Glucksburg cites the right to marry as one of the well-established fundamental
rights. 521 U.S. at 720.
Because the right to marry is fundamental, the Supreme Court has repeatedly
invalidated laws that infringe upon it. In the pathmarking case of Loving v. Virginia, our
Nations highest court found unconstitutional a Virginia statute banning interracial
marriages. 388 U.S. 1 (1967). Similar to the Idaho Marriage Laws challenged here,
Virginias anti-miscegenation laws prohibited the issuance of marriage licenses to
interracial couples and further forbade attempts to evade the ban by marrying out-of-
state. Loving, 388 U.S. at 4-6. Violation of these Virginias law was a criminal offense
punishable by imprisonment for up to five years. Id. at 5. Regardless of the historical
precedent for such laws, the Supreme Court made clear that the freedom to marry or not
marry[] a person of another race resides with the individual and cannot be infringed by
the State. Id. at 12.
The Supreme Court reaffirmed the fundamental and individual character of the
right to marry in Zablocki v. Redhail. There, the Court reviewed a Wisconsin law that
required residents to seek court permission to marry if a Wisconsin resident had children
not in the residents custody. Zablocki, 434 U.S. at 375. Under that law, permission to
marry would be granted only if the resident could show full compliance with any child-
support obligations and further demonstrate children covered by a support order were
not then and [were] not likely thereafter to become public charges. Id. (quoting Wis.
Stat. 245.10 (1973)). Despite the States interest in child welfare, the Supreme Court
invalidated the statute because it unnecessarily impinge[d] on the right to marry in a
00023
context where Wisconsin had numerous other means for advancing its interest. Id. at
388-89.
Next, in 1987, the Supreme Court struck down a Missouri prison regulation that
restricted inmates right to marry. Turner v. Safley, 482 U.S. 78 (1987). Under the
regulation, an inmate could marry only with approval from the superintendent of prisons,
permission that would be granted under compelling circumstances such as pregnancy
or the birth of an illegitimate child. Id. at 82. While prisoners are subject to a variety of
restrictions on their constitutional liberties, the Court found that [m]any important
attributes of marriage remain, however, after taking into account the limitations imposed
by prison life. Id. at 95. Recognizing the emotional, public, and spiritual significance of
marriage, as well as the many government benefits that flow from marital status, the
Court struck down the prison regulation. According to the Supreme Court, these
incidents of marriage, like the religious and personal aspects of the marriage
commitment, are unaffected by the fact of confinement or the pursuit of legitimate
penological objectives. Id. at 95-96.
More recently, the Supreme Court confirmed that gay and lesbian individuals do
not forfeit their constitutional liberties simply because of their sexual orientation.
Lawrence, 539 U.S. 558. The Court observed that our laws and tradition afford
constitutional protection to personal decisions relating to marriage, procreation,
contraception, family relationships, child rearing, and education. Id. at 574.
Emphasizing that these are personal rights, the Court concluded [p]ersons in a
homosexual relationship may seek autonomy for these purposes, just as heterosexual
00024
persons do. Id. (emphasis added). And, less than one year ago, the Supreme Court struck
down the federal Defense of Marriage Acts man-woman definition of marriage because
it amounted to unconstitutional interference with the equal dignity of same-sex
marriages recognized by some states. Windsor, 133 S. Ct. at 2693. The message of these
cases is unmistakableall individuals have a fundamental right to marry.
Defendants argue these cases do not apply here because the Supreme Court has
recognized a fundamental right to only heterosexual marriage. Relying on Glucksburg,
the Defendants characterize this case as one involving the right to same-sex marriage, a
right lacking both historical precedent and constitutional protection. Defendants
argument suffers from three critical flaws.
This new right argument attempts to narrowly parse a right that the Supreme
Court has framed in remarkably broad terms. Loving was no more about the right to
interracial marriage than Turner was about the prisoners right to marry or Zablocki
was about the dead-beat dads right to marry. Even in cases with such vastly different
facts, the Supreme Court has consistently upheld the right to marry, as opposed to a sub-
right tied to the facts of the case. While Glucksburg demands that new rights be carefully
described and deeply rooted, the cases above demonstrate that the Supreme Court has
long recognized an unembellished right to marry.
On the other hand, the holding in Glucksburg followed directly from the unbroken
pattern of state laws and legal traditions disapproving suicide and assisted suicide. 521
U.S. at 710-11 (Indeed, opposition to and condemnation of suicideand, therefore,
assisting suicideare consistent and enduring themes of our philosophical, legal, and
00025
cultural heritages.). Given that context, it was a truly novel proposition to say that the
concept of liberty substantively protects a persons freedom to end his or her life.
Finding the policy of condemning and discouraging suicide both deeply rooted and nearly
universal in contemporary society, the Court declined to recognize a new fundamental
right. Id. at 728.
The context here is dramatically different. Far from a uniform pattern of laws
rejecting the practice, a fast-growing number of states now recognize that same-sex and
opposite-sex marriages are equal. And, while Glucksburg makes much of the consistent
legal, medical, and social policies against suicide, the Court is not aware of a similarly
pervasive policy against marriage. To the contrary, the Defendants make abundantly clear
that marriage is a life-affirming institutionsomething to be encouraged because it
provides stability not only for couples, but also for children.
Finally, and most critically, the Supreme Courts marriage cases demonstrate that
the right to marry is an individual right, belonging to all. See Lawrence, 539 U.S. at 574.
If every individual enjoys a constitutional right to marry, what is the substance of that
right for gay or lesbian individuals who cannot marry their partners of choice?
Traditional man-woman marriage is no answer, as this would suggest that gays and
lesbians can switch off their sexual orientation and choose to be content with the universe
of opposite-sex partners approved by the State.
9
Defendants offer no other answer.

9
No credible evidence supports a finding that an individual may, through conscious
decision, therapeutic intervention or any other method, change his or her sexual orientation.
Perry v. Schwarzenegger, 704 F.Supp.2d 921, 966 (N.D. Cal. 2010); see also Hernandez-Montiel
(Continued)
00026
In their effort to avoid the question, Defendants commit the same analytical
mistake as the majority in Bowers v. Hardwick, the decision that declined to announce a
fundamental right to engage in homosexual sodomy. 478 U.S. 186, 191 (1986),
overruled by Lawrence, 539 U.S. at 577. The crucial mistake in Bowers was that the
majority narrowed and thus fail[ed] to appreciate the extent of the liberty at stake.
Lawrence, 539 U.S. at 567. For that reason, the Supreme Court in Lawrence concluded
Bowers was not correct when it was decided, and it is not correct today. Id. at 577.
Lawrence instructs not only that gay and lesbian individuals enjoy the same fundamental
rights to make intimate personal choices as heterosexual individuals enjoy, but that
judicial attempts to parse those rights out of existence will be met with a harsh rebuke.
The Supreme Courts marriage cases recognize an individuals fundamental right
to marry. The right transcends ones race, confinement to prison, or ability to support
children. Lawrence unequivocally cements marriage as among the constitutionally
protected liberties shared by homosexual and heterosexual persons alike. The teaching of
these cases is that the fundamental right to marry cannot be narrowed in the manner
Defendants urge. Idahos Marriage Laws render the Plaintiff couples legal strangers,
stripping them of the choice to marry or remain married in the state they call home.

v. INS, 225 F.3d 1084, 1093 (9th Cir. 2000) (reviewing literature on the essential link between
sexual and personal identity).
00027
Therefore, Idahos Marriage Laws impermissibly infringe on Plaintiffs fundamental
right to marry.
10

C. Equal Protection
Plaintiffs also claim Idahos Marriage Laws violate the Equal Protection Clause of
the Fourteenth Amendment. That clause commands that no State shall deny to any
person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws, which is essentially a
direction that all persons similarly situated should be treated alike. City of Cleburne v.
Cleburne Living Center, Inc., 473 U.S. 432, 439 (1985) (quoting U.S. Const., amend
XIV., 1). The equal protection guarantee is in tension with the reality that laws almost
inevitably draw lines between groups of people, advantaging some and disadvantaging
others. Romer v. Evans, 517 U.S. 620, 631 (1996). The Supreme Court has developed
tiers of judicial scrutiny in an effort to reconcile this practical reality with the
constitutional principle. The level of scrutiny depends on the characteristics of the
disadvantaged group or the rights implicated by the classification.
A law that neither targets a suspect class nor burdens a fundamental right is
subject to rational basis scrutiny. Heller v Doe, 509 U.S. 312, 319-21 (1993). The Court
in such cases presumes the law is valid unless the challenger can show the difference in
treatment bears no rational relation to a conceivable government interest. Id. A
classification does not fail rational-basis review because it is not made with

10
For this reason, Idahos Marriage Laws are subject to strict due process and equal
protection scrutiny. See Zablocki, 434 U.S. at 388. But the Laws do not survive under the lower
level of equal protection scrutiny applied in Part IV.D below. Consequently, the Laws would fail
strict scrutiny.
00028
mathematical nicety or because in practice it results in some inequality. Id. at 321
(quoting Dandridge v. Williams, 397 U.S. 471, 485 (1970)). But, even under this most
deferential standard, the State may not rely on a classification whose relationship to the
asserted goal is so attenuated as to render the decision arbitrary or irrational. Cleburne,
473 U.S. at 446. For this reason, courts insist on knowing the relation between the
classification adopted and the object to be attained. Romer, 517 U.S. at 632; see also
Heller, 509 U.S. at 321 (explaining the classification must find some footing in the
realities of the subject addressed by the legislation).
Strict scrutiny lies at the other end of the spectrum. This level of scrutiny applies
when a legislative classification impermissibly interferes with the exercise of a
fundamental right or operates to the peculiar disadvantage of a suspect class. Mass. Bd.
of Retirement v. Murgia, 427 U.S. 307, 312 (1976). Such classifications are presumed
unconstitutional and will survive strict scrutiny only when the government can show the
law is narrowly tailored to a compelling governmental interest. See Zablocki, 434 U.S. at
388.
Between the extremes of rational basis review and strict scrutiny lies a level of
intermediate scrutiny, which generally has been applied to discriminatory classifications
based on sex or illegitimacy. Clark v. Jeter, 486 U.S. 456, 461 (1988). These
classifications are considered quasi-suspect, and survive heightened constitutional
scrutiny only if the State shows the classification is substantially related to an important
governmental objective. Miss. Univ. for Women v. Hogan, 458 U.S. 718, 724 (1982).
Discrimination against a quasi-suspect class, such as women, must be supported by an
00029
exceedingly persuasive justification and not hypothesized or invented post hoc in
response to litigation. United States v. Virginia, 518 U.S. 515, 533 (1996). The purpose
of this heightened level of scrutiny is to ensure quasi-suspect classifications do not
perpetuate unfounded stereotypes or second-class treatment. Id. at 534.
The Courts principal tasks here are to determine the form of discrimination at
issue and next identify and apply the appropriate level of scrutiny.
1. Form of Discrimination
Plaintiffs argue that Idahos Marriage Laws discriminate against individuals on the
basis of sex and sexual orientation. The Defendants counter that Idahos Marriage Laws
do not prefer one sex over the other, nor do they target gay and lesbian persons.
A persons gender and sexual orientation are two sides of the same coin. As one
court aptly observed, sex and sexual orientation are necessarily interrelated, as an
individuals choice of romantic or intimate partner based on sex is a large part of what
defines an individuals sexual orientation. Perry v. Schwarzenegger, 704 F.Supp.2d 921,
996 (N.D. Cal. 2010). However, the Supreme Court has not equated sexual orientation
discrimination and sex discrimination despite several opportunities to do so. See Romer,
517 U.S. at 635 (We must conclude that Amendment 2 classifies homosexuals not to
further a proper legislative end but to make them unequal to everyone else.); Lawrence,
539 U.S. at 583 (OConnor, J ., concurring) ([T]he conduct targeted by this law is
conduct that is closely correlated with being homosexual.); Windsor, 133 S. Ct. at 2695
(The class to which DOMA directs its restrictions and restraints are those persons who
are joined in same-sex marriages made lawful by the State.). Considering the Supreme
00030
Courts treatment of this issue, this Court finds that sex discrimination and sexual
orientation discrimination are distinct phenomena. In re Marriage Cases, 183 P.3d 384,
439 (Cal. 2008); see also Bishop v. U.S., 962 F.Supp.2d 1252 (N.D. Okla. 2014)
(Common sense dictates that the intentional discrimination occurring in this case has
nothing to do with gender-based prejudice or stereotypes, and the law cannot be subject
to heightened scrutiny on that basis.).
Idahos Marriage Laws allow heterosexuals, but not homosexuals, to marry and
thus clearly discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation. This distinction does not
prefer one gender over the othertwo men have no more right to marry under Idaho law
than two women. In other words, Idahos Marriage Laws are facially gender neutral and
there is no evidence that they were motivated by a gender discriminatory purpose. See In
re Kandu, 315 B.R. 123, 143 (Bankr. W.D. Wash. 2004) (The test to evaluate whether a
facially gender-neutral statute discriminates on the basis of sex is whether the law can be
traced to a discriminatory purpose.) (internal quotations omitted).
2. Level of Scrutiny
Plaintiffs advance two reasons for applying heightened scrutiny to Idahos
Marriage Laws. First, they argue sexual orientation is subject to heightened scrutiny
under recent precedent of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.
Second, they claim that classifications based on sexual orientation are constitutionally
suspect.

00031
a. Ninth Circuit Precedent
Plaintiffs first argue that heightened scrutiny applies to sexual orientation
discrimination by virtue of the Ninth Circuits recent decision in SmithKline Beecham
Corp. v. Abbott Laboratories, 740 F.3d 471, 484 (9th Cir. 2014). The Defendants claim
SmithKline is distinguishable on its facts. The State and Recorder Rich argue SmithKline
is a case about discriminatory jury selection and, as such, its holding is limited to cases
involving intentional sexual orientation discrimination based on stereotypes. In a similar
vein, Governor Otter claims SmithKline is inapplicable because Idahos Marriage Laws
are not motivated by animus toward homosexuals. Defendants misread the case.
SmithKline involved a constitutional challenge to a preemptory strike of a
prospective juror during jury selection for a trial between two pharmaceutical companies,
SmithKline Beecham and Abbott Laboratories. The parties dispute centered on the
pricing of HIV medications, which is a subject of considerable controversy in the gay
community. Id. at 474. During the jury selection process, J uror B was the only self-
identified gay member of the jury pool. Immediately after Abbott exercised its first
peremptory strike against J uror B, SmithKlines counsel raised a Batson challenge that
the trial judge denied.
11
The Ninth Circuit concluded that Abbotts challenge amounted

11
In Batson v. Kentucky, 476 U.S. 79 (1986), the Supreme Court found that the Equal
Protection Clause limits the privilege of exercising peremptory strikes when selecting a jury.
Although Batson considered strikes based on race, its underlying constitutional principle now
extends to classes of persons subject to intermediate or strict equal protection scrutiny. J.E.B. v.
Alabama, 511 U.S. 127, 143 (1994) (Parties may . . . exercise their peremptory challenges to
remove from the venire any group or class of individuals normally subject to rational basis
review.).
00032
to purposeful sexual orientation discrimination before answering the dispositive question:
Whether classifications based on sexual orientation are subject to heightened scrutiny.

To answer this question, the Ninth Circuit looked to the Supreme Courts equal
protection analysis in Windsor. Although Windsor does not announce the level of
scrutiny, the SmithKline court considered what the Supreme Court actually did and
determined the Supreme Courts analysis was inconsistent with pure rational basis
review. Id. at 481. SmithKlines examination of Windsor is authoritative and binding
upon this Court.
According to SmithKline, Windsors constitutional analysis exhibits none of the
hallmarks of rational basis review. First, the Supreme Court ignored the hypothetical
justifications for the Defense of Marriage Act and instead carefully considered the laws
actual purpose. Id. at 481-82 (citing Windsor, 133 S. Ct. at 2693-94). Second, the critical
part of Windsor begins by demanding that Congresss purpose justify disparate treatment
of the group. Id. at 482 (quoting Windsor, 133 S. Ct. at 2693). Wholly inconsistent with
rational basis review, this demand neither defers to legislative choices nor presumes a law
is constitutional. Compare Williamson v. Lee Optical, 348 U.S. 483, 487 (1955) ([I]t is
for the legislature, not the courts, to balance the advantages and disadvantages of the new
requirement.) with Windsor, 133 S. Ct. at 2696 (The federal statute is invalid, for no
legitimate purpose overcomes the purpose and effect to disparage and injure those whom
the State, by its marriage laws, sought to protect in personhood and dignity.).
Concluding its analysis, the Ninth Circuit held that Windsor requires that when state
action discriminates on the basis of sexual orientation, we must examine its actual
00033
purposes and carefully consider the resulting inequality to ensure that our most
fundamental institutions neither send nor reinforce messages of stigma or second-class
status. SmithKline, 740 F.3d at 483.
This holding is unqualified and logically preceded the courts analysis of the
Batson challenge. Indeed, the Batson analysis otherwise would have been foreclosed
because the Ninth Circuits pre-Windsor equal protection precedent held that sexual
orientation discrimination is subject to rational basis review. See High Tech Gays v. Def.
Indus. Sec. Clearance Office, 895 F.2d 563 (9th Cir. 1990), abrogation recognized by
SmithKline, 740 F.3d at 483. Reexamining its precedent in light of Windsor, the
SmithKline court found that earlier cases applying rational basis review to classifications
based on sexual orientation cannot be reconciled with Windsor. 740 F.3d at 483. Only
after the Ninth Circuit found J uror B belonged to a group subject to heightened scrutiny
did it then proceed with its Batson analysis. In this Courts view, SmithKline establishes a
broadly applicable equal protection principle that is not limited to the jury selection
context.

Also, contrary to Defendants contentions, SmithKline does not limit the
application of heightened scrutiny to instances of proven animus or irrational
stereotyping. SmithKline addresses purposeful discrimination and the perpetuation of
impermissible stereotypes, but it does so in the context of the Batson analysisnot in the
discussion about Windsor. Id. at 484-86. With respect to Windsor, the courts holding is
undeniably broad: Windsors heightened scrutiny applies to classifications based on
sexual orientation. Id. at 483. Had the Ninth Circuit intended to limit its holding to cases
00034
involving animus or irrational stereotyping, it easily could have done so. Instead, it found
Windsor to be dispositive of the question of the appropriate level of scrutiny in this
case, a case that fits into the broader category of classifications based on sexual
orientation. Id. at 480. J ust as the Ninth Circuit was bound by [Windsors] controlling,
higher authority when deciding SmithKline, this Court is bound to apply Windsors
heightened scrutiny to Idahos Marriage Laws.
12

b. Suspect class
Apart from SmithKline, Plaintiffs also contend Idahos Marriage Laws are subject
to heightened scrutiny because classifications based on sexual orientation are
constitutionally suspect. The Court need not dissect this argument because the Supreme
Court has accepted it by implication. If homosexuals are not a suspect or quasi-suspect
class, the Supreme Court would have applied rational basis scrutiny in Windsor. But, as
recognized in SmithKline, the Supreme Court applied heightened scrutiny. Indeed, the
Supreme Court affirmed the Second Circuit without questioning (or even discussing) the
lower courts express holding:
A) homosexuals as a group have historically endured persecution and
discrimination; B) homosexuality has no relation to aptitude or ability to
contribute to society; C) homosexuals are a discernible group with non-
obvious distinguishing characteristics, especially in the subset of those who
enter same-sex marriages; and D) the class remains a politically weakened
minority.

12
Currently, Nevadas laws prohibiting same-sex marriage are before the Ninth Circuit and
Oregons are before the District of Oregon. The Attorneys General of Nevada and Oregon both
recently concluded that heightened scrutiny under SmithKline eviscerates the legal bases for their
defenses. (Dkt. 77-2 at 5; Dkt. 77-3 at 22.) Consequently, both Attorneys General have refused to
defend their states marriage laws.
00035
Windsor v. United States, 699 F.3d 169, 181-82 (2d Cir. 2012), affd United States v.
Windsor, 133 S. Ct. 2675 (2013). The Second Circuits holding was both approved and
essential to the scrutiny the Supreme Court applied in Windsor. Had the Supreme Court
disagreed with the Second Circuit, it would not have applied heightened scrutiny. It is not
necessary to repeat the Second Circuits analysis, for that analysis is implicit in both
Windsor and SmithKline.
D. Idahos Marriage Laws Fail Constitutional Scrutiny
Because Idahos Marriage Laws impermissibly infringe on Plaintiffs fundamental
right to marry, the Laws are subject to strict due process and equal protection scrutiny.
But SmithKline directs the Court to apply heightened equal protection scrutiny to laws
that discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation. Idahos Marriage Laws do not
withstand this heightened scrutiny.
At a minimum, the Court must examine Idahos Marriage Laws and carefully
consider the resulting inequality to ensure that our most fundamental institutions neither
send nor reinforce messages of stigma or second-class status. SmithKline, 740 F.3d at
483. Based on Windsor, and as explained in SmithKline, four principles guide the Courts
equal protection analysis. The Court (1) looks to the Defendants to justify Idahos
Marriage Laws, (2) must consider the Laws actual purposes, (3) need not accept
hypothetical, post hoc justifications for the Laws, and (4) must decide whether the
Defendants proffered justifications overcome the injury and indignity inflicted on
Plaintiffs and others like them. See id. at 481-83.
00036
These principles most closely correspond to the intermediate scrutiny test applied
to quasi-suspect classifications based on gender and illegitimacy. See Windsor v. United
States, 699 F.3d 169, 185-88 (2d Cir. 2012) (applying intermediate scrutiny). In those
cases the burden of justification is demanding and it rests entirely on the State. United
States v. Virginia, 518 U.S. 515, 533 (1996). While intermediate scrutiny permits
classifications designed to remedy economic injuries or promote equality, the test focuses
on differential treatment and denial of opportunity to ensure that discriminatory laws
do not create or perpetuate the legal, social, and economic inferiority of the affected
class. Id. at 533-34.
1. The Actual Purpose of Idahos Marriage Laws
The Court begins its inquiry into the actual purpose of Idahos Marriage Laws by
examining their text. See Planned Parenthood of Idaho, Inc. v. Wasden, 376 F.3d 908,
926 (9th Cir. 2004). The plain meaning of legislation should be conclusive, except in the
rare cases in which the literal application of a statute will produce a result demonstrably
at odds with the intention of its drafters. United States v. Ron Pair Enters., Inc., 489
U.S. 235, 242 (1989). The meaning of Idahos Marriage Laws could not be plainer.
The only recognized domestic legal union in Idaho is a marriage between a man
and a woman. Idaho Const. Art. III, 28. A marriage can be licensed and solemnized
only if it is a civil contract between a man and a woman. . . . Idaho Code 32-201. All
marriages contracted outside of Idaho are valid in Idaho except marriages that violate
Idahos public policy. Id. 32-209. The statutory list of marriages that violate Idahos
public policy is nonexclusive, but it specifically identifies only two categoriessame-
00037
sex marriages, and marriages entered into . . . with the intent to evade the prohibitions of
Idahos Marriage Laws. Id. The parties do not cite, and the Court does not find, a
published Idaho case holding that anything other than same-sex marriage violates the
public policy set forth in Idaho Code 32-209. Each of these laws unambiguously
expresses a singular purposeto exclude same-sex couples from civil marriage in Idaho.
The Laws legislative history makes their exclusionary purpose even clearer.
Idaho Code Sections 32-201 and 32-209 were both amended in the mid-1990s, at a time
when no state recognized same-sex marriage. In 1993, however, the Hawaii Supreme
Court became the first court in the country to strike down a statutory same-sex marriage
ban. Baehr v. Lewin, 852 P.2d 44, 61 (Haw. 1993) (remanding for consideration of
justifications for the ban). After Baehr, over half of the states passed laws prohibiting
same-sex marriage. See Bourke v. Beshear, 2014 WL 556729, at *1 n.1 (W.D. Ken. Feb.
12, 2014) (listing laws). In addition, the United States Congress reacted in 1996 by
passing the Defense of Marriage Actthe law found partially unconstitutional in
Windsor. The present versions of Sections 32-201 and 32-209 also took effect in 1996.
The Idaho Legislature amended 32-201 in 1995 to add, among other language,
the words between a man and a woman. 1995 Idaho Sess. Laws, ch. 104, 3. In
addition to this definitional change, the 1995 amendment abolished common law
marriage. Id. 3-5. Indeed, abolition of common law marriage appears to be the
amendments primary purpose, as its legislative history does not include a single direct
reference to the between a man and a woman provision. The Compilers Notes for the
1995 amendment do, however, include the following:
00038
It is the intent of this act to promote the stability and best interests of
marriage and the family. Marriage is the institution that is the foundation of
the family and of society. Its stability is basic to morality and civilization
and of vital interest to society and the state. Common-law marriages
entered into in this state on and after J anuary 1, 1996, will no longer be
recognized.
1995 Idaho Sess. Laws, ch. 104, 1. The stated intent and apparent purpose of the
amendment to Idaho Code 32-201 was to promote family stability, morality, and a
traditional view of the marriage institution.
Section 32-201s man-woman marriage definition took effect on J anuary 1, 1996.
A few months later, the Idaho Legislature amended 32-209 to include a public policy
against same-sex and evasive marriages. 1996 Idaho Sess. Laws, Ch. 331, 1. From
Idahos territorial days until the amendments approval in 1996, Idaho law codified the
long-established place of celebration rule, whereby [a]ll marriages contracted without
this state, which would be valid by the laws of the country in which the same were
contracted, are valid in this state. Idaho Code Ann. 32-209 (1983); see also Hilton v.
Stewart, 96 P. 579, 583 (Idaho 1908) (This statute merely announces the general rule of
law, as we understand it, that any contract which is a valid marriage according to the law
of the place where the contract is made is valid everywhere.).
But in 1996, the Legislature ended Idahos tradition of comity toward out-of-state
marriages. At the time, Speaker of the House Simpson voiced his concern that Hawaii
might recognize same-sex marriages and leave Idaho with no choice but to reinforce its
current policy or recognize same-sex marriage by default. Relating to Recognition of
Foreign Marriages: Minutes for Feb. 15, 1996 Meeting on H.B. 658 Before the H.
00039
Judiciary, Rules, & Admin. Comm., 53d Legis. Sess., 2d Reg. Sess. 2 (Idaho 1996).
According to Representative William Sali, there was no time to delay or study the matter
because Hawaii would dictate Idahos marriage policy if the Legislature did not act. Id.
Despite opposition from religious leaders, civil liberties advocates, and both homosexual
and heterosexual citizens, the bill easily passed the House and Senate before arriving on
Governor Batts desk.
With the Governors signature, the law took immediate effect on March 18, 1996.
This swift transition from bill to governing law was due to a legislative declaration of
emergency that accompanied the substantive changes to 32-209. 1996 Idaho Sess.
Laws, Ch. 331, 2. The Legislatures sense of urgency was vindicated when, later that
year, a Hawaii trial court rejected every proffered justification for Hawaiis same-sex
marriage ban and enjoined Hawaii from denying marriage license applications solely
because of the applicants sexual orientation. Baehr v. Miike, 1996 WL 694235 (Haw.
Cir. Ct. Dec. 3, 1996), superseded by statute, Haw. Rev. Stat. 572-1 (1998). Thus, the
purpose of the 1996 amendment to Idaho Code 32-209 was to buttress Idahos
traditional definition of marriage against changes in other states marriage laws.
By 2003, the highest courts in Vermont and Massachusetts had ruled that their
respective state constitutions precluded the denial of marriage benefits on the basis of
sexual orientation. Baker v. State, 744 A.2d 864 (Vt. 1999); Goodridge v. Dept of Pub.
Health, 798 N.E.2d 941 (Mass. 2003). These developments again prompted legislative
reactions across the country. This time, however, the Idaho Legislature sought to place on
the ballot a proposed amendment to the Idaho Constitution that would prevent an Idaho
00040
court from reaching a result similar to those in Vermont and Massachusetts. Efforts to do
so in 2004 and 2005 failed to garner the necessary two-thirds majority in the Idaho
Senate. But, in 2006, a third measure was introduced in the House, debated, and this time
passed both chambers. H.R.J . Res. 2, 58th Leg., 2d Reg. Sess. (Idaho 2006). The
legislative approval allowed the following question to appear on the November 2006
general election ballot:
Shall Article III, of the Constitution of the State of Idaho be amended by
the addition of a new Section 28, to provide that a marriage between a man
and a woman is the only domestic legal union that shall be valid or
recognized in this state?
(Dkt. 57-8 at 2.)
The public debate over the proposal, which became known as Amendment 2,
centered on tradition, family, and equality. See generally (Dkt. 57-4; Dkt. 57-7 at 6-16,
18-20, 35; Dkt. 57-8 at 5, 42-128.) Supporters of the amendment argued that traditional
marriage between a man and a woman formed a foundation for stable and nurturing
families. Both sides debated the relative quality of opposite-sex versus same-sex
parenting. Those opposed to the amendment emphasized that same-sex couples could be
just as loving and committed to each other and their children as opposite-sex couples.
Some framed the debate in explicitly religious terms, but faith leaders spoke out on both
sides. Others characterized the matter as a secular issue, often citing the need for equality
among citizens.
On November 7, 2006, Idahos electorate took to the ballot box, and 63.3% voted
in favor of Amendment 2. (Dkt. 57-8 at 8.) The amendment immunized Idahos man-
00041
woman marriage definition from attack in the States courts or legislative bodies. As a
result, nothing short of a successful federal constitutional challenge or a superseding
amendment to Idahos Constitution would be sufficient to change Idahos Marriage
Laws.
Because over 280,000 Idahoans voted for Amendment 2, it is not feasible for the
Court to infer a particular purpose or intent for the provision. But, as Plaintiffs argue, it is
obvious that Idahos Marriage Laws purposefully discriminate on the basis of sexual
orientation. Suggesting that the laws discriminatory effects are merely incidental,
Defendants characterize them as efforts to preserve Idahos traditional civil marriage
institution. But preserving the traditional institution of marriage is just a kinder way of
describing the States moral disapproval of same-sex couples. Lawrence, 539 U.S. at
601 (Scalia, J ., dissenting). Although the Court finds Idahos Marriage Laws were
motivated, in part, by important governmental interests, their history demonstrates that
moral disapproval of homosexuality was an underlying, animating factor. As with
DOMA, the practical effect of Idahos Marriage Laws is to impose a disadvantage, a
separate status, and so a stigma on a class of people based solely on their sexual
orientation. Windsor, 133 S. Ct. at 2693. The question now is whether any of the
Defendants asserted justifications overcome the inequality imposed upon Plaintiffs and
others like them.
2. Asserted Justifications for Idahos Marriage Laws
All Defendants assert that Idahos Marriage Laws relate to the States interest in
maximizing child welfare but differ on how the meansdenying marital status to same-
00042
sex couplesserve this child-welfare end. Governor Otter primarily contends the
definition fosters a traditional, child-centric marriage culture and otherwise promotes
optimal family structures. The State and Recorder Rich claim the definition allows Idaho
to channel its limited fiscal resources toward naturally procreative relationships.
Aside from child welfare, the Governor and amicus curiae Cornerstone Family
Council of Idaho assert Idahos Marriage Laws serve additional, important interests.
They maintain that the Laws further the States interest in federalism. Governor Otter
also claims Idahos Marriage Laws serve the States interests in accommodating religious
freedom, avoiding civic strife, and affirming democratic consensus. The Court addresses
each asserted justification below.
a. Child Welfare
Governor Otter contends that Idahos Marriage Laws advance the States interest
in protecting children. Children are indeed both vulnerable and essential to the
perpetuation of society. And, although the Court agrees that the State has a compelling
interest in maximizing child welfare, the link between the interest in protecting children
and Idahos Marriage Laws is so attenuated that it is not rational, let alone exceedingly
persuasive.
Governor Otter observes that man-woman marriage is an ancient and traditional
child-centered institution, one focused first and foremost on the welfare of children
00043
rather than the emotional interests of adults.
13
(Dkt. 57-2 at 10.) The Governor
emphasizes this conjugal view of marriage encourages parents to routinely sacrifice
their own interests to the legitimate needs and interests of their children. (Id.) And, the
Governor asserts, Idahos Marriage Laws reinforce this traditional, child-centric norm by
offering marital status only to couples with the natural capacity to procreate.
The Governor claims that recognizing same-sex marriages would radically
redefine the institution by imposing a consent-based marriage regime. Without the
normative guidance of traditional marriage, the Governor fears that the social institution
of marriage will erode. This deinstitutionalization of marriage could cause parents to turn
away from the self-sacrifice that, the Governor asserts, is a hallmark of Idahos
traditional, child-centric regime.
The Governor also claims that Idahos Marriage Laws further the States interest
in child-welfare by promoting optimal family structures. Citing to volumes of
sociological studies, the Governor advances the general proposition that two parents in a
low-conflict marriage constitute the optimal child-rearing environment. See generally
(Dkt. 57-8 at 103-128; 57-9 through 57-11 at 150.) Plaintiffs do not dispute this general
conclusion. (Lamb Dec., Dkt. 47 17-20.) But the Governor further argues that children

13
The Governor does not argue that Idahos Marriage Laws advance traditional marriage
for traditions sake alone. But it bears repeating that the [a]ncient lineage of a legal concept
does not give it immunity from attack for lacking a rational basis. Heller v. Doe, 509 U.S. 312,
326 (1993). Moreover, the fact that the governing majority in a State has traditionally viewed a
particular practice as immoral is not a sufficient reason for upholding a law prohibiting the
practice; neither history nor tradition could save a law prohibiting miscegenation from
constitutional attack. Lawrence v. Texas, 539 U.S. 558, 57778 (2003) (quoting Bowers v.
Hardwick, 478 U.S. 186, 216 (1986) (Stevens, J ., dissenting)).

00044
uniquely benefit from parental gender complementaritythat is, parenting by parents
of the opposite sex. (Dkt. 90 at 3.) Plaintiffs counter by emphasizing the broad consensus
among sociological experts that gender of the two parents makes no difference for a
childs well-being. (Lamb Dec., Dkt. 47 32-36.) Thus, the parties fundamentally
disagree on whether same-sex parenting negatively affects a childs well-being.
14

The best that can be said for Defendants position is that some social scientists
quibble with the prevailing consensus that the children of same-sex parents, on average,
fare no better or worse than the children of opposite-sex parents. (Id. 35-41.) But the
Court need noteven if it could at the summary judgment stageresolve this
sociological debate. The parties debate over the scientific literature distracts from the
essential inquiry into the logical link between child welfare and Idahos wholesale
prohibition of same-sex marriage. That link is faulty for at least four reasons.
First, civil marriage in Idaho is and has long been a designedly consent-based
institution. The law speaks of marriage as a civil contract . . . to which the consent of
parties capable of making it is necessary. Idaho Code 32-201. True, throughout human
history and across many cultures, marriage has been viewed as an exclusively opposite-
sex institution and as one inextricably linked to procreation and biological kinship.
Windsor, 133 S. Ct. at 2718 (Alito, J ., dissenting). But Idaho law is wholly indifferent to
whether a heterosexual couple wants to marry because they share this vision or simply

14
Two federal district courts have held bench trials that focused on this question. Perry v.
Schwarzenegger, 704 F.Supp.2d 921 (2010); DeBoer v. Snyder, 2014 WL 1100794 (E.D. Mich.
March 21, 2014). Both found that the overwhelming scientific consensus favors the no
differences view.
00045
seek a tax break. That such a crass objective would be sufficient to obtain a marriage
license does not mean marriage is a cheap convenience. Instead, it means that the value
of marriage derives from a place beyond the laws reach.
Important as the child-centered vision of marriage is, Idahos consent-based
marriage regime does not require heterosexual couples to accept or follow this norm.
Whatever the beliefs or intentions of the parties, there is nothing conjugal or child-centric
about the formality of obtaining a marriage license. The Governor offers only conjecture
to support his critical pointthat allowing Plaintiffs or people like them to marry risks
vitiating the child-centered norm. There is no evidence that allowing same-sex marriages
will have any effect on when, how, or why opposite-sex couples choose to marry.
Second, Idaho does not condition marriage licenses or marital benefits on
heterosexual couples ability or desire to have children. No heterosexual couple would be
denied the right to marry for failure to demonstrate the intent to procreate. Indeed, as the
State and Recorder Rich observe, [a]ttempting to restrict civil marriage to couples who
intend to have children would demand governmental inquiry into sensitive matters of
personal privacy and raise insuperable, or at a minimum very significant, privacy-based
constitutional concerns. (Dkt. 73 at 17.) To claim that civil marriage is somehow tied to
a governmental interest in procreation is to threaten the legitimacy of marriages
involving post-menopausal women, infertile individuals, and individuals who choose to
refrain from procreating. Bostic v. Rainey, 970 F.Supp.2d 456, 478-79 (E.D. Va. 2014).
Third, Idaho does not withhold marriage licenses from heterosexual couples who
might be, or are, non-optimal parents. Under Idaho law, everyone from multiple
00046
divorcees, dead-beat dads, see Zablocki, 434 U.S. 374, to prison inmates, see Turner v.
Safley, 482 U.S. 78 (1987), may marry, as long as they marry someone of the opposite
sex. Yet Plaintiffssix of whom have children or step-childrenare deemed unworthy
of marital benefits because they might be less fit parents according to an inconclusive
body of scientific literature. To the extent this amounts to a presumption of parental
unfitness, it bears emphasis that a similar presumption was found unconstitutional over
40 years ago. Stanley v. Illinois, 405 U.S. 645 (1972) (holding due process entitles unwed
fathers to a hearing before they could be deemed unfit parents). Constitutionality aside,
"sexual orientation [is] wholly irrelevant" to whether a person can adopt children in
Idaho. In re Adoption of Doe, P.3d, 2014 WL 527144, at *6 (Idaho February 10,
2014). In a state where the privilege of becoming a child's adoptive parent does not hinge
on a person's sexual orientation, it is impossible to fathom how hypothetical concerns
about the same person's parental fitness possibly could relate to civil marriage.
Finally, and most importantly, the Governors child welfare rationales disregard
the welfare of children with same-sex parents. It is undisputed that poverty and social
isolation [are] associated with maladjustment [in children], and adequate resources
support[] healthy adjustment. (Lamb Dec., Dkt. 47 18.c.) It is also clear that
[m]arriage can yield important benefits for children and families, including state and
federal legal protections, economic resources, family stability, and social legitimacy.
These benefits are equally advantageous for children and adolescents in families headed
by same-sex and different-sex couples. (Id. 48.) Although the State and Recorder Rich
dismiss same-sex households as statistically insignificant, (Dkt. 73 at 12 n.3), no
00047
Defendant suggests that the States child welfare interest does not extend to the children
in these households.
In this most glaring regard, Idahos Marriage Laws fail to advance the States
interest because they withhold legal, financial, and social benefits from the very group
they purportedly protectchildren. As J ustice Kennedy observed, a law that withdraws
these benefits humiliates . . . children now being raised by same-sex couples. The law in
question makes it even more difficult for the children to understand the integrity and
closeness of their own family and its concord with other families in their community and
in their daily lives. Windsor, 133 S. Ct. at 2694. Failing to shield Idahos children in any
rational way, Idahos Marriage Laws fall on the sword they wield against same-sex
couples and their families.
b. Focusing Governmental Resources on Couples with Biological
Procreative Capacity

The State and Recorder Rich articulate a somewhat different link between child
welfare and Idahos prohibition of same-sex marriage. They propose that Idahos interest
in child welfare is served by directing the States limited resources to opposite-sex
couples. The State is justified in reserving marital benefits for these couples, the
argument continues, because only they have the natural ability to procreate. Pointing to
the public costs of divorce, single parenting, and tax breaks for married couples, Recorder
Rich and the State argue that the State can avoid some of these costs by not allowing
same-sex couples to marry.
00048
Even in rational basis cases, the Supreme Court has rejected the argument that
cost-cutting is a sufficient reason for denying benefits to a discrete group. Plyler v. Doe,
457 U.S. 202, 229 (1982) (invalidating a Texas statute that denied free public education
to children of undocumented immigrants). When Arizona threatened to deny health care
benefits to the same-sex domestic partners of state employees, the Ninth Circuit affirmed
the district courts rejection of the Arizonas cost-saving rationale. Diaz v. Brewer, 656
F.3d 1008, 1013 (9th Cir. 2011). In both cases, the chief constitutional problem was that
the states attempts to cut costs fell on an arbitrarily selected group.
Because heightened scrutiny applies here, the Court must focus on the Laws
actual purposes. The Court finds that defending the States fiscal resources is not an
actual purpose of any law challenged in this case. Aside from the cost of putting
Amendment 2 on the ballot, (Dkt. 57-7 at 3), the record indicates that the only public
costs referenced during the debate over the measure were the cost of defending it in
litigation, (Dkt. 57-8 at 5), and the cost of driving businesses away from Idaho with a
State-approved message of intolerance. (Id. at 74.)
Even assuming cost-cutting was an actual purpose for Idahos Marriage Laws, the
State and Rich do not explain how avoiding the public cost of same-sex marriages
improves child welfare. The Laws do not create new benefits for naturally procreative
couples; instead, they arbitrarily withhold benefits from a statistically insignificant
class of households with children. (Dkt. 73 at 12 n.3.) There is no showing that
forbidding same-sex marriages makes naturally procreative couples more likely to marry,
let alone stay married. Nor is there any evidence that the State has any compunction
00049
about expending its limited resources on non-procreative or unstable heterosexual
marriages.
Defendants only explanation is that a law does not offend the Constitution
simply because the classification is not made with mathematical nicety or because in
practice it results in some inequality. Dandridge v. Williams, 397 U.S. 471, 485 (1970)
(internal quotation omitted). While this may be the case when a court reviews economic
legislation under the rational basis standard, e.g., U.S. R.R. Retirement Bd. v. Fritz, 449
U.S. 166, 174 (1980), more precision is necessary where, as here, the law discriminates
on the basis of sexual orientation. See SmithKline, 740 F.3d at 481-82. If Idahos
Marriage Laws seek to improve child welfare by focusing limited public resources on
heterosexual marriages, they do so in a patently arbitrary manner. They are at once
grossly overinclusiveby expending the States limited resources on unstable marriages
and married couples with no intent or ability to procreateand dramatically
underinclusiveby denying those resources to children whose parents happen to be
homosexual. The burden of this imprecision falls on families that seek the same stability
that Idaho claims to incentivize. This is not fiscal prudence; it is a State-endorsed
message of unworthiness that does not withstand constitutional scrutiny.
c. Federalism
Governor Otter and amicus curiae Cornerstone Family Council of Idaho claim that
federalism principles require the Court to uphold the States traditional authority to define
marriage. Defendants also make two more specific states rights arguments. In particular,
Governor Otter claims that Idahos policy against recognizing out-of-state same-sex
00050
marriages must be accepted under the well-established public policy exception to the Full
Faith and Credit Clause. See Nevada v. Hall, 440 U.S. 410, 422 (1979). Defendants also
claim that Section 2 of the federal Defense of Marriage Act, codified at 28 U.S.C.
1738C, authorizes Idaho to refuse recognition of same-sex marriages. All of these
arguments fail to consider that neither Congress nor a State can validate a law that
denies the rights guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment. Saenz v. Rowe, 526 U.S.
489, 508 (1999).
It is true federalism favors preserving a states right to choose policies uniquely
suited to the preferences of its citizens. By creating a system with both state and federal
governments, the Framers [of the Constitution] thus ensured that powers which in the
ordinary course of affairs, concern the lives, liberties, and properties of the people were
held by governments more local and more accountable than a distant bureaucracy. Natl
Fedn of Indep. Bus. v. Sebelius, 132 S. Ct. 2566, 2578 (2012) (quoting The Federalist
No. 45, at 293 (J . Madison)). Thus, a single courageous state may, if its citizens choose,
serve as a laboratory; and try novel social and economic experiments without risk to the
rest of the country. New State Ice Co. v. Liebmann, 285 U.S. 262, 311 (1932) (Brandeis,
J ., dissenting). Windsor upheld this principle by invalidating the federal man-woman
marriage definition, in part, because of its unusual deviation from the federal
governments usual deference to state domestic relations laws. 133 S. Ct. at 2693.
However, States are not the sole intended beneficiaries of federalism. Bond v.
United States, 131 S. Ct. 2355, 2364 (2011). Federalism has another dimension, one that
00051
secures to citizens the liberties that derive from the diffusion of sovereign power.
Coleman v. Thompson, 501 U.S. 722, 759 (1991) (Blackmun, J ., dissenting).
Federalism also protects the liberty of all persons within a State by ensuring
that laws enacted in excess of delegated governmental power cannot direct
or control their actions. By denying any one government complete
jurisdiction over all the concerns of public life, federalism protects the
liberty of the individual from arbitrary power. When government acts in
excess of its lawful powers, that liberty is at stake.
Bond, 131 S. Ct. at 2364 (citation omitted). Federalism is not just a bulwark against
federal government overreach; it is also an essential check on state power.
For that reason, federalism is no answer where, as here, individuals claim their
state government has trampled their constitutional rights. Indeed, Windsor also
recognizes the transcendent quality of individual constitutional rights, even when those
rights conflict with a states traditional sovereign authority. State laws defining and
regulating marriage, of course, must respect the constitutional rights of persons, see, e.g.,
Loving. . . . Windsor, 133 S. Ct. at 2691 (emphasis added). As other courts have
recognized, Windsors citation to Loving for this proposition is a disclaimer of enormous
proportions. Bishop v. U.S., 962 F.Supp.2d 1252, 1279 (N.D. Okla. 2014). In Loving,
Virginias sovereign authority over marital relations could not save the States anti-
miscegenation laws. And, just as in Loving, Idahos right to regulate domestic relations is
subject to the paramount rights of its citizens. That is the way of our federal system.
d. Accommodating Religious Freedom, Avoiding Civic Strife, and
Assuring Social Consensus

Finally, Governor Otter argues that Idahos Marriage Laws should be upheld
because they serve the related goals of supporting religious liberty, avoiding the potential
00052
for religion-centered conflicts, and affirming a prevailing social consensus on marriage.
Analogizing to the Supreme Courts days-old decision in Schuette v. BAMN, 134 S. Ct.
1623 (2014), the Governor argues that a states voters can ban preferences and that
courts should let[] the people make difficult policy choices through democratic means.
(Dkt. 93 at 2.) Yet the Governor acknowledges, as he must, this is not to say the State
can invoke concerns about religious freedom or religion-related social strife as a basis for
denying rights otherwise guaranteed by the Constitution. (Dkt. 57-2 at 53.)
The Governors argument concerning religious liberty is myopic. No doubt many
faiths around the world and in Idaho have longstanding traditions of man-woman
marriage rooted in scripture. But not all religions share the view that opposite-sex
marriage is a theological imperative. In fact, some of the Plaintiffs actively worship in
faiths that recognize and support their unions. (S. Watsen Dec. 13, Dkt. 51.) To the
extent Governor Otter argues that Idaho has a legitimate interest in validating a particular
religious view of marriage, that argument blithely disregards the religious liberty of
congregations active in Idaho. By recognizing the right to marry a partner of the same
sex, the State allows these groups the freedom to practice their religious beliefs without
mandating that other groups must adopt similar practices. Kitchen v. Herbert, 961
F.Supp.2d 1181, 1214 (D. Utah 2013).
Likewise, a desire to protect or maintain a particular social consensus does not
withstand constitutional scrutiny. A citizens constitutional rights can hardly be
infringed simply because a majority of the people choose that it be. Lucas v. Forty-
Fourth Gen. Assembly of Colo., 377 U.S. 713, 736-37 (1964). The Supreme Courts
00053
decision in Schuette says nothing to the contrary. Unlike this case, Schuette involved the
Michigan electorates vote to stop the racially discriminatory, albeit arguably beneficial,
practice of affirmative action. 134 S. Ct. at 1630 (The question here concerns not the
permissibility of race-conscious admissions policies under the Constitution but whether,
and in what manner, voters in the States may choose to prohibit the consideration of
racial preferences in governmental decisions, in particular with respect to school
admissions.). Far from establishing a states right to violate the Fourteenth Amendment
by majority vote, Schuette stands for the unremarkable proposition that voters can and
should be allowed to end their states discriminatory policies. That principle has no
application in a case, like this one, where voters imposed a purposefully discriminatory
policy that undermines a fundamental right.
Rather, the dispositive principle in this case is that fundamental rights may not be
submitted to vote; they depend on the outcome of no elections. W. Va. Bd. of Educ. v.
Barnette, 319 U.S. 624, 638 (1943). The Supreme Court has endorsed this principle again
and again. As J ustice Robert J ackson so eloquently put it:
The framers of the Constitution knew, and we should not forget today, that
there is no more effective practical guaranty against arbitrary and
unreasonable government than to require that the principles of law which
officials would impose upon a minority must be imposed generally.
Conversely, nothing opens the door to arbitrary action so effectively as to
allow those officials to pick and choose only a few to whom they will apply
legislation and thus to escape the political retribution that might be visited
upon them if larger numbers were affected. Courts can take no better
measure to assure that laws will be just than to require that laws be equal
in operation.
00054
Railway Express Agency v. New York, 336 U.S. 106, 112-113 (1949) (J ackson, J .,
concurring).
This principle resonates today, as 10 federal courts across the country have in
recent months reached similar conclusions on the very issues present in this case.
15

Considering many of the same arguments and much of the same law, each of these courts
concluded that state laws prohibiting or refusing to recognize same-sex marriage fail to
rationally advance legitimate state interests. This judicial consensus was forged from
each courts independent analysis of Supreme Court cases extending from Loving
through Romer, Lawrence, and Windsor. The logic of these precedents virtually compels
the conclusion that same-sex and opposite-sex couples deserve equal dignity when they
seek the benefits and responsibilities of civil marriage. Because Idahos Marriage Laws
do not withstand any applicable form of constitutional scrutiny, the Court finds they
violate the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.
V. CONCLUSION
The Plaintiffs are entitled to extraordinary remedies because of their extraordinary
injuries. Idahos Marriage Laws withhold from them a profound and personal choice, one
that most can take for granted. By doing so, Idahos Marriage Laws deny same-sex

15
Kitchen v. Herbert, 961 F.Supp.2d 1181, (D. Utah 2013); Bishop v. U.S., 962 F.Supp.2d
1252 (N.D. Okla. 2014); Bourke v. Beshear, F.Supp.2d, 2014 WL 556729 (W.D. Ky. Feb.
12, 2014); Bostic v. Rainey, 970 F.Supp.2d 456 (E.D. Va. 2014); Lee v. Orr, F.Supp.2d,
2014 WL 683680 (N.D. Ill. Feb 21, 2014); De Leon v. Perry, F.Supp.2d, 2014 WL 715741
(W.D. Tex. Feb. 26, 2014); Tanco v. Haslam, F.Supp.2d, 2014 WL 997525 (M.D. Tenn.
Mar. 14, 2014); DeBoer v. Snyder, F.Supp.2d, 2014 WL 1100794 (E.D. Mich. Mar. 21,
2014); Henry v. Himes, F.Supp.2d, 2014 WL 1418395 (S.D. Ohio Apr. 14, 2014); Baskin v.
Bogan, F.Supp.2d, 2014 WL 1568884 (S.D. Ind. Apr. 18, 2014).
00055
couples the economic, practical, emotional, and spiritual benefits of marriage, relegating
each couple to a stigmatized, second-class status. Plaintiffs suffer these injuries not
because they are unqualified to marry, start a family, or grow old together, but because of
who they are and whom they love.
The Defendants offered no evidence that same-sex marriage would adversely
affect opposite-sex marriages or the well-being of children. Without proof, the
Defendants justifications echo the unsubstantiated fears that could not prop up the anti-
miscegenation laws and rigid gender roles of days long past. Then as now, it is the duty
of the courts to apply the law to the facts in evidence. Here, the facts are clear and the law
teaches that marriage is a fundamental right of all citizens, which neither tradition nor the
majority can deny.
The Fourteenth Amendment guarantees of due process and equal protection lie at
the core of our constitutional system. While the Supreme Court has not expressly decided
the issues of this case, it has over the decades marked the path that leads to todays
decision. [T]he history of our Constitution . . . is the story of the extension of
constitutional rights and protections to people once ignored or excluded. United States v.
Virginia, 518 U.S. 515, 557 (1996). Slow as the march toward equality may seem, it is
never in vain.

00056
ORDER
The Court GRANTS Plaintiffs' Motion for Summary Judgment (Dkt. 45).
Defendant Governor Otter's Motion for Summary Judgment (Dkt. 57) and Defendant
Recorder Rich and Defendant-Intervenor Idaho's Motions to Dismiss (Dkt. 30, 41, 43)
are DENIED.
The Court hereby DECLARES that Idaho's Marriage Laws are unconstitutional
because they violate Plaintiffs' rights under the Due Process and Equal Protection
Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.
The Court PERMANENTLY ENJOINS the State of Idaho and its officers,
employees, agents, and political subdivisions from enforcing Article III, 28 of the Idaho
Constitution; Idaho Code Sections 32-201 and 32-209; and any other laws or regulations
to the extent they do not recognize same-sex marriages validly contracted outside Idaho
or prohibit otherwise qualified same-sex couples from marrying in Idaho. This injunction
shall take effect at 9:00 a.m. MDT on May 16, 2014.
IT IS SO ORDERED.
DATED: May 13, 2014.
CANDY WAGAHOFF DALE
CHIEF U.S. MAGISTRATE JUDGE
00057


/s/W. Scott Zanzig
W. SCOTT ZANZIG

Case Nos. 14-35420 & 14-35421


vs.
and
STATE OF IDAHO,

D.C. No. 1:13-cv-00482-CWD

APPELLANTS EXCERPTS OF RECORD, VOL. II

LAWRENCE G. WASDEN
ATTORNEY GENERAL
STEVEN L. OLSEN
Telephone: (208) 334-2400
Fax: (208) 854-8073
J une 19, 2014
TABLE OF CONTENTS
VOLUME I

DOCUMENTS
DOCKET
NUMBER
EXCERPT
PAGE
VOLUME II

DOCUMENTS
DOCKET
NUMBER
EXCERPT
PAGE
104 00061-00063
J udgment 101 00067-00068
81-2 00069-00072
81-1 00073-00207
Lamb
76-2 00208-00218
Summary J udgment
76-1 00219-00222
74 00223-00225

J udgment (Dkt. 45)
73-1 00226-00228
60 00229-00335
Material Facts
57-1 00336-00343
J udgment
57 00344-00345
VOLUME III

DOCUMENTS
DOCKET
NUMBER
EXCERPT
PAGE
46 00496-00510
43 00516-00518
Injunctive Relief
42 00519-00548
(2008)
30-10 00559-00603
No. 2 (Fall 2005)
30-8 00611-00633
VOLUME IV

DOCUMENTS
DOCKET
NUMBER
EXCERPT
PAGE
30-7 00634-00643
30-6 00644-00692
Statistics Reports
30-5 00693-00713
30-4 00714-00715
2010 Census Briefs
30-2 & 30-
3
00716-00738

1

THOMAS C. PERRY, ISB #7203
CALLY A. YOUNGER, ISB #8987
Counsel to the Governor
Office of the Governor
P.O. Box 83720
Boise, ID 83720-0034
Telephone: (208) 334-2100
Facsimile: (208) 334-3454

MONTE N. STEWART, ISB #8129
DANIEL W. BOWER, ISB #7204
STEWART TAYLOR & MORRIS PLLC
12550 W. Explorer Drive, Suite 100
Boise, ID 83713
Telephone: (208) 345-3333
Facsimile: (208) 345-4461

Lawyers for Defendant Governor C.L. Butch Otter

IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT


SUSAN LATTA and TRACI EHLERS, LORI
WATSEN and SHARENE WATSEN, SHELIA
ROBERTSON and ANDREA ALTMAYER,
AMBER BEIERLE and RACHAEL
ROBERTSON,

Plaintiffs,

vs.

C.L. (BUTCH) OTTER, as Governor of the State
of Idaho, in his official capacity, and

Defendants,

and

STATE OF IDAHO,


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GOVERNOR OTTERS
AMENDED NOTICE OF APPEAL

000058
2

Pursuant to Rule 3 of the Federal Rules of Appellate Procedure, amended notice is hereby
given that Governor C.L. Butch Otter (Governor Otter), a defendant in this civil action,
hereby appeals to the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit (i) from the May 13,
2014 Memorandum Decision and Order (Dkt. No. 98) of the United States District Court for the
District of Idaho invalidating and enjoining enforcement of all Idaho statutory and constitutional
provisions preserving marriage as the union of a man and a woman, (ii) from the May 14, 2014
Order (Dkt. No. 100) denying Governor Otters motion for stay pending appeal, (iii) from the
May 14, 2014 Judgment (Dkt No. 101), and (iv) from all interlocutory orders of the District
Court that have merged into any of those three filings.
Dated: May 19, 2014 Respectfully submitted,

/s/ Monte N. Stewart
Monte N. Stewart
Daniel W. Bower
Stewart Taylor & Morris PLLC
Boise, Idaho 83713
Telephone: (208) 345-3333
Facsimile: (208) 345-4461

Thomas C. Perry
Cally A. Younger
P.O. Box 83720
Boise, Idaho 83720
Telephone: (208) 334-2100
Facsimile: (208) 334-3454

Counsel for Governor Otter

000059
3


I HEREBY CERTIFY that on May 19, 2014, I electronically filed the foregoing
with the Clerk of the Court using the CM/ECF system, which caused the following parties
or counsel to be served by electronic means, as more fully reflected on the Notice of
Electronic Filing:

Deborah A. Ferguson
d@fergusonlawmediation.com

Craig Harrison Durham
craig@chdlawoffice.com

Shannon P. Minter
sminter@nclrights.org

Christopher F. Stoll
cstoll@nclrights.org

W. Scott Zanzig
scott.zanzig@ag.idaho.gov

Clay R. Smith
clay.smith@ag.idaho.gov

Thomas C. Perry
tom.perry@gov.idaho.gov

/s/ Monte N. Stewart
Monte N. Stewart
000060
NOTICE OF APPEAL - 1
LAWRENCE G. WASDEN
ATTORNEY GENERAL

STEVEN L. OLSEN

W. SCOTT ZANZIG, ISB #9361
CLAY R. SMITH, ISB#6385
Civil Litigation Division
Office of the Attorney General
954 W. J efferson Street, 2
nd
Floor
P. O. Box 83720
Boise, ID 83720-0010
Telephone: (208) 334-2400
Fax: (208) 854-8073

Attorneys for Defendant Christopher Rich
and Defendant-Intervenor State of Idaho



ROBERTSON,

Plaintiffs,
vs.

C.L. BUTCH OTTER, as Governor of the State

Defendants,
and

STATE OF IDAHO,

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NOTICE OF APPEAL

000061
Defendant Christopher Rich and Defendant-Intervenor State of Idaho hereby appeal from
the J udgment entered herein on this date (Dkt. 101) to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.
A Representation Statement is attached hereto pursuant to Ninth Circuit Rule 3-2.
Dated this 14th day of May 2014.

STATE OF IDAHO
OFFICE OF THE ATTORNEY GENERAL

By: /s/
W. SCOTT ZANZIG
Deputy Attorney General

000062

I HEREBY CERTIFY that on the 14th day of May, 2014, I electronically filed the
foregoing with the Clerk of the Court using the CM/ECF system which sent a Notice of
Electronic Filing to the following Persons:

Deborah A. Ferguson


Shannon P. Minter


Thomas C. Perry

Cally A. Younger
cally.younger@gov.idaho.gov

/s/
W. SCOTT ZANZIG

000063
1

P.O. Box 83720
Boise, ID 83720-0034
Telephone: (208) 334-2100
Facsimile: (208) 334-3454

MONTE N. STEWART, ISB #8129
DANIEL W. BOWER, ISB #7204
STEWART TAYLOR & MORRIS PLLC
Boise, ID 83713
Telephone: (208) 345-3333
Facsimile: (208) 345-4461

Lawyers for Defendant Governor C.L. Butch Otter



ROBERTSON,

Plaintiffs,

vs.


Defendants,

and

STATE OF IDAHO,


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GOVERNOR OTTERS NOTICE OF
APPEAL

000064
2

Pursuant to Rule 3 of the Federal Rules of Appellate Procedure, notice is hereby given
that Governor C.L. Butch Otter (Governor Otter), a defendant in this civil action, hereby
appeals to the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit (i) from the May 13, 2014
Memorandum Decision and Order (Dkt. No. 98) of the United States District Court for the
District of Idaho invalidating and enjoining enforcement of all Idaho statutory and constitutional
provisions preserving marriage as the union of a man and a woman (ii) from the May 14, 2014
Order (Dkt. No. 100) denying Governor Otters motion for stay pending appeal, and (iii) from all
interlocutory orders of the District Court that have merged into the May 13
th
order.
Dated: May 14, 2014


/s/ Thomas C. Perry
Thomas C. Perry
Cally A. Younger
P.O. Box 83720
Boise, Idaho 83720
Telephone: (208) 334-2100
Facsimile: (208) 334-3454

Monte N. Stewart
Daniel W. Bower
Stewart Taylor & Morris PLLC
Boise, Idaho 83713
Telephone: (208) 345-3333
Facsimile: (208) 345-4461

Counsel for Governor Otter

000065
3


I HEREBY CERTIFY that on May 14, 2014, I electronically filed the foregoing
with the Clerk of the Court using the CM/ECF system, which caused the following parties
Electronic Filing:

Deborah A. Ferguson


Shannon P. Minter


W. Scott Zanzig

Clay R. Smith

/s/ Thomas C. Perry
Thomas C. Perry
000066



BEIERLE and RACHAEL ROBERTSON,

Plaintiffs,

v.


Defendants,
and

STATE OF IDAHO,



JUDGMENT

In accordance with the Courts Memorandum Decision and Order dated May 13,
2014 (Dkt. 98), IT IS HEREBY ORDERED, ADJUDGED, AND DECREED that:
(1) J udgment is entered in favor of Plaintiffs;
(2) Idahos laws prohibiting same-sex marriage in Idaho or not recognizing
same-sex marriages validly contracted outside Idaho violate the Due Process and Equal
Protection Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution;
(3) The State of Idaho and its officers, employees, agents, and political
000067
subdivisions are permanently enjoined from enforcing Article III, 28 of the Idaho
Constitution, Idaho Code 32-201 and 32-209, and any other laws or regulations to the
extent they do not recognize same-sex marriages validly contracted outside Idaho or
prohibit otherwise qualified same-sex couples from marrying in Idaho;
(4) This injunction shall take effect at 9:00 a.m. MDT on May 16, 2014; and
(5) The Clerk of Court is directed to close this case.
000068
May 14, 2014
-1-

CALLY A. YOUNGER, ISB # 8987
P.O. Box 83720
Boise, ID 83720-0034
Telephone: (208) 334-2100
Facsimile: (208) 334-3454

Attorneys for Defendant, Governor C.L. Butch Otter



ROBERTSON,

Plaintiffs,

vs.


Defendants,

and

STATE OF IDAHO,


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DEFENDANT GOVERNOR OTTERS
OBJECTIONS TO STATEMENT OF
MATERIAL FACTS IN SUPPORT OF
PLAINTIFFS MOTION FOR
SUMMARY JUDGMENT (Dkt. No.
45)

Defendant Governor Otter objects to Statement of Material Facts in Support of
Plaintiffs Motion for Summary Judgment (Dkt. No. 45) (Plaintiffs Statement), as follows:
A proper statement of material facts in support of a motion for summary judgment must
contain only statements of adjudicative facts that are material to resolution of the motion. It
Case 1:13-cv-00482-CWD Document 81-2 Filed 03/20/14 Page 1 of 4
000069
-2-

must not include conclusions of law, facts that are irrelevant and therefore, ipso facto, not
material to resolution of the motion, or assertions of legislative facts. Plaintiffs Statement,
however, is replete with just such objectionable assertions.
1. All references to supposed harms to the Plaintiffs or children connected to them are
irrelevant to the extent they are made in support of any claim other than the Moreno-
Romer-Windsor claim that Idahos Marriage Laws are the product solely of animus, that
is, of a bare desire to harm an unpopular minority. As demonstrated in Defendant
Governor Otters Response in Opposition to Plaintiffs Motion for Summary Judgment
filed today (Governors Response) at page 39, such supposed harms are irrelevant to
any other claim Plaintiffs may be asserting.
2. All references to Idahos Marriage Laws demeaning or harming Plaintiffs or children
connected to them constitute conclusions of law or, at best, conclusions of mixed law and
fact. (Although the different references to Plaintiffs feeling demeaned or harmed avoid
this objection, they fall within Objection # 1 above.)
3. All references to dignity (no matter how denominated), including supposed dignitary
harms, are irrelevant because, as shown in the Governors Response at pages 23-24, there
is no free-standing federal constitutional right to dignity. Plaintiffs Complaint invokes
only (because there are no other rights it can correctly invoke) the federal constitutional
rights to equal protection of the laws and to liberty as historically preserved and protected
in our Nation.
4. Paragraphs 9, 10, 11, 22, 25, 27, 28, 29, 30, 32, 33, 34, 43, 44, 45, 57, and 59 assert
conclusions of law in one or both of two ways: one, saying what the legal consequences
000070
-3-

of certain facts are or, two, saying what the consequences would be if the law were
different in certain ways.
5. All references to federal benefits of any sort are irrelevant because Plaintiffs are not
challenging the constitutionality of any federal benefit program. It is federal law, not
Idaho law, that is the legal cause of the denial of any federal benefits, and it is within the
power of the federal government to change the law to allow such federal benefits to flow
without regard to Idaho law. Indeed, federal law appears to be changing in just that way.
6. Paragraph 52s allegations regarding the termination of a particular Plaintiffs
employment in the private sector are irrelevant because no Plaintiff is making an
employment-related claim and Idaho law is not the legal cause of the private employers
supposed course of conduct.
7. Paragraphs 11 and 41 use possessive pronouns in connection with grandchildren and
child in a way appearing to be, either in whole or in part, unconnected to established
law, whether state or federal.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Governor Otter objects to Plaintiffs Statement on the grounds set forth.
Dated: March 20, 2014
By /s/ Thomas C. Perry
THOMAS C. PERRY

000071
-4-


I HEREBY CERTIFY that on March 20, 2014, I electronically filed the foregoing with
the Clerk of the Court using the CM/ECF system, which caused the following parties or counsel
to be served by electronic means, as more fully reflected on the Notice of Electronic Filing:

Deborah A. Ferguson


Shannon P. Minter


W. Scott Zanzig

Clay R. Smith

/s/ Thomas C. Perry
THOMAS C. PERRY

000072



ROBERTSON,

Plaintiffs,

vs.


Defendants.

and

STATE OF IDAHO,

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SUPPLEMENTAL APPENDIX IN SUPPORT OF


RESPONSE IN OPPOSITION TO PLAINTIFFS

MOTION FOR SUMMARY JUDGMENT (Dkt. Nos. 45, 59, 61)

000073
SUPPLEMENTAL APPENDIX
TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page(s)
Tab 1 Brief of Amici Curiae Professors of Social Science in Support of
Defendant-Appellees and Affirmance ............................................................................. 0001-0036

Tab 2 Brief of Amici Curiae Professors Alan J. Hawkins and Jason S. Carroll in
Support of Defendants-Appellants and Reversal ............................................................. 0037-0078

Tab 3 Institute for American Values (Dan Cere, Principal Investigator), The Future
of Family Law: Law and the Marriage Crisis in North America (2005) ......................... 0079-0129

000074
DECLARATION OF THOMAS C. PERRY

I, Thomas C. Perry, hereby declare and state as follows:
1. I am Counsel to Governor C.L. Butch Otter, Governor of the State of Idaho, and I
represent the Governor in Latta v. Otter, Case No. 1:13-cv-00482-CWD, United States District
Court for the District of Idaho.
2. Each of the documents in this Appendix in Support of Defendant Governor Otters
Response in Opposition to Plaintiffs Motion for Summary Judgment is an accurate copy of just
what it purports to be.
I sign this Declaration under penalty of perjury under the laws of the United States of
America.
DATED this 20
th
day of March 2014.

/s/ Thomas C. Perry
Thomas C. Perry

000075

TAB 1

000076

APPEAL NO. 12-17668

__________________________________________

BEVERLY SEVCIK, et al.
Plaintiffs-Appellants,
v.
BRIAN SANDOVAL, et al.
Defendants-Appellees.
__________________________________________

Appeal from the United States District Court for the District of Nevada
Civil Case No. 2:12-cv-00578-RCJ-PAL (Judge Robert C. Jones)
__________________________________________

BRIEF OF AMICI CURIAE PROFESSORS OF SOCIAL SCIENCE IN SUPPORT OF
DEFENDANTS-APPELLEES AND AFFIRMANCE
__________________________________________

Abram J. Pafford
Pafford Lawrence & Childress PLLC
1776 I Street N.W., Suite 900
Washington, DC 20006
Telephone: (202) 756-4886
Fax: (202) 756-1301
apafford@pafflaw.com

Attorney for Professors of Social Science

Case: 12-17668 01/28/2014 ID: 8956076 DktEntry: 139 Page: 1 of 36
0001
000077

i

TABLE OF CONTENTS
TABLE OF AUTHORITIES .................................................................................... ii
INTEREST OF AMICI CURIAE ............................................................................... 1
SUMMARY OF THE ARGUMENT ........................................................................ 2
ARGUMENT ............................................................................................................. 4
I. Compelling Evidence Shows that Children Benefit from the Unique
Parenting Contributions of Both Men and Women. ........................................ 4
II. The Claim of No Difference in Outcomes of Children Raised by
Gay and Lesbian Parents and Intact Biological Parents Is Empirically
Undermined by Significant Methodological Limitations. ............................. 12
A. The APA studies are based on small sample sizes. ............................. 14
B. The APAs studies are largely based on homogeneous samples. ....... 16
C. Most of the samples in the APA-cited studies relied on non-
random, convenience sampling. .......................................................... 18
III. The Largest Population-Based Studies Do Not Confirm the No
Differences Conclusion about Child Outcomes among Same-Sex
Parents. ........................................................................................................... 20
CONCLUSION ........................................................................................................ 27
CERTIFICATE OF COMPLIANCE WITH RULES 29-2(d) AND
32(a)(7)(B) ..................................................................................................... 28
CERTIFICATE OF SERVICE ................................................................................ 29

0002
000078

ii

Cases
Bowen v. Gilliard,
483 U.S. 587 (1987)......................................................................................... 5
Lofton v. Secretary of the Department of Children and Family Services,
358 F.3d 804 (11th Cir. 2004) ....................................................................... 14
Other Authorities
Douglas W. Allen et al.,
Nontraditional Families and Childhood Progress Through School: A
Comment on Rosenfeld, Demography, November 2012,
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13524-012-0169-
x/fulltext.html .......................................................................................... 14, 26
Douglas W. Allen,
High school graduation rates among children of same-sex
households, Rev. Econ. Household, Sept. 2013 ............................................ 22
Paul R. Amato,
More Than Money? Mens Contributions to Their Childrens Lives?,
in Men in Families, When Do They Get Involved? What Difference
Does It Make? 267 (1998) ............................................................................... 8
Paul R. Amato & Fernando Rivera,
Paternal Involvement and Childrens Behavior Problems, 61 Journal
of Marriage and the Family 375 (1999) ........................................................ 11
Linda Carroll,
Dads Empower Kids to Take Chances, NBCNEWS.com, June 18,
2010, http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/37741738 .......................................... 10
Marilyn Coleman et al.,
Reinvestigating Remarriage: Another Decade of Progress, 62 Journal
of Marriage and the Family 1288 (2000) ...................................................... 15
Scott Coltrane,
Family Man (1996) .......................................................................................... 7
0003
000079

iii

Suzanne A. Denham et al.,
Prediction of Externalizing Behavior Problems From Early to Middle
Childhood: The Role of Parental Socialization and Emotion
Expression, in Development and Psychopathology 23 (2000) ....................... 8
M. DeWolff & M. van Izjendoorn,
Sensitivity and Attachment: A Meta-Analysis on Parental Antecedents
of Infant Attachment, 68 Child Development 571 (1997) ............................... 6
Greg Duncan & Jeanne Brooks-Gunn,
Consequences of Growing Up Poor (1999) .................................................... 9
Ruth Feldman,
Oxytocin and Social Affiliation In Humans, 61 Hormones and
Behavior 380 (2012) ........................................................................................ 5
Mark V. Flinn et al.,
Fluctuating Asymmetry of Stepchildren, 20 Evolution of Human
Behavior 465 (1999) ...................................................................................... 15
Norval D. Glenn,
The Struggle for Same-Sex Marriage, 41 Society 25 (2004) .............. 9, 19, 20
Sandra L. Hofferth et al.,
The Demography of Fathers: What Fathers Do, in Handbook of
Father Involvement: Multidisciplinary Perspectives 81 (2002) ...................... 7
Michael E. Lamb,
Fathers: Forgotten Contributors to Child Development, 18 Human
Development 245 (1975) ................................................................................. 5
Robert Lerner & Althea K. Nagai,
No Basis: What the Studies Dont Tell Us About Same-Sex Parenting
(Marriage Law Project, 2001) ....................................................................... 19
Eleanor Maccoby,
The Two Sexes (1998) ............................................................................ 7, 8, 11
M. Main & J. Solomon,
Discovery of an Insecure-Disorganized/Disoriented Attachment
Pattern, in Affective Development in Infancy 95 (1986) ............................... 6
0004
000080

iv

Wendy D. Manning & Kathleen A. Lamb,
Adolescent Well-Being in Cohabiting, Married, & Single-Parent
Families, 65 Journal of Marriage and the Family 876 (2003) ........................ 4
Loren D. Marks,
Same-Sex Parenting and Childrens Outcomes: A Closer Examination
of the American Psychological Associations Brief on Lesbian and
Gay Parenting, 41 Social Science Research 735 (2012) .......14, 15, 16, 17, 19
Sara McLanahan & Gary Sandefur,
Growing Up With a Single Parent: What Hurts, What Helps 1 (1994) ...... 4, 9
Kristen Anderson Moore et al.,
Marriage from a Childs Perspective, Child Trends Research Brief
(2002) ............................................................................................................... 4
C.A. Nelson & M. Bosquet,
Neurobiology of Fetal and Infant Development: Implications for
Infant Mental Health, in Handbook of Infant Mental Health 37, (2d
ed. 2000) .......................................................................................................... 6
Affidavit of Professor Steven Lowell Nock,
Halpern v. Attorney General of Canada, Case No. 684/00 (Ontario
Sup. Ct. Justice 2001), available at http://marriagelaw.cua.edu/Law/
cases/Canada/ontario/halpern/aff_nock.pdf .................................................. 19
Daniel Paquette & Mark Bigras,
The Risky Situation: A Procedure for Assessing the Father-Child
Activation Relationship, 180 Early Childhood Development and Care
33 (2010) .......................................................................................................... 9
Ross D. Parke,
Fatherhood (1996) ................................................................................. 7, 8, 10
C.J. Patterson,
Children of Lesbian and Gay Parents, 63 Child Development 1025
(1992) ............................................................................................................. 17
Trial transcript at 1064 and 1068, Perry v. Schwarzenegger, 704 F. Supp. 2d
921 (N.D. Cal. 2010) (No. 09-2292) ............................................................... 6
0005
000081

v

David Popenoe,
Life Without Father: Compelling New Evidence that Fatherhood &
Marriage are Indispensable for the Good of Children & Society 146
(1996) ..................................................................................................... 5, 9, 10
Thomas G. Powers et al.,
Compliance and Self-Assertion: Young Childrens Responses to
Mothers Versus Fathers, 30 Developmental Psychology 980 (1994) .......... 11
Mark D. Regnerus,
How Different Are the Adult Children of Parents Who Have Same-Sex
Relationships? Findings from the New Family Structures Study, 41
Social Science Research 752 (2012) ......................................................passim
Mark D. Regnerus,
Parental Same-Sex Relationships, Family Instability, and Subsequent
Life Outcomes for Adult Children: Answering Critics of the New
Family Structures Study with Additional Analysis, 41 Social Science
Research 1367 (2012) .................................................................. 22, 23, 24, 25
Mark D. Regnerus & Laura B. Luchies,
The Parent-Child Relationship and Opportunities for Adolescents
First Sex, 27 Journal of Family Issues 159 (2006) ........................................ 11
Michael J. Rosenfeld,
Nontraditional Families and Childhood Progress Through School, 47
Demography 755 (2010) ................................................................................ 26
Shmuel Shulman & Moshe M. Klein,
Distinctive Role of the Father in Adolescent Separation-Individuation,
62 New Directions for Child and Adolescent Development 41 (1993) ........ 10
Walter R. Schumm,
What Was Really Learned From Tasker & Golomboks (1995) Study
of Lesbian & Single Parent Mothers?, 95 Psychological Reports 422
(2004) ............................................................................................................. 19
Walter R. Schumm,
Methodological Decisions and the Evaluation of Possible Effects of
Different Family Structures on Children: The New Family Structures
Survey, 41 Social Science Research 1357 (2012) ......................................... 25
0006
000082

vi

Judith Stacey & Timothy Biblarz,
(How) Does the Sexual Orientation of Parents Matter?, 66 American
Sociological Review 159 (2001) ................................................................... 20
Fiona Tasker, Lesbian Mothers, Gay Fathers and Their Children: A Review,
26 Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrics 224 (2005) ............................. 18
W. Brad Wilcox et al.,
Why Marriage Matters: Twenty-Six Conclusions from the Social
Sciences, 14 (3d ed. 2011) ............................................................................. 11

0007
000083

1

INTEREST OF AMI CI CURI AE
1

Amici have studied and published on parental and household distinctions and
their association with child and young-adult developmental outcomes. Amicis
expertise in these fields will assist the Courts consideration of the issues presented
by this case. Amici include (in alphabetical order):
Douglas W. Allen (Ph.D., Economics, University of Washington) is
Burnaby Mountain Professor of Economics at Simon Fraser University, BC,
Canada.
David J. Eggebeen (Ph.D., Sociology, University of North Carolina) is an
Associate Professor of Human Development and Sociology at Penn State
University.
Alan J. Hawkins (Ph.D., Human Development and Family Studies, Penn
State University) is a Professor of Family Life at Brigham Young
University.
Byron R. Johnson (Ph.D., Criminology, Florida State University) is a
Distinguished Professor of Social Sciences at Baylor University.

1
No partys counsel authored this brief in whole or in part, and no one other than
Amici or their counsel contributed money that was intended to fund preparing or
submitting this brief. All parties have consented to the filing of this brief, and thus,
Amici need not file a motion for leave to file this brief.
0008
000084

2

Catherine R. Pakaluk (Ph.D., Economics, Harvard University) is an
Assistant Professor of Economics at Ave Maria University and a Faculty
Research Fellow at the Stein Center for Social Research at Ave Maria
University.
Joseph Price (Ph.D., Economics, Cornell University) is an Assistant
Professor of Economics at Brigham Young University.
Mark D. Regnerus (Ph.D., Sociology, University of North Carolina) is an
Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Texas at Austin, and a
Faculty Research Associate at the Population Research Center of the
University of Texas.
SUMMARY OF THE ARGUMENT
A persistent claim by supporters of same-sex marriage is that there is no
difference in the outcomes of children raised by a biological mother and father
and those who have been raised by two women or two men. That claim has also
been advanced by associations like the American Psychological Association
(APA). But as recent scholarship indicates, the claim is difficult to support because
nearly all of the studies upon which the no difference assertion is based are
rather limited, involving non-random, non-representative samples, often with
relatively few participants. Specifically, the vast majority of the studies were based
on samples of fewer than 100 parents or children, and typically representative only
0009
000085

3

of well-educated, white women, often with elevated incomes. These are hardly
representative samples of the lesbian and gay population raising children, and
therefore not a sufficient basis to make broad claims about child outcomes of
same-sex parenting structures.
These and other methodological limitations make the APAs confident no
difference conclusion suspect. The claim also contradicts longstanding research
asserting the view that the ideal environment for raising children is a stable
biological mother and father. The science on comparative parenting structures,
especially the research on same-sex households, is relatively new. Therefore, a
claim that another parenting structure provides the same level of benefit should be
rigorously tested and based on sound methodologies and representative samples.
Nearly all of the studies cited by the APA fail to meet those criteria.
The only studies based on large, random, representative samples tended to
reveal the opposite conclusion, finding significant differences in the outcomes of
children raised by parents in a same-sex relationship and those raised by a married
biological mother and father. What is clear is that much more study must be done
on these questions. But there is no dispute that a biological mother and father
provide, on average, an effective and proven environment for raising children. And
it is reasonable to conclude that a mother and father function as a complementary
parenting unit and that each tends to contribute something unique and beneficial to
0010
000086

4

child development.
The State of Nevada thus has a rational interest in supporting that proven
parenting structure by reserving the title and status of marriage to unions
comprised of a man and a woman.
ARGUMENT
I. Compelling Evidence Shows that Children Benefit from the Unique
Parenting Contributions of Both Men and Women.
It is a well-established and well-regarded sociological finding that
[c]hildren who grow up in a household with only one biological parent are worse
off, on average, than children who grow up in a household with both of their
biological parents . . . regardless of whether the resident parent remarries. Sara
McLanahan & Gary Sandefur, Growing Up With a Single Parent: What Hurts,
What Helps 1 (1994); see also Wendy D. Manning & Kathleen A. Lamb,
Adolescent Well-Being in Cohabiting, Married, & Single-Parent Families, 65 J.
Marriage & Fam. 876, 890 (2003) (The advantage of marriage appears to exist
primarily when the child is the biological offspring of both parents.); Kristen
Anderson Moore et al., Marriage from a Childs Perspective, Child Trends
Research Brief at 1-2 (2002) ([I]t is not simply the presence of two parents . . . but
the presence of two biological parents that seems to support childrens
development.).
A few decades ago Justice William Brennan recognized what was likely
0011
000087

5

considered a very unremarkable proposition when he stated that the optimal
situation for the child is to have both an involved mother and an involved father.
Bowen v. Gilliard, 483 U.S. 587, 614 (1987) (Brennan, J. dissenting). Experts have
long contended that both mothers and fathers make unique contributions to
parenting. As sociologist David Popenoe explains, [t]he burden of social science
evidence supports the idea that gender-differentiated parenting is important for
human development and that the contribution of fathers to childrearing is unique
and irreplaceable. David Popenoe, Life Without Father: Compelling New
Evidence that Fatherhood & Marriage are Indispensable for the Good of Children
& Society 146 (1996). Even Professor Michael Lamb, a current advocate of same-
sex marriage, supported this view before he became a proponent of redefining
marriage to include same-sex couples. He stated in no uncertain terms that [b]oth
mothers and fathers play crucial and qualitatively different roles in the
socialization of the child. Michael E. Lamb, Fathers: Forgotten Contributors to
Child Development, 18 Human Dev. 245, 246 (1975).
Current research on the psycho-social development of children continues to
affirm that the complementarity of an intact family, with a mother and a father
serving unique relational roles, is optimal for a childs healthy development. See,
e.g., Ruth Feldman, Oxytocin and Social Affiliation In Humans, 61 Hormones &
Behav. 380-391 (2012) (noting the different roles that mothers and fathers play
0012
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6

across species, the importance of those differences to human development, and
suggesting that human oxytocin systems may account for the different yet
complementary maternal and paternal functions). Even same-sex marriage
supporters like Dr. Lamb have admitted that men and women are not completely
interchangeable with respect to skills and abilities and that data suggests that the
differences between maternal and paternal behavior are more strongly related to
either the parents biological gender or sex roles, than to either their degree of
involvement in infant care or their attitudes regarding the desirability of paternal
involvement in infant care. Trial transcript at 1064 and 1068, Perry v.
Schwarzenegger, 704 F. Supp. 2d 921 (N.D. Cal. 2010) (No. 09-2292).
Dr. Lambs statement is consistent with a great deal of scholarship on the
distinct ways in which separate maternal and paternal contributions promote
positive child-development outcomes. For example, distinctive maternal
contributions are numerous and significant. The natural biological responsiveness
of a mother to her infant fosters critical aspects of neural development and
capabilities for interactivity in the infant brain.
2
Mothers are also able to extract the

2
See C.A. Nelson & M. Bosquet, Neurobiology of Fetal and Infant Development:
Implications for Infant Mental Health, in Handbook of Infant Mental Health 37-59
(C.H. Zeanah Jr. ed., 2d ed. 2000); M. DeWolff & M. van Izjendoorn, Sensitivity
and Attachment: A Meta-Analysis on Parental Antecedents of Infant Attachment,
68 Child Dev. 571-91 (1997); M. Main & J. Solomon, Discovery of an Insecure-

0013
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maximum return on the temporal investments of both parents in a two-parent home
because mothers provide critical direction for fathers on routine caretaking
activities, particularly those involving infants and toddlers. See Sandra L. Hofferth
et al., The Demography of Fathers: What Fathers Do, in Handbook of Father
Involvement: Multidisciplinary Perspectives 81 (Catherine Tamis-Lamonda &
Natasha Cabrera eds., 2002); Scott Coltrane, Family Man 54 (1996). This direction
is needed in part because fathers do not share equally in the biological and
hormonal interconnectedness that develops between a mother and a child during
pregnancy, delivery, and lactation.
In comparison to fathers, mothers generally maintain more frequent and
open communication and enjoy greater emotional closeness with their children, in
turn fostering a sense of security in children with respect to the support offered by
the family structure. Ross D. Parke, Fatherhood 7 (Developing Child Series,
Jerome Bruner et al. eds., 1996). Mothers typical mode of parent-child play is
predictable, interactive, and geared toward joint problem-solving, which helps
children to feel comfortable in the world they inhabit. Eleanor Maccoby, The Two
Sexes 266-67 (1998);
3
see also Parke, supra, at 5. Mothers also impose more limits

Disorganized Disoriented Attachment Pattern, in Affective Development in
Infancy 95-124 (T.B. Brazelton & M.W. Yogman eds., 1986).
3
Professor Maccoby, a distinguished feminist psychologist at Stanford University
who championed the idea that sex differences were caused only by socialization, is

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8

and tend to discipline more frequently, albeit with greater flexibility when
compared with fathers. Maccoby, supra, at 273.
Mothers also uniquely play a greater role in cultivating the language and
communication skills of their children. Parke, supra, at 6. Mothers help children
understand their own feelings and respond to the feelings of others, in part by
encouraging open discussion of feelings and emotions within the family unit. See
Suzanne A. Denham et al., Prediction of Externalizing Behavior Problems From
Early to Middle Childhood: The Role of Parental Socialization and Emotion
Expression, in Development and Psychopathology 23-45 (2000); Maccoby, supra,
at 272. Active maternal influence and input is vital to the breadth and depth of
childrens social ties, and mothers play a central role in connecting children to
friends and extended family. Paul R. Amato, More Than Money? Mens
Contributions to Their Childrens Lives?, in Men in Families, When Do They Get
Involved? What Difference Does It Make? 267 (Alan Booth & Ann C. Crouter
eds., 1998).
Fathers also make distinctive contributions to the upbringing of their
children, and positive paternal contributions play a key role in avoiding a variety of
negative outcomes that arise with greater frequency in homes where a father is not

now acknowledging the importance of biology in explaining sex differences in
parenting. Maccoby, supra, at 314.
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9

present. Having a father is associated with an increase in positive outcomes for
children in domains such as education, physical health, and the avoidance of
juvenile delinquency. McLanahan & Sandefur, supra (1994); Greg Duncan &
Jeanne Brooks-Gunn, Consequences of Growing Up Poor (1999). As Professor
Norval Glenn explains, there are strong theoretical reasons for believing that both
fathers and mothers are important, and the huge amount of evidence of relatively
poor average outcomes among fatherless children makes it seem unlikely that these
outcomes are solely the result of the correlates of fatherlessness and not of
fatherlessness itself. Norval D. Glenn, The Struggle for Same-Sex Marriage, 41
Socy 25, 27 (2004).
Fathers engage proactively in spontaneous play with their children, and
children who roughhouse with their fathers . . . quickly learn that biting, kicking,
and other forms of physical violence are not acceptable. Popenoe, supra, at 144.
A study conducted by developmental psychologist Daniel Paquette found that
fathers are also more likely to supervise children at play while refraining from
intervention in the childs activities, a pattern that stimulates exploration,
controlled risk-taking, and competition. Daniel Paquette & Mark Bigras, The
Risky Situation: A Procedure for Assessing the Father-Child Activation
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Relationship, 180 Early Childhood Dev. & Care 33-50 (2010).
4
Boys who do not
regularly experience the love, discipline, and modeling of a good father are more
likely to engage in what is called compensatory masculinity where they reject
and denigrate all that is feminine and instead seek to prove their masculinity by
engaging in domineering and violent behavior. Popenoe, supra, at 157.
Paternal modes of play activity are only one example of the ways in which
fathers encourage their children to take risks. Compared to mothers, fathers are
more likely to encourage children to try new things and to embrace novel situations
and challenges. See Parke, supra, at 6. One study summarized this aspect of
paternal input and observed that [f]athers, more than mothers, conveyed the
feeling that they can rely on their adolescents, thus fathers might provide a
facilitating environment for adolescent attainment of differentiation from the
family and consolidation of independence. Shmuel Shulman & Moshe M. Klein,
Distinctive Role of the Father in Adolescent Separation-Individuation, 62 New Dir.
Child & Adolesc. Dev. 41, 53 (1993).
Fathers also tend to utilize a different discipline style than mothers, in that
they discipline with less frequency, but greater predictability and less flexibility in
terms of deviating from pre-determined consequences for particular behavior. See

4
See Linda Carroll, Dads Empower Kids to Take Chances, NBCNEWS.com, June
18, 2010, http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/37741738.
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11

Thomas G. Powers et al., Compliance and Self-Assertion: Young Childrens
Responses to Mothers Versus Fathers, 30 Dev. Psychol. 980-89 (1994). Children
respond differently to paternal discipline, and are comparatively more likely to
resist maternal commands and comply with paternal requests. Maccoby, supra, at
274-75. This may be one reason why a number of studies have found that paternal
influence and involvement plays an outsized role in preventing adolescent boys
from breaking the law and lowering the odds that a teenage girl will become
pregnant. See, e.g., Paul R. Amato & Fernando Rivera, Paternal Involvement and
Childrens Behavior Problems, 61 J. Marriage & Fam. 375-84 (1999) (finding that
paternal involvement is linked to lower levels of delinquency and criminal activity,
even after controlling for maternal involvement); Mark D. Regnerus & Laura B.
Luchies, The Parent-Child Relationship and Opportunities for Adolescents First
Sex, 27 J. Fam. Issues 159-83 (2006) (noting that a study of 2000 adolescents
showed that father-daughter relationship, rather than mother-daughter relationship,
was an important predictor of whether and when adolescent girls transitioned to
sexual activity); see also W. Brad Wilcox et al., Why Marriage Matters: Twenty-
Six Conclusions from the Social Sciences 14, 22-23 (3d ed. 2011) (discussing
evidence suggesting that female sexual development is slowed by early childhood
exposure to pheromones of biological father, and accelerated by regular early
childhood exposure to pheromones of adult male who is not childs biological
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father).
In sum, a substantial body of evidence demonstrates that both mothers and
fathers make unique contributions to a childs development. Same-sex parenting
structures, by definition, exclude either a mother or a father. Certainly same-sex
couples, like other parenting structures, can make quality and successful efforts in
raising children. That is not in question. But the social science evidence, especially
evidence founded on conclusions from population-based samples, suggests that
there are unique advantages to a parenting structure consisting of both a mother
and a father, political interests to the contrary notwithstanding. Therefore it
remains rational for government to provide distinctive recognition and incentive to
that proven parenting structure through the status of marriage.
II. The Claim of No Difference in Outcomes of Children Raised by Gay
and Lesbian Parents and Intact Biological Parents Is Empirically
Undermined by Significant Methodological Limitations.
Decades of study on various parenting structures yield the near uniform
conclusion that a biological mother and father provide optimal child outcomes.
Mark Regnerus, How Different Are the Adult Children of Parents Who Have Same-
Sex Relationships? Findings from the New Family Structures Study, 41 Soc. Sci.
Research 752, 763 (2012) [hereinafter How Different?]. So the claim that another
parenting relationship produces child outcomes just as good as (or even better
than) intact biological parents is a surprising proposition, to say the least, and one
0019
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that must be rigorously tested (and until then, viewed with healthy suspicion).
5

A closer examination of the studies purporting to show no difference
between same-sex parenting and parenting by biological parents suggests that they
cannot bear the weight that advocates place on them. Most striking is that all but
one failed to involve a large, random, representative sample of the population.
While this can be attributed to the fact that such a sample is difficult to locate
randomly, it nevertheless ought to raise concern when they are used to support
broad public policy changes, like those at issue in this case. In short, it is
unconvincing to claim no difference with such thin support.
The Eleventh Circuit has recognized these limitations in the research on gay
and lesbian parenting, noting significant flaws in the studies methodologies and
conclusions, such as the use of small, self-selected samples; reliance on self-report
instruments; politically driven hypotheses; and the use of unrepresentative study

5
Although outcomes of children raised by adoptive parents are often positive,
outcomes for those children are not typically as positive as children raised by
biological parents in an intact marriage, despite the rigorous screening process
involved in adoption. Regnerus, How Different?, supra, at 754-55 ([S]tudies of
adoptiona common method by which many same-sex couples (but more
heterosexual ones) become parentshave repeatedly and consistently revealed
important and wide-ranging differences, on average, between adopted children and
biological ones. In fact, these differences have been so pervasive and consistent
that adoption experts now emphasize that acknowledgement of difference is
critical for both parents and clinicians when working with adopted children and
teens. (citing Brent Miller et al., Comparisons of Adopted and Non-Adopted
Adolescents In A Large, Nationally Representative Sample, 71 Child Dev. 1458
(2000))).
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populations consisting of disproportionately affluent, educated parents. Lofton v.
Secy of Dept of Children and Family Servs., 358 F.3d 804, 825 (11th Cir. 2004).
A. The APA studies are based on small sample sizes.
Most of the studies that the APA relies on to support its no-difference
conclusion are based on small, non-representative, convenience samples of fewer
than 100 participants. Loren D. Marks, Same-Sex Parenting and Childrens
Outcomes: A Closer Examination of the American Psychological Associations
Brief on Lesbian and Gay Parenting, 41 Soc. Sci. Res. 735, 736-38 (2012); see
also Douglas W. Allen et al., Nontraditional Families and Childhood Progress
Through School: A Comment on Rosenfeld, Demography November 2012,
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13524-012-0169-x/fulltext.html
[hereinafter Comment on Rosenfeld] (Although there has been considerable
research on the effect of family structure on child outcomes, almost none of the
research using nationally representative samples has included same-sex parents as
part of the analysis.).
The hallmark of a rigorous study is a large, representative pool of
participants drawn from a population-based random sample. Regnerus, How
Different?, supra, at 754. It is very difficult to draw reliable conclusions from the
data used in small samples because the conclusions from such limited studies
cannot be confidently extrapolated to the general population and the risk of
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15

erroneously attributing statistical insignificance to between-group comparisons
(that is, mistakenly concluding that there are no differences between groups) is
high. Marks, supra, at 736.
Even analyzing matched samples, as a variety of studies have done,
fails to mitigate the challenge of locating statistically-significant
differences when the sample size is small. This is a concern in all
social science, but one that is doubly important when there may be
motivation to confirm the null hypothesis (that is, that there are in fact
no statistically-significant differences between groups).

Regnerus, How Different?, supra, at 754.
A simple illustration shows the concern with small sample sizes. It is well
established that having a stepfather in the home tends on average to result in less
optimal child outcomes. Mark V. Flinn et al., Fluctuating Asymmetry of
Stepchildren, 20 Evol. Hum. Behav. 465 (1999) (In summary, the absence of a
genetic relationship between stepchildren and stepparents may affect the quality
and quantity of careincluding specific behaviors that affect nutrition, sleep
routines, hygiene, medical attention, work loads, instruction, comforting,
protection and so forthwith consequent affect on growth.); Marilyn Coleman et
al., Reinvestigating Remarriage: Another Decade of Progress, 62 J. Marriage &
Fam. 1288, 1293 (2000) ([M]ost researchers reported that stepchildren were
similar to children living with single mothers on the preponderance of outcome
measures and that step-children generally were at a greater risk for problems than
were children living with both of their parents.). That is relevant for the matter at
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hand because every child in a planned gay or lesbian family has at least one
nonbiological step parent. But because of the small sample sizes of same-sex
parents (especially gay fathers) represented in the studies, these outcome
differences have not often surfaced (or even been evaluated), raising additional
questions about the reliability of the studies purporting to show no differences.
Moreover, comparisons are most often made between children in heterosexual
stepfamilies and those in gay unions, a comparison that overlooks the general
consensus about the importance of biological connections.
Notably, one of the larger studies that the APA cites, but does not discuss,
showed significant outcome differences between children raised by same-sex
parents and those raised by biological parents in an intact relationship. Overall,
the study has shown that children of married couples are more likely to do well at
school in academic and social terms, than children of cohabiting and homosexual
couples. Marks, supra, at 742-43 (quoting S. Sarantokas, Children In Three
Contexts: Family, Education, and Social Development, 21 Children Australia 23
(1996), and describing the studys findings in detail, its comparative statistical
strength, and the APAs puzzling de-emphasis of it).
B. The APAs studies are largely based on homogeneous samples.
Not only are most of the studies claiming no differences in same-sex
parenting based on small sample sizes, they also tend to draw upon homogeneous
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17

samples of privileged lesbian mothers to represent all same-sex parents. Marks,
supra, at 739. Many of the studies cited by the APA, for example, include no
minorities with samples predominantly composed of white, well-educated, middle-
to-upper-class women. Id. at 738. As one study candidly acknowledged, the study
sample was small and biased toward well-educated, white women with high
incomes. These factors have plagued other [same-sex parenting] studies, and
remain a concern of researchers in this field. Id. (quoting Laura Lott-Whitehead &
Carol T. Tully, The Family Lives of Lesbian Mothers, 63 Smith Coll. Studies Soc.
Work 275 (1993)); see also C.J. Patterson, Children of Lesbian and Gay Parents,
63 Child Dev. 1025, 1029 (1992) (Despite the diversity of gay and lesbian
communities, both in the United States and abroad, samples of children [and
parents] have been relatively homogenous . . . . Samples for which demographic
information was reported have been described as predominantly Caucasian, well-
educated, and middle to upper class.).
Very few of the APA-cited studies on same-sex parenting analyzed the
outcomes of children raised by gay fathers. Only eight of the fifty-nine cited
studies included gay fathers, and only four of those included a heterosexual
comparison group. Marks, supra, at 739. Systematic research has so far not
considered developmental outcomes for children brought up from birth by single
gay men or gay male couples (planned gay father families), possibly because of the
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difficulty of locating an adequate sample. Fiona Tasker, Lesbian Mothers, Gay
Fathers and Their Children: A Review, 26 Dev. & Behav. Pediatr. 224, 225 (2005).
C. Most of the samples in the APA-cited studies relied on non-
random, convenience sampling.
It is not surprising that the samples in these studies are so homogenous,
given that most of the people in them were recruited by use of non-random,
convenience (snowball) sampling. Regnerus, How Different?, supra, at 753. For
instance, one data-collection effort that has been the subject of at least 19 different
peer-reviewed publications to date recruited entirely by self-selection from
announcements posted at lesbian events, in womens bookstores, and in lesbian
newspapers in Boston, Washington, and San Francisco. Id. This method of
recruitment was common among the APA-cited studies. Id. Such snowball
sampling is known to have some serious problems because it is impossible to
generalize the findings of such a specific subgroup to the general population. Id.
(quoting Tom A. Snijders, Estimation on the Basis of Snowball Samples, 36
Bulletin de Methodologie Sociologique 59 (1992)).
Because such studies samples are garnered from people who have a great
deal in common with each other, how well their findings characterize a broader
population of gay families remains unknown. By their own reports, social
researchers examining same-sex parenting have repeatedly selected small, non-
representative, homogeneous samples of privileged lesbian mothers to represent all
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19

same-sex parents. Marks, supra, at 739; see also Walter R. Schumm, What Was
Really Learned From Tasker & Golomboks (1995) Study of Lesbian & Single
Parent Mothers?, 95 Psych. Reports 422, 423 (2004) ([O]ne has to be very
careful in interpreting research on homosexual issues and be wary of outcomes
when samples are very small and often nonrandom, so the null hypothesis is not
rejected but is used for political purposes as if a meaningful result had been
obtained).
6

If these studies were being used to shed light on the outcomes of children
raised by highly educated and affluent middle to upper class white women, their
conclusions would have merit. But the studies ought not be generalized to the
childhood and adolescent experiences of the wide spectrum of gay and lesbian
parents, since gay and lesbian parents are, in reality, economically, racially, and
socially far more diverse than those studies imply.
The issue is further complicated by the political climate surrounding the
fundamental definition of marriage. Given the widespread support for same-sex

6
Other scholars have noted that studies purporting to show no difference between
children raised by same-sex couples and those raised by married mothers and
fathers share these significant limitations. One of the most extensive critiques of
the research was offered by Professor Steven Lowell Nock of the University of
Virginia. Nock Aff., Halpern v. Attorney General of Canada, Case No. 684/00
(Ontario Sup. Ct. Justice 2001), available at http://marriagelaw.cua.edu/
Law/cases/Canada/ontario/halpern/aff_nock.pdf. See also Glenn, supra, at 26-27;
Schumm, supra, at 423; Robert Lerner & Althea K. Nagai, No Basis: What the
Studies Dont Tell Us About Same-Sex Parenting (Marriage Law Project, 2001).
0026
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20

marriage among social and behavioral scientists, it is becoming politically
incorrect in academic circles even to suggest that arguments being used in support
of same-sex marriage might be wrong. Glenn, supra, at 25; see also Judith Stacey
& Timothy Biblarz, (How) Does the Sexual Orientation of Parents Matter?, 66
American Sociol. Rev. 159, 161 (2001) ([T]oo many psychologists who are
sympathetic to lesbigay parenting seem hesitant to theorize at all and are apt to
downplay the significance of any findings of differences.).
Given such limitations characteristic of a nascent area of social-science
research, the vast majority of the studies relied upon by the APA for its general
claim that there is no difference in outcomes of children raised by gay and lesbian
parents and those raised by heterosexual parents are poorly poised to address the
broad propositions asserted in this case.
III. The Largest Population-Based Studies Do Not Confirm the No
Differences Conclusion about Child Outcomes among Same-Sex
Parents.
Recent research using larger, randomly selected, nationally representative
samples suggests that there are significant differences in the outcomes of children
raised by parents who have had a same-sex relationship and children raised by
intact biological parents. This research, called the New Family Structures Study
(NFSS), was conducted on young adults with a very large sample size of nearly
3,000 participants, comprising a racially, socioeconomically, and geographically
0027
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21

diverse group reflective of the diversity noted in demographic mappings of the gay
and lesbian population in America. Regnerus, How Different?, supra, at 755, 757.
The study surveyed adults aged 18-39 about their parent(s) past same-sex
relationships, which occurred as recently as a few years ago or as far back as 30 or
more years.
7
Among that sample, 175 people reported living with a mother who
was (and may still be) in a same-sex romantic relationship, and 73 reported living
with a father who had been in a same-sex romantic relationship.
The study looked at social behaviors, health behaviors, and relationships
comparing child outcomes (as reported by the adult children rather than their
parents) among various groups, including married biological parents, stepparents,
single parents, and parents who had been in a same-sex romantic relationship.
When compared with children who grew up in biologically (still) intact, mother-
father families, the children of women who reported a same-sex relationship look
markedly different on numerous outcomes, including many that are obviously
suboptimal (such as education, depression, employment status, or marijuana use).
Id. at 764. Some of the statistically significant differences where adult children
who reported living in a household with their mother and her partner for at least
some period of time (denoted below as MLRthat is, mother in a lesbian

7
The NFSS may best capture what might be called an earlier generation of
children of same-sex parents, and includes among them many who witnessed a
failed heterosexual union.
0028
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22

relationship) fared worse than children raised by intact biological parents (denoted
below as IBFthat is, intact biological family) included:
receiving welfare while growing up (17% of the IBF group and 70% of the
MLR group),

currently receiving public assistance (10% of the IBF group and 49% of the
MLR group),

current full-time employment status (49% of the IBF group and 17% of the
MLR group),

current unemployment (8% of the IBF group and 40% of the MLR group),

having an affair while married or cohabitating (13% of the IBF group and
38% of the MLR group),

having been touched sexually by a parent or other adult caregiver (2% of the
IBF group and 26% of the MLR group), and

having been forced to have sex against their will (8% of the IBF group and
27% of the MLR group).
Mark Regnerus, Parental Same-Sex Relationships, Family Instability, and
Subsequent Life Outcomes for Adult Children: Answering Critics of the New
Family Structures Study with Additional Analysis, 41 Soc. Sci. Res. 1367, 1372-74
(2012) [hereinafter Parental Same-Sex Relationships]; see also Douglas W. Allen,
High school graduation rates among children of same-sex households, Rev. Econ.
Household, Sept. 2013 (Children living with gay and lesbian families in 2006
were about 65% as likely to graduate compared to children living in opposite sex
marriage families.).
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23

Because of the smaller sample size for fathers who have had gay
relationships, there were not as many significant findings as compared to mothers
who have had lesbian relationships. Nevertheless, adult children of fathers who are
or have been in a same-sex relationship are more apt than [adult children raised
by intact biological parents] to smoke, have been arrested, pled guilty to non-minor
offenses, and report more numerous sex partners. Regnerus, How Different?,
supra, at 764.
The study does not purport to assess causation or definitively answer
political questions about family structures. Indeed, it would be difficult, if not
impossible, to precisely determine causation under these circumstances. But it is
noteworthy that the groups display numerous significant distinctions, which
directly undermine the APAs no differences hypothesis.
When the NFSS-based study was released in summer 2012, it initiated much
heated discussion about same-sex parenting, and encountered widespread criticism
and a level of scrutiny unusual for a published sociological study based on
nationally representative data. Regnerus, Parental Same-Sex Relationships, supra,
at 1367. One of the most frequent criticisms by supporters of same-sex marriage
was that the study compared apples to oranges because it compared the adult
children of stably intact biological parents with adult children of stably intact
same-sex households and adult children whose mother or father left a heterosexual
0030
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24

union for a same-sex one. Id.
But as the authors follow-up study noted, that criticism is unfair for at least
two reasons. First, if stability is a key asset for households with children, then it is
sensible to use intact biological families in any comparative assessment. Id. at
1368. Indeed, a primary problem of nearly all previous studies is that they seldom
included a married biological family control group. Id. at 1368-69. Second, that
most of the same-sex households in the study were unstable at some point does not
mean that the study undercounted stable same-sex households; it could just as
plausibly be interpreted as showing that same-sex relationships are often short-
lived. Id. The latter alternative is possible, if not probable, given other research on
the comparative volatility of lesbian relationships.
A study of Norwegian and Swedish same-sex marriages notes that
divorce risk is higher in same-sex marriages and that the risk of
divorce for female partnerships actually is more than twice that for
male unions. Moreover, early same-sex marriagesthose occurring
shortly after a shift in marriage lawexhibited a similar risk of
divorce as did more recent unions, suggesting no notable variation in
instability over time as a function of new law or pent-up demand
among more stable, longstanding relationships. The study authors
estimate that in Sweden, 30% of female marriages are likely to end in
divorce within 6 years of formation, compared with 20% for male
marriages and 13% for heterosexual ones.

Id. at 1370 (emphasis added) (quoting Gunnar Anderson et al., The Demographics
0031
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25

of Same-Sex Marriages In Norway and Sweden, 43 Demography 79, 89 (2006)).
8

Although this unanswered, empirically unknown question remains, what is
clear is that there remains much to be studied in this domain, and hence confident
assertions of no difference ought to be viewed with suspicion. As the studys
author indicated:
Perhaps in social reality there are really two gold standards of family
stability and context for childrens flourishinga heterosexual stably-
coupled household and the same among gay/lesbian householdsbut
no population-based sample analysis is yet able to consistently
confirm wide evidence of the latter. Moreover, a stronger burden of
proof than has been employed to date ought to characterize studies
which conclude no differences, especially in light of longstanding
reliance on nonrandom samples of unknown bias and the high risk of
making [significant] errors in small-sample studies. Simply put, the
science here is young. Until much larger random samples can be
drawn and evaluated, the probability-based evidence that exists
suggests that the biologically-intact two-parent household remains an
optimal setting for long-term flourishing of children.

Id. at 1377 (citations omitted); see also Walter R. Schumm, Methodological
Decisions and the Evaluation of Possible Effects of Different Family Structures on
Children: The New Family Structures Survey, 41 Soc. Sci. Research 1357-66
(2012) (validating methodological decisions in New Family Structures Study, and
noting similar decisions in other large-scale surveys).
Other population-based studies have similarly identified better outcomes for

8
Although gay mens relationships appear more stable than lesbian relationships,
they are less likely to be monogamous. Id. (citing Colleen Hoff & Sean Beougher,
Sexual Agreements Among Gay Male Couples, 39 Arch. Sex. Beh. 774 (2010)).
0032
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26

children raised by a biological mother and father than children raised in other
parenting structures. In assessing group differences in academic progress through
school, Michael J. Rosenfeld noted no differences in school progress for children
raised by same-sex parents. Michael J. Rosenfeld, Nontraditional Families and
Childhood Progress Through School, 47 Demography 755 (2010). But a reanalysis
of his high-quality, census-based samplethis time including the children of all
couples, not just those who were residentially stable for at least five years
revealed that children being raised by same-sex couples are 35% less likely to
make normal progress through school. Allen, Comment on Rosenfeld, supra
(noting findings that are strikingly different from those of the original [Rosenfeld]
study). Thus Rosenfelds original no differences conclusion may be a result of
dropping more unstable households from his analytic sample.
Indeed, no existing study yet bears the ability to randomly compare large
numbers of children raised by gay couples with the same among heterosexual
couples over a long period of time. The social science of same-sex parenting
structures remains young, and subject to significant limitations about what can be
known, given that the influence of household structures and experiences on child
outcomes is not a topic for experimental research design. Yet those analyses that
employ large population-based samples continue to document differences. With so
many significant unanswered questions about whether children develop as well in
0033
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27

same-sex households as in opposite-sex households, it remains prudent for
government to continue to recognize marriage as a union of a man and a woman,
thereby promoting what is known to be an ideal environment for raising children.
CONCLUSION
For the foregoing reasons, Amici urge this Court to affirm the decision of the
lower court.

Dated: January 28, 2014

s/ Abram J. Pafford
Abram J. Pafford
Pafford Lawrence & Childress PLLC
1776 I Street N.W., Suite 900
Washington, DC 20006
Telephone: (202) 756-4886
Fax: (202) 756-1301
apafford@pafflaw.com

Attorney for Professors of Social Science

0034
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28

CERTIFICATE OF COMPLIANCE WITH RULES 29-2(d) AND
32(a)(7)(B)
Certificate of Compliance With Type-Volume Limitation,
Typeface Requirements, and Type Style Requirements.

This brief complies with the type-volume limitation of Fed. R. App. P.
32(a)(7)(B) because this brief contains 6,080 words, excluding parts of the brief
exempted by Fed. R. App. P. 32(a)(7)(B)(iii).
This brief complies with the typeface requirements of Fed. R. Civ. P.
32(a)(5) and the type style requirements of Fed. R. App. P. 32(a)(6) because this
brief has been prepared in a proportionally spaced typeface using Word 2007 in
14-point Times New Roman.

Dated: January 28, 2014
s/ Abram J. Pafford
Abram J. Pafford

0035
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29

I hereby certify that on January 28, 2014, I electronically filed the foregoing
with the Clerk of the Court for the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth
Circuit by using the appellate CM/ECF system. All participants in the case are
registered CM/ECF users and will be served by the appellate CM/ECF system.

s/ Abram J. Pafford
Abram J. Pafford

0036
000112

TAB 2

000113

Case Nos. 13-4178, 14-5003, 14-5006

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE TENTH CIRCUIT
a
DEREK KITCHEN, individually, et al.,
v.
GARY R. HERBERT, in his official
capacity as Governor of Utah, et al.,
Defendants-Appellants.
Appeal from the United States District
Court for the District of Utah,
Civil Case No. 2:13-CV-00217-RJS
MARY BISHOP, et al.,
and
SUSAN G. BARTON, et al.,
Plaintiffs-Appellees/Cross-Appellants,
v.
SALLY HOWE SMITH, in her official
capacity as Court Clerk for Tulsa County,
State of Oklahoma,
Defendant-Appellant/Cross-Appellee.
Appeal from the United States District
Court for the Northern District of
Oklahoma,
Civil Case No. 04-CV-848-TCK-TLW

__________________________________________

BRIEF OF AMICI CURIAE PROFESSORS ALAN J. HAWKINS AND JASON S.
CARROLL IN SUPPORT OF DEFENDANTS-APPELLANTS AND REVERSAL
__________________________________________

Lynn D. Wardle, Esq.
Brigham Young University Law School
Room 518
Provo, UT 84602
Telephone: (801) 422-2617
wardlel@law.byu.edu
Attorney for Professors Hawkins and Carroll
Appellate Case: 13-4178 Document: 01019200443 Date Filed: 02/10/2014 Page: 1 Appellate Case: 13-4178 Document: 01019200673 Date Filed: 02/10/2014 Page: 1
0037
000114

i

TABLE OF CONTENTS
TABLE OF CONTENTS ........................................................................................... i
TABLE OF AUTHORITIES ................................................................................... iii
INTEREST OF AMICI CURIAE ............................................................................... 1
SUMMARY OF THE ARGUMENT ........................................................................ 1
ARGUMENT ............................................................................................................. 3
I. Marriage Is a Social Institution With Practical Benefits that Depend
on Its Social, Linguistic, and Legal Meaning; Altering that
Meaning will Necessarily Alter Those Benefits. .................................. 3
A. Marriage is a social institution that exists to encourage
important human behaviors for vital public ends ....................... 3
B. Because marriage is a social institution with a public
purpose and not only a vehicle for accommodating
private arrangements, altering its basic definition will
necessarily alter the social benefits it produces .......................... 6
II. Recent Legal Changes to the Institution of Marriage and to
Marriage-Related Expectations Confirm that Altering the
Meaning of Marriage Would Likely Have Unintended and
Negative Consequences for Children .................................................... 9
III. Redefining Marriage in Non-Gendered Terms Will Likely Harm
the Interests of Children by Diminishing the Relevance and
Value of Marriage and Fatherhood to Heterosexual Men. ..................16
A. Traditional, gendered marriage is the most important way
heterosexual men create their masculine identities.
Marriage forms and channels that masculinity into the
service of their children and society. Redefining marriage
to include same-sex couples would eliminate gender as a
crucial element of marriage and thus undermine
marriages power to shape and guide masculinity for
those beneficial ends .................................................................18
0038
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ii

B. Abandoning the gendered definition of marriage, thereby
weakening the connection of heterosexual men to
marriage and fatherhood, will harm the States interests
in maximizing the welfare of children ......................................23
CONCLUSION ........................................................................................................28
CERTIFICATE OF COMPLIANCE WITH RULE 32(a) ......................................31
CERTIFICATE OF DIGITAL SUBMISSION .......................................................34

0039
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iii

CASES

Goodridge v. Dept of Pub. Health
798 N.E.2d 941 (Mass. 2003) ................................................................................ 9

Hernandez v. Robles
855 N.E.2d 1 (N.Y. 2006) ...................................................................................... 6

Lewis v. Harris
908 A.2d 196 (N.J. 2006) ....................................................................................... 9

United States v. Windsor
133 S. Ct. 2675 (2013) .......................................................................................8, 9

Williams v. North Carolina
317 U.S. 287 (1942) ............................................................................................... 5

OTHER AUTHORITIES

A.R. RADCLIFFE-BROWN, STRUCTURE AND FUNCTION IN PRIMITIVE SOCIETY
(1952) .................................................................................................................3, 4

ALLEN M. PARKMAN, GOOD INTENTIONS GONE AWRY: NO-FAULT DIVORCE AND
THE AMERICAN FAMILY (2000) ..................................................................... 10, 13

Andrew Cherlin, The Deinstitutionalization of American Marriage, 66 J.
MARRIAGE FAM. 848 (2004) ...............................................................................23

ANDREW J. CHERLIN, THE MARRIAGE-GO-ROUND: THE STATE OF MARRIAGE AND
THE FAMILY IN AMERICA TODAY (2009) ....................................................... 13, 27

Barara Dafoe Whitehead, THE DIVORCE CULTURE: RETHINKING OUR
COMMITMENTS TO MARRIAGE AND FAMILY (1996) .............................................11
0040
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iv

Barbara Dafoe Whitehead, The Experts Story of Marriage 7 (A Council on
Families in Am. Working Paper for the Marriage in Am. Symposium, Working
Paper No. WP14, 1992) ......................................................................................... 4

Betsey Stevenson & Justin Wolfers, Bargaining in the Shadow of the Law: Divorce
Law and Family Distress, 121 Q.J. ECON. 267 (2006) ........................................10

Daniel Cere, The Conjugal Tradition in Postmodernity: The Closure of Public
Discourse?, Paper Presented at Re-visioning Marriage in Postmodern Culture
Conference, 4-5 (Dec. 2003) ..............................................................................7, 8

Donald Moir, A New Class of Disadvantaged Children, in IT TAKES TWO: THE
FAMILY IN LAW AND FINANCE 63, 67-68 (Douglas W. Allen & John Richards
eds., 1999) ............................................................................................................11

DOUGLASS NORTH, INSTITUTIONS, INSTITUTIONAL CHANGE, AND ECONOMIC
PERFORMANCE (1990) ............................................................................................ 1

E. MAVIS HETHERINGTON & JOHN KELLY, FOR BETTER OR FOR WORSE: DIVORCE
RECONSIDERED (2002) .........................................................................................11

G. ROBINA QUALE, A HISTORY OF MARRIAGE SYSTEMS (1988) ............................... 6

JAMES Q. WILSON, THE MARRIAGE PROBLEM: HOW OUR CULTURE HAS WEAKENED
OUR FAMILIES (2002) ............................................................................................. 5

Jason S. Carroll & David C. Dollahite, Whos My Daddy? How the Legalization
of Same-Sex Partnerships Would Further the Rise of Ambiguous Fatherhood in
America, in WHATS THE HARM?: DOES LEGALIZING SAME-SEX MARRIAGE
REALLY HARM INDIVIDUALS, FAMILIES OR SOCIETY
(Lynn D. Wardle ed., 2008). ................................................................... 24, 25, 26

JUDITH S. WALLERSTEIN ET AL., THE UNEXPECTED LEGACY OF DIVORCE: THE 25
YEAR LANDMARK STUDY (2000) ............................................................ 10, 13, 14
0041
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v

KATHRYN EDIN & TIMOTHY J. NELSON, DOING THE BEST I CAN: FATHERHOOD IN
THE INNER CITY (2013) ........................................................................................22

KAY HYMOWITZ, ET AL, KNOT YET: THE BENEFITS AND COSTS OF DELAYED
MARRIAGE IN AMERICA (2013) ............................................................................27

KRISTIN ANDERSON MOORE ET AL., CHILD TRENDS, MARRIAGE FROM A CHILDS
PERSPECTIVE: HOW DOES FAMILY STRUCTURE AFFECT CHILDREN AND WHAT
CAN WE DO ABOUT IT? (June 2002) ....................................................................24

LINDA J. WAITE ET AL., INSTITUTE FOR AM. VALUES, DOES DIVORCE MAKE PEOPLE
HAPPY? FINDINGS FROM A STUDY OF UNHAPPY MARRIAGES (2002) ...................11

Linda J. Waite et al., Marital Happiness and Marital Stability: Consequences for
Psychological Well-Being, 38 SOC. SCI. RES. 201 (2009) ............................ 12, 25

Maggie Gallagher, (How) Will Gay Marriage Weaken Marriage As a Social
Institution: A Reply to Andrew Koppelman, 2 U. ST. THOMAS L. J. 33 (2004) ..... 4

Matthew D. Bramlett & William D. Mosher, CDC, First Marriage Dissolution,
Divorce and Remarriage: United States, ADVANCE DATA NO. 323 (2001) ........14

Monte Neil Stewart, Judicial Redefinition of Marriage
21 CAN. J. FAM. L. 11 (2004) ................................................................................. 7

NOAH WEBSTER, AN AMERICAN DICTIONARY OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE (1828) . 6

PAUL R. AMATO & ALAN BOOTH, A GENERATION AT RISK: GROWING UP IN AN ERA
OF FAMILY UPHEAVAL (1997) ................................................................. 11, 12, 25

Paul R. Amato & Bryndl Hohmann-Marriott, A Comparison of High- and Low-
Distress Marriages That End in Divorce, 69 J. MARRIAGE & FAM. (2007) ........11

0042
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vi

Paul R. Amato, The Impact of Family Formation Change on the Cognitive, Social,
and Emotional Well-Being of the Next Generation, 15 FUTURE OF CHILDREN,
Fall 2005 ................................................................................................. 12, 13, 27

ROBERT GEORGE ET AL., WHAT IS MARRIAGE? MAN AND WOMAN: A DEFENSE
(2012) ..................................................................................................................... 8

Rose McDermott et al., Breaking Up Is Hard to Do, Unless Everyone Else Is
Doing It Too: Social Network Effects on Divorce in a Longitudinal Sample, 92
SOC. FORCES 491(2013) .......................................................................................14

SAMUEL JOHNSON, A DICTIONARY OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE (1755) .................. 6

Sara McLanahan, Diverging Destinies: How Children Are Faring Under The
Second Demographic Transition, 41 DEMOGRAPHY 607 (2004) .................. 18, 20

STEVEN L. NOCK, MARRIAGE IN MENS LIVES (1998) .............................................19

Victor Nee & Paul Ingram, Embeddedness and Beyond: Institutions, Exchange,
and Social Structure, in THE NEW INSTITUTIONALISM IN SOCIOLOGY (Mary C.
Brinton & Victor Nee eds., 1998) .......................................................................... 4

William J. Doherty et al., Responsible Fathering: An Overview and Conceptual
Framework, 60 J. MARRIAGE & FAM. 277 (1998) ...............................................20

WILLIAM J. DOHERTY, ET AL., INSTITUTE FOR AM. VALUES, WHY MARRIAGE
MATTERS: TWENTY-ONE CONCLUSIONS FROM THE SOCIAL SCIENCES (2002) ....... 5

WITHERSPOON INSTITUTE, MARRIAGE AND THE PUBLIC GOOD: TEN PRINCIPLES
(2006) ..................................................................................................................... 8

RULES

Fed. R. App. P. 29 ...................................................................................................... 1

0043
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vii

Fed. R. App. P. 32 ....................................................................................................31
0044
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1

INTEREST OF AMICI CURIAE
1

Alan J. Hawkins and Jason S. Carroll are professors of Family Life at
Brigham Young University. Professor Hawkins earned his Ph.D. in Human
Development and Family Studies from Penn State University. Professor Carroll
earned his Ph.D. in Family Social Science from the University of Minnesota. They
have studied extensively and published widely on fatherhood, marital formation
and dissolution, interventions to strengthen marriages, and how marriage as a
social institution affects human behavior. Their expertise in these fields will assist
the Courts consideration of the issues presented by this case.
SUMMARY OF THE ARGUMENT
There is no dispute among social scientists that social institutions profoundly
affect human behavior. They provide human relationships with meaning, norms,
and patterns, and in so doing encourage and guide conduct. Nobel Laureate
Douglass North has described institutions as the humanly devised constraints that
shape human interaction. DOUGLASS NORTH, INSTITUTIONS, INSTITUTIONAL
CHANGE, AND ECONOMIC PERFORMANCE 3 (1990). That is their function. And

1
No partys counsel authored this brief in whole or in part or contributed money
that was intended to fund preparing or submitting the brief, and no one other than
amicus or his counsel contributed money that was intended to fund preparing or
submitting this brief. See Fed. R. App. P. 29(c)(5). All parties have consented to
the filing of this brief. The views expressed herein are those of the amici and not
necessarily those of Brigham Young University.
0045
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2

when the definitions and norms that constitute a social institution change, the
behaviors and interactions that the institution shapes also change.
Marriage is societys most enduring and essential institution. From ancient
times to the present, it has shaped and guided sexual, domestic, and familial
relations between men, women, and their children. As with any institution,
changing the basic definition and social understanding of marriagesuch as by
abandoning its gendered definitionwill change the behavior of men and women
in marriage and even affect whether they enter marriage in the first place. Whether
deemed good or bad, redefining marriage away from its historically gendered
purposes will have significant consequences.
We know this, as discussed below, not only as a matter of sound theory,
logic, and common sense but from experience with other changes to marriage and
marriage-related expectations. Specifically, the advent of no-fault divorce changed
the legal and social presumption of permanence in marriage. That change had
profound consequences. While affording adults greater autonomy and facilitating
an easier end to dangerous or unhealthy relationships, it also resulted in increased
numbers of divorces from low-conflict marriages, created a tangible sense of
fragility for all marriages, and left more children to be raised without one of their
parents, typically the father, with attendant adverse consequences.

0046
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3

Although it is far too early to know exactly how redefining marriage to
include same-sex couples will change marriage, Professor Hawkins and Professor
Carroll demonstrate that such a significant change will likely further weaken
heterosexual mens connection to marriage and their children. This, in turn, will
likely increase the risk that more children will be raised without the manifest
benefits of having their fathers married to their mothers and involved day to day in
their lives. These risks justify States in cautiously hesitating before redefining
marriage in non-gendered terms.
ARGUMENT
I. Marriage Is a Social Institution With Practical Benefits that Depend on
Its Social, Linguistic, and Legal Meaning; Altering that Meaning Will
Necessarily Alter Those Benefits.
A. Marriage is a social institution that exists to encourage important
human behaviors for vital public ends.
Social institutions exist primarily to guide and channel human behavior in
ways that benefit society. As Utah notes in its opening brief (at 53 n.15),
preeminent social anthropologist A. R. Radcliffe-Brown described social
institutions as a means for society to order the interactions of persons in social
relationships. A.R. RADCLIFFE-BROWN, STRUCTURE AND FUNCTION IN PRIMITIVE
SOCIETY 10-11 (1952). In social institutions, the conduct of persons in their
interactions with others is controlled by norms, rules, or patterns. Id. As a
consequence, a person [in a social institution] knows that he [or she] is expected
0047
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4

to behave according to these norms and that the other person should do the same.
Id.
Through such rules, norms, and expectationssome legal, others cultural
social institutions become constituted by a web of public meaning. See Victor Nee
& Paul Ingram, Embeddedness and Beyond: Institutions, Exchange, and Social
Structure, in THE NEW INSTITUTIONALISM IN SOCIOLOGY 19 (Mary C. Brinton &
Victor Nee eds., 1998) (An institution is a web of interrelated normsformal and
informalgoverning social relationships.). Social institutions, and the language
we use to describe them, in large measure define relationships and how we
understand them and act within them.
[L]anguageor more precisely, normative vocabularyis one of the
key cultural resources supporting and regulating any [social]
institution. Nothing is more essential to the integrity and strength of
an institution than a common set of understandings, a shared body of
opinions, about the meaning and purpose of the institution. And,
conversely, nothing is more damaging to the integrity of an institution
than an attack on this common set of understandings with the
consequent fracturing of meaning.
Maggie Gallagher, (How) Will Gay Marriage Weaken Marriage As a Social
Institution: A Reply to Andrew Koppelman, 2 U. ST. THOMAS L. J. 33, 52-53 (2004)
(quoting Barbara Dafoe Whitehead, The Experts Story of Marriage 7 (Council on
Families in Am. Working Paper No. WP14, 1992)).
Marriage is a vital institutionfew dispute that. See, e.g., WILLIAM J.
DOHERTY ET AL., INSTITUTE FOR AM. VALUES, WHY MARRIAGE MATTERS:
0048
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5

TWENTY-ONE CONCLUSIONS FROM THE SOCIAL SCIENCES 8-9 (2002) [hereinafter
DOHERTY, WHY MARRIAGE] (At least since the beginning of recorded history, in
all the flourishing varieties of human cultures documented by anthropologists,
marriage has been a universal human institution.). Courts have long recognized
the institutional nature of marriage. See, e.g., Williams v. North Carolina, 317
U.S. 287, 303 (1942) ([T]he marriage relation [is] an institution more basic in our
civilization than any other.).
Thus, although serving many private ends, marriages institutional nature
means that it is not merely a private arrangement. It exists to shape and guide
human behavior to serve public and social purposes. And those public purposes
have always centered on uniting a man and a woman to order their sexual behavior
and maximize the welfare of their children:
Marriage exists in virtually every known human society. . . . As a
virtually universal human idea, marriage is about the reproduction of
children, families, and society. . . . [M]arriage across societies is a
publicly acknowledged and supported sexual union which creates
kinship obligations and sharing of resources between men, women,
and the children that their sexual union may produce.
DOHERTY, WHY MARRIAGE, supra, at 8-9. That has been the social, linguistic, and
legal meaning of marriage from ancient times and continues in contemporary
society. See, e.g., JAMES Q. WILSON, THE MARRIAGE PROBLEM: HOW OUR
CULTURE HAS WEAKENED OUR FAMILIES 24 (2002) ([A] lasting, socially enforced
obligation between man and woman that authorizes sexual congress and the
0049
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6

supervision of children exists and has existed [i]n every community and for as
far back in time as we can probe); G. ROBINA QUALE, A HISTORY OF MARRIAGE
SYSTEMS 2 (1988) (Marriage, as the socially recognized linking of a specific man
to a specific woman and her offspring, can be found in all societies.); SAMUEL
JOHNSON, A DICTIONARY OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE (1755) (marriage is the act
of uniting a man and woman for life); NOAH WEBSTER, AN AMERICAN
DICTIONARY OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE (1828) (same).
Indeed, until very recently, it was an accepted truth for almost everyone
who ever lived, in any society in which marriage existed, that there could be
marriages only between participants of different sex. Hernandez v. Robles, 855
N.E.2d 1, 8 (N.Y. 2006). And until a few years ago, the law universally reflected
and reinforced that historical, cultural, and linguistic understanding.
B. Because marriage is a social institution with a public purpose and
not only a vehicle for accommodating private arrangements,
altering its basic definition will necessarily alter the social benefits
it produces.
Abandoning marriages gendered definition and redefining it in non-
gendered terms would fundamentally alter its meaning and many of its the public
purposes. That necessarily follows from the very nature of marriage as a social
institution. As Professor Daniel Cere of McGill University has explained:
Definitions matter. They constitute and define authoritative public knowledge. . .
Changing the public meaning of an institution changes the institution. [The
0050
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7

change] inevitably shapes the social understandings, the practices, the goods, and
the social selves sustained and supported by that institution. Monte Neil Stewart,
Judicial Redefinition of Marriage, 21 CAN. J. FAM. L. 11, 76-77 (2004) (footnotes
omitted) (quoting Daniel Cere, The Conjugal Tradition in Postmodernity: The
Closure of Public Discourse?, Paper Presented at Re-visioning Marriage in
Postmodern Culture Conference, 4-5 (Dec. 2003)).
The current debate over marriage is frequently portrayed as a decision about
whether to expand or extend the boundaries of marriage to include same-sex
couples. This argument rests on the assumption that the basic nature of marriage
will remain largely unchanged by granting marriage status to same-sex
partnerships and that all this policy change would do is absorb same-sex
partnerships within the boundaries of marriage and extend the benefits of marriage
to a wider segment of society. Indeed, the very term same-sex marriage implies
that same-sex couples in long-term committed relationships are already a type of
marriage that should be appropriately recognized and labeled as such. But this
understanding is flawed in that it fails to recognize how recognizing same-sex
partnerships as marriages would signify a fundamental change in how marriage is
collectively understood and the primary social purposes for which it exists.
If marriage is redefined to mean the union of two people without regard to
gender, it will lose its inherent focus on children. Such a change, to be sure, would
0051
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8

afford a few more children in same-sex unions the opportunity to grow up in what
the law would deem a married household. But the law would then teach that
marriage is essentially an emotional union that has no inherent connection to
procreation and family life. ROBERT GEORGE ET AL., WHAT IS MARRIAGE? MAN
AND WOMAN: A DEFENSE 7 (2012); see United States v. Windsor, 133 S. Ct. 2675,
2715, 2718 (2013) (Alito, J., dissenting) (citing GEORGE ET AL., supra). In a formal
statement, seventy prominent academics from all relevant disciplines expressed
deep[ ] concerns about the institutional consequences of same-sex marriage for
marriage itself, concluding that [s]ame-sex marriage would further undercut the
idea that procreation is intrinsically connected to marriage and undermine the
idea that children need both a mother and a father, further weakening the societal
norm that men should take responsibility for the children they beget.
WITHERSPOON INSTITUTE, MARRIAGE AND THE PUBLIC GOOD: TEN PRINCIPLES 18-
19 (2006). Defining marriage as merely the union of two persons, in short, would
distill[] marriage down to its pure close relationship essence. Cere, supra, at 2.
Courts and jurists have likewise acknowledged the profound change in
social meaning that would follow a change in marriages basic definition:
We cannot escape the reality that the shared societal meaning of
marriagepassed down through the common law into our statutory
lawhas always been the union of a man and a woman. To alter that
meaning would render a profound change in the public consciousness
of a social institution of ancient origin.
0052
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9

Lewis v. Harris, 908 A.2d 196, 222 (N.J. 2006); see also Goodridge v. Dept of
Pub. Health, 798 N.E.2d 941, 981 (Mass. 2003) (Sosman, J., dissenting) ([I]t is
surely pertinent to the inquiry to recognize that this proffered change affects not
just a load-bearing wall of our social structure but the very cornerstone of that
structure.).
II. Recent Legal Changes to the Institution of Marriage and to Marriage-
Related Expectations Confirm that Altering the Meaning of Marriage
Would Likely Have Unintended and Negative Consequences for
Children.
The conclusion that redefining marriage will materially alter the mix of
social benefits marriage provides is supported not only by sound socio-institutional
theory, logic, and common sense but by experience with other changes to marriage
and marriage-related expectations. Of course, no one can know the precise, long-
term consequences of redefining marriage to include same-sex couples. It is
simply too soon and the ways it may affect marriage too complex to be understood
without considerably more time and extensive conceptual and empirical inquiry.
Justice Alito recently made this point:
Past changes in the understanding of marriage . . . have had far-
reaching consequences. But the process by which such consequences
come about is complex, involving the interaction of numerous factors,
and tends to occur over an extended period of time. We can expect
something similar to take place if same-sex marriage becomes widely
accepted. The long-term consequences of this change are not now
known and are unlikely to be ascertainable for some time to come.
Windsor, 133 S. Ct. at 2715 (Alito, J., dissenting); see also id. at 2715 n.5 (As
0053
000130

10

sociologists have documented, it sometimes takes decades to document the effects
of social changeslike the sharp rise in divorce rates following the advent of no-
fault divorceon children and society. (citing JUDITH S. WALLERSTEIN ET AL.,
THE UNEXPECTED LEGACY OF DIVORCE: THE 25 YEAR LANDMARK STUDY (2000)).
But cautionary lessons can be drawn from recent changes to marriage law
and marriage-related expectations. Perhaps the most relevant lesson comes from
an analysis of the impact of no-fault divorce. No-fault divorce had unintended
consequences that weakened marriage and fatherhood, and thus harmed children,
id. at 297; ALLEN M. PARKMAN, GOOD INTENTIONS GONE AWRY: NO-FAULT
DIVORCE AND THE AMERICAN FAMILY 91-150 (2000), and is a likely template for
the effects of same-sex marriage.
There are many important reasons for no-fault divorce laws. The fault-based
systems of the past undoubtedly created many problems and at times serious
injustices. Among its benefits, no-fault divorce affords adults greater autonomy,
WALLERSTEIN ET AL., supra, at 297, and facilitates the end of dangerous, Betsey
Stevenson & Justin Wolfers, Bargaining in the Shadow of the Law: Divorce Law
and Family Distress, 121 Q.J. ECON. 267, 267 (2006), unhealthy, or necrotic
unions.
Reformers were optimistic that no-fault divorce would have no detrimental
effects on children. In fact, as Barbara Dafoe Whitehead has chronicled, many
0054
000131

11

early experts provided extensive and intricate rationales for how divorce would
benefit childrendivorce for the sake of the children. BARARA DAFOE
WHITEHEAD, THE DIVORCE CULTURE: RETHINKING OUR COMMITMENTS TO
MARRIAGE AND FAMILY 81 (1996); see also id. at 84-90 (discussing predictions of
how divorce would benefit children). Empirically, however, this early optimism
has proven short-sighted. See Donald Moir, A New Class of Disadvantaged
Children, in IT TAKES TWO: THE FAMILY IN LAW AND FINANCE 63, 67-68 (Douglas
W. Allen & John Richards eds., 1999). Reformers may have reasoned that
childrens exposure to harmful parental conflict would decrease and that their
parents would readily find greater happiness that would improve parenting. But
divorce often does not end parental conflict, E. MAVIS HETHERINGTON & JOHN
KELLY, FOR BETTER OR FOR WORSE: DIVORCE RECONSIDERED 138 (2002), and the
evidence suggests that parenting quality declines with divorce, id. at 126-140.
Also, most divorces come from low-conflict marriages. PAUL R. AMATO & ALAN
BOOTH, A GENERATION AT RISK: GROWING UP IN AN ERA OF FAMILY UPHEAVAL
220 (1997); Paul R. Amato & Bryndl Hohmann-Marriott, A Comparison of High-
and Low-Distress Marriages That End in Divorce, 69 J. MARRIAGE & FAM. 261
(2007). And divorce does not lead reliably to greater personal happiness. LINDA J.
WAITE ET AL., INSTITUTE FOR AM. VALUES, DOES DIVORCE MAKE PEOPLE HAPPY?
FINDINGS FROM A STUDY OF UNHAPPY MARRIAGES 4 (2002).
0055
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12

So as scholars acquired sufficient data to adequately assess the empirical
realities of divorce, the evidence revealed decidedly less favorable outcomes, Paul
R. Amato, The Impact of Family Formation Change on the Cognitive, Social, and
Emotional Well-Being of the Next Generation, 15 FUTURE OF CHILDREN, Fall 2005,
at 75, 75. It is true that the children of chronic, high-conflict marriages actually do
better when that relationship ends, AMATO & BOOTH, supra, at 220, furthering
societal interests in childrens well-being. But this is not the typical divorce
scenario; as mentioned above, most divorces come from low-conflict marriages,
and these children do worse when their parents divorce compared to children
whose parents are able to sustain the marriage. Id. And most unhappy marriages
become happy again if given time, Linda J. Waite et al., Marital Happiness and
Marital Stability: Consequences for Psychological Well-Being, 38 SOC. SCI. RES.
201, 201 (2009) [hereinafter Waite, Marital Happiness], redounding to the further
benefit of their children.
Accordingly, the potential salutary benefits of no-fault divorce for one
subset of children and parents have been greatly diminished by the harms it
imposes on another and likely much larger subset of children and parents. A
prolonged period of greater instability is a primary contributor to these harms. For
most children (and adults), marital dissolution begins a prolonged process of
residential and relational instability, as families move and new romantic interests
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move in and out of the household and many children lose contact with their fathers.
ANDREW J. CHERLIN, THE MARRIAGE-GO-ROUND: THE STATE OF MARRIAGE AND
THE FAMILY IN AMERICA TODAY 16-24 (2009) [hereinafter CHERLIN, MARRIAGE-
GO-ROUND]. While there is a long list of caveats, and while most children are
resilient, the fact remains that, on average, children whose parents divorce are at
significantly greater risk for a host of economic, behavioral, educational, social,
and psychological problems. Amato, supra, at 75.
Moreover, the impact of no-fault divorce must also be assessed at the
institutional level, not just the personal level. Scholars have debated the specific
effects of no-fault divorce on subsequent divorce and marriage rates. It certainly
contributed to a short-term increase in divorce in the 1970s, but evidence suggests
it has also contributed modestly to increased divorce rates above its long-term
historical trends. PARKMAN, supra, at 91 (summarizing research).
Psychologically, high rates of divorce have contributed greatly to a climate of
marital fragility, which may be influencing current declines in our overall marriage
rate as well as further increases in divorce rates. Judith Wallerstein concluded
from her 25-year study of the effects of divorce that changes to family life,
including the high incidence of divorce, have created new kinds of families in
which relationships are fragile and often unreliable. WALLERSTEIN ET AL., supra,
at 297. Nearly half of all marriages now end in divorce, Matthew D. Bramlett &
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William D. Mosher, CDC, First Marriage Dissolution, Divorce and Remarriage:
United States, ADVANCE DATA NO. 323, at 5 (2001), making marriage seem like a
risky proposition for all. This discourages some from entering into marriage at all,
WALLERSTEIN ET AL., supra, at xvi, and keeps the specter of divorce ever-present
during times of marital discontent. Research also has found a contagion effect for
divorce, such that a divorce in ones social circle increases ones own risk of
divorce. Rose McDermott et al., Breaking Up Is Hard to Do, Unless Everyone
Else Is Doing It Too: Social Network Effects on Divorce in a Longitudinal Sample,
92 SOC. FORCES 491, 491 (2013).
The advent of no-fault divorce (with accompanying shorter waiting periods)
did not just make it procedurally easier to exit an unsatisfying relationship. It
changed the legal and social presumption of permanence in marriage. Intentionally
or not, no-fault divorce diminished the institutional and social expectation of
marital permanence. It changed the public meaning of marriage from a legally
binding life-long union that was expected to weather the inevitable
disappointments and challenges of romantic unions (for better or for worse), to a
union whose duration depended on the subjective choice of one spousefrom as
long as we both shall live has been replaced by as long as we both shall love.
Before no-fault divorce, our laws reinforced the ideal that divorce should not be a
ready option, although it may be a necessity. After no-fault divorce, our laws teach
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that divorce is always a ready option, even if not a necessity.
The legal change of no-fault divorce has to some extent tipped the scales of
marriage in favor of adult emotional interests and personal choice over its
institutional, child-centered elements. It weakened permanence as a fundamental
public meaning of marriage and contributed to a generational shift in attitudes and
behaviors within individual marriages in ways that harmed overall child interests.
Permanence was not just an element of the legal definition of marriage; it was a
primary mechanism by which marriage produced its benefits for children (and
adults). The expectation of permanence provides a strong incentive for parents to
work through their problems to achieve a satisfying relationship; it encourages
parents to prioritize their childrens long-term needs above their own short-term
desires; it helps to harness two adults in the rearing of their children. Weakening
the expectation of permanence in the legal and cultural understanding of marriage
unexpectedly weakened each of these child-centered factors, on average harming
the wellbeing of children.
The no-fault divorce experience serves as a warning, especially with respect
to child welfare. The definition of the institution of marriageits legal rules and
norms and the social and personal meanings and expectations that flow from
themaffects the behavior of all couples within marriage. And that in turn can
have profound effects on the overall wellbeing of children, even if the immediate
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16

rationale of the change is to benefit a specific subset of children and adults.
III. Redefining Marriage in Non-Gendered Terms Will Likely Harm the
Interests of Children by Diminishing the Relevance and Value of
Marriage and Fatherhood to Heterosexual Men.
As with early advocates for no-fault divorce, proponents of eliminating the
gendered definition and understanding of marriage confidently predict that such a
change will have no adverse consequences for heterosexual marriages or their
children. What could be the harm to marriage-related interests of allowing same-
sex couples to marry? Indeed, for the vast majority of people, the argument goes,
nothing would change: If you like your marriage, you can keep your marriage.
This recalls the optimistic early thinking about no-fault divorce. Yet some
humility is in order. It is unlikely that contemporary thinkers attempting to divine
the consequences of another major change to the legal definition of marriagethe
removal of gender as a defining pillarare more gifted at secular prophecy than
were thinkers in the early years of the no-fault divorce revolution. Indeed, in our
view, the no-fault divorce revolution provides the clearest precedent for rational
predictions about the effects of redefining marriage in genderless terms.
Just as the innovation of no-fault divorce benefited men and women in
irretrievably broken marriages, same-sex couples may benefit from being able to
marry and from the non-gendered understanding of marriage that such a
redefinition would create. And it is reasonable to assumealthough it is hardly a
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17

certaintythat some existing children in same-sex couple households would also
benefit from marriage if it brings greater stability to their family. But as the
history of no-fault divorce suggests, there are strong reasons not to fully credit
such predictions. And importantly, one has to look beyond the effects within
same-sex families alone to accurately gauge the full impacts of a de-gendered
understanding of marriage.
Benign predictions about the effects of such a redefinition, moreover, are
based on the assumption that legalizing same-sex marriage would not be a
significant change in the core definition of marriage, or that, even if it is, such a
change will have little or no adverse consequences on marriage as an institution
and on those who depend on its current definition. But in fact, the legalization of
same-sex marriage would eliminate gender as a definitional pillar of the social
institution of marriage. That would not just expand or extend marriage to another
class of relationships leaving unchanged the basic institution for its traditional
members; it would effect a fundamental change in its meaning. And changing its
meaning most likely will change behavior. To deny this likelihood is intellectually
untenableit is to deny that meaning matters to social institutions, and that
marriage matters as a social institution.
How the new, de-gendered meaning of marriage will change attitudes
toward and behaviors within marriage cannot be known with precision. But based
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on what is known about marriage as an institution and the roles it has long played
in society, we can make some highly reasonable projections. We focus here on
one in particular: that stripping marriage of its gendered meaning will likely
diminish the relevance and meaning of marriage and fatherhood to heterosexual
men, weakening their connection to marriage and to the children they father.
A. Traditional, gendered marriage is the most important way
heterosexual men create their masculine identities. Marriage
forms and channels that masculinity into the service of their
children and society. Redefining marriage to include same-sex
couples would eliminate gender as a crucial element of marriage
and thus undermine marriages power to shape and guide
masculinity for those beneficial ends.
Far from being a relic of history or a quaint custom that has outgrown its
usefulness in modern society, gender is a crucial component of not only the
definition of marriage but of how marriage produces its benefits for children and
society. In fact, it may be more crucial now than it has ever been because of
changes that have occurred in the meaning of marriage over the past five decades
that have dramatically weakened mens ties to their children and their childrens
mother. Sara McLanahan, Diverging Destinies: How Children Are Faring Under
The Second Demographic Transition, 41 DEMOGRAPHY 607, 607 (2004).
According to eminent family sociologist Steven L. Nock, marriage is a
primary means of shaping mens identities and behaviors (e.g., sexual, economic,
etc.) from self-centered in nature to child- and family-centered in orientation:
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Historically, masculinity has implied three things about a man: he
should be the father of his wifes children, he should be the provider
for his wife and children, and he should protect his family.
Accordingly, the male who refused to provide for or protect his family
was not only a bad husband, he was somehow less of a man. In
marriage, men do those things that are culturally accepted as basic
elements of adult masculinity. . . . [M]arriage changes men because it
is the venue in which adult masculinity is developed and sustained.
STEVEN L. NOCK, MARRIAGE IN MENS LIVES 4 (1998). Moreover, Nock argues
that, by calling for behaviors of a certain type [socially valuable behaviors], the
expectations of normative marriage also reinforce and maintain [generative]
masculine identities. In this sense, normative marriage is a masculinity template. .
. . In their marriages, and by their marriages, men define and display themselves as
masculine. Id. at 58-59. When we ask why marriage appears to be beneficial to
men [and women and children], one possible answer is that the institution of
marriage, at least in its traditional form, is a socially approved mechanism for the
expression of [mature] masculinity. Id. at 59.
Marriage is the most important social mechanism we have to channel young
mens adult identity into other-oriented behaviors of sacrifice, generosity, and
protection for their own children and even for all children. Marriage is a
transformative act, but especially so for men, because of how it directs mens adult
identity into service to their families and to society
But fatherhood is more socially constructed and more contextually sensitive
than motherhood, according to a landmark report to the U.S. Department of Health
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and Human Services, which was later published in a leading peer-reviewed journal.
William J. Doherty et al., Responsible Fathering: An Overview and Conceptual
Framework, 60 J. MARRIAGE & FAM. 277 (1998) [hereinafter Doherty, Responsible
Fathering]. Fatherhood is more problematic than motherhood because mens
commitment to and investment in parenting is far more difficult to achieve. Many
of the historical supports that have traditionally preserved mens involvement in
their childrens lives have been eroding for contemporary families. Historically
high rates of non-marital cohabitation, out-of-wedlock childbirth, and marital
divorce, McLanahan, supra, have dramatically altered the landscape of fathering,
leaving unprecedented numbers of children growing up with uncertain or non-
existent relationships with their fathers.
While these demographic trends have changed family life in general, they
have been particularly grim for father-child relationships, which are more sensitive
than mother-child relationships to contextual forces and supports. Doherty,
Responsible Fathering, supra, at 277. Accordingly, any signal that mens
contributions are not central to childrens well-being threatens to further decrease
the likelihood that they will channel their masculine identities into responsible
fathering. We believe the official de-gendering of marriage sends just such a
signal. A gender-free definition of marriage risks eliminating the achievement of
mature, other-centered masculinity (as opposed to immature, self-centered
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masculinity) as a primary motivation for generative fathering.
Thus, the legal recognition of same-sex marriage is not just an extension or
expansion of marriages borders to accommodate a new kind of family form; it is a
fundamental change to the meaning of marriage and fatherhood. In our opinion, to
legally proclaim that gender is not an essential component of marriage undermines
in a profound, far-reaching, and official way the very mechanism that creates many
of the benefits that marriage produces. If marriage is redefined as two committed
partners regardless of their gender, then marriages connection to mens role as
fathers is necessarily ambiguous. A genderless meaning of marriage puts at risk
the cultural sense that marriage and fatherhood are central to defining mens
identities. It invites, even demands, new ways of understanding families that make
mens unique contributions to family life and their children entirely optional. It
deepens the destructive, decades-long cultural trend of questioning the necessity
and importance of fathers as nurturers, providers, and protectors within families,
which has weakened father-child bonds and familial ties.
In sum, if men are legally defined as optional to marriage and childrearing,
then marriage will likely struggle to maintain its primacy as a means for men to
establish their masculine identity in ways that serve children best. A gender-free
definition of marriagewhere gender is officially irrelevant to its structure and
meaningwill likely have less social power to draw heterosexual men into
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22

marriage and thus less power to serve marriages vital child-welfare purposes.
And no doubt these potential effects, like many others, would be felt most keenly
and quickly by the children and families of the most disadvantaged men in our
societymen who already are struggling with a sense that they are of secondary
importance within their families and whose masculinity is already challenged by
their tenuous participation in our economic system. KATHRYN EDIN & TIMOTHY J.
NELSON, DOING THE BEST I CAN: FATHERHOOD IN THE INNER CITY 216-28 (2013).
To be sure, these risks associated with same-sex marriage may be difficult to
disentangle from negative effects from other strong social changes. After all, we
believe a de-gendered understanding of marriage is an additional force in a larger
trend that is uncoupling sexuality, marriage, and parenthood and making mens
connections to children weaker. Thus, it may be difficult to separate statistically
the potential effects of de-gendering marriage from the effects stemming from
powerful forces to which it is related, such as the sexual revolution, the divorce
revolution, and the single-parenting revolution. That these effects are intertwined
with the effects of other powerful forces, however, does not diminish their
importance or the harms they can impose on marriage.
Removing gender from the legal meaning of marriage will deepen the grand
social experiment of the past 50 years of deinstitutionalizing marriage and
fatherhood. Andrew Cherlin, The Deinstitutionalization of American Marriage, 66
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J. MARRIAGE FAM. 848, 848 (2004). And we fear its consequences will only add
to the problems this change in family life is producing.
B. Abandoning the gendered definition of marriage, thereby
weakening the connection of heterosexual men to marriage and
fatherhood, will harm the States interests in maximizing the
welfare of children.
We have demonstrated how abandoning the gendered definition of marriage
will tend to further alienate heterosexual men from marriage and fatherhood.
Although precise effects cannot be known with certainty at this early stage, that
alienation is likely to harm the States interests in securing the welfare of
childrenand specifically in maximizing the likelihood that children will be
reared by a father as well as a motherin at least four concrete and predicable
ways.
1. Fewer and shorter marriages. Redefining marriage in genderless
terms will undermine the States interest in encouraging heterosexual fathers to
marry the mothers of their children. If men no longer view marriage as central to
defining their adult identitiesif they see themselves as unnecessary to the
intrinsic meaning and purpose of marriage and thus view marriage as unrelated to
their sense of malenessthey will be less likely to marry, even when they become
fathers. Marriage, in other words, will simply be less relevant to men and thus less
attractive to them. In an already highly individualistic culture such as ours, men
will be more likely to seek to establish their adult identities through other means,
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24

such as career and financial success, personal pursuits, and leisure activities and
non-marital sexual relationships. The children of such men will be far less likely
to be raised by their fathers as well as their mothers, and as a result will suffer. See
KRISTIN ANDERSON MOORE ET AL., CHILD TRENDS, MARRIAGE FROM A CHILDS
PERSPECTIVE: HOW DOES FAMILY STRUCTURE AFFECT CHILDREN AND WHAT CAN
WE DO ABOUT IT? 6 (June 2002), http://www.childtrends.org/files/Marriage
RB602.pdf (children born and raised without a married father and mother suffer
increased risks of poor outcomes).
Redefinition will also undermine the States interest in encouraging married
heterosexual fathers to remain married for the benefit of their children despite
marital difficulties. Until the current generation, the widely held (and now
empirically supported) belief that children needed their fathers was a central tenet
in social norms encouraging men to work through marital troubles with their wives
. . . . Jason S. Carroll & David C. Dollahite, Whos My Daddy? How the
Legalization of Same-Sex Partnerships Would Further the Rise of Ambiguous
Fatherhood in America, in WHATS THE HARM?: DOES LEGALIZING SAME-SEX
MARRIAGE REALLY HARM INDIVIDUALS, FAMILIES OR SOCIETY 62 (Lynn D. Wardle
ed., 2008). This retreat from the ideal may be particularly devastating for [the
family involvement and parenting of] men who, according to research, are more
reliant on such social and relationship supports to foster their healthy involvement
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25

in family life and parenting. Id. As we noted previously, research studies have
found that most divorces come from low-conflict marriages and that the children in
these families do worse when their parents divorce compared to children whose
parents are able to sustain the marriage. AMATO & BOOTH, supra, at 220. Also,
most unhappy marriages become happy again if given time, Waite, Marital
Happiness, supra, at 201, rebounding to the further benefit of their children. A
gendered definition of marriage and parenting emphasizes that fathers are
important and unique in the lives of their children. This perspective helps men see
that their children are stakeholders in their marriages and discourages divorce.
Same-sex marriage denies that men are essential to marriage and thus that fathers
are essential in the lives of their children, which will increase the likelihood that
fewer heterosexual fathers stay married for the sake of their children.
2. Less parenting by fathers. Abandoning the gendered definition of
marriage will also diminish the likelihood of men, even married men, being
responsible fathers, or being fathers at all. Indeed, it is likely that redefining
marriage
would support a retreat from fatherhood altogether among some
American men. One aspect of a self-defined parenting ideology in
society is the option of not being a parent at all. If fathering is not a
cultural ideal, the potential exists for an increase in men who live
outside marriage and parenthood altogether. Given the data on the
negative social consequences of a large number of unmarried men
(e.g., higher rates of crime and other anti-social behavior), we should
resist movement toward a parenting culture that would suggest that
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26

men can be viewed as sperm donors whose only essential
parenting role is conception and then women can do it alone, either
as single parents or as a lesbian couple. The loss of a cultural ideal for
men to become responsible fathers could lead to increased numbers of
men and children who live in non-generative contexts.
Carroll & Dollahite, supra, at 62-63. This would harm the States interest in
encouraging the optimal mother-father, biological parenting model, resulting in
more children being raised without the benefits of a biological fatheror any
father at all.
3. More conception outside marriage rather than inside marriage. For
similar reasons, abandoning the gendered definition of marriage would make it
more likely that men will engage in sex outside marriage, and will thus produce
comparatively more children who will likely be raised by their mothers alone. For
many men, the current cultural expectation that they will be active fathers to any
children they help conceive serves as a natural deterrent to engaging in extra-
marital sex and thus risking the incursion of such an obligation. By weakening or
removing that cultural expectationi.e., by making the fathers role optional
redefining marriage in genderless terms will reduce that deterrent and, therefore,
likely increase the relative number of children conceived and born outside of
marriage, with no expectation that the father will be actively involved in rearing
them. In short, redefinition will likely increase the proportion of fatherless
0070
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27

children in two ways: by reducing the number of children born within marital
unions, and by increasing the number born outside of such unions.
Of course, current increases in non-marital childbirth rates reflect large
increases in the number of cohabiting couples having children, which is
increasingly being seen by many as another culturally viable form of family
formation. And, if young mothers and fathers were actually marrying each other a
year or two after the arrival of their first child and remaining together, non-marital
childbirth rates might not be much to worry about. But that is not whats
happening. Nearly 40 percent of cohabiting twenty-something parents who had a
baby between 2000 and 2005 split up by the time their child was fivethree times
the rate for twenty-something parents who were married when they had a
child. Cohabiting parents were also more than three times more likely than
married parents to move on to another cohabiting or marital relationship with a
new partner if their relationship did break up. KAY HYMOWITZ, ET AL., KNOT YET:
THE BENEFITS AND COSTS OF DELAYED MARRIAGE IN AMERICA (2013), available at
http://nationalmarriageproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/KnotYet-
FinalForWeb.pdf. Research paints a sobering picture of the effect these
disruptions have. Children suffer emotionally, academically, and financially when
they experience this type of relationship carousel. See CHERLIN, MARRIAGE-GO-
ROUND, supra; Amato, supra.
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28

4. Less self-sacrificing by fathers. Finally, further alienating men from
marriage and fatherhood by redefining it to make their presence unnecessary would
likely diminish self-sacrificing behavior by men for their wives and children. If, as
we show above, a genderless definition of marriage undermines marriage and
fatherhood as a primary vehicle for adult identity-creation, then men will be less
likely to sacrifice their self-interests for the child-centric interests inherent in
traditional male-female marriage and fatherhood. When faced with choices
regarding career, housing and neighborhood decisions, long-term saving, child
educational needs, personal recreational activities, activities with friends, sexual
fidelity to spouse, alcohol and drug use, and a host of other decisions affecting the
welfare of their children, fathers will be more likely to choose their own selfish
interests over those of their wives and children. As child interests take a back seat,
the welfare of children is likely to suffer in a host of ways.
CONCLUSION
This Court should not make the mistake of believing that redefining
marriage to include same-sex couples is merely a matter of extending to such
couples the benefits of marriage. Social institutions are constituted by legal and
social meanings that shape and guide human behavior. Marriage, foremost among
our social institutions, has profound connections with child welfare and adult male
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29

identity. Indeed, both are integrally related. We believe marriage cannot simply
be redefined in non-gendered terms without significant consequences for children.
Naturally, the risks associated with legalizing same-sex marriage may prove
difficult to statistically disentangle from the negative effects of other strong social
changes. In our view, a de-gendered understanding of marriage is an additional
force in a larger trend that is uncoupling sexuality, marriage, and parenthood and
making mens connections to children weaker. Thus, it may be difficult to
statistically separate the potential effects of de-gendering marriage from effects
stemming from powerful forces to which it is related: the sexual revolution, the
divorce revolution, and the single-parenting revolution. But the fact that de-
gendering effects are intertwined with the effects of other powerful forces does not
diminish their importance.
Much as no-fault divorce changed the presumed permanence of marriage,
creating unexpectedly adverse consequences for children, abandoning the gendered
definition of marriage threatens to further destabilize marriage as a key definer and
shaper of mature male identity. This, in turn, is likely to further alienate men from
marriage, resulting in harm to marriages vital role in advancing child welfare
and particularly in maximizing the likelihood that children, as much as possible,
will be reared by a father as well as a mother. While the precise effects of
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30

redefining marriage cannot be known with statistical certainty, these risks are real
and cannot be ignored.
For these reasons, we urge the Court to reject arguments advocating the
judicial redefinition of marriage and reverse the district courts below.

Dated: February 10, 2014
s/ Lynn D. Wardle
Room 518
Provo, UT 84602
Telephone: (801) 422-2617
wardlel@law.byu.edu

Attorney for Professors Hawkins and
Carroll

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31

CERTIFICATE OF COMPLIANCE WITH RULE 32(a)
Certificate of Compliance With Type-Volume Limitation,
Typeface Requirements, and Type Style Requirements.

This brief complies with the type-volume limitation of Fed. R. App. P.
32(a)(7)(B) because this brief contains 6,874 words, excluding parts of the brief
exempted by Fed. R. App. P. 32(a)(7)(B)(iii).
This brief complies with the typeface requirements of Fed. R. Civ. P.
32(a)(5) and the type style requirements of Fed. R. App. P. 32(a)(6) because this
brief has been prepared in a proportionally spaced typeface using Word 2007 in
14-point Times New Roman.
s/ Lynn D. Wardle
Room 518
Provo, UT 84602
Telephone: (801) 422-2617
wardlel@law.byu.edu
0075
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32

I hereby certify that on February 10, 2014, I electronically filed the
foregoing with the Clerk of the Court for the United States Court of Appeals for
the Tenth Circuit by using the appellate CM/ECF system, which will send
notification of such filing to the following:
Case No. 13-4178:

David C. Codell
dcodell@nclrights.org

Kathryn Kendell
kkendell@nclrights.org

Shannon Price Minter
SMinter@nclrights.org

James E. Magleby
magleby@mgpclaw.com

Jennifer Fraser Parrish
parrish@mgpclaw.com

Peggy Ann Tomsic
tomsic@mgpclaw.com

Attorneys for Plaintiffs-Appellees

John J. Bursch
jbursch@wnj.com

Philip S. Lott
phillott@utah.gov

Stanford E. Purser
spurser@utah.gov

Gene C. Schaerr
gschaerr@gmail.com

Monte Neil Stewart
stewart@stm-law.com

Attorneys for Defendants-Appellants

Ralph E. Chamness
rchamness@slco.org

Darcy Marie Goddard
dgoddard@slco.org

Attorneys for Defendant Swensen

0076
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33

Case Nos. 14-5003, 14-5006:
Don Gardner Holladay
dholladay@holladaychilton.com

James Edward Warner, III
jwarner@holladaychilton.com

Joseph Thai
thai@post.harvard.edu

Attorneys for Plaintiffs-Appellees/
Cross-Appellant

W. Scott Simpson
scott.simpson@usdoj.gov

Attorney for Defendant
Byron Jeffords Babione
bbabione@alliancedefendingfreedom.org

James Andrew Campbell
jcampbell@alliancedefendingfreedom.org

David Austin Robert Nimocks
animocks@alliancedefendingfreedom.org

John David Luton
jluton@tulsacounty.org

Attorneys for Defendant-Appellant/
Cross-Appellee

Kerry W. Kircher
kerry.kircher@mail.house.gov

Attorney for Defendant-Intervenor

s/ Lynn D. Wardle
Room 518
Provo, UT 84602
Telephone: (801) 422-2617
wardlel@law.byu.edu
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34

CERTIFICATE OF DIGITAL SUBMISSION
I hereby certify that with respect to the foregoing:
(1) all required privacy redactions have been made per 10th Cir. R.
25.5;
(2) if required to file additional hard copies, the ECF submission is an
exact copy of those documents;
(3) the digital submissions have been scanned for viruses with the
most recent version of a commercial virus scanning program, Sophos,
Version 10.3, last updated on February 10, 2014, and according to the
program are free of viruses.
s/ Lynn D. Wardle
Room 518
Provo, UT 84602
Telephone: (801) 422-2617
wardlel@law.byu.edu

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TAB 3
000156
A Report from the Council on Family Law
Dan Cere, Principal Investigator
The Future of Family Law
Law and the Marriage Crisis in
North America
Institute for American Values
Institute for Marriage and Public Policy
Institute for the Study of Marriage, Law and Culture
0079
000157
On the cover: Rejected Copy by Larry Rivers Estate
of Larry Rivers/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY.
Layout by Josephine Tramontano.
2005, Institute for American Values. No reproduc-
tion of the materials contained herein is permitted
without the written permission of the Institute for
American Values.
ISBN #978-1-931764-08-5
For more information or additional copies, contact:
1841 Broadway, Suite 211
New York, NY 10023
Tel: (212) 246-3942
Fax: (212) 541-6665
Email: info@americanvalues.org
Web: www.americanvalues.org
The Council on Family Law, chaired by Mary Ann Glendon of Harvard Law School,
is an interdisciplinary group of scholars and leaders who have come together to
analyze the purposes and current directions of family law in Canada and the United
States and to make recommendations for the future. The Council is independent and
nonpartisan. It is jointly sponsored by the Institute for American Values, the Institute
for Marriage and Public Policy, and the Institute for the Study of Marriage, Law and
Culture. This Reports Principal Investigator, Dan Cere, teaches ethics at McGill
University in Montreal and directs the Institute for the Study of Marriage, Law and
Culture.
The Council is grateful to the Achelis and Bodman Foundations, the William H.
Donner Foundation, the JM Foundation, the Maclellan Foundation, Arthur and Joann
Rasmussen, and the William E. Simon Foundation for their generous financial support.
The research, editorial, and administrative contributions of Sara Butler and Elizabeth
Marquardt are also deeply appreciated.
0080
000158
Table of Contents
Members of the Council on Family Law...............................................................................
Executive Summary...............................................................................................................
Introduction: The Marriage and Family Law Crisis...............................................................
How Does Family Law Matter?..................................................................................
The Veil of Incrementalism........................................................................................
Marriage Law in the New World of Close Relationships...................................................
Marriage: The Conjugal View....................................................................................
Marriage: The Close Relationship Model..................................................................
Two Case Studies.......................................................................................................
The American Law Institute Report: Principles of the Law of Family Dissolution......
Beyond Conjugality: The View from Canada............................................................
Critiquing these Reports: Whats Left Out?................................................................
The Future of Family Law: Four Possible Directions............................................................
1. Equivalence Between Cohabitation and Marriage................................................
2. Redefining Marriage as a Couple-Centered Bond.................................................
3. Disestablishment, or the Separation of Marriage and State..................................
4. Why Just Two?........................................................................................................
Parenthood: The Next Legal Frontier....................................................................................
Fragmenting Parenthood...........................................................................................
Conclusion.............................................................................................................................
Recommendations.................................................................................................................
Endnotes................................................................................................................................
4
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Members of the Council on Family Law
Iain T. Benson, Centre for Cultural Renewal
David Blankenhorn, Institute for American Values
Margaret Brinig, University of Iowa College of Law
Don S. Browning, University of Chicago Divinity School, Emeritus
Ernesto Caparros, University of Ottawa Faculty of Law, Emeritus
Dan Cere, McGill University (Principal Investigator)
Maura D. Corrigan, Chief Justice, Michigan Supreme Court
John Crouch, Americans for Divorce Reform
Maggie Gallagher, Institute for Marriage and Public Policy
Mary Ann Glendon, Harvard Law School (Council Chair)
Christopher B. Gray, Concordia University
Thomas C. Kohler, Boston College Law School
John E. Murray, Jr., Duquesne University School of Law
David Novak, University of Toronto
David Popenoe, Rutgers University, National Marriage Project
T. Peter Pound, Centre for Cultural Renewal
Leah Ward Sears, Presiding Justice, Supreme Court of Georgia
Carl E. Schneider, University of Michigan Law School
Katherine Shaw Spaht, Louisiana State University Law Center
Lynn D. Wardle, Brigham Young University Law School
Robin Fretwell Wilson, University of Maryland School of Law
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FAMILY LAW IS on the front pages of our newspapers and is implicated in
some of our deepest cultural conflicts, from no-fault divorce, to the status of
cohabitation to, most recently, same-sex marriage.
At their core, these ongoing disputes are fueled by competing visions of
marriage and of the role of the state in making family law.
This report on the current state of family law holds up for clear public
view the underlying, dramatically different models of marriage that are
contributing to deep public clashes over the law of marriage, cohabitation,
and parenthood. Obtaining conceptual clarity about marriage and its
meanings will allow family law experts, scholars from other disciplines,
judges, legislators, and the general public to make more informed choices
among competing legal proposals now being advanced in the United States
and Canada.
Two Recent Reports
Recently two highly influential reports have been published by legal
scholars, one in the United States and one in Canada. Both reports are
deeply influenced by a new vision of marriage. Both reports have potentially
profound and far-reaching consequences for social attitudes and practices
concerning marriage, parenthood, and children.
The first report is the Principles of the Law of Family Dissolution, published
in 2002 by the American Law Institute (ALI). This report moves away from
the idea that there can be public standards guiding marriage and parenthood.
Instead, it says that the central purpose of family law should be to protect
and promote family diversity. The report sidelines what it calls traditional
marriage, viewing marriage as merely one of many possible and equally
valid family forms. In the process the report denies the central place of
biological parenthood in family law and focuses instead on the newer idea
of functional parenthood.
The second report is Beyond Conjugality: Recognizing and Supporting
Close Personal Adult Relationships, published in 2001 by the Law Commission
The Future of Family Law
Law and the Marriage Crisis in North America
Executive Summary
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of Canada. This report proposes a fundamental reconstitution of contemporary
family law. It argues that the law must go beyond conjugality and focus on the
substance of relationships rather than giving legal recognition to any specific
arrangements such as marriage. It recommends that the traditional conjugal idea of
marriage be put on a level playing field with all other kinds of relationships. It also
argues for redefinition of marriage and its extension to same-sex couples.
The Current Directions of Family Law
These recent reports indicate that family law is headed in one or more of at least
four troubling directions. Some of these changes have already been implemented
in some jurisdictions in the United States and Canada.
Equivalence Between Cohabitation and Marriage
Many now argue that marriage and cohabitation should be treated equally under
the law. This approach denies that some couples might intentionally choose not
to marry. Most dramatically, it would have the law treat two institutions similarly
when social science data show that, when it comes to the well-being of children,
cohabitation is on average much less stable and safe.
Redefining Marriage as a Couple-Centered Bond
In order to accommodate same-sex couples, this approach redefines marriage
as a gender-neutral union of two persons. By doing so it neutralizes the laws
ability to say that children need their mothers and fathers and reifies a new
conception of marriage that is centered on the couple rather than children.
Disestablishment, or the Separation of Marriage and State
Given serious and seemingly irresolvable cultural and political clashes between
competing visions of marriage, increasing numbers of advocates on the left and
the right are calling for disestablishment of marriage, or getting the state out of
the marriage business. This approach denies the states legitimate and serious
interest in marriage as our most important child-protecting social institution and
as an institution that helps protect and sustain liberal democracy.
Why Just Two?
The gendered definition of marriage has already met serious challenges (and
been defeated) in some U.S. and Canadian courts. Challenges to the two-person
definition of marriage are only a matter of time. Legal scholars are now publishing
articles that make this case.
1.
2.
3.
4.
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Children: The Missing Piece
What is missing in new proposals in family law is any real understanding of the
central role of marriage as a social institution in protecting the well-being of children.
Marriage organizes and helps to secure the basic birthright of children, when
possible, to know and be raised by their own mother and father. It attempts to forge
a strong connection between men and women and the children resulting from their
bonds. These new marriage proposals call for a fundamental reevaluation of the
relationships between children and their parents. These new reports make clear that
eliminating the notion of biology as the basis of parenthood, and allowing parenthood
to fragment into its plural and varied forms, is necessary if courts are to make family
diversity a legal and cultural reality.
The vision outlined in these two reports frees adults to live as they choose. But
social science data strongly suggest that not all adult constructions of parenthood
are equally child-friendly. Further fragmentation of parenthood means further
fragmented lives for a new generation of children who will be jostled around by
increasingly complex adult claims. This vision also requires more systematic intrusion
into the family and adjudication of its internal life by the state and its courts.
Clashing Models of Marriage
What are the competing models of marriage that are at odds in todays family
law debates?
The Conjugal View
The model of marriage broadly reflected in law and culture until quite recently
can be called the conjugal model. Marriage in this view is a sexual union of
husband and wife who promise each other sexual fidelity, mutual caretaking,
and the joint parenting of any children they may have. Conjugal marriage is
fundamentally child-centered. Theorists of liberal democracy from John Locke
to John Rawls have underlined the important, generative work that conjugal
marriage does for society. This normative model of marriage is under attack in
these recent reports.
The Close Relationship Model
This competing vision of marriage has emerged in recent decades. In it, marriage
is a private relationship between two people created primarily to satisfy the
needs of adults. If children arise from the union, so be it, but marriage and
children are not seen as intrinsically connected.
1.
2.
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This second and newer vision has been fueled by a new discipline called close
relationship theory. For close relationship theorists, marriage is simply one kind of
close personal relationship. The structures of the discipline tend to strip marriage
of the features that reflect its importance as a social institution. Marriage is examined
primarily as a relationship created by the couple for the satisfaction of the two
individuals who enter into it.
This view of marriage radically sidelines the main feature that makes marriage
unique and important as a social institution that is, the attempt to bridge sex
difference and struggle with the generative power of opposite-sex unions, including
the reality that children often arise (intentionally and not) from heterosexual unions.
Todays close relationship theorists argue that conjugal marriage can no longer
serve as a useful focus for scholarly research on closely bonded human relationships.
They argue that the traditional marriage-and-family paradigm imposes an ethnocentric
benchmark or ideal. This paradigm, they say, does not speak to the experience
of racial minorities, women, single parents, divorced and remarried persons, gays
and lesbians, and others. Their perspective is finding a new and powerful voice in
todays family law proposals.
Conclusion
Family law today appears to be embracing a big new idea. The idea is that
marriage is only a close personal relationship between adults, and no longer a pro-
child social institution. This idea is fundamentally flawed. It will hurt children and
weaken our civil society. For this reason, there is an urgent need for those outside
the legal discipline to understand and critique the new understandings of marriage
and family life that are driving current legal trends. Marriage and family are too
important as institutions, affecting too many people, for basic decisions about their
legal underpinnings to remain the province of legal experts alone.
If the proposed changes are put in place, there are likely to be important negative
impacts on the lives of everyday people. A close relationships culture fails to
acknowledge fundamental facets of human life: the fact of sexual difference; the
enormous tide of heterosexual desire in human life; the procreativity of male-female
bonding; the unique social ecology of parenting which offers children bonds with
their biological parents; and the rich genealogical nature of family ties and the web
of intergenerational supports for family members that they provide.
These core dimensions of conjugal life are not small issues. Yet at this crucial
moment for marriage and parenthood in North America, there is no serious intel-
lectual platform from which to launch a meaningful discussion about these elemental
features of human existence. This report on the state of family law seeks to open
that debate.
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Introduction: The Marriage and Family Law Crisis
FAMILY LAW IS HOT. It is on the front pages of our newspapers and is implicated in
some of our deepest cultural conflicts, from no-fault divorce to the status of
cohabitation to, most recently, same-sex marriage.
Family law now operates in a global context with legal
scholars in one nation often influencing their peers elsewhere.
Because marriage and the family are pervasive social institutions,
touching the lives of all citizens, changes in family law can
generate unusually intense social discomfort. John Dewar, the
dean of law at Griffith University in Australia, puts it this way:
There are few areas of law that generate as much controversy
and disagreement as family law. Its something potentially that
affects us all, in which we all feel we have a stake and of which
some of us have had direct experience. Indeed, there are probably few areas of law
that affect so many people so directly in their everyday lives.
1
Legal theory about the family, he notes, has become a confused and tangled
terrain of conflicting ideas and tendencies.
2
The purpose of this report is to bring conceptual clarity into the confused and
tangled terrain of the family law debate. Here is our central thesis: the ongoing
disputes in family law are centrally about competing visions of marriage. While
at the far ends of a conceptual divide lie a bewildering variety of specific new
proposals (same-sex marriage, covenant marriage, de facto parenting, cohabitation,
constitutional amendments to define marriage, and more) these disputes begin with
and are fueled by dramatically different concepts of marriage and of the role of the
state in making family law.
The competing visions of marriage and family contained in family law are
important. Because marriage is a public, legal status, the states vision of marriage
has unusual social power. In regulating marriage, the state not only defines the
rights of individuals and couples but also can and does command other institutions
of civil society (corporations, faith communities, and even private individuals) to
treat married couples differently because they are married.
Yet the meanings of marriage at stake in these debates are often not very clear.
In part, as we shall see, this lack of clarity stems from the fact that the laws
characteristic method, incrementalism, tends to obscure ultimate consequences. In
part it is because the social meanings of the word marriage, and the underlying
reality it denotes, are in play in our society as they have seldom been before. The
competing visions of marriage at the heart of the family law debate are deeply
incompatible the adoption of one model of marriage moves us in a very different
The ongoing disputes in
family law are centrally
about competing visions
of marriage.
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direction than its alternative. But unless the conceptual issues at stake are clarified,
this problem is not obvious to most observers, in part because most of us in North
America today have been influenced in our marriage dreams by both of these
visions of marriage.
Further, the stakes in the family law debates have been left unclear because
some champions of this new marriage model appear to be reluctant for tactical
reasons to explain the ultimate consequences of adopting their proposals, while
many advocates of our marriage traditions have been less than articulate about what
it is they seek to uphold or why the legal understanding of marriage matters.
Rights talk can obscure as much as it reveals. In particular, the portrayal of
certain legal reforms as advancing state neutrality between the moral positions of
individuals, or as increasing individual liberty in a straightforward way, obscures the
reality of what is being proposed: a new substantive model of marriage endorsed
and promoted by law. The shift to unilateral divorce, for example, does not merely
make the state more neutral regarding divorce, nor does it merely increase indi-
vidual liberty. Unilateral divorce, as a legal institution, increases the freedom of
individuals to divorce by reducing their capacity to make enforceable marriage
contracts with each other; it shifts legal power in divorce negotiations from the
spouse who clings to the marriage vow to the spouse who wishes to end it. Some
of us may view changes such as unilateral divorce as necessary accommodations to
social change. Some of us may view them negatively, and as ripe for reform. But we
all must recognize that such changes are not neutral or merely freedom-enhancing.
They are powerful interventions by government into a key social institution and
thus worthy of sustained and intelligent public debate.
A major goal of this essay is to hold up for clear public view these underlying,
competing models of marriage that are contributing to deep public clashes over the
law of marriage, cohabitation, and parenthood. We hope that obtaining conceptual
clarity about marriage and its meanings will allow family law experts, scholars,
judges, legislators, and the general public to make more informed choices among
competing legal proposals.
How Does Family Law Matter?
Laws do more than distribute rights, responsibilities, and punishments. Laws
help to shape the public meanings of important institutions, including marriage
and family. The best interdisciplinary studies of institutions conclude that social
institutions are shaped and constituted by their shared public meanings. According
to Nobel Prize winner Douglass North, institutions perform three unique tasks. They
establish public norms or rules of the game that frame a particular domain of
human life. They broadcast these shared meanings to society. Finally, they shape
social conduct and relationships through these authoritative norms.
3
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The courts today have become major sites for reconstructing the public meanings
of family, marriage, permanence, and parenthood. Legal theorists of diverse ideo-
logical stances acknowledge the impact of family law on marriage and family life.
Harry Krause argues that the law has deeply affected (and helped to affect) family
behavior over time. Moreover, is it not the role of law to help shape and channel our
future in this most important playground of human existence?
4
Another legal scholar argues: There is no part of modern
life to which law does not extend. The rule of law shapes our
experience of meaning everywhere and at all times. It is not
alone in shaping meaning, but it is rarely absent.
5
The Chief
Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada concurs: The rule of
law exerts an authoritative claim upon all aspects of selfhood
and experience in a liberal democratic society. Some such
claims are made by the institutional structures of the law.
Others are ancillary claims arising from a diffused ethos of legal
rule that influences local, community, and familial structures.
6
William Eskridge, a Yale law professor and a prominent architect of same-sex
marriage strategy, argues that law cannot liberalize unless public opinion moves,
but public attitudes can be influenced by changes in the law.
7
Feminist legal theorist
Martha Fineman, who urges the abolition of marriage as a legal category, says that
institutions such as the family are actually created and constituted as coherent
institutions through law. Their very existence as objects of state regulatory concern
comes into being through law. State policies can profoundly affect the form and
functioning of the family.
8
The Veil of Incrementalism
Yet to the layperson, the family law debate is often highly confusing, in part
because of the laws characteristic language and method of incrementalism. Legal
theorists in the ivory tower may tout broad, sweeping changes, but quite often these
changes are enacted by courts incrementally, through individual cases and the
reshaping of discreet legal categories. There is nothing nefarious or inappropriate
about incrementalism as a legal method. But in the current family law context, this
legal process can obscure deep and lasting changes that end up shaping peoples
everyday lives in unexpected ways.
Make no mistake: incremental changes do not mean unimportant changes.
William Eskridge explains the tactical advantages of advocating only incremental
changes to the law. Though he supports same-sex marriage, for strategic reasons,
he advises against any direct push for legal redefinition of marriage.
9
He writes that
a main benefit of incrementalism is that it leaves resulting changes largely immune
from direct public criticism and debate.
10
He points to Holland and other European
Family law is
reconstructing the public
meanings of marriage and
parenthood.
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countries which, in a fairly short amount of time, have ushered in a variety of state-
sanctioned relationships that now compete with marriage. According to Eskridge,
these equality practices help to denormalize marriage.
11
Marriage and family are too important as social institutions, affecting too many
people, especially children, for basic decisions about their legal underpinnings to
remain the private province of legal experts alone. There is an urgent need for the
involvement of disciplines besides the law to identify, understand, and critique the
legal theories of marriage and family life that are helping to shape new trends.
Marriage Law in the New World of Close Relationships
WHAT ARE THE models of marriage now in play in family law in North America?
Marriage: The Conjugal View
The model of marriage broadly reflected in law and culture until quite recently
can be called the conjugal model. Marriage in this view is a sexual union of husband
and wife, who promise each other sexual fidelity, mutual caretaking, and the joint
parenting of any children they may have. In essence, conjugality refers to the sex-
bridging, procreative dimension of marriage.
Conjugal marriage has several characteristics. First, it is inherently normative.
Conjugal marriage cannot celebrate an infinite array of sexual or intimate choices
as equally desirable or valid. Instead, its very purpose lies in channeling the erotic
and interpersonal impulses between men and women in a particular direction: one
in which men and women commit to each other and to the children that their sexual
unions commonly (and even at times unexpectedly) produce.
As an institution, conjugal marriage addresses the social problem that men and
women are sexually attracted to each other and that, without any outside guidance
or social norms, these intense attractions can cause immense personal and social
damage. This mutual attraction is inherently linked to the reproductive labor that
is essential to the intergenerational life of all societies, including modern liberal
societies.
12
The default position for men and women attracted to the opposite sex,
absent strong social norms, is too many children born without fathers, too many
men abandoning the mothers of their children, and too many women left alone to
care for their offspring. If law and culture choose to do nothing about sexual
attraction between men and women, the passive, unregulated heterosexual reality
is multiple failed relationships and millions of fatherless children.
Marriage, like the economy, is one of the basic institutions of civil society. It
provides an evolving form of life that helps men and women negotiate the sex
divide, forge an intimate community of life, and provide a stable social setting for
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their children. The seminal theorists of liberal democracy from John Locke to John
Rawls have always underlined the generative work of this conjugal form of life.
John Lockes The Second Treatise on Government underlines the core social purpose
of marriage for a liberal polity.
13
John Rawls argues that the family as a basic
institution is geared to the orderly production and reproduction of society and of
its culture from one generation to the next.
14
From this basic human reality arises the need for the wider
society to direct immense energy into helping manage the
reality of individual mens and womens desire for sex and
intimacy in ways that ultimately protect them, their children,
and the interests of the community. As a highly visible social
and legal institution, marriage provides both the structure and
the hope men and women need, so that such a resolution of
male and female sexual interests is not only possible but attainable. As we shall see,
this normative function of marriage is the one that is most directly under attack by
the authors of the American Law Institute report.
Another characteristic of conjugal marriage is that it is fundamentally child-
centered, focused beyond the couple towards the next generation. Not every married
couple has or wants children. But at its core marriage has always had something to
do with societies recognition of the fundamental importance of the sexual ecology
of human life: humanity is male and female, men and women often have sex,
babies often result, and those babies, on average, seem to do better when their
mother and father cooperate in their care. Conjugal marriage attempts to sustain
enduring bonds between women and men in order to give a baby its mother and
father, to bond them to one another and to the baby.
15
A great deal of social science evidence now confirms the traditional understanding
of the law. Children do better, on average, when raised by their own mother and
father in a harmonious relationship. A Child Trends research brief summed up the
new scholarly consensus:
Research clearly demonstrates that family structure matters for children, and the
family structure that helps the most is a family headed by two biological parents in
a low-conflict marriage. Children in single-parent families, children born to unmarried
mothers, and children in stepfamilies or cohabiting relationships face higher risks
of poor outcomes.... There is thus value for children in promoting strong, stable
marriages between biological parents.
16
Of course, marriage always has and still does many other important things. It
protects and supports the man and woman as they grow older and provides sexual
pleasure and comfort even when children do not result. It also helps to organize
property, inheritance, and more. But the core insight fueling the conjugal view of
Conjugal marriage is
fundamentally
child-centered.
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marriage is this one: if human beings did not reproduce sexually, creating human
infants with their long period of dependency, marriage would not be the virtually
universal human social institution that it is.
17
Marriage: The Close Relationship Model
In recent decades, however, a competing vision of marriage has emerged. In this
new view, marriage is seen primarily as a private relationship between two people,
the primary purpose of which is to satisfy the adults who enter it. Marriage is about
the couple. If children arise from the union, that may be nice, but marriage and
children are not really connected.
18
In a moment we shall see how the close relationship model has begun to dom-
inate family law. To understand the features of this new model of marriage most
clearly, the place to start is with its contemporary theoreticians, who are primarily
psychologists and, to a lesser extent, sociologists.
As a discipline, close relationship theory emerged prominently in the 1980s,
spearheaded by a diverse group of scholars and academic associations, such as the
International Society for the Study of Personal Relationships and the International
Network on Personal Relationships. This new disciplinary framework now has two
major journals The Journal of Social and Personal Relationships (1984-) and
Personal Relationships (1994-) as well as a number of major publication series,
including the Sage Series on Close Relationships and Advances in Personal
Relationships.
19
Close relationship theory focuses primarily on the nature of relationships
between two people (or what is called dyadic relationships). For close relationship
theorists, marriage becomes a subcategory of this core concept; marriage is simply
one kind of close personal relationship. The structures of the discipline tend to strip
marriage of the features that reflect its status and importance as a social institution.
Marriage is examined primarily as a relationship created by the couple for the
satisfaction of the two individuals who are in it.
Of course close relationship theorists are not operating in a vacuum. Close
relationship theory reflects real trends in society that are making marriage less
connected to its classic purposes as a social institution. For example, while marriage
remains a wealth-generating institution,
20
other institutions of society (such as the
market and government) have taken over large parts of the economic and social
insurance functions marriage once had. While marriage remains a socially preferred
context for sexual intercourse, the sexual revolution (including the growth in social
acceptance for couples living together) has reduced the stigma for those who have
sex outside of marriage. While marriage continues to have considerable connection
to children in the public mind, large increases in unmarried childbearing have
increased social acceptance of unwed parents and their children. In addition, high
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rates of divorce and the personal longings for a soul mate are changing the way
young people think about marriage.
21
Anthony Giddens, probably Britains most distinguished sociologist, writes that
the close relationships approach to human sociality is reconfiguring popular as well
as academic culture, bringing about a new grammar of intimacy. He believes that
we are moving from a marriage culture to a culture that celebrates
pure relationship.
22
A pure relationship is one that has been
stripped of any goal beyond the intrinsic emotional, psycho-
logical, or sexual satisfaction which the relationship currently
brings to the individuals involved.
As an academic field, close relationship theory insists on
bringing a common theoretical and methodological approach
to the study of all sexually based primary relationships.
23
Similar values and processes are said to govern the initiation,
maintenance, and dissolution dynamics of all close relationships. The existence (or
lack) of a legally recognized bond such as marriage is a secondary consideration.
In one sense, there is nothing particularly novel about the idea of marriage as a
close personal relationship. Classical Western perspectives on marriage have always
stressed that marriage must be grounded in committed friendship. Close relationship
theory can help us to understand this dimension of marriage.
But it is also clear that once marriage is viewed as just another dyadic relationship,
the distinctive features grounding the conjugal understanding of marriage are simply
edited out of the discourse.
24
That which is distinctive about marriage is not allowed
to enter the discussion.
25
What gets left out? The answer is the main feature that makes marriage unique
the attempt to bridge sex difference and the struggle with the generative power
of opposite-sex unions. Conjugal marriage attempts to confront the fact that hetero-
sexual sex acts can and often do produce children. This reality raises a set of concerns
of critical importance to children, couples, and the species concerns that close
relationship theory is not prepared to take on.
Instead, many close relationship theorists maintain that what was once called
the nuclear conjugal family can no longer serve as a useful focus for research on
closely bonded human relationships.
26
They argue that viewing sexual and procreative
life through the lens of conjugal marriage constitutes an external, ideological
perspective that distorts objective analysis. The traditional marriage-and-family
paradigm imposes an ethnocentric benchmark or ideal. This paradigm, they say,
does not speak to the experience of racial minorities, women, single parents,
divorced and remarried persons, gays and lesbians, and others.
27
In the late 1980s, leading close relationship theorists recommended that legal
theorists expand their thinking about sexually bonded intimacy beyond the confines
of the family to include all close relationships.
28
And so, as we shall see, they have.
In the new view, marriage
is to satisfy adult needs.
Marriage and children
are not connected.
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Two Case Studies: The American Law Institutes Principles of the Law of
Family Dissolution and the Law Commission of Canadas Beyond Conjugality
The clearest evidence of the intellectual dominance of the close relationship
model of marriage in family law discourse can be found in two highly influential
law reports, published within a short time of each other, one in the United States
and one in Canada.
29
The first report is the Principles of the Law of Family Dissolution, published in
2002 by the American Law Institute (ALI). The ALI usually publishes what it calls
restatements of the law. These influential reports are used by academics, attorneys,
and judges to help make sense of laws that may not have been decided yet by a
states own case law, and courts will sometimes adopt their restatements. It is rare
for the ALI to take on family law and rarer still for them to suggest changes to
existing law as they have in the Principles of the Law of Family Dissolution
rather than simply restating the law.
30
The second report is Beyond Conjugality: Recognizing and Supporting Close
Personal Adult Relationships, published in 2001 by the influential Law Commission
of Canada. The Law Commission of Canada is appointed by the Canadian federal
government as an independent federal law reform agency that advises Parliament
on how to improve and modernize Canadas laws.
Both reports come from legal organizations that have shaped the development
of laws in their respective nations in the past. These two new reports are a good
vantage point from which to analyze and view the direction of conventional legal
thought on marriage and family law in North America.
We have no reason to suppose that the authors of these reports have necessarily
read the work of leading close relationship theorists. But the underlying concepts
of marriage becoming predominant in the culture and developed most clearly by
close relationship theorists exert a powerful influence on these leading theorists of
family law. Both of these reports push family law in profoundly new directions
whose purposes and aims are sometimes far removed from (and often contrary to)
family laws former public purposes that included protecting marriage and the best
interests of children.
The American Law Institute Report: Principles of the Law of Family Dissolution
The ALI report seeks to change existing family law in a number of key areas.
First, the report moves away from the notion of public standards for marriage and
parenthood. Instead, it emphasizes individualized decision-making and voluntary
adult arrangements through prenuptial and marital agreements, parenting plans,
and separation agreements.
31
Public standards of the sort that once influenced family
law are, in this report, subject to relentless critique for their failure to promote
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diversity and their tendency to impose social stereotypes.
32
Such standards for
familial life run counter to the commitment this society avows towards family
diversity.
33
The authors warn that even when a determinate standard conforms to
broadly held views about what is good for children, it can intrude just as inde-
terminate standards do on matters concerning a childs upbringing that society
generally leaves up to parents themselves, and standardize
child-rearing arrangements in a way that unnecessarily curtails
diversity and cultural pluralism.
34
Professor Katherine Bartlett, one of the reports three main
drafters (or reporters), said that the passion that drives her
work is
the value I place on family diversity and on the freedom of indi-
viduals to choose from a variety of family forms. This same value
leads me to be generally opposed to efforts to standardize families into a certain
type of nuclear family because a majority may believe this is the best kind of family
or because it is the most deeply rooted ideologically in our traditions.
35
Instead, Bartlett wants to embrace equally all forms of intimate relationships.
She and her peers aim to de-privilege marriage by treating cohabiting and other kinds
of relationships just like marriage. In this view, protection of diverse constructions of
intimacy becomes the central public task of family law.
Second, the ALI proposes to sideline what it calls traditional marriage, resituating
marriage as merely one of many possible and equally valid family forms, along with
cohabiting couples, singles, gay and lesbian families, and others.
36
The report presses
toward full legal marriage rights for same-sex couples by seeking to place same-sex
couples, cohabiters, and married people all on the same level playing field when they
dissolve their unions. The only sustained discussion of the characteristics of conju-
gality occurs in the chapter devoted to domestic partnerships. The report pushes aside
the legal formality of marriage in order to refocus family law on relationships that
may be indistinguishable from marriage.
37
The social ecology of male/female bonding
does not appear as one of the thirteen indicia of a marriage-like relationship.
38
This
new understanding of marriage seeks to replace conjugality with relationship or
couplehood as the central organizing principle of family law. According to the ALI
report, this emphasis on the character of the relationship and the recognition of a
diversity of marriage-like relationships draws its inspiration from Canada.
39
Third, the reports recommendations shift the focus from biological parenthood
to functional parenthood (with functional parenthood meaning the day-to-day
work of raising children). The report argues that the traditional biological view of
parenthood as an exclusive, all-or-nothing status fails to grapple with diverse
constructions of parenting in contemporary society.
40
Protection of diversity
becomes the central public
task of family law.
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Finally, the report is reluctant to define some of the key institutions marriage,
family, and parenthood that it targets for legal reform. Yet despite the authors
reluctance to pin themselves down, a discernible vision of human relationships
percolates through this document. In their view, marriage and parenting are rela-
tionships with very high degrees of plasticity and indeterminacy. They are only
given meaning by the choices of diverse individuals in a wide array of relationships.
In this view, marriage is infinitely malleable. Only the vaguest definitions are
possible. Marriage, the authors venture, is an emotional enterprise, with high
returns and high risks.
41
It is a function of individual commitments and accommo-
dations: Different couples arrive at different accommodations in their relationships,
and some depart from the social conventions. Intimate relationships often involve
complex emotional bargains that make no sense to third parties with different needs
or perceptions.
42
In the view of the ALI authors, marriage has almost no real public
content. Instead, marriage is the relational play of highly subjective, diverse con-
structions of intimacy and love.
The implications of this constructivist view of marriage surface in the documents
opening discussions of no-fault divorce. In a constructivist world of marital intimacy,
it is all but impossible to assign fault when intimacy breaks down. Without anchors
of meaning for marriage, fault becomes an almost empty concept. Even the word
cause loses meaning; there can be no such thing as an objective cause of a
divorce. The authors of the ALI report tell us that some individuals tolerate a spouses
drunkenness or adultery and never resort to divorce. Others, they say, may seek a
divorce if a spouse grows fat or spends long hours in the office.
43
When this happens,
they ask, is the divorce caused by one spouses offensive or unattractive conduct, or
by the others unreasonable intolerance? The reports answer is: who can say? The
complexity of individual choices makes it impossible to determine cause.
44
The ALI
reporters warn that any attempt to do so necessarily involves a sleight of hand, since
it requires a moral assessment that amounts to rewarding virtue and punishing sin.
45
Aside from the most minimal of standards of conduct for example, it bars
domestic violence the report concludes it is nearly impossible to determine after
the fact what was right or wrong about spousal conduct in a marriage that is ending.
Beyond Conjugality: The View from Canada
Beyond Conjugality proposes a fundamental reconstitution of contemporary
family law. As its title says, the report argues that the law must go beyond conju-
gality and focus on the substance of relationships rather than giving legal recog-
nition to any specific arrangements, such as marriage. It contends that govern-
ments should recognize and support all significant adult close relationships that
are neither dysfunctional nor harmful.
46
The only clear standards for relational
behavior are the offside zones delineated by criminal law.
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The authors of Beyond Conjugality define a close personal relationship,
offering a fluid definition in which marriage is firmly placed as just one of the
varied relationships adults might form:
The focus in this Report is on interdependent relationships between adults: those
personal relationships that are distinguished by mutual care and
concern, the expectation of some form of an enduring bond,
sometimes a deep commitment, and a range of interdependen-
cies emotional and economic that arise from these fea-
tures. These economically and emotionally interdependent
relationships are one of the very foundations of Canadian
social life. They may or may not involve parenting responsibil-
ities that certainly influence the range of interdependencies
created. They may or may not involve sexual intimacy. They
may or may not be characterized by deep economic interde-
pendency. Governments need to ensure that the law respects the diverse choices
that Canadians make.
47
Two legal scholars who contributed to the preparatory work for this report have
argued: The role of the law ought to be to support any and all relationships that
further valuable social goals, and to remain neutral with respect to individuals
choice of a particular family form or status.
48
In Beyond Conjugality, the Law Commission of Canada spells out the full logic
of these legal ideas and trends. It recommends that legal reformers eliminate the
special status accorded to marital relationships. In this view, conjugality is too
restrictive, since it excludes whole categories of interpersonal relationships that
exhibit patterns of interpersonal, emotional, and economic interdependence that
are equivalent to, or in some cases surpass, the commitments of sexualized close
relationships between heterosexuals. It urges the federal government to provide a
legal framework that would capture the relational equality of all close personal
relationships.
49
The main direction of the Beyond Conjugality report is toward the complete
elimination of the category of marriage from law. In a somewhat confusing maneuver,
however, the report concludes by proposing major and significantly contradictory
reforms. The bulk of the report lays out a new legal framework for dealing with
close adult relationships that would replace the traditional conjugal category of
marriage with one that puts all relationships on an equal playing field. Then, in the
last chapter, the report does an about-face to reaffirm the legal institution of marriage
while arguing for its redefinition and extension to same-sex couples.
The closing argument for the redefinition of marriage in Beyond Conjugality has
stolen the legal and political stage in Canada, laying out the legal template for the
Marriage becomes
just one of the many
varied relationships
adults might form.
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major Canadian court decisions in favor of the redefinition of marriage. This template
also appears in the proposed new Civil Marriage Act (Bill C-38) which redefines
marriage as a union of two persons.
Critiquing These Reports: Whats Left Out?
In these legal reconstructions, what drops out of view? Quite a lot, it turns out.
Marriage serves a number of critical purposes in human culture. It addresses the fact
of sexual difference between men and women, including the unique vulnerabilities
that women face in pregnancy and childbirth. It promotes a public form of life and
culture that integrates the goods of sexual attraction, interpersonal love and com-
mitment, childbirth, child care and socialization, and mutual economic and psycho-
logical assistance. It provides a social frame for procreativity. It fosters and maintains
connections between children and their natural parents. It sustains a complex form
of social interdependency between men and women. It supports an integrated form
of parenthood, uniting the biological (or adoptive), gestational, and social roles that
parents play.
These are large issues. Yet in these reports, with a wave of the constructivist
wand, these long-standing human concerns are systematically displaced from their
formerly central position in family law. In their place the authors are recommending
the legal imposition of a new model of close personal relations.
Despite the fact that sex-difference and opposite-sex attraction and bonding are
fundamental features of human existence, and that marriage is an institution that
attempts to work within this vast and complex domain, in contemporary legal
debates in the U.S. and Canada, these core issues are being pushed off the table.
50
Legal scholars make much of the fact that theorists have discovered no difference
between married and unmarried couples, or homosexual and heterosexual relation-
ships, when it comes to the basic dynamics of love, compatibility, and intimacy. But
the authorities cited to support this thesis are strong proponents of close relationship
theory.
51
The problem with close relationship theory is that it is fine-tuned to discover
exactly what it predicts, namely, that unmarried same-sex and opposite-sex couples
reveal the same patterns of interpersonal intimacy evident in married couples. The
core relational values of intimacy, commitment, interdependence, mutual support,
and communication get cranked out as the exemplary values for all close relationships,
including marriage. Certainly, good marriages partake of these core relational values,
but marriage as an institution encompasses much more than this limited set of inter-
personal concerns. Understanding marriage only as a close personal relationship,
but nothing more, leaves our understanding flat and impoverished.
The kinds of values or patterns cited by close relationship theorists turn out to
be found in many types of relationships, not just ones in which the two people have
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sex. Friendships, sibling relationships, and parent-child attachments also partake of
values such as commitment, mutual support, and the rest. By talking about relation-
ships in terms of generic interpersonal intimacy, close relationship theorists bracket
out, before the discussion even begins, the specificity of marriage as a form of life
struggling with the unique challenges of bonding sexual difference and caring for
children who are the products of unions.
52
Today, contemporary family law theorists are bent on ham-
mering this new theory into law, usually using the avenue of
constitutional law. What is striking is the breathless speed of
these developments in the absence of any real scholarly or
public debate. A particular school of thought openly aimed at
re-conceptualizing marriage first took root in the academy in
the 1980s. By the late 1990s it had come to dominate fashionable
academic theorizing on sexual intimacy. That school of thought
is successfully urging family law scholars to think in radically
new ways about family law. Much of the new thinking centers on ways to transform
family law from its historic role as the protector of marriage into something very
close to its antagonist.
What is likely to happen next?
The Future of Family Law: Four Possible Directions
IF THE CLOSE relationship model of marriage triumphs, where is family law head-
ed? One or more of at least four troubling outcomes for family law is likely.
The First Direction: Equivalence Between Cohabitation and Marriage
The first direction that family law might take is to reduce the distinctions
between marriage and cohabitation by treating more and more cohabiting couples
as if they were married. After all, if marriage is just a word that means close intimate
relationship, what is the legal justification for treating people differently based on
a wedding? In some jurisdictions, this transition is already well established.
Since the characteristic features that are distinctive to marriage (including shared
social norms about roles and expectations and the public vow before community,
God, and the law) have already been ruled off the table by close relationship theory,
today these features tend to be ignored by legal experts in favor of those aspects
that make marriage and cohabitation similar.
Thus, the American Law Institute report argues that the movement toward
equivalence should be harmonized and universalized. The rights and benefits
regarding partners should be based on the character of their social relationship,
What is striking
is the speed of these
developments in the
absence of any public
debate.
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not their marital status.
53
(The possibility that marriage might change the character
of the spouses relationship is not considered.) The ALI report treats the failure to
marry as insignificant and meaningless:
As the incidence of cohabitation has dramatically increased it has become
increasingly implausible to attribute special significance [to] the parties failure to
marry. Domestic partners fail to marry for many reasons. Among others, some have
been unhappy in prior marriages and therefore wish to avoid the form of marriage,
even as they enjoy its substance with a domestic partner. Some begin in a casual
relationship that develops into a durable union, by which time a formal marriage
ceremony may seem awkward or even unnecessary. Failure to marry may reflect
group mores. Some ethnic and social groups have a substantially lower incidence
of marriage and a substantially higher incidence of informal domestic relationships
than do others. Failure to marry may also reflect strong social or economic inequality
between the partners, which allows the stronger partner to resist the weaker
partners preference for marriage. Finally there are domestic partners who are not
allowed to marry each other under state law because they are of the same sex.
In all of these cases the absence of formal marriage may have little or no bearing
on the intentions of the parties, the character of the parties domestic relationship,
or the equitable considerations that underlie claims between lawful spouses at the
dissolution of a marriage. Normatively, Chapter 6 takes the view that family law
should be concerned about relationships that may be indistinguishable from marriage
except for the legal formality of marriage.
54
Because the goal of the ALI is to treat all marriage-like relationships similarly,
it is forced to define not marriage, but domestic partnership. This concept, rather
than marriage, becomes the underlying social reality to which the law must conform.
The ALI report defines domestic partnerships by a set of generic relationship
characteristics that mark a life together as a couple.
55
As more cities in the United States establish domestic partnership registries,
this term is gaining recognition in law as a kind of midway status between marriage
and singleness. Increasing numbers of private corporations and union agreements
use any valid government recognition of a relationship as the basis for providing
contractually guaranteed benefits to unmarried couples, and some permit couples
simply to file affidavits affirming that they are domestic partners as the condition
for receiving benefits such as health insurance. Overall, though, the argument that
cohabiters have a general right to be treated as married has made relatively little
headway in the United States, except in the case of same-sex couples who can
legally marry in Massachusetts.
Canadian courts, by contrast, have been quite receptive to the idea that treating
couples differently based on marital status constitutes unjust discrimination. Like the
0100
000178
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ALI report, Canadian courts have cited as determinative the characteristics that are
often common to both married and non-married intimacy,
56
including common
shelter, sexual and personal behavior,
57
mutual service, social life together, societal
perceptions of the couple, economic support, and parenting.
Although Canadian courts have appealed to conjugal characteristics in order
to establish the fundamental similarity of marital and non-
marital forms of intimate life, they have also demonstrated a
surprising awareness of the dangers of doing so. For ironically,
the argument that all marriage-like relationships should be
treated alike still requires the law to define which relation-
ships are worthy of being treated as marriage-like by the
courts, and continues to use marriage as the basic social
norm for making this distinction. In other words, when courts
replace marital norms with close relationships norms, they
still leave the law in the position of promoting certain normative concepts of
conjugality.
Canadian courts have mostly dealt with this problem by calling attention to the
fluidity and plasticity of the standards they have created. In Macmillan-Dekker v.
Dekker, Supreme Court Justice Bertha Wilson writes that characteristics such as shar-
ing a home or having a sexual relationship are merely indicia of a conjugal/
spousal relationship. Wilson stresses their malleable nature:
I conclude that there is no single, static model of a conjugal relationship, nor of
marriage. Rather, there are a cluster of factors which reflect the diversity of con-
jugal and marriage relationships that exist in modern Canadian society. Each
case must be examined in light of its own unique, objective facts the seven
factors [that define conjugality] are meant to provide the Court with a flexible
yet objective tool for examining the nature of relationships on a case-by-case
basis.
58
In a dissenting opinion in 1993, Justice Claire LHeureux Dub anticipated later
legal developments in arguing that these conjugal characteristics should not reinforce
a normative model of conjugality:
The use of a functional approach would be problematic if it were used to establish
one model of family as the norm, and to then require families to prove that they
are similar to that norm. It is obvious that the application of certain variables could
work to the detriment of certain types of families. By way of example, the
requirement that a couple hold themselves out to the public as a couple may not,
perhaps, be appropriate to same-sex couples, who still often find that public
acknowledgement of their sexual orientation results in discriminatory treatment.
59
If marriage is just a close
relationship, why treat
people differently
based on a wedding?
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To avoid the risks of normativity, Justice Peter Cory, writing for the majority in
M. v. H., suggests an infinitely plastic definition of conjugality:
Certainly an opposite-sex couple may, after many years together, be considered to
be in a conjugal relationship although they have neither children nor sexual
relations. Obviously the weight to be accorded the various elements or factors to
be considered in determining whether an opposite-sex couple is in a conjugal
relationship will vary widely and almost infinitely. The same must hold true of
same-sex couples. Courts have wisely determined that the approach to determining
whether a relationship is conjugal must be flexible. This must be so, for the relationships
of all couples will vary widely.
60
[emphasis added]
The heart of the equivalence approach is the idea that marital status is a mere
formality. Similar relationships should be treated similarly, regardless of whether or
not a marriage ceremony ever took place.
There are at least two serious problems with the equivalence approach. First, it
runs roughshod over the long-established principle that marriage requires consent.
Cohabiters are now to be locked by government into a marital regime whether they
like it or not.
61
Indeed, for some legal scholars, coercion is precisely the point. According to
Roderick Macdonald, the former president of the Law Commission of Canada, self-
ascription that is, the couples understanding of the relationship is of limited
value in determining a couples legal status, since any such definition can be
effectively blocked by one non-consenting partner in the relationship:
No matter how broadly a concept is defined by law, if the status it confers depends
only on self-ascription, many of those intended to be the beneficiaries of the status
will be excluded. Suppose for a moment that the law were amended to provide that
persons of the same sex could get married, and that, were they to do so, the full
panoply of rights and responsibilities attaching to the status of marriage would
apply. This opening up of the concept of marriage might well address many of the
legal concerns now expressed by same-sex couples. But, just as for heterosexual
couples, it would be of no help to a partner in a common-law same-sex relationship
who wants to marry but whose partner does not.
62
But for many who advocate equivalence as part of a broader embrace of family
diversity, the coercive aspects of this legal regime remain troubling. In the Nova Scotia
v. Walsh decision, for example, the Canadian courts abruptly reversed years of legal
movement in the direction of equivalence. Instead, the Court suddenly insisted on the
need to respect individuals freedom to choose, or not to choose, more committed
forms of partnership. Quoting an earlier opinion of Justice LHeureux-Dub, Nova
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Scotia v. Walsh argues that the decision to marry or, alternatively, not to marry,
depends entirely on the individuals concerned. According to the judges, family
means different things to different people all of them equally valid and all of them
equally worthy of concern, respect, consideration, and protection under the law. The
state should not impose a marital regime retroactively.
63
The second problem with the equivalence approach is that
social science evidence by and large fails to support its central
contention, which is that marriage is just a formality. Instead, the
differences between marital and cohabiting relationships appear
to be real and significant, at least in the United States, where
most of the research has been conducted.
64
A group of twelve
diverse U.S. family scholars, for example, recently concluded:
Cohabitation is not the functional equivalent of marriage. As a
group, cohabiters in the United States more closely resemble sin-
gles than married people. Children with cohabiting parents have outcomes more
similar to the children living with single (or remarried) parents than children from
intact marriages. Adults who live together are more similar to singles than to mar-
ried couples in terms of physical health and emotional well-being and mental
health, as well as in assets and earnings. Couples who live together also, on aver-
age, report relationships of lower quality than do married couples with cohab-
iters reporting more conflict, more violence and lower levels of satisfaction and
commitment. Even biological parents who cohabit have poorer quality relationships
and are more likely to part than parents who marry. Cohabitation differs from mar-
riage in part because Americans who choose merely to live together are less com-
mitted to a lifelong relationship.
65
Moreover, three-quarters of children born to cohabiting couples are likely to see
their parents split up by the time they are sixteen years old.
66
Whether the standard
is relationship durability or relationship satisfaction or tangible benefits to adults or
the well-being of children, cohabitation is not the same thing as marriage. The
equivalence regime is unjust because it treats couples who are unwilling to make
a marriage commitment as if they have done so. It is unwise because the law
communicates to younger people the demonstrably false idea that marital status
makes no difference for the well-being of a couple or their children.
The Second Direction: Redefining Marriage as a Couple-Centered Bond
A second direction marriage law might take is substantive redefinition. In this
approach, the law would continue to allow distinctions to be made between married
couples and cohabiting couples, with marriage remaining a distinct legal status. But
Scholarship fails
to support the central
contention of the
equivalence approach.
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the meaning of marriage would be redefined by courts, primarily on behalf of same-
sex couples, as a commitment between any two people. The new legal definition
strips all remaining remnants of sex, gender, and procreativity from the public,
shared meaning of marriage. In contrast to the equivalence view, once full access
to marriage is granted irrespective of sex, any legal benefits to domestic partnerships
should in theory be rolled back.
67
(This approach has been called the Levelling
Position.)
68
Marriage becomes the only legally recognized close relationship.
69
To privilege one version of marriage in law as a gender-neutral, couple-
centered bond that centers primarily on commitment necessarily involves the
public repression of alternative meanings. In classrooms and courtrooms today,
proponents of the couple-centered conception of marriage are arguing that the
commonly held view of marriage as a conjugal union of man and woman is a
prejudice analogous to racism. In Canada, the majority of provincial courts have
argued that this irrational and discriminatory view of marriage needs to be weeded
out of public law and replaced. The proposed Civil Marriage Act is attempting to
bring the rest of Canada into harmony with this legal conclusion. Meanwhile,
alternative legal categories such as civil unions have been panned as a repugnant
separate but equal category.
70
Because the law retains the special legal status
associated with marriage, the redefinition approach authorizes the state to begin to
exert negative pressure on private individuals, organizations, and communities that
subscribe to the older conjugal view of marriage now viewed as discriminatory by
the courts.
Court decisions in both Massachusetts and Canada authorizing same-sex marriage
follow this basic script. Each calls for the substantive redefinition of marriage as a
union of two persons. Each also inaugurates the process of stigmatizing the alter-
native conjugal view of marriage as discriminatory, suggesting the future pariah status
of people who cling to the older view.
In Canada, Ontario Justice Harry S. Lafarge argues that the real, although
unstated, purpose of the restriction [of marriage to a man and a woman] is to preserve
the exclusive privileged status of heterosexual conjugal relationships in society. He
declares this understanding of marriage to be repugnant.
71
In the U.S., the four judge
majority in Goodridge v. Department of Public Health (which legalized same-sex
marriage in Massachusetts) denounced as discriminatory the conjugal view of
marriage as a union of man and woman. The belief that marriage intrinsically unites
male and female in a sexual bond that reinforces their personal obligations to each
other and to any children they produce is dismissed as rooted in persistent prejudices
against persons who are (or who are believed to be) homosexual. The Constitution,
they warn, quoting a 1984 Supreme Court case, cannot control such prejudices but
neither can it tolerate them.
72
As the majority in Baehr v. Lewin (a 1993 case in Hawaii
regarding same-sex unions) warned, constitutional law may mandate, like it or not,
that customs change with an evolving social order.
73
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This strong language suggests that the legal creation of a couple-centered under-
standing of marriage is achieved by placing the older conjugal meaning of marriage
under a moral and legal cloud of suspicion. It will place the law in a stance that is
hostile towards cultural and religious communities that adhere to the ethos of con-
jugal marriage as the backbone of their communal life.
In an important decision, Canadian Justice Robert Blair
candidly remarked that this change was not an incremental
one but rather a profound change with serious implications
for vast areas of marriage and family law. Blair states that
the consequences and potential reverberations flowing from such
a transformation in the concept of marriage are extremely
complex. They will touch the core of many peoples belief and
value systems, and their resolution is laden with social, political,
cultural, emotional, and legal ramifications. They require a
response to a myriad of consequential issues relating to such things as inheritance
and property rights, filiation, alternative biogenetic and artificial birth technologies,
adoption, and other marriage-status driven matters.
74
Both advocates and opponents agree that the redefinition of marriage would do
far more than simply incorporate the small number of homosexuals in the population
into the existing marital regime.
The Third Direction: Disestablishment, or the Separation of Marriage and State
How might we avoid contentious public disputes about the meaning of marriage?
One possible solution is to conclude that the law should no longer establish any
definition of marriage. Only a few years ago, almost no one favored this idea. But
today this option appears to be gaining converts across the political spectrum.
75
Disestablishment is thus a third possible direction for the future of marriage.
On the left, queer theorists such as Michael Warner adopt a radical liberationist
argument for disestablishment.
76
Warner argues that the extension of marriage to gays
and lesbians is no less than an attempt to herd all human sexuality into the narrow
conjugal box. Others support disestablishment because they feel that marriage is
essentially a religious institution, something in which a secularized liberal state
should have no role. One proponent of this view, Nancy Cott, argues that Christian
models of conjugal monogamy have been legally imposed on social life.
77
Another
author similarly characterizes the permanent, monogamous, marriage, nuclear,
heterosexual concept of family as an explicitly Christian concept of marriage.
78
In
this view, the heterosexual definition of marriage legally imposes a particular the-
ological or religious vision of marriage on society, one that violates the convictions
Sex, gender, and
procreativity are stripped
from marriages
public meaning.
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of sexual dissenters and nonconformists.
79
Cott and others feel that the separation of
church and state requires ridding the law of any theological vision of marriage.
However, redefining marriage provides no easy solution to the dilemma of state
endorsement of some religious view. Religious groups can be found that endorse
same-sex marriage, polygamy, monogamy, and even polyamory.
80
In choosing any
substantive vision of marriage, therefore, the state will end up endorsing some
religions marital vision.
Faced with competing and conflicting conceptions of marriage, proponents of
disestablishment argue that the state should take this breakdown of social consensus
as the cue for it to get out of the marriage business.
81
They argue that the liberal
state learned how to adopt a stance of measured distance towards religion and the
economy. It must now adopt a stance of measured distance towards marriage. Civil
matters related to interdependent relationships (taxation, inheritance, community
property, and more) could be handled by a more neutral registry system.
The removal of marriage as a legal category was one option put forward by the
Canadian court decisions striking down the existing law of marriage.
82
It was also
proposed as an option by the Department of Justice in its directives to Canadas
Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights in hearings on the question of
same-sex marriage. The disestablishment of marriage would be achieved by
removing all federal references to marriage and replacing them by a neutral registry
system.
83
In the Beyond Conjugality report, the Law Commission of Canada considers
Nancy Cotts argument for disestablishment:
Borrowing the term from the history of church and state, Nancy Cott has described
the transformation in the relationship between marriage and the state in the United
States as disestablishment. Just as the state does not recognize a single, officially
established church, no longer is any single, official model of adult intimate relation-
ship supported and enforced by the state.
84
Instead, the law would embrace virtually all interdependent relationships.
Indications of a marital, conjugal relationship such as sexual intimacy, cohabitation,
the dyadic restriction (only two people can get married), and even restrictions based
on consanguinity would be removed from law.
85
This approach is grounded in the
conviction that democratic societies have a fundamental obligation to respect and
promote equality between different kinds of relationships, to celebrate the diversity
of personal adult relationships, and to honor the freedom to choose whether and
with whom to form close personal relationships.
86
The new family law would be
in essence a universal buddy system that offers legal protections for all citizens,
whether straight or gay, parents or not, and whether they are involved with only
one person, or many.
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Yet once family law becomes a universal buddy system, some have reasonably
asked why the law should be concerned at all about who is having sex with
whom.
87
That the law traditionally has an interest in sexual activity largely because
children often arise intentionally or not from heterosexual couplings seems
currently to escape the attention of many scholars and, indeed, an increasing number
of judges. Rather, they conclude that the legal preoccupation
with sexual intimacy is arbitrary and pointless. One study on
the legal irrelevancy of sex approvingly cites Eric Lowther, a
member of the Canadian Parliament, who said the following
when speaking in opposition to the extension of benefits to
same-sex couples:
There are many types of gender relationships: siblings, friends,
roommates, partners, et cetera. However, the only relationship
the government wants to include is when two people of the same
gender are involved in private sexual activity, or what is more commonly known
as homosexuality. No sex and no benefits is the governments approach to this bill.
Even if everything else is the same, even if there is a long time cohabitation and
dependency, if there is no sex there are no benefits. Bill C-23 is a benefits-for-sex-
bill. It is crazy.
88
Lowther favors the existing definition of marriage as a heterosexual bond. His
critics are advocates of same-sex marriage. Yet both agree that there is a fundamental
flaw in the current legal construction of conjugality. According to them,
the question of whether a relationship has a sexual component bears no connection
to legitimate state objectives. Once this is recognized, and sex is removed from the
scope of relational inquiries, the distinction between conjugal and non-conjugal
relationships collapses. And we then need to develop better ways to determine
when and how the existence of an adult personal relationship is relevant and
should be recognized in law.
89
The fundamental argument of the Law Commission of Canada in Beyond
Conjugality is the same. The report argues for a broad legislative approach to all adult
close relationships that involve significant mutual dependence. The presence or
absence of sexual conduct in the relationship is considered incidental. The fact that
some kinds of sex acts produce children and some do not merits no consideration.
As mentioned earlier, Beyond Conjugality does end somewhat confusingly with
a call for the redefinition of marriage, even after making a strong case for disestab-
lishment.
90
However, the original thrust of the report, found in its title, was to lay
out a new legal framework which would eliminate the category of conjugality from
As the law becomes a
universal buddy system,
why should it care about
who is having sex with
whom?
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law and replace it with a more inclusive civil registry system. In such a system,
marriage as we have known it marriage as a social institution would likely
still play a role for some time to come. But in the eyes of the law, that role will be
a bit part, written in very small print and destined eventually to wither away.
In Canada this classical liberal argument for disestablishment has been drowned
out by a newer and more aggressive social liberalism arguing for a redefinition of
marriage. But it was one of Canadas historical Liberal leaders, Pierre Elliot Trudeau,
who laid down the principle that the state must get out of the bedrooms of the
nation. Some liberals argue that disestablishment is the only viable alternative in the
face of apparently irresolvable legal and political disagreements about the authori-
tative meaning of conjugality.
On the right-leaning end of the spectrum, certain religious constituencies are also
questioning whether disestablishment might be preferable to a full-fledged legal
redefinition of marriage. They point out that the political regulation of marriage was
a relatively late development in the history of Western marriage. For some, the state
has done more harm than good in its attempts to influence the direction of the
marriage culture. Perhaps its time to get the state out of the marriage business.
91
They
hope that, just as the separation of religion and state is responsible for the relatively
flourishing religious sector in the United States, getting the government out of marriage
would be a prelude to a marriage revival. They argue that marriage, like religion, can
only really flourish when it is freed from political control and manipulation.
But it is clear that there is nothing neutral about the state refusing to recognize
and accommodate the fact of marriage in law. In places like the United States,
where marriage remains a significant legal category, its disestablishment would take
an enormous amount of political and cultural energy of the kind that is unlikely to
feed a flourishing marriage culture. More likely the disestablishment of marriage
would support a troubling and already all too common perception that marriage
may be a nice ceremony but is no longer a key social institution.
Ironically, the consequence of disestablishment is not likely to be greater
individual freedom, but rather more intense and far-reaching state regulation of
formerly private relations. Married people generally regulate their family affairs
without direct government interference, except in cases of criminality or violence.
By comparison, the state routinely tells divorced and unmarried parents when they
can see their kids and how much child support to pay, and often intervenes in
thorny disagreements such as what school the child will attend, or what religion he
or she will be raised in, or if a parent is allowed to relocate. Outside of marriage,
the state is necessarily drawn into greater and more intrusive regulation of family
life. Because sex between men and women continues to produce children, and
because women raising children alone are economically and socially disadvantaged,
governments will continually wrestle with expensive and intrusive efforts to protect
children born outside of marital unions.
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Finally, the rights disestablishment argument presumes that the state has no key
interest in the existence of marriage. While marriage is partly a religious institution
for religious people, it has never been only a religious act. In the Western tradition
marriage has represented the best efforts of state and society to integrate disparate
goods love, money, mutual support, sex, children in the service of helping
men and women raise the next generation in circumstances
most likely to sustain them, their children, and the society.
The huge and complex slice of human experience consti-
tuted by heterosexual bonding, procreativity, and parent-child
connectedness sweeps across non-religious as well as religious
spheres of social activity and meaning. In a real sense, marriage
is bigger and more elemental to human life than religion.
Marriage in every known society has been deeply influenced
and colored by religious traditions in the societies in which it
has taken root. But marriage is even older than some of our
oldest religious traditions. It existed before Judaism and well before Christianity and
Islam. Marriage is influenced by religion, but it is not solely a religious institution,
and it is certainly not solely a Christian institution. Religious traditions and civil
society have critical roles to play in shaping a marriage culture; but in a large,
complex society, government and the law will ignore marriage at their peril.
Some disestablishment proponents also seem to assume that children
can be treated as a category separate from adult relationships. Martha Fineman,
for instance, argues that the law should get out of adult relationships and leave them
to private contracts. She believes that this move would allow the law and public
policy to focus its attention on adult-child caregiving relationships. However, this
seemingly logical deconstruction is but a symptom of the family fragmentation that
has a deeply negative impact on children. Disestablishment might work well in a
world of freestanding adult relationships. But the bedrooms of the nation still produce
children. The offspring of our sexual bonds are profoundly vulnerable and demand
the states interest.
Why Just Two?
As Beyond Conjugalitys provocative title suggests, the family legal trends
sweeping North America and the world have no natural or necessary stopping point.
All of these major trends in law are part of a movement to channel public law into
a new authoritative framework that is beyond conjugality. Where is this movement
leading? Once marriage is repositioned as merely one of many equally valid examples
of a close relationship, is there a compelling rationale for refusing legal recognition
to any close relationship, including all forms of friendship and mutual care? Probably
not. If conjugal relationships vary widely and almost infinitely, then virtually any
Absent marriage,
the state is drawn into
more intrusive regulation
of family life.
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caring or sharing close relationship is arguably worthy of state recognition and
social support. Such a move appears to set the stage for a vast extension of the rule
of law into the sphere of intimate relations, including legal recognition of multiple
close relationships.
Those determined to alter the public meaning of marriage admonish us to shelve
such questions. A Canadian human rights lawyer insists that problematic concerns
about where new legal changes might lead need not be decided at this point. The
immediate and pressing legal challenge is to redefine marriage in order to include
same-sex couples. Raising the problem of future legal implications merely compli-
cates an already thorny issue.
92
However, the debate about the next round of legal reforms has already begun.
In An Introduction to Family Law, Gillian Douglas of Cardiff Law School agrees
with the American Law Institute report, arguing that the continuing limitation of
marriage to heterosexual couples derives from an ideological rather than a logical
imperative. She follows this observation with a deconstructive swipe at another key
pillar of what she terms the traditional view of marriage its limitation to two
people. Douglas writes: The abhorrence of bigamy appears to stem again from the
traditional view of marriage as the exclusive locus for a sexual relationship and from
a reluctance to contemplate such a relationship involving multiple partners.
93
Critics of legalizing same-sex marriage have occasionally argued that once gender
is removed from the definition of marriage, there will be little rationale to limit the
number of people in a marriage. This slippery slope argument is usually derided
by advocates of same-sex marriage as being made in bad faith. What most people
do not know is that the argument for the legal recognition of polyamory is more
likely today to be raised in legal circles by leading proponents of close relationship
theory, not critics of same-sex marriage. Much talk about polyamory is coming from
the left, not the right. Hoping to ride the coattails of the gay marriage movement,
some, like the Unitarian Universalists for Polyamorous Awareness, are now pushing
for liberal religious traditions to recognize multiple-partner marriage.
94
Similarly, Beyond Conjugality raises the question of whether the new legal
category of close personal relationship should be limited to two people. The
report insists that the values and principles of autonomy and state neutrality
require that people be free to choose the form and nature of their close personal
adult relationships.
95
Roger Rubin, a former vice-president of the National Council
on Family Relations, is confident that the current movement to redefine marriage
has set the stage for a broader discussion over which relationships should be legally
recognized.
96
Professor Elizabeth Emens of the University of Chicago Law School
has followed up with a major legal defense of polyamory.
97
We discover that in the plastic world of intimate relationships, firm distinctions
begin to dissipate. Severed from its link to the biology of heterosexual reproduction,
conjugality begins to inflate and morph. The first inflation successfully drew
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cohabitating relationships into the marital regime. The second inflation, the assim-
ilation of same-sex relationships, has jumped quickly from the academy into the
courtroom. Its legal victories are beginning to stack up. The legal challenge to the
two-person nature of marriage is only a matter of time.
Yet when the dust settles, there is likely to be real dissatisfaction with the
impoverished horizons of this new paradigm, especially with
its likely negative impact on the lives of everyday people. A
culture of pure relationships is marked by profound intellectual
myopia. It fails to bring into focus fundamental facets of human
life: the fact of sexual difference; the enormous tide of hetero-
sexual desire in human life; the massive significance of
male/female bonding and procreativity; the unique social
ecology of parenting, which offers children bonds with their
biological parents; and the rich genealogical nature of family ties and the web of
intergenerational supports for family members that they provide.
These core dimensions of conjugal life are not small issues. Yet in the current
debate, even alluding to them typically invites blank, angry stares. At this crucial
moment for marriage and parenthood in North America, there appears to be no
serious intellectual platform from which to launch a meaningful discussion about
these elemental features of human existence. About these fundamentally important
issues, contemporary family law scholarship is both silent and dismissive.
Parenthood: The Next Legal Frontier
HOW WILL MOVING beyond conjugality affect legal notions of parenthood?
Marriage organizes and helps to secure the basic birthright of children, when
possible, to know and be raised by their own mother and father. A pivotal purpose
of this social institution has been to forge a strong connection between
male/female bonds and the children resulting from those bonds. Moving beyond
the conjugal view of marriage inevitably involves a legal reevaluation of the rela-
tionships between children and their parents. In particular, what is being put into
play is the idea of biological parenthood as a fixed right that the state is obliged
to recognize.
The Civil Marriage Act proposed by the Canadian government not only redefines
marriage but also simultaneously eliminates the category of natural parent from
federal law and replaces it with the category of legal parent.
98
This kind of move
threatens a fundamental reconfiguration of the norms of marriage and parenthood.
Some indication of the future might lie in the reports put out by the American
Law Institute and the Law Commission of Canada. These reports have much to say
about parenting, much of which may be disturbing to parents.
The bedrooms of the
nation still produce
children.
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Beyond Conjugality draws a bright line between marriage (a recognized close
personal adult relationship) and parenthood. The authors argue that these two
categories raise very different issues.
99
Parenthood is not related to marriage.
The central purpose of marriage is to provide an orderly framework in which
couples can express their commitment to each other and voluntarily assume a
range of legal rights and obligations.
100
Children are stripped from the core
meaning of marriage and instead shuffled into another category of close personal
relationships known as intergenerational relationships that involved the rearing
of children.
101
The American Law Institute carries its suspicion of legally enforced norms in
family life into the very definition of parenthood. For the ALI authors, even age-old
standards, such as the one stating that family law should operate in the best
interests of children, are questioned on the grounds that they introduce moral
norms into family law.
102
Katherine Bartlett, one of the ALI authors, writes that too often this age-old
standard masks normative judgments about preferred models of child-parent
relationships:
[T]he best interests of the child is a highly contingent social construction. Although
we often pretend otherwise, it seems clear that our judgments about what is best
for children are as much the result of political and social judgments about what kind
of society we prefer as they are conclusions based upon neutral or scientific data
about what is best for children. The resolution of conflicts over children ultimately
is less a matter of objective fact-finding than it is a matter of deciding what kind of
children and families what kind of relationships we want to have.
103
In the ALI report, Bartlett and her co-authors worry that any appeal to an
objective standard for parental conduct might threaten the one value that figures
most prominently throughout the pages of their report, that of family diversity:
[E]ven when a determinate standard conforms to broadly held views about what
is good for children, it can intrude just as indeterminate standards do on
matters concerning a childs upbringing that society generally leaves up to parents
themselves, and standardize child-rearing arrangements in a way that unnecessarily
curtails diversity and cultural pluralism.
104
In a lecture, Bartlett notes proudly that she and her team were able to come up
with a default rule that avoids these kinds of empirical and normative assumptions
about the family and is, accordingly, less family-standardizing.
105
This default rule
points to past parenting practices. How individual adult claimants have historically
participated in the day-to-day raising of the children with whom they are in close
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relationship will determine their parental status: [This rule] operates not from a
state-determined, family-standardizing ideal but from where the parents themselves
left off. It is based not on empirical evidence of the experience of families in the
aggregate but on the individual experiences of the family before the court.
106
Moreover, methods of determining custody or parental arrangements must be chal-
lenged if they run counter to the commitment this society
avows toward family diversity.
107
In service of this goal, the ALI report affirms the positive
correlation between the interests of the parents and the welfare
of their children.
108
It argues that the courts must carefully
respect the diverse choices and lifestyles of parents since the
improved self-image of the parents rebounds to the ultimate
benefit of the child.
109
It suggests that the law must protect and
foster parental self-esteem. If basic self-esteem needs are not
met in the judicial process, then parents are more likely to
engage in strategic, resentful or uncooperative behavior from which children may
suffer.
110
This broad support for any family that adults dream up is supposed to be in the
interests of children. But just in case, and with remarkable bluntness, the ALI report
notes: Even a childs awareness of such a relationship, or dislike of the individual
with whom a parent has developed an intimate relationship, should not justify
interferences relating to the childs welfare or parental fitness; children cannot be
protected from every source of unhappiness and unease.
111
In the ALI report, even the question who is a parent? is up for grabs. In a
nutshell, their viewpoint states that unless otherwise specified, a parent is either a
legal parent, a parent by estoppel, or a de facto parent. The category of the natural
or biological parent does not figure as an independent category in this threefold
classification, nor do adoptive parents. Instead, biological and adoptive parents are
folded into the other three categories.
112
Traditionally, parent by estoppel has been the case in which a man, in good
faith, believes that he is the father of his spouses child and continues fully accepting
his parental responsibilities even after he learns that he is not the biological father.
The ALI report pries open this concept in order to offer it to any biologically unre-
lated person who wants to take on parenting responsibilities. Thus, a parent could
be a person who lived with the child since the childs birth, holding out and
accepting full and permanent responsibilities as parent, as part of a prior co-parenting
agreement with the childs legal parent.
113
The report thus defines a parent by
estoppel as an individual who, even though not a legal parent, has acted as a parent
under specified circumstances which serve to estop [stop, block] the legal parent
from denying the individuals status as a parent. This category is afforded all of
the privileges of a legal parent.
114
The ALIs close relationship
regime transforms
parenthood into a domain
created by the state.
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The extension of the category of estoppel aims, in part, at legalizing the parental
status of same-sex partners:
[This report] contemplates the situation of two cohabiting adults who undertake to
raise a child together, with equal rights and responsibilities as parents. Adoption is
the clearer, and thus preferred, legal avenue for recognition of such parent-child
relationships, but adoption is sometimes not legally available or possible, especially
if one of the adults is still married to another, or if the adults are both women, or
both men.
115
What is missing from the triad of legal parent, parent by estoppel, and de facto
parent? What is missing is the core idea that parenthood is a category based on bio-
logical realities beyond governmental redefinition. The legal definition of parent is
severed from its deep links to biology and based on a more pliable assessment of
the people who are said to care for a child on a day-to-day basis. Parenthood thus
becomes a flexible category that gives courts and legislatures the capacity to redefine
parental relationships based on evolving standards. In the ALI report, these standards
are typically portrayed as permissive. For example, if an adult wishes to take on
quasi-parental responsibilities for a child, the courts should enforce his or her rights.
But in principle, if the best interests of the child require the imposition of parental
responsibilities on unrelated adults, there is no good reason in the ALI worldview
to abstain from doing so. By living with a parent, a boyfriend or girlfriend can acquire
legally enforceable rights to a child. They may also (and this point is typically unclear)
acquire legally enforceable responsibilities. Parenthood becomes a flexible legal
category, with the courts rather than the childs existing parents determining
when a person has devoted enough care and attention to an unrelated child to
acquire parental rights.
Such proposals attribute a great deal of intention and self-awareness to choices
that adults often make without thinking them through a great deal. For instance,
does a father really intend for his current live-in girlfriend to have a long-term role
as a parent in his childs life, even after he breaks up with her, simply because he
welcomed her caring for his child while they lived together? When a parent remarries,
he or she makes an active decision to form a new family, to bring a stepparent into
their childs life in a parent-like role. Do cohabiting parents approach the decision
to move in together with the same sense of investment? Some may, but many may
not and may avoid marriage precisely because they are unsure how long they want
the relationship to last or how much influence they want their current love interest
to have in their childs life. Surely some adults would be aghast to think that, simply
by living with a childs parent, the law might someday require them to take on
financial or other responsibilities for the child, even if they were no longer involved
with the childs parent.
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Fragmenting Parenthood
Almost as an afterthought, the ALIs new close relationship marital regime
transforms parenthood into a domain created by the state. One scholar writes that
the traditional privileging of biological parenting represents a heterosexual
constraint on the wide range of family forms and practices.
116
Eliminating the notion of biology as the basis of parenthood,
and allowing parenthood to fragment into its plural and varied
forms, is necessary if courts are to make family diversity a legal
and cultural reality.
117
Jonathan Herring, who sees such fragmentation as a positive
change, identifies five contemporary varieties of parenthood.
First, he writes, there is genetic parenthood, the individuals
that supply the egg and sperm needed to produce a baby. Second, there is coital
parenthood, the union of sperm and egg (typically, but not always, in heterosexual
intercourse). Third, there is gestational parenthood, the carrying of the fetus by a
pregnant woman.
118
Fourth, there is post-natal (social or psychological) parent-
hood, the raising of the child after birth. Finally, there is a fifth category that the
author calls intentional parenthood, when an adult or adults who intend to be
parents initiate a process (through surrogacy or assisted reproduction) leading to
the birth of a child.
119
All five forms of parenting can be analytically and practically separate from one
another, as diverse adults participate in the distinct activities of supplying genetic
material, conceiving, carrying, birthing, and nurturing.
Might breaking parenthood up into all its constituent parts lead to some confusion?
The American Law Institute report authors think so. They explore this expanding
pastiche of parental identities that Herring sifts out of current legal debates, trying
to open new legal doors to accommodate the fragmentation. One scholar, Richard
Storrow, argues that the reports shift towards a functional view of parenthood is
heading in exactly the right direction, but suggests that the tweaking of legal categories
will have to go further. Specifically, Storrow argues that the interests of intentional
parents must be addressed.
120
Parenthood by pure intention represents the full
cultural shift from an emphasis on biogenic unity to an emphasis on the family
of choice.
121
Parents who set the process in motion through assisted reproduction
or surrogacy become his ideal type for this type of parenthood.
One rather large problem with this idea is that about half of pregnancies today
are still unplanned. They are unintentional. The brave new world of intentional
parenthood is supposed to provide a child for every adult who wants one. But lets
flip the picture and look at the situation from the childs point of view. If intention,
not biology, becomes the thin legal ground holding parents accountable to their
children, what happens to all the children who are conceived in a moment when
Is the fathers
ex-girlfriend a parent?
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they were not actively wanted by both parents? At a minimum, how will the state
enforce child support payments from fathers who can claim that they never intended
to be a parent in the first place? If enough parents were to buy the American Law
Institute view that biology is essentially unimportant, are there enough intentional
adoptive parents out there to raise all the unintended children who happen to be
born anyway?
In their push to delink law from biology, legal reformers seem blind to the basic
facts of human reproduction. Only the tiniest fraction of babies are born today
through elaborate fusions of genetic, coital, and gestational parenthood. The baby
born of one womans eggs, in another womans womb, with the aid of a sperm
donor, rates headlines precisely because the event is so rare. The vast majority of
babies are still born, both intentionally and not, to men and women who are
engaging in the passionate and often unpredictable business of sex.
Fragmentation of parenthood means more fragmented lives for children who
will be jostled around by an increasingly complex set of adult claims. It also means
more systematic intrusion into the family and adjudication of its internal life by the
state and its courts.
To address the problem, the courts might be wise to consider an old idea:
marriage. When it works, marriage unfragments. It manages to hold together the
intentional, the biological (genetic, coital, and gestational) and the psychological
and social dimensions of parenthood. It creates a thick social ecology that integrates,
rather than endlessly fractures, the basic features of human parenthood.
Across cultures, the institution of marriage works to support the ties of natural and
adoptive parents to their children. It provides broad public affirmation and support
for this type of bond. It enshrines a basic birthright of children whenever possible to
know, to be connected to, and to be raised by both of their biological parents. It does
so in a robust but malleable way (with the possibility of adoption for exceptions to
the rule).
122
The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child states that the
child shall have the right from birth to a name, the right to acquire a nationality
and, as far as possible, the right to know and be cared for by his or her parents (Art.
7).
123
The authors of this convention brilliantly recognize several key features of
childrens individual identity and security having a name, being a citizen of a
nation whose laws protect you, and, whenever possible, being raised by the two
people who made you.
New legal changes threaten further to undermine this birthright. For instance,
whatever one feels about the merits of same-sex marriage, it is clear that legalizing
these unions must, of necessity, diminish the social importance of children being
raised by their own biological parents. Rewriting marriage laws to accommodate
same-sex unions sends a powerful signal to the vast majority of would-be parents,
who are heterosexuals, that the law is not explicitly concerned about children
being raised whenever possible by their biological mother and father. Even candid
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advocates for same-sex marriage recognize that the inclusion of these unions in the
social ecology of parenting entails fundamental shifts for children. One advocate
concedes (and celebrates) the fact that building law upon gay experience
involves the reconfiguration of family de-emphasizing blood, gender, and kinship
ties and emphasizing the value of interpersonal commitment. In
our legal culture the linchpin of family law has been the marriage
between a man and a woman who have children through pro-
creative sex. Gay experience with families we choose delinks
family from gender, blood, and kinship. Gay families of choice
are relatively ungendered, raise children that are biologically
unrelated to one or both parents, and often form no more than
a shadowy connection between the larger kinship groups.
124
Precisely this disconnect between children and natural parents is the new legal
vision of marriage that has emerged out of the recent Canadian judgments in favor
of same-sex marriage in Ontario, British Columbia, and Quebec. These decisions
evaluate two features: the unity of the couple and functional parenthood (that is,
the day-to-day raising of children). In this view, the procreative link between marriage
and children drops completely out of view, as well as the genealogical rights of
children to know and be connected to their ancestors. Further, in Canadas proposed
new Civil Marriage Act, the redefinition of marriage requires the elimination of the
category of natural parent across federal law. Parenthood is thus transformed into
a legal construct that has no inherent relationship to sexuality and childbirth.
In the world of the Principles of the Law of Family Dissolution and Beyond
Conjugality, adults construct relationships and children adjust. This understanding
of parent-child relationships frees adults to live as they choose. But the data strongly
suggest that not all adult constructions of parenthood are equally child-friendly. For
example, the common assumption of those who advocate for flexible definitions of
parenthood is that children are just as safe in continuing contact with non-biologi-
cally related caretakers as they are with biological parents. But the actual evidence
points in the opposite direction. A large body of social scientific evidence now
shows that the risk of physical or sexual abuse rises dramatically when children are
cared for in the home by adults unrelated to them, with children being especially
at risk when left alone with their mothers boyfriends. Robin Wilson, a legal scholar
at the University of Maryland, has presented the empirical evidence of increased
risk in an article in the Cornell Law Review.
125
To put it mildly, the data suggest
that legal theorists are standing on very thin ice when they dismiss or debunk the
significance of biological parenthood.
Delinking parenthood from marriage, embracing the variety of relationships
that adults construct as the new standard, and conceptualizing the parent-child
Intention, not biology,
holds parents accountable
to their children.
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relationship as just another close relationship, may free adults to live in the
diverse family types they choose, but it seriously undermines the laws historic role
to seek to protect the best interests of children. Children need and desire, whenever
possible, to be raised by their own parents.
126
Though fallible, marriage is societys
best known way to try to fulfill that need. A legal system that moves its emphasis
from partners to parents may sound good for children, but the actual practice of
fragmenting parenthood and valuing intentional parenthood over all else will
ultimately leave children more, rather than less, insecure.
Conclusion
SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS ARE constituted by their shared public meanings. The legal
imposition of new and contested public meanings upon marriage and parenthood
represents the power of the state hard at work in the soft-shelled domain of civil
society. This legal and political imposition on marriage seeks to re-engineer the
authoritative public norms of these institutions on the basis of appeals to relatively
new theories of diversity, relationality, and functional parenthood.
This trend raises fundamental questions for liberalism. Is the state violating the
measured distance that the liberal state should adopt towards the basic institutions
of civil society? Are the courts legally imposing a sectarian form of social liberalism?
Are the courts abandoning their traditional role of protecting civil society from
encroachment by the state?
127
These moves also hold questions for the future of marriage itself. Institutions
like marriage and parenthood are not simply mechanisms to fulfill individual needs
and aspirations. They are also thick, multi-layered realities that speak to the needs
for meaning and identity within human community. Marriage is the complex cultural
site for opposite-sex bonding. A rich heritage of symbols, myths, theologies, tradi-
tions, poetry, and art has clustered around the marital bond. To change the core
features of marriage is to impact real people, adults and children, whose lives will
be significantly shaped by the renewal or decline of this institution.
The type of legal theorizing proposed by the American Law Institutes Principles
of the Law of Family Dissolution and the Law Commission of Canadas Beyond
Conjugality systematically marginalizes, and drives to the very periphery of public
law, the core features of conjugal marriage and parenthood. The complex social
institution of marriage does require ongoing change to sustain and enrich its devel-
opment. But the well-being of children, parents, couples, and society is seriously
threatened by the push to de-normalize the core features of marriage and parent-
hood and to strip their historic public meanings from law and public discourse.
In this remade world, marriage is reconstituted in order to celebrate relationship
diversity. What drops out of view? Quite a lot, it turns out. Marriage serves critical
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purposes in human culture. It addresses the fact of sexual difference between men
and women, including the unique vulnerabilities that women face in pregnancy and
childbirth. It promotes a unique form of life and culture that integrates the goods
of sexual attraction, interpersonal love and commitment, childbirth, child care and
socialization, and mutual economic and psychological assistance. It provides a
social frame for procreativity. It fosters and maintains connections between children
and their natural parents. It sustains a complex form of social interdependency
between men and women. It supports an integrated form of parenthood, uniting
the biological (or adoptive), gestational, and social roles that parents play.
The value of diversity is key to justice in our civil society. But by itself, diversity
is an inadequate basis for understanding marriage as an institution. The diversity-
trumps-everything approach marginalizes what tradition, religion, and even now
the social sciences tell us about family formation, parenting, and childrens well-
being.
Can an insistence on family diversity as our primary lodestar offer any meaningful
insight into the distinctive significance of marriage in human culture? Can close
relationship theory stir up any reflective wonder about the remarkable social-sexual
ecology that animates human culture? Can functional parenthood capture the deep-
seated human concern for connection between children and their natural parents?
For most ordinary citizens on both sides of this longest border in the world, the
common sense answer to these questions is no.
This rough human wisdom suggests that our leading academics and legal theorists
may be getting it wrong. Not just a little wrong. Not just wrong in a few places. But
deeply, fundamentally wrong. Perhaps we should insist that they go back to the
drawing board and try to get it right.
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Recommendations
1. Recognize that marriage is a social institution, not merely individuals following
laws devised by legal professionals.
2. Identify and encourage people going into the field of family law who will seek
to strengthen rather than weaken marriage.
3. A minimum five-year moratorium should be placed on any changes to the laws
affecting the definition of marriage. The purpose of the moratorium is to allow for
informed democratic consultation and deliberation.
4. Research into family law should broaden its base and welcome a more interdis-
ciplinary approach to issues of marriage, parenthood, and family. Legal research
associations such as the American Law Institute and the Law Commission of Canada
should recognize the limits of their competence to reform these fundamental features
of ordinary life. Their work should be undertaken in a far more interdisciplinary,
exploratory, and collaborative way.
5. Governments should foster more democratic consultation and deliberation on
the question of the role of marriage in society. Broad-based representative commis-
sions should be formed to explore public interest concerns in the area of marriage
and family life. These commissions should consist primarily of those affected by
changes to the institution of marriage: ordinary citizens, cultural communities, marriage
and family life associations, and religious communities, rather than lawyers and
academics.
6. Governments and universities should invest in more research on marriage and
family life. Research should focus on the following:
Gathering relevant statistical information on national trends and developments in
marriage, parenthood and family life;
Gathering cross-cultural and trans-national data;
Interdisciplinary conferences, research and programs on marriage, parenthood
and family life;
Research on the impact of diverse family forms on the well-being of children; and
Research to track properly the shifting attitudes and behaviors of youth culture
in relationship to marriage and pathways to marriage.
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Endnotes
1. John Dewar, Family Law and Its Discontents, International Journal of Law, Policy
and the Family 14 (2000): 59-60.
2. Ibid.
3. Douglass C. North, Institutions, Institutional Change, and Economic Performance
(New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990a). The new institutionalism in economics,
sociology, and social anthropology underlines the critical importance of public norms and
rules. For some classic discussions see North as well as Mary C. Brinton and Victor Nee,
eds., The New Institutionalism in Sociology (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1998);
Mary Douglas, How Institutions Think (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1986).
4. Harry Krause, Marriage for the New Millennium: Heterosexual, Same-Sex Or Not
At All? Family Law Quarterly 34 (2000): 284-85.
5. Paul Kahn, The Cultural Study of Law (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999),
123-24.
6. Beverly McLachlin, Freedom of Religion and the Rule of Law, in Recognizing Religion
in a Secular Society, ed. Douglas Farrow (Montreal, QC and Kingston, ON: McGill-Queens
University Press, 2004), 14. See also Katharine T. Bartlett, Re-Expressing Parenthood, in
Family, State and Law, vol. 2, ed. Michael D. Freeman (Dartmouth: Ashgate, 1999), 163.
7. William N. Eskridge, Jr., Equality Practice: Civil Unions and the Future of Gay Rights
(New York: Routledge, 2002), 154.
8. Martha Fineman, The Autonomy Myth: A Theory of Dependency (New York: The New
Press, 2004), 63.
9. One lesson Professor Waaldjik [a leading European gay law theorist] and I would
draw [from the experience of same-sex marriage] is that legal recognition of same-sex
marriage comes through a step-by-step process. Such a process is sequential and
incremental: it proceeds by little steps. Registered partnership laws have not been adopt-
ed until a particular country has first decriminalized consensual sodomy and equalized the
age of consent for homosexual and heterosexual intercourse; then has adopted laws pro-
hibiting employment and other kinds of discrimination against gay people; and, finally, has
provided other kinds of more limited state recognition for same-sex relationships, such as
giving legal benefits to or enforcing legal obligations on cohabiting same-sex couples. That
the Netherlands has just recognized same-sex marriages was facilitated by its prior recognition
of, and successful experience with, registered partnerships. Eskridge, Equality Practice,
153-54.
10. [L]aw cannot liberalize unless public opinion moves, but public attitudes can be
influenced by changes in the law. For gay rights, the impasse suggested by this paradox
can be ameliorated or broken if the proponents of reform move step by step along a
continuum of little reforms. [There are] pragmatic reasons why such a step-by-step process
can break the impasse: it permits gradual adjustment of antigay mindsets, slowly empowers
gay rights advocates, and can discredit antigay arguments. Ibid., 154.
11. Ibid., 225. Margaret Brinig notes that Canada proceeded along a series of small steps
towards legalizing same-sex marriage. See Chapter 6 and Default Rules, in Reconceiving
the Family: Critical Reflections on the American Law Institutes Principles of the Law of
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Family Dissolution, ed. Robin Wilson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming).
The same case has also been made for Norway and Scandinavia; see Turid Noack,
Cohabitation in Norway: An Accepted and Gradually More Regulated Way of Living,
International Journal of Law, Policy and the Family 15 (2001): 102-17.
12. John Rawls, Justice as Fairness: A Restatement (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press, 2001), 162.
13. John Locke, Second Treatise on Government, chap. VII, sec. 78.
14. Rawls, Justice as Fairness, 162-3.
15. See Maggie Gallagher and Joshua K. Baker, Do Moms and Dads Matter? Evidence
from the Social Sciences on Family Structure and the Best Interests of the Child, Margins
4 (2004): 161-180.
16. Kristin Anderson Moore, Susan M. Jekielek, and Carol Emig, Marriage from a Childs
Perspective: How Does Family Structure Affect Children and What Can We Do About It?
Child Trends Research Brief (Washington, DC: Child Trends, June, 2002), 1. Also available
at http://www.childtrends.org/files/MarriageRB602.pdf. For more evidence of the importance
of intact families for children see Sandra L. Hoffreth and Kermyt G. Anderson, Are all dads
equal? Biology versus marriage as a basis for paternal investment, Journal of Marriage and
Family 65, no. 1, (2003): 213-32; and Wendy D. Manning and Kathleen A. Lamb,
Adolescent Well-Being in Cohabiting, Married, and Single-Parent Families, Journal of
Marriage and Family 65, no. 4, (2003): 876-93.
17. This line of argument is common in evolutionary psychology. For discussions of kin
altruism and parental investment see chapter three in Louise Barrett, Robin Dunbar, and John
Lycett, Human Evolutionary Psychology (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002);
Mary Daly and Margo Wilson, Sex, Evolution and Behavior (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 1978).
18. Halpern v. Canada (Attorney General), [2003] 225 D.L.R. (4th) 529 (Can.), par. 130;
Goodridge v. Department of Public Health, 798 N.E.2d 941, 961-64 (2003).
19. See Dan Cere, The Experts Story of Courtship (New York: Institute for American
Values, 2000), 15-31.
20. See, for example, Linda J. Waite and Maggie Gallagher, The Case for Marriage: Why
Married People Are Happier, Healthier and Better-Off Financially (New York: Doubleday,
2000).
21. See David Popenoe and Barbara Dafoe Whitehead, The State of Our Unions: The
Social Health of Marriage in America, 2001, (Rutgers, NJ: The National Marriage Project,
2001).
22. Anthony Giddens, The Transformation of Intimacy: Sexuality, Love and Eroticism in
Modern Societies (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1992), 58.
23. John Scanzoni, Karen Polonko, Jay Teachman, and Linda Thompson, The Sexual
Bond: Rethinking Families and Close Relationships (Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications,
1989), 9, 13.
24. One consequence of this flattening of marriage into a close personal relationship is
that the public meaning of marriage must be redefined and shaped by the common patterns
of same-sex relationships, not the distinctive capacities of opposite-sex ones. The Ontario
Court of Appeals was blunt. It stated that the law of marriage needed to be redesigned to
meet the needs, capacities and circumstances of same-sex couples, not the needs,
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capacities and circumstances of opposite-sex couples. This view rested on the basis that
the purpose and effects of the impugned law must at all times be viewed from the
perspective of the claimant. Halpern v. Canada (Attorney General), [2003] 225 D.L.R. (4th)
529 (Can.), par. 91.
25. For a generalized discussion of how institutional frameworks (like scholarly disciplines)
make certain kinds of thoughts unthinkable, see Douglas, How Institutions Think (see n. 3).
26. Scanzoni, et al., The Sexual Bond, 9, 13.
27. Julia Wood and Steve Duck, Off the Beaten Track: New Shores for Relationship
Research, in Understudied Relationships: Off the Beaten Track, ed. Julia Wood and Steve
Duck (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1995).
28. Scanzoni, et al., The Sexual Bond, 14-24.
29. The European Commission on Family Law is also proposing major legal reforms to
harmonize European family law codes. One of its most recent reports is Principles of
European Family Law Regarding Divorce and Maintenance between Former Spouses
(Antwerp: Intersentia, 2004).
30. The Principles of the Law of Family Dissolution is the work of a select group of legal
academics who had enormous autonomy in the development of this report. David Westfall
raises some critical concerns about the controlled nature of the consultative process. See
Unprincipled Family Dissolution: The American Law Institutes Recommendations for
Spousal Support and Division of Property, Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy 27
(2004): 918-20.
31. American Law Institute, Principles of the Law of Family Dissolution: Analysis and
Recommendations (Philadelphia: American Law Institute, 2002), chap. 1, I-III (hereinafter
ALI Principles).
32. For example, see the discussion of prohibited factors in the analysis of Criteria
for Parenting Plan, ALI Principles, sec. 2.12.
33. Ibid., chap. 1, I.b.
34. Ibid., sec. 2.02, cmt. c.
35. Katharine T. Bartlett, Saving the Family from the Reformers (Brigitte M.
Bodenheimer Memorial Lecture on the Family), University of California, Davis Law Review
31 (1998): 817.
36. ALI Principles, chap. 6.
37. Ibid., chap. 1, Overview of Chapter 6 (Domestic Partners).
38. Ibid., sec. 6.03.
40. Ibid., chap. 1, I.b.
41. Ibid., chap. 1, IV.b.
42. Ibid.
43. In the context of marital failure, however, the word cause has no such meaning,
and its use simply masks a moral inquiry with a word pretending a more objective
assessment. Some individuals tolerate their spouses drunkenness or adultery and remain
in the marriage. Others may seek divorce if their spouse grows fat, or spends long hours
in the office. Is the divorce caused by one spouses offensive conduct, or by the others
unreasonable intolerance? In deciding that question the court is assessing the parties relative
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moral failings, not the relationship between independent and dependent variables. And the
complexity of marital relations of course confounds the inquiry. Ibid., chap. 1, III.a(1).
44. Ibid.
45. Ibid.
46. Law Commission of Canada, Recognizing and Supporting Close Personal Relationships
Between Adults (discussion paper) (Ottawa: Law Commission of Canada, 2000), sec. 2(b).
47. Law Commission of Canada, Beyond Conjugality: Recognizing and Supporting Close
Personal Adult Relationships (Ottawa: Law Commission of Canada, 2001), xxiv-xxv (hereinafter
Beyond Conjugality).
48. Brenda Cossman and Bruce Ryder, Gay, Lesbian and Unmarried Heterosexual
Couples and the Family Law Act: Accommodating a Diversity of Family Forms (Toronto,
ON: Ontario Law Reform Commission, 1993), 5.
49. Beyond Conjugality, xxii-xxiii, 13-15.
50. In the Ontario Superior Court marriage decision, Justice Robert Blair stated that
marriage must be open to same-sex couples who live in long-term, committed, relationships
marriage-like in everything but name just as it is to heterosexual couples. Halpern
v. Canada, 215 D.L.R. (4th) 223 (Can.), par. 32.
51. For example, Eskridges argument for the similarity of same-sex and opposite-sex
relationships cites as his authorities the research of close relationship theorists Letitia Anne
Peplau and Susan D. Cochrane, A Relationship Perspective on Homosexuality in
Homosexuality/Heterosexuality: Concepts of Sexual Orientation, ed. David P. McWhirter
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1990. William N. Eskridge, Jr., The Case for Same-Sex
Marriage: From Sexual Liberty to Civilized Commitment (New York: Free Press, 1996), 109,
fn.6.
52. One consequence of this flattening of marriage into a close personal relationship is
that the public meaning of marriage must be redefined and shaped by the common pat-
terns of same-sex relationships, not the distinctive capacities of opposite-sex ones. The
Ontario Court of Appeal was blunt. It stated in Halpern that the law of marriage needed to
be redesigned to meet the needs, capacities and circumstances of same-sex couples, not
the needs, capacities and circumstances of opposite-sex couples (see n. 24).
53. ALI Principles, sec. 6.01.
55. Ibid., sec. 6.03. Sharing a life together as a couple is characterized by features such
as common commitments or promises to one another (oral or written) or representations
to others of their relationship, economic interdependence, collaborative life together,
evidence that the relationship wrought change in the life of either or both of the parties,
responsibilities for each other such as each naming the other as beneficiary, qualitative
distinctiveness of the relationship compared to other relationships, emotional or physical
intimacy of the relationship, assumption of parental functions toward a child.
56. Molodowich v. Penttinen, [1980] 17 R.F.L. (2d) 376 (Can.).
57. Under sexual and personal behavior Judge Kurisko posed the following questions:
Did the parties have sexual relations? If not, why not? Did they maintain an attitude of
fidelity to each other? What were their feelings toward each other? Did they communicate
on a personal level? Did they eat their meals together? What, if anything, did they do to
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assist each other with problems or during illness? Did they buy gifts for each other on
special occasions? Molodowich v. Penttinen, par. 21-27.
58. Macmillan-Dekker v. Dekker [2000] 10 R.F.L. (5th) 352 (Can.), par. 68, quoted in
Brenda Cossman and Bruce Ryder, What is Marriage-Like Like? The Irrelevance of
Conjugality, Canadian Journal of Family Law 18 (2001): 269, 290.
59. Canada (Attorney General) v. Mossop [1993] 1 S.C.R. 554 (Can.), par. 60. In this case
an employee was denied bereavement leave based on family status to attend the funeral
of the father of his same-sex partner. The majority decided against the complainant.
60. M. v. H., [1999] 2 S.C.R. 3 (Can.), par. 60. This ground-breaking decision extended
the right to spousal support to gays and lesbians in same-sex unions.
61. Marsha Garrison, Is Consent Necessary? An Evaluation of the Emerging Law of
Cohabitant Obligations, University of California, Los Angeles Law Review 52 (2005).
62. Roderick A. Macdonald, All in the Family, Transition Magazine 30, no. 2 (2000),
http://www.vifamily.ca/library/transition/302/302.html#1.
63. Miron v. Trudel, [1995] 2 S.C.R. 418 (Can.), par. 105; Nova Scotia vs. Walsh, [2002] 4
S.C.R. 325 (Can.), par. 42.
64. Much research in Canada and Europe combine formal and informal couples in
one category. While this may be a justifiable decision for some purposes it has the side
effect of making it impossible to discern in those studies whether and how married and
cohabiting couples differ.
65. William J. Doherty, et al., Why Marriage Matters: 21 Conclusions from the Social
Sciences (New York City: Institute for American Values, 2002), 7-8 (internal citations omitted).
66. Fully three-quarters of children born to cohabiting parents will see their parents
split up before they reach age sixteen, whereas only about a third of children born to married
parents face a similar fate. One reason is that marriage rates for cohabiting couples have
been plummeting. In the last decade, the proportion of cohabiting mothers who go on to
eventually marry the childs father declined from 57% to 44%. From David Popenoe and
Barbara Dafoe Whitehead, Should We Live Together? What Young Adults Need to Know
about Cohabitation Before Marriage, 2nd ed. (Piscataway, NJ: National Marriage Project,
2002), 8. They cite Wendy Manning, The Implications of Cohabitation for Childrens Well-
Being, in Just Living Together: Implications for Children, Families, and Public Policy, ed.
Alan Booth and Ann C. Crouter (Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2002).
67. James M. Donovan, An Ethical Argument to Restrict Domestic Partnerships to Same-
Sex Couples, Law and Sexuality 8 (1998): 649.
68. Terry Kogan, Competing Approaches to Same-Sex Versus Opposite-Sex, Unmarried
Couples in Domestic Partnerships and Ordinances, Brigham Young University Law Review
2001: 1023-44.
69. Jonathan Rauch argues for this approach in Gay Marriage: Why It is Good for Gays,
Good for Straights, and Good for America (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2004).
70. See, for instance, Prime Minister Paul Martins opening speech in favor of the new
Civil Marriage Act, House of Commons, Hansard, Feb. 16, 2005.
71. Halpern v. Canada, 215 D.L.R. (4th) 223 (Can.), par. 243.
72. Goodridge, which on November 18, 2003, rendered a four-three decision in favor
of same-sex marriage, was the American version of Halpern v. Canada. The quoted phrases
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are drawn from the opinion of Justice Greaney. Goodridge v. Department of Public Health,
798 N.E.2d 941, 968 (2003); Palmore v. Sidoti 466 U.S. 429, 433 (1984). See also the opinion
of Justices Marshall, Greaney, Ireland, and Cowin in Opinion to the Senate, 802 N.E.2d 565,
569-72 (2004).
73. Baehr v. Lewin, 74 Haw. 530, 570 (1993).
74. The Courts are not the best equipped to conduct such a balancing exercise, in my
opinion. This is not an incremental change in the law. It is a profound change. Although
there may be historical examples of the acceptance of same-sex unions, everyone
acknowledges that the institution of marriage has been commonly understood and accepted
for centuries as the union of a man and a woman. Deep-seated cultural, religious, and
socio-political mores have evolved and shapes societys views of family, child-rearing and
protection, and couple-hood based upon that heterosexual view of marriage. The apparent
simplicity of linguistic change in the wording of a law does not necessarily equate with an
incremental change in that law. To say that altering the common law meaning of marriage
to include same-sex unions is an incremental change, in my view, is to strip the word
incremental of its meaning. Justice Robert Blair in Halpern v. Canada, 215 D.L.R. (4th)
223 (Can.), par. 97-99.
75. For discussion in the popular press, see for example, John Havelock, State should
limit role to civil unions, Anchorage (AK) Daily News, July 31, 2004; Editorial, Avoid
divisiveness over who marries; Religious bodies should bless holy matrimony; government
should protect civil unions, San Antonio (TX) Express-News, Nov. 15, 2004; Michael
Kinsley, Abolish Marriage; Lets really get the government out of our bedrooms,
Washington Post, July 3, 2003; Deroy Murdock, Stop Licensing Marriage, Scripps Howard
News Service, July 10, 2004.
76. Michael Warner, The Trouble With Normal: Sex, Politics and the Ethics of Queer Life
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000).
77. Nancy F. Cott, Public Vows: A History of Marriage and the Nation (Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, 2001).
78. Nicholas Bala, Context and Inclusivity in Canadas Evolving Definition of the
Family, International Journal of Law, Policy and the Family 16 (2002): 147.
79. See Janet R. Jacobsen and Ann Pelegrini, Love the Sin: Sexual Regulation and the
Limits of Tolerance (New York: New York University Press, 2003); Larry C. Backer, Religion
as the Language of Discourse of Same Sex Marriage, Capital University Law Review 2002:
221-278.
80. Polyamory means many loves, while polygamy means many marriages.
Polyamorous unions of three or more people may or may not involve one or more couples
who are married to one another.
81. Some calling for disestablishment include: Paula L. Ettelbrick, Domestic Partnership,
Civil Unions, or Marriage: One Size Does Not Fit All, Albany Law Review 64 (2001): 905;
Dianne Post, Why Marriage Should Be Abolished, Womens Rights Law Reporter 18 (1997):
283; Patricia A. Cain, Imagine Theres No Marriage, Quinnipiac Law Review 16 (1996): 27;
Nancy D. Polikoff, Why Lesbians and Gay Men Should Read Martha Fineman, American
University Journal of Gender, Social Policy and Law 8 (1999): 167, 176; Martha Albertson
Fineman, The Neutered Mother, the Sexual Family and Other Twentieth-Century Tragedies
0126
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(New York: Routledge, 1995), 270-72; Nancy D. Polikoff, We Will Get What We Ask For:
Why Legalizing Gay and Lesbian Marriage Will Not Dismantle the Legal Structure of Gender
in Every Marriage, Virginia Law Review 79 (1993): 1535; Jennifer Jaff, Wedding Bell Blues:
The Position of Unmarried People in American Law, Arizona Law Review 30 (1988): 207.
82. Halpern v. Canada (Attorney General), [2003] 225 D.L.R. (4th) 529 (Can.), par. 150.
83. Department of Justice Canada, Marriage and Legal Recognition of Same-Sex
Unions: A Discussion Paper (discussion paper) (Ottawa: Department of Justice Canada,
2002), http://www.justice.gc.ca/en/dept/pub/mar/mar_e.pdf.
84. Beyond Conjugality, 128.
85. Ibid., 118-120.
86. Ibid., 13, 17.
87. For instance see Cossman and Ryder, What is Marriage-Like Like? (see n. 58).
88. Ibid., 323.
89. Ibid., 326.
90. This tension in the report may be due to the fact that the composition of the report
occurred under the leadership of two presidents of the Law Commission.
91. In 1880, the first modern papal encyclical on marriage, On Christian Marriage by
Leo XIII, expressed serious concerns about the political usurpation of marriage by the
modern state.
92. Julius Grey, Equality Rights Versus the Right to Marriage: Toward the Path of
Canadian Compromise, Policy Options (October, 2003): 33.
93. Gillian Douglas, An Introduction to Family Law, Clarendon Law Series (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2001), 30-31.
94. See http://www.uupa.org.
95. Beyond Conjugality, 133, fn.16.
96. See Rubins Alternative Lifestyles Today in Handbook of Contemporary Families,
ed. M. Coleman and L.H. Ganong (Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications, 2004), 32-33. Note
that same-sex marriage laws also threaten the dyadic restriction on marriage because in
order for same-sex couples to have children without resorting to adoption they must
necessarily involve a third person in order to conceive and bear a child.
97. Elizabeth F. Emens, Monogamys Law: Compulsory Monogamy and Polyamorous
Existence, New York University Review of Law and Social Change 29 (2005).
98. See Bill C-38, Civil Marriage Act, 1st sess., 38th Parliament (2005), Consequential
Amendments.
99. Beyond Conjugality, xxiv.
100. Ibid., 129.
101. Ibid., xxiv.
102. ALI Principles, sec. 2.08, cmt b.
103. Bartlett, Re-Expressing Parenthood, 173 (see n. 6).
104. ALI Principles, 2.02(c).
105. Bartlett, Saving the Family from the Reformers, 852 (see n. 35).
106. Ibid., 853.
107. ALI Principles, 1.01.
108. Ibid., 2.02, reporters note a.
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109. Ibid.
110. Ibid., 2.02(b).
111. Ibid., 2.12(f).
112. Ibid., 2.03(1). The legal category will ordinarily include biological parents,
whether or not they are or ever have been married to each other, and adoptive parents.
Ibid., 2.03, cmt. a.
113. Ibid., 2.03(1)(b)(iii).
114. Ibid., 2.03(1)(b); ibid., cmt. b.
115. Ibid., 2.03.
116. Helen Rhoades, The Rise and Rise of Shared Parenting Laws: A Critical
Perspective, Canadian Journal of Family Law 19 (2002): 107-108.
117. Studies arguing for the deconstruction of the concept of natural parent and kinship
relations include: Sara Franklin and Susan McKinnon, eds., Relative Values: Reconfiguring
Kinship Studies (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2001); Judith Butler, Is Kinship Always
Heterosexual? in Undoing Gender (New York: Routledge, 2004), 102-130.
118. Most people are familiar with the concept of a surrogate mother, a woman who
carries a baby which is genetically her child with plans to give the baby to another person
or couple after birth. A newer form of surrogacy is the gestational carrier who carries a
fetus created by using another womans egg. Infertile couples might prefer gestational
carriers because of the possibility of having a baby that is genetically their own and/or the
lower perceived risk that the surrogate will change her mind and keep the child.
119. Jonathan Herring, Family Law (London: Longman, 2001), 264, 305f.
120. Richard F. Storrow, Parenthood by Pure Intention: Assisted Reproduction and the
Functional Approach to Parentage, Hastings Law Journal 53 (2002): 597-679; Janet L.
Dolgin, Choice, Tradition, and the New Genetics: The Fragmentation of the Ideology of
Family, Connecticut Law Review 32 (2000): 520-566.
121. Storrow, Parenthood by Pure Intention, 628.
122. Current legislation in Quebec dealing with sperm donation places the rights of
adults over the rights of children to know their biological parents.
123. This right also implies that children should not to be the subjects or products of
experimental reproductive technologies that may have long-term effects on life, health, and
identity that remain as yet unknown.
124. William N. Eskridge Jr., Gaylaw: Challenging Apartheid in the Closet (Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press, 1999), 11.
125. Robin Wilson, Children at Risk: The Sexual Exploitation of Female Children after
Divorce, Cornell Law Review 86 (2001) 251, 256.
126. June Carbone, From Partners to Parents: The Second Revolution in Family Law
(New York: Columbia University Press, 2000), 227
127. See F. C. DeCostes insightful discussion in The Halpern Transformation: Same-
Sex Marriage, Civil Society, and the Limits of Liberal Law, Alberta Law Review 41 (2003):
619.
0128
000206
About the Institute for American Values
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Attorneys for Plaintiffs


et al.,

Plaintiffs,
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Defendants,
and
STATE OF IDAHO,



SUPPLEMENTAL EXPERT
DECLARATION OF DR.
MICHAEL E. LAMB

000208
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PRELIMINARY STATEMENT
I, Michael Lamb, Ph.D., hereby declare and state as follows:
1. I am a Professor of Psychology in the Department of Psychology at the University
of Cambridge in the United Kingdom. I have actual knowledge of the matters stated in this
declaration and could and would so testify if called as a witness.
2. On February 16, 2014, I submitted my expert declaration in this matter, which set
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my curriculum vitae as Exhibit A and the bibliography of documents I reviewed and relied upon
in my Original Declaration as Exhibit B.
3. My Original Declaration set forth the principal opinion that I am offering in this
case: that children and adolescents raised by same-sex parents are as likely to be well-adjusted
as children raised by heterosexual parents.
1

4. I have read the relevant portions of the Motion for Summary Judgment and
Memorandum in Support filed by Defendant Governor Otter, Dkt. 57-2. More specifically, the
text on pages 38 through 43 of the Governors Memorandum asserts that children are best
adjusted when raised by married mothers and fathers who are their biological parents, Dkt. 57-2
at 38-41; that children are disadvantaged by not having opposite-sex parents, Dkt. 57-2 at 39-41;
that children conceived through assisted reproductive technology have poorer outcomes, id. at
41-42; and that recent articles undermine the conclusion that the children of lesbians and gay
men have equally good outcomes as children raised by married heterosexual couples, id. at 41-
43. I submit this further declaration in response to those assertions, which are neither correct nor
credible. I also have reviewed the materials the Governor cited in this portion of his brief and
submitted in his Appendix in Support of his Motion for Summary Judgment.

1
All citations in this supplemental declaration which appear in shortened form refer to
articles cited in the Bibliography attached as Exhibit B to my Original Declaration. Dkt. 47. All
new sources are fully cited.
000209
3

5. My Original Declaration addressed a number of the sources cited by the Governor
in his Memorandum, explaining that they do not raise any credible concerns about the
psychological adjustment of children raised by same-sex parents, and I will not repeat that
testimony in full here. See Dkt. 47 at 14-15 (discussing Mark Regnerus, How different are the
adult children of parents who have same-sex relationships? Findings from the New Family
Structures Study, Social Science Research 41 (2012) 75270); Dkt. 47 at 15-16 (discussing
Douglas W. Allen, High school graduation rates among children of same-sex households, Rev.
Econ. Household (2013) 11:635-658; Dkt. 47 at 18 n.8 (discussing Loren D. Marks, Same-Sex
Parenting and Childrens Outcomes: A Closer Examination of the American Psychological
Associations Brief on Lesbian and Gay Parenting, 41 Soc. Sci. Research 735, 748 (2012)); Dkt.
47 at 21 n.11 (discussing W. Bradford Wilson, Why Marriage Matters: Thirty Conclusions for
Social Sciences (3d ed. 2011) and Kristen Anderson Moore, et al., Marriage from a Childs
Perspective: How Does Family Structure Affect Children, and What Can We Do about It, Child
Trends Research Br. (June 2002)).
6. As described further below, none of the additional materials submitted by the
Governor provide empirical support for the claims he makes or call into question the conclusion
stated in my Original Declaration that children and adolescents raised by same-sex parents are as
likely to be well-adjusted as children raised by opposite-sex parents. None of the Governors
sources provide any basis for questioning the robust research in the field that consistently shows
equally positive outcomes for children of gay and heterosexual parents.
A. There Is No Scientific Evidence That A Biological Linkage Between Parents
And Children Affects Childrens Outcomes.
7. There is no scientific support for the Governors assertion that children fare best if
raised by biological parents. To the contrary, high quality social science research has explored
and failed to findassociations between genetic linkages between children and their parents and
measures of childrens adjustment and development. Instead, research has consistently found
that the most important determinants of childrens adjustment and development are the quality of
000210
4

the parent-child relationships, the quality of the relationships between the parents, and the
availability of economic and social resources. Dkt. 47 at 5.
8. First, research on adopted children, who are not genetically related to the parents
who rear them, shows that the majority thrive, although some are psychologically affected by
adverse experiences occurring prior to adoption (including prenatal experiences, such as prenatal
exposure to drugs or alcohol).
2

9. Second, children conceived through assisted reproduction also fare as well as
children raised by biological parents. Children conceived through assisted reproduction may be
genetically linked to their mothers but not their fathers (e.g., sperm donation), to their fathers but
not their mothers (e.g., egg donation), or to neither mothers nor fathers (e.g., embryo donation).
Research has consistently shown that children conceived in these ways generally thrive and
develop and adjust well
3
throughout the lifespan, including adolescence
4
and adulthood.
5

10. In summary, well-designed, high quality research that is directly relevant to the
issue of genetic relatedness clearly shows that children may thrive psychologically whether or
not they are genetically linked to the parents who rear them. The Governors memorandum
ignores this body of research entirely.

2
See, e.g., Grotevant, van Dulmen, Dunbar, Nelson-Christinedaughter, Christensen, Fan &
Miller, Antisocial Behavior of Adoptees and Nonadoptees: Predictions from Early History and
Adolescent Relationships, Journal of Research on Adolescence (2006) 16:105-131; Juffer & van
IJzendoorn, 2005, 2007.
3
See, e.g., Lamb, 2012; Golombok, Murray, Jadva, Lycett, MacCallum & Rust, 2006;
Golombok, Tasker & Murray, 1997; MacCallum, Golombok & Brinsden, Parenting and Child
Development in Families with a Child Conceived Through Embryo Donation, Journal of Family
Psychology (2007) 21:278-287; and MacCallum & Keeley, Embryo Donation Families: A
Follow-Up in Middle Childhood, Journal of Family Psychology (2008) 22:799-808. See also
Golombok, 2013.
4
See, e.g., MacCallum & Golombok, 2004.
5
See, e.g., Golombok & Badger, 2010.
000211
5

11. The Governor cites a report issued by the advocacy organization, the Institute for
American Values, called Daddys Name is Donor. This report, which is based on an online
survey, purports to show poorer child outcomes among children conceived by way of sperm and
egg donation. Dkt. 57-2 at 41-42. On-line surveys of this sort do not constitute reliable
scientific data. As discussed above, the research on donor-conceived children which has been
published in peer-reviewed scientific journals shows that these children develop normally and
that the existence of donor parents has no bearing on childrens adjustment.
6

B. There Is No Scientific Evidence That Children Of Different-Sex Parents,
Including Those Who Are Biologically Related To Their Children, Fare
Better Than Children Of Same-Sex Parents.
12. The Governors claim that child-rearing by married heterosexual parents is
optimal for children (see, e.g., Dkt. 57-2 at 38-43) is not supported by scientific research. The
sources cited by the Governor report that children raised in continuously intact households fare
better on average than children raised in single-parent households, divorced households, and
step-families. These conclusions are consistent with the opinions expressed in my Original
Declaration regarding the benefits of stable marriages for all children, including those raised by
same-sex parents. These sources do not support the conclusion that opposite-sex parents,
including those who are biologically related to their children, provide superior parenting.
Moreover, as I explained in my Original Declaration, the research cited by the Governor does not
examine parenting by same-sex couples and therefore does not provide any information about
children who are raised by same-sex parents. Dkt. 47 at 18-19.
13. Sources of the sort cited by the Governorthat is, those that examine the impact
of single parenthood, divorce and step-family life include, for example: Kristen Anderson
Moore, et al., Marriage from a Childs Perspective: How Does Family Structure Affect Children,
and What Can We Do about It, Child Trends Research Br. (June 2002) (Dkt. 57-2 at 39 n.29);

6
Golombok, 2013.
000212
6

Bruce J. Ellis et al, Does Father Absence Place Daughters at Special Risk for Early Sexual
Activity and Teenage Pregnancy?, 74 Child Dev. 801 (2003) (Dkt. 57-2 at 41 n.35); Stephanie
Weiland Bowling & Ronald J. Werner-Wilson, Father-Daughter Relationships and Adolescent
Female Sexuality: Paternal Qualities Associated with Responsible Sexual Behavior, 3 J.
HIV/AIDS Prevention & Educ. Adolescents & Child (2003) (Dkt. 57-2 at 41 n.35); Lawrence L.
Wu & Brian C. Martinson, Family Structure and the Risk of a Premarital Birth, 54 Am. Soc.
Rev. 210 (1993) (Dkt. 57-2 at 42 n.37); Cynthia C. Harper and Sara S. McLanahan, Father
Absence and Youth Incarceration, 14 J. Res. Adolescence 369 (2004) (Dkt. 57-2 at 43 n.39).
Because these studies evaluate the impact of growing up in heterosexual single parent, divorced
and step-families, no conclusions can be drawn from them about the impact of being raised by
same-sex parents. Instead, such publications suggest that, all other things being equal, children
and adolescents with same-sex parents, like their peers, likely would benefit if their parents could
marry and solidify their family and parental ties.
14. The Governor also cites sources that are commentaries written by advocates
rather than reports of scientific research. See, e.g., Dkt. 57-2 at 40 n.31 (citing Norval D. Glen,
The Struggle for Same-Sex Marriage, 41 Socy 25, 27 (2004); Dkt. 57-2 at 39 n.30 (citing
Witherspoon Institute, Marriage and the Public Good: Ten Principles 18 (2008)); Dkt. 57-2 at
40 (citing W. Bradford Wilson, Why Marriage Matters: Thirty Conclusions for Social Sciences
(3d ed. 2011); Dkt. 57-2 at 40 n.32 (citing Dean Byrd, Gender Complementarity and Child-
Rearing: Where Tradition and Science Agree, 6 J. L. & Fam. Studs 213 (2004) and A. Dean
Byrd & Kristen M. Byrd, Dual-Gender Parenting: A Social Science Perspective for Optimal
Child Rearing, Family Law: Balancing Interests and Pursing Priorities 382-87 (2007)); Dkt. 57-
2 at 42 (citing Lynn D. Wardle, The Fall of Marital Stability and the Rise of Juvenile
Delinquency, 10 J.L. & Fams. Studs. 83 (2007)); and Dkt. 57-2 at 43 (citing Richard G. Wilkins,
Adult Sexual Desire and the Best Interests of the Child, 18 St. Thomas L. Rev. 543 (2005)).
Such advocacy does not constitute reliable evidence that children of same-sex couples fare worse
than children of opposite-sex parents.
000213
7

C. It Is Now Established Beyond Dispute That The Gender Of Parents Has No
Bearing On Childrens Adjustment Or Well-Being.
15. Contrary to the Governors claim that it is optimal for children to be raised by
parents of both genders, scientific research has definitively established that, contrary to the
earlier assumptions of many researchers, the parents genders have no bearing on childrens
adjustment or development.
16. The Governor misleadingly cites my early research in an attempt to show that so-
called gender-differentiated parenting benefits children. Dkt. 57-2 at 40 n.32. When I began
my research in the early 1970s, many social scientists, including myself, hypothesized that
children should be raised in heterosexual families that include fathers in order to be well-
adjusted, although this theory had not been studied, much less established by empirical research.
As explained in my Original Declaration, a robust body of evidence-based research (including
my own) has since proven that hypothesis incorrect, and scientists in the field have long since
discarded the idea that parents gender affects childrens adjustment. Dkt. 47 at 9-12.
17. Instead, as I previously testified, three categories of factors account for the
adjustment of children and adolescents: the quality of the parent-child relationship, the quality
of the relationship between the parents, and the adequacy of resources to support the family.
Dkt. 47 at 10-11. This has been a matter of scientific consensus for over 20 years.
7

7
The Governor cites a book by David Popenoe, Life Without Father: Compelling New
Evidence that Fatherhood and Marriage are Indispensable for the Good of Children and Society
(1996), to support his claim that gender differentiated parenting is important for human
development. That claim, which was widely assumed to be true many years ago, has been
shown to be unfounded, and conflicts with the extensive body of empirical research described
above. Additionally, Popenoe is neither a psychologist nor child development expert. It is
beyond any debate among child development experts today that male and female parents can be
equally competent and that the absence of a male or female parent in the home does not impair
adjustment.

000214
8

D. None Of The Sources Cited By The Governor Provide A Basis To Question
The Scientific Consensus That Children Of Same-Sex Parents And Children
Of Opposite-Sex Parents Are Equally Well-Adjusted.
18. The Governor cites articles by Mark Regnerus, Loren Marks, and Douglas W.
Allen that purport to cast doubt on the scientific consensus that children raised by same-sex
parents are equally well-adjusted. See Dkt. 57-2 at 41-42. However, as I explained in my
Original Declaration, the data presented in these articles do not support the conclusions that their
authors offer. See Dkt. 47 at 14-15 (explaining that Regnerus study did not actually assess
children raised in families with same-sex parents); Dkt. 47 at 15-16 (explaining severe flaws in
Allens study rendering any conclusions about same-sex parenting impossible); Dkt. 47 at 18 n.8
(explaining that Loren D. Marks article is a materially incomplete review of the literature that
mischaracterizes the extensive research about same-sex parents published before 2005, and
ignores entirely the many informative studies published since then).
19. The Governor also makes much of a subsequent piece by Mark Regnerus entitled
Parental same-sex relationships, family instability, and subsequent life outcomes for adult
children: Answering critics of the New Family Structures Study with additional analyses, which
responds to the widespread critiques of the deficiencies in his article, although this article
actually recognizes the problems I identified with his study. I observed in my Original
Declaration that most of the children in the so called lesbian mother and gay father groups
spent very little time living in households headed by same-sex couples. Dkt. 47 at 14. Regnerus
recognizes that this is true. He reports that, of the 85 respondents who reported mothers who had
same-sex relationships, the vast majority 51 of them lived with the same-sex couple for two
years or less. Dkt. 57-11, Governors Appendix, at 724. Only six respondents lived with a
same-sex couple for 10 or more consecutive years. Id. at 725. Only two respondents reported
living with their mother and her partner from the beginning of their lives to the age of 18. Id.
Most of the lesbian mother and gay father participants were the children of heterosexual
marriages that did not last and whose parents had same-sex relationships at some point in time.
000215
9

This study does not tell us anything about children who grew up in families with same-sex
parents.
20. Similarly, I observed in my Original Declaration that most of Regnerus so called
gay father and lesbian mother participants were in families that went through divorces and
transitions to single-parent or step-family life, which are known correlates of poorer child
outcomes, whereas he excluded from his heterosexual comparison group all of the families that
went through divorce and family transitions. Dkt. 47 at 15. This, too, Regnerus acknowledges.
Dkt. 57-11, Governors Appendix at 723-24 (acknowledging that he did not control for these
differences between the two groups, and that in an ideal data world, that makes sense); id. at
724 (unlike in the intact heterosexual families category, Regnerus included in his lesbian mothers
and gay fathers categories parents who were single, another known correlate of adjustment
difficulties). The alternative analyses reported by Regnerus in his new article do not address
these fundamental problems: He compared exclusively intact heterosexual parent families with
mostly non-intact gay father and lesbian mother families and, thus, could legitimately only
conclude from this study something that we have long known that family break-up is
associated with poorer child outcomes.
21. Nothing in Regneruss new piece alters my original conclusion that his study did
not actually measure outcomes for children raised by same-sex parents; instead, Regnerus
underscored my previously stated concerns.
22. The conclusion stated in my Original Declarationthat it is beyond scientific
dispute that children raised by gay, lesbian, and heterosexual couples are equally likely to be
well-adjustedis well supported by the empirical research literature. This is because outcomes
for children and adolescents depend not on the sex of the parents or the family structure, but
rather on the quality of parenting and parent-child relationships, the quality of the relationships
between parents or significant adults in the childrens lives, and the parents access to social and
economic resources. The Governor does not cite a single reliable scientific study to the contrary,
presents unsupported assertions of opinion as facts, and provides no reason to ignore the
000216
000217
11


I HEREBY CERTIFY that on the 20th day of March, 2014, I filed the foregoing document
electronically through the CM/ECF system, which caused the following parties or counsel to be
served by electronic means, as more fully reflected on the Notice of Electronic Filing:

Attorneys for Defendant Rich and Intervenor State of Idaho

Steven Lamar Olsen
steven.olsen@ag.idaho.gov

Clay R. Smith

W. Scott Zanzig
scott.zanzig@ag.idaho.gov,

Attorneys for Defendant Governor Otter

Thomas C. Perry

Cally Ann Younger

______/s/_________
Deborah A. Ferguson
000218
202 N. 9
th
Street, Suite 401 C
Boise, Idaho 83702
Tel.: (208) 484-2253

Boise, Idaho 83702
Tel.: (208) 345-5183

Shannon P. Minter
Tel.: (415) 392-6257




SUSAN LATTA and TRACI EHLERS, et al.,

Plaintiffs,
v.

Defendants,
and
STATE OF IDAHO,



PLAINTIFFS STATEMENT
REGARDING MATERIAL
FACTS IN RESPONSE TO
DEFENDANT GOVERNOR
OTTERS MOTION FOR
SUMMARY JUDGMENT

000219
2
Pursuant to Local Civil Rule 7.1 (c)(2), Plaintiffs submit this statement regarding
material facts in response to Defendant Governor Otters Motion for Summary Judgment
(Dkt. 57) and his Statement of Undisputed Material Facts (Dkt. 57-1) (Governors
Statement).
The majority of the material in the Governors Statement consists not of
undisputed facts that are material to this dispute, but of (1) descriptions and
characterizations of statutes, constitutional provisions, proposed constitutional provisions,
legislative history, and case law; (2) legal argument; and (3) statements of non-expert
opinion. Apart from citations to certain legislative history, election materials, and press
materials, the Governors Statement contains no citation to evidence.
Rather than respond point-by-point to the contents in the Governors Statement
(which is not divided into numbered paragraphs), Plaintiffs state that there is no fact
contained in the Governors Statement that supports his Motion for Summary Judgment.
Rather, the contents of the Governors Statement support denial of his Motion and the
granting of Plaintiffs Motion for Summary Judgment (Dkt. 45).

DATED: March 20, 2014


_________/s/_________
Deborah A. Ferguson

000220
3

202 N. 9th Street, Suite 401 C
Boise, Idaho 83702
Tel.: (208) 484-2253

Boise, Idaho 83702
Tel.: (208) 345-5183

Shannon P. Minter


000221
4

I HEREBY CERTIFY that on the 20th day of March, 2014, I filed the foregoing
document electronically through the CM/ECF system, which caused the following parties
Electronic Filing:


Steven Lamar Olsen

Clay R. Smith

W. Scott Zanzig


Thomas C. Perry

Cally Ann Younger

______/s/_________
Deborah A. Ferguson

000222

DEFENDANT RICH AND DEFENDANT-INTERVENORS REQUEST FOR JUDICIAL NOTICE - 1

LAWRENCE G. WASDEN
ATTORNEY GENERAL

STEVEN L. OLSEN

nd
Floor
P. O. Box 83720
Boise, ID 83720-0010
Telephone: (208) 334-2400
Fax: (208) 854-8073

Attorneys for Defendant Rich and Defendant-Intervenor



SUSAN LATTA et al.,

Plaintiffs,

vs.


Defendants,

and

STATE OF IDAHO,

)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)


DEFENDANT RICH AND
DEFENDANT-INTERVENORS
REQUEST FOR JUDICIAL
NOTICE

000223


Defendant Christopher Rich and Defendant-Intervenor State of Idaho respectively
request that judicial notice be taken the documents in Docket 30-2 through Docket 30-5
pursuant to Fed. R. Evid. 201(b)(2).
DATED this 20th day of March 2014.
STATE OF IDAHO

By: /s/
W. SCOTT ZANZIG
CLAY R. SMITH

000224



I HEREBY CERTIFY that on the 20th day of March 2014, I electronically filed
the foregoing with the Clerk of the Court using the CM/ECF system which sent a Notice
of Electronic Filing to the following Persons:

Deborah A. Ferguson


Shannon P. Minter


Thomas Perry

Cally Ann Younger

/s/
W. Scott Zanzig

000225

DEFENDANT RICH AND DEFENDANT-INTERVENORS STATEMENT OF MATERIAL FACTS RE PLAINTIFFS MOTION
FOR SUMMARY JUDGMENT (DKT. 45) - 1

LAWRENCE G. WASDEN
ATTORNEY GENERAL

STEVEN L. OLSEN

nd
Floor
P. O. Box 83720
Boise, ID 83720-0010
Telephone: (208) 334-2400
Fax: (208) 854-8073




SUSAN LATTA et al.,

Plaintiffs,

vs.


Defendants,

and

STATE OF IDAHO,

)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)


DEFENDANT RICH AND
STATEMENT OF MATERIAL
FACTS RE PLAINTIFFS
MOTION FOR SUMMARY
JUDGMENT (DKT. 45)

000226


Defendant Christopher Rich and Defendant-Intervenor State of Idaho submit a
statement of material facts pursuant to Idaho Dist. Loc. Civ. R. 7.1(b)(1).
1. Civil marriage between members of the same sex has never been authorized
under Idaho territorial or state law. E.g., 1864 Idaho Terr. Sess. L. 613; 1889 Idaho Terr.
Sess. L. 40; 1901 Civ. Code Ann. 1990; Idaho Code 32-202.
2. Plaintiffs Susan Latta and Traci Ehlers were Idaho residents at the time of
their marriage in the State of California. Dkt. 46 1-6. Plaintiffs Lori and Sharene
Watsen were Idaho residents at the time of their marriage in the State of New York.
Dkt. 46 1-18; Dkt. 51 9-13.
3. The demographic facts identified on pages 12 and 13 in Dkt. 30-1, as
corrected in Dkt. 34, are accurate and derived from the sources identified on such pages.
4. The documents appended as Docket 30-2 through Docket 30-10 are
accurate copies of what they purport to be.
DATED this 20th day of March 2014.
STATE OF IDAHO

By: /s/
W. SCOTT ZANZIG
CLAY R. SMITH

000227



I HEREBY CERTIFY that on the 20th day of March 2014, I electronically filed
of Electronic Filing to the following Persons:

Deborah A. Ferguson


Shannon P. Minter


Thomas Perry

Cally Ann Younger

/s/
W. Scott Zanzig

000228

202 N. 9
th
Street, Suite 401 C
Boise, Idaho 83702
Tel.: (208) 484-2253

405 S. 8th Street, Suite 372
Boise, Idaho 83702
Tel.: (208) 345-5183

Shannon P. Minter
Tel.: (415) 392-6257




Plaintiffs,
v.

Defendants,
and
STATE OF IDAHO,



DECLARATION OF
SHANNON P. MINTER IN
SUPPORT OF PLAINTIFFS
REQUEST FOR JUDICIAL
NOTICE

000229
1

I, Shannon P. Minter, hereby declare and state as follows:
1. I am an attorney admitted pro hac vice before this Court and represent the
Plaintiffs in this action. I have personal knowledge of the matters stated in the Declaration and
could and would competently testify to these facts.
2. This Declaration is filed concurrently with Plaintiffs Motion for Judicial Notice.
3. Plaintiffs counsel retained Legislative Intent Service, Inc., to obtain the official
legislative history for the above-mentioned bills, including the materials attached hereto as
Exhibits A through F.
4. Attached hereto as Exhibit A is a true and correct copy of Idaho House Bill 658,
Chapter 331, Session Law 1996 (House Judiciary, Rules & Administration Committee, Feb. 15,
1996 Minutes).
5. Attached hereto as Exhibit B is a true and correct copy of Idaho House Joint
Resolution No. 2, Session Law 2006, p. 1359, ratified Nov. 7, 2006 (Senate State Affairs
Committee, Jan. 29, 2005 Minutes).
6. Attached hereto as Exhibit C is a true and correct copy of Idaho House Joint
Resolution No. 2, Session Law 2006, p. 1359, ratified Nov. 7, 2006 (House State Affairs
Committee, Feb. 2, 2006 Minutes).
7. Attached hereto as Exhibit D is a true and correct copy of Idaho House Joint
Resolution No. 2, Session Law 2006, p. 1359, ratified Nov. 7, 2006 (Statement of Purpose
RS15639).
8. Attached hereto as Exhibit E is a true and correct copy of Idaho House Joint
Resolution No. 2, Session Law 2006, p. 1359, ratified Nov. 7, 2006 (Attorney General Opinion
No. 06-1).
000230
2

9. Attached hereto as Exhibit F is a true and correct copy of Idaho House Joint
Resolution No. 9 of 2004, 57th Legislature, Second Regular Session, failed (House Judiciary,
Rules & Administration Committee, Feb. 5, 2004 Minutes).
10. Plaintiffs also cite Idaho Attorney General Opinion No. 93-11 in their
accompanying Memorandum in Support of Motion for Summary Judgment. Attached hereto as
Exhibit G is a true and correct copy of Attorney General Opinion No. 93-11.
11. Attached hereto as Exhibit H is a true and correct copy of an official ballot
pamphlet from the November 7, 1994 election.
I sign this Declaration under penalty of perjury under the laws of the United States.
DATED the 18th day of February 2014.

_______________/s/_______________________
Shannon P. Minter (pro hac vice)
Attorney for Plaintiffs

000231
3


I HEREBY CERTIFY that on the 18th day of February, 2014, I filed the foregoing document
electronically through the CM/ECF system, which caused the following parties or counsel to be
served by electronic means, as more fully reflected on the Notice of Electronic Filing:


Steven Lamar Olsen

Clay R. Smith

W. Scott Zanzig


Thomas C. Perry

Cally Ann Younger

______/s/_________
Shannon P. Minter

000232

EXHIBIT A
000233
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J+ouse,
Minutes
HOUSE JUDICIARY, RULES & ADMINISTRATION COMMITTEE
DATE: February 15, 1996
TIME: 2:10 p.m.
PLACE: Room 406
MEMBERS: Representative Gould, Chairman; Representative Stubbs, Vice Chairman;
Representatives King, Jones (9), Tippets, Sali, Kempton, McKeeth, Kjellander, Field,
Hofman, Judd, Jaquet
ABSENTI
EXCUSED: Representative Stubbs
GUESTS: Representative Alltus; Todd Joyner, IPAA; Lauren Simon; Mr. Speaker; Mike Gilmore,
Attorney General's Office; Rev. Brian Baker; Dallas Chase; Stephen Rowley, ACLU; Dr.
Mary Rohlfing; Debbie Graham; Andrea Baker; Rabbi Dan Fink; MaryEvelyn Smith; John
Hummel; Robert Stevahn
MINUTES: It was moved by Representative McKeeth, seconded by Representative Jones, to
approve the minutes of the meeting held on February 13, 1996, as written. Motion
carried.
HB 711
MOTION
HB465
The first item on the agenda to be addressed was HB 711 and Representative Alltus was
called on to explain.
Representative Alltus said this bill defines rape and sets up criteria for the court to
terminate parental rights in cases of rape, murder, or incarceration of a parent. He cited
a case that caused the legislation to be drafted. Mr. Todd Joyner stood before the
committee in support of the bill and asked that it be sent to the floor with a Do Pass
recommendation.
It was moved by Representative Tippets, seconded by Representative Hofman, to send
HB 711 to the floor with a Do Pass recommendation. Motion carried. Representative
Alltus will carry the bill on the floor.
The next item to be presented was HB 465 and Representative Sali was called on to
explain.
Representative Sali said this bill provides a procedure allowing the adoption of adults by
other adults. He said there had been some concerns raised regarding the language in
the legislation by both the department of health and welfare and the department on aging.
Therefore, amendments were drafted to clarify the meaning of the bill. He concluded his
remarks by saying there had been no opposition to the bill.
Mr. Lauren Simon was recognized to testify on the bill. Mr. Simon said he was a resident
of Kuna and he had tried to adopt his adult stepdaughter whom he had raised from the
time she was 5 years old. He discovered that he could not adopt her under the current
law of the state of Idaho. Therefore, he asked the committee to send HB 465 to the floor
with a Do Pass recommendation.
000234
L
E
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MOTION
H8707
MOTION
, '
: ,
It was moved by Representative King, seconded by Representative Jones, to send HB
465 to General Order. with Committee amendments attached. Motion carried.
Representative Stubbs will carry the bill on the floor,
The next item on the agenda to be presented was HB 707 and Mr. Speaker was called
on.
Mr. Speaker said this bill provides procedures and immunities for lawsuits brought under
Article IX, section 1, of the Idaho Constitution. In particular, the bill sets forth who may
sue under that section (school chil dren and their parents or guardians) and the state
(through the legislature or the superintendent of public instruction) and who may not sue
(local school districts); the requirements for a successful suit against a local school
district or against the state itself; and the judicial remedies available following a
successful suit. The bill provides that the act will be effective on January 1, 1996, and
will apply to pending lawsuits if the section is amended to require the legislature to
provide procedures and immunities for pending claims. The Speaker walked the
members through each of the proposed changes in the legislation.
A question and answer period followed with Mike Gilmore from the Attorney General' s
office answering several of the questions. A motion was made by Representative Jones
to send HB 707 to the floor with I 00 Pass recommendation. The motion was
seconded by Representati ve SaiL Motion carried. Representative Sali will carry the bill
on the floor.
The last item on the agenda was HB 658 and Mr. Speaker explained the legislation.
HB 658 Mr. Speaker said this legislation establi shes a state policy on same sex marriages and
places an evasion clause in the law. He said this bill is before the Committee because
Ihe state of Hawaii is considering recognizing same sex marriages which is forcing Idaho
to make a chOice to either pass this bil l reinforcing the current policy or recognize same
sex marriages by default. He continued by saying the question will come up whether
Idaho will be sued if this legislation is passed. It was the Speaker's feeling that the threat
of a law suit should not prevent the passage of the bill . He concluded by saying this
Committee and the Legislature need to debate and resolve this issue.
TESTIMONY The Reverend Brian Baker was called on to testify. Rev. Baker said he was opposed to
HB 658. He said fidelity, love and respect are t he cornerstones of a family. When
homosexual couples embrace the values that marriage embodies, they should be allowed
to be married. He said no religious institution would be obliged to recognize same sex
marriages.
The next person to testify in opposition to the bill was Dallas Chase. Ms. Chase said she
has been both legally married and she is a homosexua1. She said she has experienced
the benefits of being legally married and she also knows quite well the inequalities and
injustices this bill would perpetuate for same-gender couples. She pointed out benefits
allowed heterosexual couples that are not allowed same sex couples. She concluded by
saying the message she receives from this proposed legislation is that her life has no
validity and she cannot expect entitlement to some of t he same benefits enjoyed by
heterosexual couples.
The next person recognized to testify in opposition to the bill was Stephen Rowley
representing the ACLU. He said there were several reasons why the bill should be
House Judiciary, Rules and Administration Committee
Thursday, February 15, 1996- Minutes-Page 2
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opposed. First, there are constitutional issues and he went over them in detail. Second,
the language of the bill is flawed He said it was vague and over broad. Third, the bill
drags the legislature and the courts of the state into matters that are between each
person and that person's maker and, as such, there are moral, social and public policy
reasons that the bill should be opposed. He said evidence indicates that homosexuals'
emotional, psychological , social and economic stability are the same as heterosexuals. In
conclusion, he said that lesbians and gays are a permanent part of our society and this
bill ignores reality and principles of fairness by denying them their equality.
The next person to testify in opposition was Dr. Mary Rohlfing. Dr, Rohlfing said she was
a lesbian. She and her li fe partner made a commitment to share their lives together.
She concluded her remarks by saying all citizens should be offered equal rights and
protection and this Legislature will legislate morality should it pass this bill. She also
requested that the legal ramifications be considered.
The next person testity;ng in opposition was Debbie Graham. Ms. Graham said she was
a registered nurse and a native Idahoan. She said she loves Idaho and it is concern for
the state that brought her here to testify. She said the bill is not needed and it violates
personal autonomy in forming relationships. In conclusion she asked the Committee not
to send the bill to the floor with a Do Pass.
The next person called on was Andrea Baker. Ms. Baker said she adamantly opposes
the bill. She said she was a heterosexual woman, married and a mother. She has
friends who are homosexuals. The individuals in these relationships have made life long
commitments and they should be able to enjoy the same legal rights as heterosexual
couples do. She said non-tolerance and persecution are not values she wishes to pass
on to her children.
The next person to testify was Rabbi Dan Fink. He said he was before the Committee on
his own behalf and on behalf of the Idaho Rabbinical Association, He said it is important
for us to atways know the difference between that which is stereotyped and that which is
reality. He said people of faith and the people who make the laws cannot stand idle whil e
neighbors are bleeding. He concluded by saying let's value real families, both
heterosexual and gay, and provide justice for aU.
The next person to be recognized was MaryEvelyn Smith. She said denial of rights to
one group does nothing to safeguard the rights of the larger group and this bill is one of
those laws that diminishes aU citizens. She said a strong marriage occurs because two
people choose to work to make it happen. The amendments to the constitution
guarantee equal ity for all which this bill does not. She concluded by asking the
Committee to vote no on the passage of the bill .
The next testifier was John Hummel. Mr. Hummel said he strongly opposes the bill. He
said he is an attomey in Boise. He said denying gays and lesbians a recognition of
marriage creates an injustice. He cited, as an example, a same sex couple who had
been together for 20 years and amassed quite an estate. Then they separated and there
was no legal way to divide their assets. He concluded by saying there was a denial of
property rights in failing to recognize same sex marriages and he asked that the
Committee vote no on the bil l.
The last person to testify in opposition was Robert Stevahn. He said he has been
married for 13 years and it is his view that the recognition of same sex marriages would
not dilute the value of a traditional marriage.
Thursday, February 15, 1996-Minutes-Page 3

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MOTION It was moved by Representative Sali , seconded by Representative Tippets to .end HB
658 to the floor with. 00 Pa recommendation. A discussion followed during which
Representative Sali said there WIS no time to do an in depth study of this issue. The
legislation was drafted because the actions of Hawaii would dictate Idaho's policy if action
were not taken. Representative Jaquat asked to be recorded as voting NO on the
motion. Motion canied.
At the conclusion of the meeting, the Chair pointed out that the deadline on hearing the House bills was
approaching. Therefors, the members should plan on attending meetings that last later than usual in
order to get the legislation through. There being no further business to come before the Committee, the
meeting was adjourned at 3:50 p.m.
Celia Gould, Chairman
[Day and Date of Meeting]-Minutes-Page 4
000237

EXHIBIT B
000238
MINUTES
SENATE STATE AFFAIRS COMMITTEE
DATE: Friday, J anuary 28, 2005
TIME: 8:00 a.m.
PLACE: Room 437
MEMBERS: Chairman Burtenshaw, Vice Chairman McKenzie, Senators Darrington,
Geddes, Davis, Stegner, Little, Stennett., Malepeai
ABSENT/
EXCUSED: None.
GUESTS: See attached sign in sheet.
CONVENE: Chairman Burtenshaw called the meeting to order at 8:04 a.m. He
explained that the testimony would be limited to three minutes per person
and directed the attention of the public to the timer on the podium.
SJR 101: Senator Curt McKenzie opened his presentation by saying that he and
Senator Sweet are representing 16 Senators who are asking the
committee to send SJ R 101 to the floor and allow a vote by the entire
Idaho Senate. He also introduced Mr. Dale Schowengerdt, an attorney
with the Alliance Defense Fund, who has knowledge of other states which
have been through this amendment process. He stated that in Idaho, we
have a fairly unique process to amend the Constitution. He stated that
the citizens of Idaho are the gate keepers of the Constitution. He pointed
out that a yes vote would show that we are a government of the people,
by the people, and for the people. He remarked that the people of Idaho
should have a vote on this fundamental issue and that such a vote would
allow this to be placed on the ballot.
He pointed out that recently, in November, citizens in eleven other states
had the opportunity to vote on similar amendments and overwhelmingly
supported protecting marriage in their state constitutions.
He stated that the language in this amendment provides that the union of
only one man and one woman shall be valid and recognized as marriage
in this state. It also provides that the state and its political subdivisions
shall not create or recognize a legal status similar to that of marriage.
The phrase in the first sentence valid refers to marriages created within
the state, the reference to recognized refers to unions formed out of the
state and complies with the Federal Defense of Marriage Act that was
recently upheld by a Federal Court in Florida. The second sentence
refers to state and political subdivisions and clarifies that the prohibition
refers only to government entities, like state agencies, departments or
other state entities, from granting official recognition to non-familial or
non-marital relationships except as provided under marriage law. He
pointed out that the Louisiana Supreme Court recently upheld a similar
amendment. He added that this amendment does not prohibit the state
from adopting laws that would allow individuals to create reciprocal
benefits between them, or to undertake legal obligations to each other,
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000239
SENATE STATE AFFAIRS
J anuary 28, 2005 - Minutes - Page 2
but it does prevent extending a status similar to marriage. He pointed out
that the Louisiana Court said that this Constitutional amendment does not
impair any property rights which are not identical or substantially similar to
the package of unique property rights necessary for marriage. It does not
prohibit any couple from entering into contracts for property, or to
designate each other for making critical life or medical decisions in cases
of medical emergency where one is not conscious, or acting as power of
attorney. It also does not prohibit an unmarried couple from making wills
to leave their estates to one another.
He read from the Indiana Court of Appeals discussion of this issue: On
J anuary 12, 2004, the Massachusetts Supreme J udicial Court ruled that
only same sex marriages, not civil union, would satisfy that states
constitution. Same sex couples have been marrying in Massachusetts
since May of 2004. The City of San Franciscos Mayor issued marriage
licenses to thousands of same sex couples and officials in other locales.
Lawsuits similar to the one before us are pending in many other states.
He concluded that Idaho is not an island and that what goes on in other
states, especially neighboring states, does affect us. He added that the
decision we make today is whether we are going to allow the citizens of
Idaho to vote on this fundamental policy or whether we will just leave it to
the courts to set this policy. He stated that some have argued that we do
not need an amendment in Idaho because Idaho judges are elected and
therefore wouldnt go against the will of the people. But simply being
elected does not guarantee that an official will follow the will of the people
on a particular issue. He further pointed out that unelected judges from
the Federal 9 Circuit frequently interpret Idahos Statutes.
th
Senator McKenzie pointed out that under Article 1, Section 1 of Idahos
Constitution, all men, by nature, are free and equal and have certain
inalienable rights, among which are enjoying and defending life and
liberty. He added that by the decision of three out of the five Supreme
Court J udges in Idaho or even two of the three 9 Circuit J udges Idaho
th
could be required to redefine marriage. He reported that the bottom line
is that this is a fundamental issue for our society and that through this
amendment process, we put this issue before the people of Idaho and let
the people decide what they want the policy to be, which is the
appropriate course.
Senator Gerry Sweet reported that the Idaho Constitution has been
amended 124 times since 1893. He pointed out that each of these
amendments related to issues of great significance to the people of Idaho
and stated that the institution of marriage is the foundation from which
families are built on and should also be protected within the Constitution.
He quoted an article by Dr. Matthew Spalding of the Heritage
Foundations B. Kenneth Simon Center for American Studies, For
thousands of years, on the basis of experience, tradition, and legal
precedent, every society and every major religious faith have upheld
marriage as a unique relationship by which a man and a woman are
joined together for the primary purpose of forming and maintaining a
family. This overwhelming consensus results from the fact that the union
of man and woman is apparent and manifest in the most basic and
evident truths of human nature. Marriage is the formal recognition of this
relationship by society and its laws. While individual marriages are
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recognized by government, the institution of marriage preexists and is
antecedent to the institution of government, which in turn presupposes
and depends on the institution of marriage. Societys interest in uniquely
elevating the status of marriage among human relationships is that
marriage is the necessary foundation of the family, and is necessary for
societal existence and well-being. The basic building block of society is
the family, which is the primary institution through which children are
raised, nurtured, and educated, and develop into adults. Marriage is the
cornerstone of the family. It produces children, provides them with
mothers and fathers, and is the framework through which relationships
among mothers, fathers, and children are established and maintained.
Only in the context of family built on the foundation of marriage can the
sometimes competing needs and interests of men, women, and children
be harmonized. Because of its characteristic relationship with the family,
marriage is uniquely beneficial to society. Based on existing studies
comparing two-parent and single-parent households, social science
overwhelmingly demonstrates that children do far better when they are
raised by two married parents in a stable family relationship and that
children raised in other household structures are subject to significantly
increased risk of harm. Evidence further suggests that one reason
children do better in a married household is not just the stability of having
two parents, but the fact that a male and a female parent each bring
distinctive strengths, perspectives, and characteristics to the family unit
that benefit both children and the parents. Although we have little
information concerning children raised in households with same-sex
parents, what we do know is that marriage between a man and a woman
provides unique social, economic, and health benefits for children, adults,
and society in general. Moreover, because of the shared obligations and
generational relationships that accrue with marriage, the institution brings
significant stability, continuity, and meaning to human relationships and
plays an important role in transferring basic cultural knowledge and
civilization to future generations.
Senator Sweet clarified four of the prominent inaccuracies:
1. Amendment is discriminatory. He cited the 1971 Minnesota Supreme
Court case of Baker v. Nelson, 191 N.W.2d 185. He added that it does
not violate the US Constitution, in particular, the Fourteenth Amendment.
2. Amendment impacts the rights of couples. He referred back to the
Louisiana Supreme Court ruling that Senator McKenzie spoke of.
3. Amendment impacts existing common law marriages. He pointed out
that after 1996, Idaho code abolished common law marriages. He added
that common law marriages prior to 1996 will still be valid after passage of
the marriage amendment.
4. Opponents just want to expand the definition of marriage. He pointed
out that they want to radically redefine marriage.
Senator Sweet remarked that we must not allow any adult special
interest groups political agenda to deny our children the social ideal of
marriage, or to use our children as test subjects in a risky social
experiment with irreversible effects. He shared information on studies
conducted by University of Michigan Professor David Chambers, studies
conducted in the Netherlands, and another conducted by Harvard
University Law Professor Mary Glendon.
He concluded by asking who should decide the marriage issue in Idaho?
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He stated that in Massachusetts, it was four judges, and added that it
should be decided by a vote of the people, in the form of a constitutional
amendment. He then introduced Mr. Dale Schowengerdt with the Alliance
Defense Fund, and Mr. William C. Duncan from the Marriage Law
Foundation.
Mr. Schowengerdt explained that this issue has erupted in the past three
years and stated that he has been involved in 11 lawsuits. He pointed out
that there are great efforts occurring to define marriage then shared a
couple of recent efforts in Massachusetts and Washington. Mr.
Schowengerdt reported that in Massachusetts, they were very explicit in
defining marriage and applied the lowest level of scrutiny. In Washington,
two superior courts overturned the definition that was also based on the
lowest level of scrutiny. He concluded by saying that this issue will be
decided in Idaho, but asked would it be decided by the Legislature and
the people, or by the courts.
Chairman Burtenshaw again defined the time allotment for testimony.
Below is a brief statement of each testimony. Full copies of each
testimony are included in the State Affairs Committee Legislative Session
Notebook.
Ms. Julie Lynde with the Cornerstone Institute testified in support by
explaining that marriage is the cornerstone of civilization and is
foundational. It is the cornerstone of who we, as a civilization, are. She
added that diluting and redefining that cornerstone has serious
ramifications. She concluded that the amending process is needed for a
time such as this.
Mr. Fred Prouty of Mountain Home testified in opposition and said that
he learned a few important rules from being a parent. He believes any
combination of parents can raise their children well if they are involved
with their children, create a family atmosphere and provide discipline. He
shared 6 ideas relating to parenthood: never give up on your children;
create a family atmosphere where children can develop good self-esteem;
be involved in your childrens activities away from home; provide a
positive home environment; know the people and groups that influence
your children; and provide discipline. He concluded that these concepts
work with any family style and added that as a school principal, he
discovered that parents of the same sex had no more or less problems
with their children than any of the other parental makeups.
Mr. Brad Miller with Focus on the Family testified in support by saying
that civil unions are unwise public policy because they teach our children
and society that all close personal relationships are equal. He added that
this is problematic because no society has ever been able to sustain itself
with a buffet-like mentality of family; just pick what suits you, because all
choices are equally valid.
Mr. Scott Curtis, a trained Social Worker in Boise, testified in opposition
by saying that this amendment does not address the raising of children
and that a constitutional amendment preventing the establishment of any
recognized civil unions for non-heterosexual couples does not outlaw
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parenthood by such couples.
Mr. Nathaniel Longstreet testified in support by saying that nature shows
that the most stable societies are formed with monogamous relationships
between one male and one female and that history shows that the
strength of a society is founded on families formed with one man and one
woman to raise children.
Mr. Paul Rolig, a computer programmer, testified in opposition. He
stated that he believes that freedom to marry whomever you want is a
matter of equal rights under the law. He remarked that under Article 1,
Section 4 of the Idaho Constitution bigamy and polygamy are forever
prohibited in the state and concluded that this amendment is not needed.
Senator Davis asked if he would strike the language about polygamy.
Mr. Rolig replied that he does not propose a change to the Constitution at
this time. Senator Davis asked him to explain why polygamy and bigotry
were included in the laws. Mr. Rolig answered that bigotry was probably
put there to prevent deformed births and that polygamy was to stop
multiple partners from qualifying for benefits under one provider. He
stated that these were there as a caution to care for financial situations of
the State.
Mr. Allen Marsh testified in support. He explained that committed
homosexual relationships are radically different from married couples in
several key respects: relationship duration; monogamy vs. promiscuity;
relationship commitment; number of children being raised; health risks;
and rates of intimate partner violence. He concluded that even though
this amendment would not stop a federal judge from imposing his will on
us, it will protect us from state judges and will put our state on the record
as favoring the Federal marriage Amendment.
Mr. Gene Arnold, former Idaho Senate Chaplain from 2003, testified in
support by saying that he believes that the present political currents and
the agendas of certain ardent social activists demand that he join the
voices of those who are advocates for the proposed amendment to the
Idaho Constitution. He added that it takes nothing away and adds no
rights to any segment of people in this state, it simply affirms the ancient,
commonly accepted, nearly universal definition of marriage.
Ms. Karen Pfleger, teacher, testified in opposition by pointing out that
Idaho has a history plagued with hate groups and discrimination. She
stated that we need to move away from this history by embracing
tolerance of all people and ensuring all people equal rights under the law
rather than furthering a homophobic agenda. She asked the committee to
not send a message that says Idaho is not tolerant.
Mr. Christopher McGreer, retired Chaplain and Fighter Pilot for the US
Air Force, testified in support of this amendment. He stated that this
resolution is giving us a firm definition of marriage that is needed in the
midst of our society in which to debate the social issues and the
traditional family. He concluded that this is for the good of our society, the
good of our beloved state, the good of America and for our families.
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Mr. James East testified in opposition. He reported that he is a
conservative gay Idahoan, in a loving and committed relationship. He
asked that if they cannot be married, then what are their alternatives? He
then listed that he has spent more than 20 years trying to be straight. He
pointed out that he knows of many who are pretending to be straight, are
married with children, yet still long for homosexual intimacy. He remarked
that this amendment will abandon more children to foster care, as wards
of the state, denying them the chance to be adopted and raised in loving
homes where they can receive stability, love, and learn values such as
commitment, integrity, community and responsibility. He concluded that
this will hurt children and families and is against the values and ideals of
this great state and her people.
Mr. Allen Gorin, representative of Toward Tradition, a national, public
policy coalition of J ews and Christians who work together where common
purpose exist testified in support. He brought up three main points raised
last year with HJ R 9: Discrimination; Compassion for gays; and the need
for a Constitutional Definition of Marriage. He stated that he views this
amendment as insurance and concluded by saying that some things are
so precious that they warrant insurance against even the possibility that
some harm may come to them.
Mr. David Johns testified in opposition. He recounted an incident last
summer where he was injured at a local water park and taken to the
emergency room of a local hospital. He stated that because of hospital
policy, the understanding nurse had to refer to his partner as his brother
J im for the night. He concluded that as a flight attendant for the past
nine and a half years, he feels the most unsafe and receives the most
bigoted remarks in Lewiston, Idaho Falls, Pocatello, Sun Valley, and
Boise.
Mr. Michael Duff, with United Families of Idaho, testified in support of the
amendment. He stated that the family is the natural and fundamental unit
of society and should be valued and protected accordingly. He stated
that United Families of Idaho seeks to strengthen families by promoting:
marriage between man and woman, founded on chastity before marriage
and fidelity within marriage; the sanctity of human life including unborn
children; the right and obligation of parents to love, protect, provide for,
and teach their children; respect for laws, policies, programs, political
structures, cultural norms, and religious values that preserve and protect
the family; and compassion for the distressed and truly disadvantaged.
He gave a brief discussion on the institutional history of marriage, the
proper role of government, protecting the form and substance of marriage,
and social justice. He then presented information on the Federal
Constitutional Amendment and concluded with a call to action saying that
passage of SJ R 101 will reflect continued adherence to the fundamental
principles that made our society as great as it is today.
Mr. Don Curtis, retired General Manager of HP, testified in opposition.
He shared three myths and explained how each are incorrect: being gay
or lesbian is a choice; gays and lesbians are a threat to heterosexual
marriage and the family; and constitutional change is the answer. He
stated that we are not talking about some inanimate highway issue, but
fellow human beings. He concluded that our humanity must be what
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unites us and asked the members to not let the constitution be what
divides us.
Mr. Ron Vieselmeyer a family and marriage crisis counselor with United
Families of Idaho testified in support. He emphasized the important role
that natural or traditional marriage and family play in the welfare of
society. He shared with the committee findings from a postgraduate study
he conducted for a paper on the homosexual matrix. He pointed out that
married people are less likely to report, problem drinking, engage in risk-
taking behavior such as drunk driving, smoking, and drug abuse, and are
less likely to contract a sexually transmitted disease. He further added
that marriage has also been linked with reports of increased happiness,
life satisfaction, and overall occurrence of positive emotions. He
concluded that the best way to improve society is to improve its families.
Senator Geddes asked what is societys responsibility to the gay
community. Mr. Vieselmeyer replied that the gay community is not
different than any other community and mentioned the gangs in California.
He stated that it is the responsibility of society to provide stability and to
protect the rest of society from dangers such as drunk driving among
other things.
Senator Malepeai asked about his statement on suicide rates being the
highest among homosexuals and asked if this had something to do with
non acceptance by society. Mr. Vieselmeyer responded that this has
been part of the argument and added that he has personally done
research on this. He stated that he is more convinced suicides by
homosexuals is due to guilt and depression that they live with.
Mrs. Susan Curtis a retired Nurse Manager with St. Lukes Regional
Medical Center testified in opposition to the amendment. She shared with
the committee that today is her 38 wedding anniversary and explained
th
that she is the mother of four. She also shared what her gay son has
accomplished in becoming a responsible and reliable adult and how he
deals with the dilemma of how to honor and validate his relationship with
his significant other in a society that will support neither. She stated that
she is here because she is convinced that putting in place a constitutional
amendment that clearly disallows the legal recognition of any
commitment, covenant, or bond that is similar to marriage is both
discriminatory and wrong. She concluded that she represents all those
who are seeking ways to choose their life-time partner; make
commitments to those persons in an honorable and respectable and
acceptable way; and be legally protected in their joint decisions regarding
life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. She believes that these rights
belong to all.
Mr. Bill Duncan with United Families of Idaho testified in support. He
stated that this is the simplest way to address this issue. He discussed
true legal effects and raised three things: the amendment will not impact
the ability of the Legislature to offer health insurance or other kinds of
benefits; the Legislature is free to create any kind of scenario in the future
as long as it does not redefine marriage or create a status substantially
similar to marriage to give benefits through some other setting; and this
would have no effect on private arrangements like wills, trusts, or other
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legal instruments.
Senator Geddes asked him for his opinion as to what is adequate to
reflect what we currently have in law versus a Constitutional amendment
and what is the threat that this amendment is trying to address. Mr.
Duncan answered that the reality is that we are trying to respond to
something that we have not thought of before with regard to same sex
marriage. He shared a story of a couple in Washington who sought a
marriage license for a same sex marriage and were denied then sued the
state in the 1970s. He added that this could happen in Idaho if the
marriage statute were challenged today. The threat is that we cant
control this without some kind of Constitutional amendment as to how
courts in the state or out of state will interpret the statute in the future.
There may be some other way to address this, but added that this is the
simplest and less obtrusive.
Senator Davis stated that in the spirit of intellectual honesty, Mr. Duncan
would have to acknowledge that although same sex relationships can
write wills and enter into contract, heterosexual couples do not need to
and they would still be the beneficiary based on laws of succession. Mr.
Duncan agreed that this was correct. He stated that marriage gives
those rights automatically. He stated that even with SJ R 101, they could
create simple beneficiary laws that do something like that in the future
where the people register in the state and then access those kinds of
benefits like medical decision making, power of attorney, etc.
Ms. Julianne Russell, a teacher of statistics, testified in opposition. She
had her toddler child asleep in a backpack on her back. She asked the
committee how history will view their role and their vote on this matter.
She addressed the claims of thousands of studies on this issue and
asked if they had read all of the research; noted who authored the
research and funded it; who comprised the sample group and how were
they chosen; was there a control group and how was it chosen; and how
long was the study conducted. She listed the past choices made by
politicians: J im Crow laws, Internment Camps in WWII, and the guise of
Manifest Destiny where the Indians were placed on reservations. She
concluded that this vote will be scrutinized by future generations who will
look to them for an explanation.
Mr. Herm Steger testified in support. He called upon the committee to
become gatekeepers for marriage. He concluded that we have a choice
of leaving future generations a blessing or a curse and urged the
committee to vote yes.
Mr. Edwin Keener a retired pastor, testified in opposition by saying that
this proposed legislation is hurtful, discriminatory, and unworthy of our
Constitution. He urged the committee to have the courage to vote no.
Mr. David Snyder with the Treasure Valley Pastors Policy Council
testified in support. He pointed out that humans in society cannot make
the decisions for society, but that almighty God must make that decision.
He submits that we cannot make this decision.
Mr. David Wettstein, Bishop of St. Stephens Episcopal Church and the
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Diocese of Boise, testified in opposition. He asked if this was good for the
common good and what is just for our gay neighbors and our society. He
concluded that together we may find more common good for all citizens of
our state, rather than this attack on a minority.
Mr. George Detweiler an attorney from Twin Falls testified in support.
He said that the Massachusetts court decision in favor of gay marriage
was an outrageous example of judicial tyranny. He concluded that an
amendment must be enacted.
Mr. Leland Whitlatch from the Cambridge Bible Church testified in
support. He quoted Websters dictionary entry of marriage and Marry;
testified to the following reasons: that since the beginning of time, it has
been one man and one woman in all cultures world wide; studies show
both a mother and a father are needed to raise healthy children; Genesis
2:24 and Ephesians 5:31 regarding God establishing marriage of one man
and one woman; procreation occurs only through one man and one
woman; the design of the physical differences and how they provide
sexual union; and the overwhelming majority of other states who have
voted for this same type of amendment.
Mr. Adam Graham testified in support of the proposed amendment. He
stated that even though we have strayed from traditional values, we can
find our way back by re-affirming the values that made us great and by
finding our strength once again in the bedrock of traditional marriage as
God created and intended it. He concluded that the committee can help
keep the hope of our society alive by passing this legislation.
Ms. Shaun Engstrom, a freshman from North J unior High School
testified in opposition. She pointed out that our country was formed
because of the realization of an unfair suppression put on us by the
British tyranny. She reported that ever since we won our independence
from Britain, our nation has faced, and overcome, many social injustices:
the slaves being ruled by masters; women being suppressed by society;
and blacks being controlled by whites. She added that it seems like every
generation has had their civil battle, and we are now facing the beginning
of our own. She reminded the committee that the Declaration of
Independence includes J ohn Lockes theory of natural rights: life, liberty
and the pursuit of happiness and stated that one should have the freedom
to live where they want, to learn what they please, and finally the freedom
to love who they wish.
Ms. Tiffany Hall, a student at North J unior High, testified in opposition.
She testified that the once women took their rightful place in the
workforce, the gender roles with each parent started to deteriorate. As
long as a child has enough love, and is raised in a supportive household,
she does not believe that he gender of either parent should matter. She
then provided some statistics that she gathered: 97% of students in public
high school report regularly hearing homophobic remarks from their
peers; 53% of students report hearing homophobic remarks being made
by school staff; 45% of gays and 20% of lesbians have either experienced
verbal harassment and/or physical violence because of their sexual
orientation during high school. She concluded by asking the committee to
not support SJ R 101.
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Mr. Wendell Bartlow testified in support by saying that he desires Idaho
to follow the lead of the 11 states that rejected homosexual marriage last
November. He concluded by saying that protecting your own interests is
not intolerance. Upholding traditional families is not intolerance. It is
those who seethe with envy and who jealously seek to devalue real
marriages who are the intolerant ones.
Ms. Julie Fanselow explained that her brother is gay and in a long-term
relationship. She stated that she opposes this because it fails to
recognize the loving responsibility and commitment undertaken by
couples of all kinds and that this resolution denies the essential humanity
of a significant number of our citizens, which is unacceptable. She
concluded that this is a real distraction from the real business of our state
and urged the committee to vote no and move on to the business the
taxpayers are paying them to do.
Ms. Katherine Frazier, Financial Advisor, testified in support by saying
that the institution of marriage is not broken. She stated that it was
weakened when no-fault divorce was passed. She then quoted Genesis
2:22-24 regarding the creation of man and woman. She concluded that it
is a concern of the State and trusts that Idaho will be one of the leaders in
this movement.
Mr. Nik Dumas, Travel Consultant, testified in opposition by chastising
the Legislature for expending tax dollars to attempt to enter verbiage into
the State Constitution that not only limits the rights of homosexual
individuals, but also could very well nullify any common law marriages
between heterosexual couples as well. He concluded that the Legislature
should be addressing more prominent issues at hand and asked them to
not let our state become one tainted with prejudice and filled with
disrespect.
Mr. John Elliot, Businessman, testified in support. He shared some
experiences he has had with the 150 employees, most of which are
between the ages of 20-25. He stated that it is hard enough with the
prevalence of divorce in our society for kids today to understand marriage,
its importance and the rock solid foundation that the union between one
man and one woman provides. He added that without this amendment
there is no guarantee that the institution of marriage will be preserved and
have any hope of surviving.
Mr. Tony Fisk testified in opposition by saying that rather than using the
Constitution to limit the marital rights of your constituents, use it to protect
and defend the rights of the citizens of Idaho. He mentioned Martin
Luther King III who spoke of the opportunity for parents today to show
their kids how to love instead of hate by leading by example and gave this
quote, J udge people individually, by their merit and what they bring to the
table. We all have talents, every last one of us. He concluded by asking
the committee to make just, kind, and fair laws based on the best science
and information that can be obtained at this point in our history and urged
the committee to be open to change, to realize that change is the only
constant in our history.
Mr. Michael Hastings testified in support by saying that Idaho does need
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this amendment to our Constitution, or at least the opportunity to vote on
the matter. He reported that homosexual unions are not natural union,
regardless of how the media spins it and suggested that there have been
countless studies of the harm caused to individuals and groups that
participate in these unspeakable practices. He stated that we have
passed no smoking laws because smoking causes cancer and stated
that homosexual acts cause sickness, bodily harm, and a shortened life
span by up to 20 years. He concluded that government is by the people,
and for the people. By not allowing this issue to be put on a public ballot,
this Senate will be sending a message that you dont have the confidence
in your constituents to decide what is best for their families, their
community, their state. A decision of this magnitude should not be
decided behind the closed doors of the Senate, or by a rogue judge, but
by the method that put the senators in the position they are in today,
public vote. He urged the committee to let the people of Idaho decide.
Ms. Josephine Halfhide testified in opposition of the legislation by
sharing some numbers relating to children and traditional homes as well
as foster care. She concluded by requesting that the committee consider
focusing on assuring that the children who are in the custody of the State
of Idaho receive appropriate services and stated that we should not
extend valuable time, money, and energy on legislation without proper
data confirming that children raised in non-traditional family settings are at
risk.
Reverend David Hardesty testified in support of the amendment by
saying that this defines what marriage is rather than who one can marry.
He pointed out that from the beginning, marriage was defined as one
man, one woman.
Ms. Vicki Worthan testified in support of the amendment by saying that
same sex marriage is unnatural on the basis of nature and pointed out
that this country was founded on Christian values. She shared that she
has three children and that there have been times when she has been
shouted at with such things like, Do you know what birth control is?, and
Hey, do you know where babies come from?. She concluded that
everyone, at one time, has been ridiculed for something and urged the
committee to support this amendment.
Ms. Carla Finis a Forensic Consultant, testified in opposition of the
amendment. She informed the committee that Idaho has the fourth worst
divorce rate of 5.6 per 1000 unions and stated that historically, the major
causes for divorce and break up of the family are infidelity and stress due
mostly to financial difficulties. She stated that if the purpose was to have
an impact on reversing a trend of marriage and family dissolution, then
perhaps they should bring legislation to outlaw divorce or to establish
adultery as a felony as a reasonable course. She further asked the
committee to not exchange the Aryan Nation bigotry for another.
Mr. Jared Hawk, an Insurance Agent, testified in support. He shared his
personal feelings about marriage; support of the existing Idaho law
banning gay marriage; and why the State Constitution should be
amended. He pointed out that the right to get married is not a right to
marry whomever or whatever we choose, it is a limited right to marry
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someone of the opposite sex. He added that this right needs to be
guarded by definition within the bounds of our law to secure marriage for
generations yet to come. He concluded that an ounce of prevention is
worth a pound of cure. and urged the committee to support SJ R 101.
Mr. Travis Riggs an Educator, testified in opposition. He shared a
touching story of his wedding and reception followed by a discovery that
his spouse had been diagnosed with a rare platelet disorder. He then
explained that his spouse was a man. He pointed out that this legislation
may force people to die alone in their hospital beds, or force their loved
ones to be unemployed and have nothing if they were to die. He
concluded that if the members of the committee have compassion for their
neighbors and compassion for the people of Idaho, they should vote no.
Mr. Jeff Estes of Fellowship Baptist Church testified in support by saying
that he feels marriage is a foundation of society and should be defined for
future generations. He stated that without this definition, there would be
no moral anchor and that a man could marry his child, pet, or as one man
tried, his T.V. He concluded that marriage between one man and one
woman is time-honored and tested as the healthiest ground for nurturing
children. He urged the committee to vote yes.
MOTION: Senator Geddes made a motion to send SJ R to the Floor with a
DO PASS RECOMMENDATION.
Senator McKenzie seconded the motion
DISCUSSION: There was no committee discussion.
VOTE: The roll call vote was 5-4. Ayes: Darrington, Geddes, Davis, McKenzie,
and Burtenshaw. Nays: Stegner, Little, Stennett, and Malepeai.
ADJOURN: There being no further business before the committee, Chairman
Burtenshaw adjourned the meeting at 11:27 a.m.
Senator Don Burtenshaw Lisa Lalliss-Skogsberg
Chairman Secretary
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EXHIBIT C
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DATE:
TIME:
PLACE:
MEMBERS:
ABSENTI
EXCUSED:
GUESTS:
MOTION:
MOTION:
--? HJR 2
MINUTES
HOUSE STATE AFFAIRS COMMITTEE
February 2, 2006
8:00 A.M.
Gold Room
Chairman Deal, Vice Chairman Smylie, Representatives Stevenson,
Ellsworth, Black, Edmunson, Miller, Ring, Snodgrass, Garrett, Loertscher,
Anderson, Andrus, Hart, Bilbao, Shepherd(2), Smith(30), Pasley-Stuart
Representative Black
Please refer to the attached Committee sign-in sheet and see the names of
those testifying highlighted below.
Chairman Deal called the meeting to order at 8:04 A.M. with a quorum being
present. The first order of business was to approve the minutes of Tuesday,
January 31, 2006 and Wednesday, February 1, 2006.
Representative Pasley-Stuart moved to approve the minutes of January
31,2006 as printed. The motion carried by voice vote.
Representative Stevenson moved to accept the minutes of February 1,
2006 as written. The motion carried by voice vote.
Before the testimony on HJR2 began, Chairman Deal went over the ground
rules for this hearing. He explained that the testimony would be limited to
three minutes. He asked that (1) testimony be specific to the legislation; (2)
that those testifying be respectful in their testimony; and (3) if their testimony
is repetitive, state they are pro or con and agree with previous testimony.
Representative Lawrence Denney, introduced HJR 2, legislation that
proposes an amendment to the Idaho Constitution defining marriage. It
states that a marriage between a man and a woman is the only domestic
legal union that shall be valid or recognized in this state.
Why are we bringing this amendment?
Article III, Section 24 of the Idaho constitution states liThe first concern of
all good government is the virtue and sobriety of the people, and the purity of
the home." This legislation should further well directed efforts for the
promotion of temperance and morality .
Some feel this amendment isn't needed because we already have a law
on the books prohibiting same sex marriage. But there are ongoing
challenges to laws like ours all over the country with a current challenge
going on in Washington. Given the unsettled status of the law, a
Constitutional amendment would strengthen the public policies concerning
marriage that are currently articulated in Idaho Code - and likely preclude a
state constitutional challenge.
This is a policy question, a very important one, about one of the very
- I
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core values of our society. No matter how you feel about marriage, we
should all be able to agree that the people of Idaho should be included in
this decision - a decision so fundamental to society. This amendment will
allow the people of this state to express their opinion on this issue.
Eighteen states have already passed similar amendments and several more
will have the issue on the ballot this November. It is time for Idaho to act.
A brief summary of the testimony given at the hearing on HJR2 is presented
be/ow. Written testimony submitted will be made part of the official record
kept in the Legislative Library minutes and in the House State Affairs
Secretary's minutes.
Julie Lynde, representing Cornerstone Institute of Idaho, spoke in favor of
HJR2. Marriage is foundational - the cornerstone of who we as a
civilization. Common sense reasons for the state to strengthen and protect
marriage are (1) one of the greatest benefits to society is that it shelters and
nurtures the next generation and (2) there is an impressive body of evidence
that children with both a mother and a father do better academically,
emotionally, and behaviorally. De-constructing marriage to include
alternatives is just one more social experiment placed squarely on the backs
of children. See Attachment 1 for complete written testimony.
Representative Nicole LeFavour, Boise, spoke in opposition to HJR2. She
reminded the members that those in the legislature have gay family
members, neighbors, co-workers, close friends, but this is not talked about.
People in our communities are like that. She asked that they consider the
question that voters will be asked on the November ballot. She asked
whether they are certain about the intent and effect of this amendment,
certain enough to write into our Constitution those words. See Attachment 2
for complete written testimony.
Leslie Goddard, Director of the Idaho Human Rights Commission, spoke in
opposition to HJR 2 because she feels this resolution is clearly designed to
prohibit same-sex civil unions. Gays and lesbians will be denied privileges
that heterosexuals take for granted: public health insurance for partners,
ability to inherit an estate without a will, or having a hospital recognize you
as "next of kin" in a medical emergency. It took Idaho 90 years to remove
discriminatory language against Mormons and people of Chinese descent.
Costs of the process will be great, including not only money, but human
energy and dignity as well. See Attachment 3 for complete written
testimony.
Tony Edmondson, representing himself, spoke in opposition to HJR2. He
discussed how he and his partner of 35 years have cared for elderly parents
and sisters. They have volunteered countless hours of public service, have
been elected to city and county governments, and have served on various
local and statewide boards and commissions. He stressed he is not a threat
and is testifying because there are those who feel he threatens the sanctity
of marriage and family. See Attachment 4 for complete written testimony_
Rabbi Dan Fink, Ahavath Beth Israel Synagogue, spoke in opposition to
HJR 2. This has become an offensive debate. Somehow there is a belief
that there is not enough to go around. There is enough love to go around for
HOUSE STATE AFFAIRS
February 2, 2006 - Minutes - Page 2
000253
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gay and straight people. Marriage as we now know it is not a biblical
institution. Until recently in western world marriage was about business. If
tradition mandates anything, it is expanding our notion of marriage to include
loving adults who have been excluded from it. Urged that this bill be
opposed.
Paul Rolig, President of Humanists of Idaho and representing their
members throughout the state, spoke in opposition to HJR 2. They oppose
this bill because they support freedom of religion. This bill presents a very
narrow view of religion. Government must restrict its governance to the
secular aspects of marriage and not establish religious doctrine as law. See
Attachment 5 for complete written testimony.
Bryan Fischer, Executive Director of the Idaho Values Alliance, spoke in
favor of HJR 2. He addressed three issues: (1) some argue that we don't
need this amendment because we have a conservative judiciary in Idaho,
yet our state supreme court changes with every election; (2) some say that
allowing civil unions will not weaken the institution of marriage, but
legitimizing marriage look-a-likes will weaken marriage; and (3) this
amendment will not take away a single right - it will simply preserve the
institution of natural marriage. See Attachment 6 for complete testimony.
Amy Herzfeld, Executive Director of the Idaho Human Rights Education
Center, spoke in opposition to HJR 2. This legislation brings no value to our
state. Idaho's constitution is designed to protect our liberties, not deny
fundamental rights and human dignity for the political benefit of a few.
Americans are committed to values of equality and fairness. This legislation
is a misguided attempt to codify discrimination. She urged that the members
reflect on the profound human rights implications of legislation and take
action to protect all Idaho families. See Attachment 7 for complete written
testimony.
Rev. Dr. Susan Watterson, citizen and Senior Pastor of the First
Congregational United Church of Christ, Boise, spoke in opposition to HJR
2. United Church of Christ pastors have been performing services of union
for same-sex couples since the 1980s. There are same-sex couples in their
congregations who have been in faithful relationships and are raising
children and grandchildren in loving, stable homes. Lesbian, gay, bisexual,
and transgender persons are not a threat to the institution of marriage. See
Clayton Cramer, representing himself, spoke in favor of HJR 2. He said he
moved to Boise from San Francisco in 2001. You've heard that the claim of
banning same-sex marriage is similar to laws banning interracial marriage -
this is wrong for various reasons. Laws to ban interracial marriage was not
universal to the US. He is not aware of any society anywhere until recently
that has recognized same-sex marriage. Prefers we do not define marriage
in the Constitution because it limits further changes, but prefers that the
legislation would limit the authority of the judiciary to alter the definition -
keep the powers where they belong with the Legislators and the people.
Gwendolyn Kimball, representing herself, spoke in opposition to HJR 2
because she feels this legislation discriminates against one-tenth of our
population: our gay, lesbian, transgender and bisexual community. Her
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daughter Cynthia came out when she was 29. Cynthia is the best daughter,
friend, professor, aunt, sister, niece, and partner and her parents will
advocate for her and others who are born to be different in their sexual
orientation. See Attachment 9 for complete written testimony.
Andrea Shipley, Board Member, Your Family, Friends and Neighbors, an
organization dedicated to issues affecting the lesbian, gay, bisexual and
transgender community. She spoke in opposition to HJR 2, saying never
before in our state's history have we amended our sacred constitution to
exclude people from legal protections. This marriage amendment also
affects straight families opting not to marry. They will face all the legal
battles and expenses that same-sex couples do. It is fiscally irresponsible to
let this bill go any further. See Attachment 10 for complete written testimony.
George Detweiler, Attorney from Twin Falls representing himself, spoke in
favor of HJR 2. He stated that this amendment is necessary because of
national movements by such groups as NAMBLA (North American Man-Boy
Love Association, and others), to use the Full Faith and Credit clause of the
US Constitution (Article 4, Section 1) as a means to force all states to
recognize non-traditional unions (same sex, multiple partner, adult-child)
performed in Massachusetts and Vermont, which already allow same-sex
marriages. Signed petitions from citizens in the Magic Valley who are in
favor of this legislation are included in Attachment 11.
Julianne Russell, representing herself and her family, spoke in opposition
to HJR 2. Mrs. Russell was accompanied by her husband and her four
children and said she was wearing the hats of a teacher, a wife and a
mother. She said each of these roles has a different perspective and yet
from each perspective she concluded that this legislation is WRONG. As a
teacher, as wife and s a mother she asked that the members rethink their
position on this piece of legislation that she finds to be unnecessary,
exclusionary and discriminatory. See Attachment 12 for complete written
testimony.
Delmar Stone, resident from Nampa, licensed master social worker, and the
Lobbyist for the Idaho Chapter of the National Association of Social Workers,
spoke in opposition to HJR 2. Scientific literature strongly indicates that
sexual orientation is far from being a voluntary choice. Research also
undermines negative assumptions about gay men and lesbians as parents.
The National Association of Social Workers calls on the Legislators not to
pass legislation that divides our state and promotes bigotry. See Attachment
13 for complete written testimony.
Greg Fadness, Pastor of Lighthouse Congregation in Twin Falls and father
of five, spoke in favor of HJR 2. He said he is very concerned about the
nation we we are passing down to our children. Understands the heartfelt
arguments that come from the gay and lesbian communities. God does
loves all sinners. There seems to be a concerted effort to cut loose from our
moorings, its foundation, creating immoral chaos. There is one race, the
human race. By adopting this amendment, Idaho can set a good example,
not of intolerance, but strengthen that which is good by passing this
amendment.
HOUSE STATE AFFAIRS
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Alex Daw, representing BSU BGLAD and its sister organizations throughout
Idaho, spoke in opposition to HJR 2. These organizations have described
this legislation as an answer to a non-existent problem. They agree that
marriage is a sacred institution and disagree that allowing gays and lesbians
to marry will degrade that institution. Our nations founding fathers were very
smart to set up an institution to protect the minority - the judiciary. It is
unwise to ban the third branch of government from having a say in this
matter, and this amendment would do just that. Many fellow students have
come up to say what a bad idea this is. Stand up for the rights of the
minority.
Monica Hopkins, representing herself, spoke in opposition to HJR 2. She
stated that Idaho's adoption of the Defense of Marriage Act in 1996 makes
this amendment extreme and unnecessary. Each church, synagogue and
house of worship is still able to make decisions according to their traditions
and beliefs. This is what a constitution is designed to do, protect people
from discrimination. Her and her partner respect the right of religious
institutions to honor their traditions and beliefs. See Attachment 14 for
complete written testimony
Rev. Ed Keener, representing The Interfaith Alliance of Idaho and Parents &
Friends of Lesbian and Gay persons, spoke in opposition to HJR 2, saying
these organizations see no positive benefit for the citizens of Idaho in
defining marriage in our Constitution. Rather than seeing homosexuality as
a threat, they see the opposite. They are our mentors, civic leaders,
teachers and neighbors. See Attachment 15 for complete written testimony.
Dr. James Smith, representing himself, spoke in opposition of HJR 2. He
said he is a volunteer for Your Family, Friends, and Neighbors, an
organization that represents over 100,000 Idahoans that oppose this
legislation and will be harmed by its addition to our state constitution. He
talked about his ancestors seeking freedom nearly 400 years ago, and he
feels it is inappropriate to modify our state constitution to limit freedom. See
Marty Durand, Legislative Counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union of
Idaho spoke in opposition to HJR 2, stating that ACLU of Idaho urges them
to oppose amending the Constitution to deprive committed couples in Idaho,
including lesbian and gay couples, of any legal protection of their lifelong
relationships. Such an amendment is unnecessary and fundamentally
unfair. Fundamental unfairness of the proposed amendment is of concern
beyond the lesbian and gay community. Nearly half of the Fortune 500
companies offer domestic partner benefits. See Attachment 17 for complete
written testimony.
Elysse Barrett, representing America's Renewal, spoke in support of HJR 2.
Family goes back three generations in Idaho. She said she is passionate
about preserving our state and is concerned about our society her younger
siblings are growing up in. She represents her generation and feels they
need to stand and make their voice be heard. Truth can be discussed and
debated, but truth never changes remains the same. Marriage is God given
and the core of social relationships and needs to be preserved and
protected. Idaho has always protected traditional marriage. Have
opportunity to preserve and protect traditional marriage.
HOUSE STATE AFFAIRS
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Kathy Haley, Lobbyist, representing Idaho Women's Network, spoke in
opposition to HJR 2. She believes HJR 2 would write discrimination into our
Idaho constitution which was written to guarantee that all citizens are
afforded the same protections, and our democratic process is in place to
protect the minority from the majority in case of discrimination. She feels this
is a civil rights issue. Denying some couples any recognition of their
committed relationships takes away legal access to rights inherent to
married couples. See Attachment 18 for complete written testimony.
Jim East, representing himself, spoke in opposition to HJR 2, saying this
amendment could be used to prevent him and is partner from ever having
any kind of recognition from the state. He was concerned about having to lie
to see his partner in a hospital, about health insurance, and about more
children being raised in homes where their parents do not love each other if
this amendment passes. See Attachment 19 for complete written testimony.
Mike Duff, President of United Families of Idaho, spoke in favor of HJR 2,
stating that the institution of marriage was not created by government and it
must not be redefined by unelected, activist courts "legislating" outside the
bounds of the Constitutional balance of powers. The courts will redefine
marriage as they have in other states. Idahoans understand that the most
profound and emphatic legal and more statement a free people can make is
to place it in their constitution. See Attachment 20 for complete written
testimony.
Nik Dumas, representing himself and Kevin Skinner who could not be here,
declared his fierce opposition to HJR 2. Pains him to see this legislation
being considered. He cited the cost of this legislation and feels this
legislation limits individual rights and it will hurt Idaho's economy and
businesses, in the long run. Article 1, Section 1 of the state Constitution
says all men by nature are free and equal regardless of who they are.
Litigation from this legislation may take years. Religious beliefs are not
being threatened. He urged the members to think of addressing other more
pressing issues in the state.
Eileen Banholzer, concerned citizen representing herself, spoke in favor of
HJR 2. She said she traveled this morning to let them know there are
people who are concerned about marriage. Union of a man and women will
produce our next generation of children. She asked for their support to do
whatever they can to strengthen marriage. She said she polled her family
and neighbors who are also concerned about strengthening marriage ..
Robert Brown, citizen representing many family and friends, spoke in favor
of HJR 2. Has learned a lot from those who do oppose this movement .are
against this amendment. If you are against the amendment then what
definition will we have in its place. Where do we draw the line. What is
proposed is not a change, but a further anchoring of what is in place. It is
the Legislator's sworn duty to preserve the purity of the home. Youth are
more likely to turn to crime when not raised in a home with a mother and
father. Strong homes creates strong communities. The final decision will be
with the people, not the Legislature if this amendment passes. Consideration
of the family should be the center of all legislation.
HOUSE STATE AFFAIRS
February 2,2006 - Minutes - Page 6
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Allen Gorin, Idaho representative of Toward Tradition: a national, public
policy coalition of Jews and Christians who work together where common
purpose exists. He focused on three main points raised by those opposing
last year's amendment (1) discrimination, (2) compassion for gays, and (3)
the need for a constitutional definition of marriage. He made an analogy of
insuring a house and insuring what's inside the insured house - the
traditional family unit, saying he views this constitutional amendment as that
added level of insurance. See Attachment 21 for complete written testimony.
Steven Thayn, citizen representing himself, spoke in favor of HJR 2 for two
reasons. First, public policy such as marriage should be made in the
legislative branch of government, where the public and elected officials can
have an open debate about the pros and cons of any proposed legislation.
Second, what is wrong with supporting traditional marriage? Many of our
most vexing social problems are a direct result of family breakdown. This
amendment simply codifies the belief in the ideal family. See Attachment 22
for complete written testimony.
Katherine Frazier, 40-year citizen of Boise, spoke in favor of HJR 2, stating
this is a moral issue and she is offended by those who have turned this
around and claim we are immoral. Her husband, Dr. George Frazier, shares
her belief that the proper definition of a legal union is between a man and a
women. She is sorry the divorce laws have been cheapened. This issue
needs to be voted on. She wishes no evil to anyone.
Janette Kurz, citizen representing herself, spoke in favor of HJR 2. She and
her husband Robert have been happily married for 12 years. She was
raised in Bulgaria which was part of the Communist regime and her father
spent 10 years in a Communist prison because he upheld social values.
The most valued part of the Bulgarian society is the sacred covenant of
marriage between one man and one woman and is considered the only
sacred union in Bulgaria. Future societies depend on the decision to protect
marriage. See Attachment 23 for complete written testimony.
Donna Yule, citizen representing herself, spoke in opposition to HJR 2. She
said she wants to speak up for her son. She said she is like all parents who
want their children to be happy and have good jobs. Her youngest son is
gay and in a long-tem relationship. She feels the dumbest argument is that
same-sex marriage poses a threat to traditional marriage.
Britton Holdaway, citizen representing himself, spoke in support of HJR 2,
stating that the issue is not about equal rights, unfair treatment, or second-
class citizenship. It is about whether or not we want unelected officials
violating the good faith of this state's citizens by legislating humanistic
morality from the bench. Voting for this amendment does not advocate hate
or disenfranchise homosexuals or write discrimination into the Constitution.
It reaffirms the sanctity and importance of traditional family. See Attachment
24 for complete written testimony.
Chris Harriman, Twin Falls, spoke in favor of HJR 2, stating he is grateful to
be able to add his voice in favor of this legislation. Judicial activism
threatens marriage and placing this amendment on the ballot allows citizens
to codify marriage as a legal union between one man and one women. It is
not likely that Washington will address this issue so states need to continue
to take action. He said he comments are not meant to be mean spirited.
HOUSE STATE AFFAIRS
000258
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MOTION:
ROLL CALL
VOTE:
ADJOURN:
Pat Burnam, spoke in favor of HJR 2 on behalf of the Idaho Eagle Forum.
She urged that this measure be placed on the ballot to allow the people to
exercise their voting rights. Marriage is the oldest social institution know to
mankind and the greatest threat to our nation is the demise of marriage and
the family. The Idaho Eagle Forum affirms that children need both a father
and a mother in the home for optimal growth and development. Marriage
between a man and a woman further undergirds the structure of society,
culture and government. See Attachment 25 for complete written testimony.
The testimony being completed, Chairman Deal said he appreciated the high
road taken during the testimony. Thirty-eight people testified. A short break
was taken before concluded the hearing.
Chairman Deal called the meeting back to order and asked Representative
Denney to give a brief summary of the legislation. Representative Denney
stated this is a very fundamental societal question. This is not a policy
change but a policy reinforcement. It does not take away current rights, but
elevates the protection of marriage to the constitutional level.
Representative Stevenson made a motion to send HJR 2 to the floor with a
DO PASS recommendation. He said he had heard a great deal of
discussion about not having access to partners in hospitals and indicated
that this issue needs to be addressed in that arena.
A roll call vote was called for. The motion to send HJR 2 to the floor with a
DO PASS recommendation passed by a 13 to 4 vote. Representatives Deal,
Smylie, Stevenson, Ellsworth, Edumnson, Snodgrass, Garrett, Loertscher,
Anderson, Andrus, Hart, Bilbao, and Shepherd (2) voted "Aye" and
Representatives Miller, Ring, Smith (30), and Pasley-Stuart voted "Nay".
Representative Black was excused. The measure passed by more than a
2/3 vote and will therefore be sent to the floor with a DO PASS
recommendation.
Chairman Deal thanked everyone for their testimony and for their
courteousness to him. There being no further business to come before the
Commit e, the meeting was adjourned at 10:40 A.M.
Karen Daniels
Secretary
HOUSE STATE AFFAIRS
February 2,2006 - Minutes - Page 8
000259

EXHIBIT D
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STATEMENT OF PURPOSE
RS 15639
The language of this bill, including the term "domestic legal
union" is intended to protect marriage as being only between a
man and a woman.
It is intended to prohi,bit recognition by the' State of Idaho, or
any of its political subdivisions, of civil unions, domestic
partnerships, or any other relationship that attempts to
approximate marriage, no matter how denominated. The language is
further intended to prohibit the State of Idaho, or any of its
political subdivisions, from granting any or all of the legal
benefits of marriage to civil unions, domestic partnerships, or
any other relationship that attempts to approximate marriage.
It is the intent that the language of this bill shall not (a)
interfere with the ability of persons or entities to enter into
private contracts; (b) interfere with the ability of a person to
provide for the disposition of their property at death, including
through wills or trusts; (c) interfere with the ability of a
person to name representatives, including financial or medical
powers of attorney, or to choose guardians or conservators,
through the means provided by the statutes of the State of Idaho.
FISCAL NOTE
The fiscal impact to the General Fund will be $50,000.00 (fifty
thousand dollars) to cover costs of placing the measure
on the ballot.
Contact
Name: President Pro Tern Robert Geddes
Speaker Bruce Newcomb
Rep. Lawerence Denney
Rep. Mike Moyle
Phone: (208) 332-10QO
STATEMENT OF PURPOSE/FISCAL NOTE HJR 2

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000261

EXHIBIT E
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Hand Delivered
STATE OF IDAHO
LAWRENCE G. WASDEN
ATTORNEY GENERAL OPINION NO. 06-1
Honorable Lawerence Denney
Majority Leader
Idaho House of Representatives
STATEHOUSE
Per Request for Attorney General's Opinion
Regarding Proposed Amendment to the Idaho Constitution
Dear Representative Denney:
The Idaho Legislature IS considering a proposed amendment to the Idaho
Constitution concerning marriage. You have written that the proposed amendment is to
ensure the State of Idaho's policy provides for and protects the traditional institution of
marriage, and you have. requested the Attorney General's opinion regarding several
questions.
This opmlOn responds to your questions concerning the constitutionality of
marriage laws and the potential impact of a constitutional marriage amendment on certain
rights and benefits under current Idaho law. This opinion is not intended to address the
particular language of the proposed marriage amendment currently under consideration.
QUESTIONS PRESENTED
For purposes of this opinion, your questions are summarized as follows:
1. Without a defense of marriage amendment, is it possible for the Idaho Supreme
Court to recognize a marriage solemnized in another state that is not between a
man and a woman?
2. Will a defense of marriage amendment directly conflict with any provisions of the
United States Constitution?
P.O. Box 83720, Boise, Idaho 83720-0010
Telephone: (208) 334-2400, FAX: (208) 334-2530
Located at 700 W. Jefferson Street, Suite 210
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3. Will a defense of marriage amendment inhibit the ability of any individuals to
conduct business of any nature via contract or interfere with powers of attorney?
4. Will a defense of marriage amendment interfere with the right of a person to leave
property by a will to anyone of his or her choosing?
5. Will a defense of marriage amendment interfere with: (a) the rights of unmarried
persons to cohabitate; (b) the rights of extended family members to help raise
minor members of their family; (c) the rules regarding the making of medical care
decisions by unmarried persons; or (d) the ability of unmarried persons to visit
each other if one is hospitalized?
CONCLUSIONS
1. Idaho Code 32-201 and 32-209 limit marriage under Idaho law to a marriage
between a man and a woman. Without a marriage amendment, a couple who seeks
to solemnize their relationship in Idaho could bring a lawsuit alleging that Idaho's
marriage statutes violate the due process and equal protection clauses of the Idaho
Constitution. Idaho Const. art. I, 1-2. A couple that seeks recognition in Idaho
of a relationship solemnized in another state could further claim that full faith and
credit is due the relationship under the United States Constitution. U.S. Const.
art. IV, 1. Although the Idaho Supreme Court would probably reject these
challenges under current law, a marriage amendment would bar a challenge under
the Idaho Constitution and would strengthen Idaho's current statement of public
policy rejecting same-sex marriages formed in other states.
2. Ultimately, the United States Supreme Court will face and probably uphold
marriage laws that limit marriage to a man and a woman as constitutional under
the Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment of the
United States Constitution, but there are no guarantees given wide discrepancies in
the current case law. U.S. Const. amend. XIV. In Baker v. Nelson, 191 N.W.2d
185 (Minn. 1971), appeal dismissed Baker v. Nelson, 409 U.S. 810, 93 S. Ct. 37,
34 L. Ed. 2d 65 (1972), the Supreme Court summarily dismissed on appeal,
without discussion, a federal constitutional challenge to a marriage statute that
limited marriage to a man and a woman. Some courts have held that Baker v.
Nelson is determinative of a federal constitutional challenge, but other courts have
questioned or ignored its precedential value. Numerous federal and state courts
have addressed the constitutionality of marriage laws and reached opposite
decisions on similar facts and arguments. A marriage law that not only defines
marriage as between a man and a woman but also prohibits recognition of other
domestic relationships faces additional federal constitutional hurdles.

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3. A marriage amendment need not be drafted to inhibit the ability of individuals to
conduct business via contract or powers of attorney. Contracts with third parties
outside of a same-sex relationship should not be invalidated by a marriage
amendment. A same-sex couple's contract with each other would more likely be
upheld on contract principles than rejected as an unenforceable legal union akin to
marriage. Powers of attorney are generally not dependent upon marriage and,
therefore, should not be invalidated by a marriage amendment.
4. A marriage amendment need not be drafted to interfere with the right of a person
to leave property by a will to anyone of his or her choosing. Because the right to
leave property by a will is not dependent upon marital status, the right to leave
property by a will should not be invalidated by a marriage amendment.
5. A marriage amendment need not be drafted to impair the decisions of unmarried
persons to cohabitate, or the rights of extended family members to raise minor
members of that extended family. A marriage amendment should not invalidate
current statutes governing medical care decisions or hospital visitation rules. A
marriage amendment that not only defines marriage as between a man and a
woman but also prohibits recognition of other domestic relationships carries a
higher risk of affecting relationships outside of traditional marriage.
BACKGROUND
In 1967, in Loving v. Commonwealth of Virginia, the United States Supreme
Court established marriage as a fundamental right protected by the Fourteenth
Amendment of the United States Constitution. 388 U.S. 1, 87 S. Ct. 1817, 18 L. Ed. 2d
1010 (1967). In Loving, the United States Supreme Court held that Virginia's
miscegenation statutes which outlawed interracial marriages violated both the substantive
due process and equal protection clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment. 388 U.S. at 12,
87 S. Ct. at 1824. "The freedom to marry has long been recognized as one of the vital
personal rights essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness by free men." Id.
Traditionally, the courts have refused to recognize any right of same-sex couples to
marriage. In 1971, in Baker v. Nelson, 191 N.W.2d 185 (Minn. 1971), appeal dismissed
Baker v. Nelson, 409 U.S. 810, 93 S. Ct. 37, 34 L. Ed. 2d 65 (1972), a same-sex couple
who were denied a marriage license claimed that they had a fundamental right to marry
and that restricting marriage to couples of the opposite sex violated equal protection
principles. On appeal, the Minnesota Supreme Court held that same-sex couples do not
have a fundamental right to marry under the United States Constitution. 191 N.W. 2d at
186. The court reasoned: "The institution of marriage as a union of man and woman,
uniquely involving the procreation and rearing of children within a family, is as old as the
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Page - 4
book of Genesis." Id. The court also rejected the couple's equal protection claim,
holding that prohibiting same-sex marriage was not invidious discrimination. Id. at 187.
Several early cases are in accord with Baker v. Nelson. See, Adams v. Howerton,
486 F. Supp. 1119, 1124-25 (C.D. Cal. 1980) (upholding prohibition of same-sex
marriage under Colorado law and federal immigration law); Singer v. Hara, 522 P.2d
1187, 1197 (Wash. Ct. App. 1974), rev. denied, 84 Wash. 2d 1008 (1974) (upholding
prohibition of same-sex marriage under Washington and federal law); Jones v. Hallahan,
501 S.W.2d 588, 588-89 (Ky. Ct. App. 1973) (citing Baker v. Nelson, fmding no
constitutional protection for right of marriage between persons of the same sex);
Anonymous v. Anonymous, 325 N.Y.S.2d 499, 500 (N.Y. Sup. Ct. 1971) ("Marriage is
and always has been a contract between a man and a woman").
In 1993, however, the Hawaii Supreme Court made a stark departure from the
traditional rule and held that prohibiting same-sex marriages violated the equal protection
provisions of the Hawaii Constitution. Baehr v. Lewin, 852 P.2d 44, 67 (Haw. 1993),
superseded by constitutional amendment, Smelt v. County of Orange, 374 F. Supp. 2d
861,875 (C.D. Cal. 2005).
Congress responded to Baehr by proposing the Defense of Marriage Act
("DOMA") which was enacted in 1996. 1 U.S.C. 7 (1996); 28 U.S.c. 1738C (1996).
DOMA defines marriage for purposes of federal law as limited to opposite-sex couples:
In determining the meaning of any Act of Congress, or of any ruling,
regulation, or interpretation of the various administrative bureaus and
agencies of the United States, the word "marriage" means only a legal union
between one man and one woman as husband and wife, and the word
"spouse" refers only to a person of the opposite sex who is a husband or a
wife.
1 U.S.C. 7. DOMA also allows states to refuse recognition of same-sex marriages
recognized in other states:
No State, territory, or possession of the United States, or Indian tribe,
shall be required to give effect to any public act, record, or judicial
proceeding of any other State, territory, possession, or tribe respecting a
relationship between persons of the same sex that is treated as a marriage
under the laws of such other State, territory, possession, or tribe, or a right
or claim arising from such relationship.
28 U.S.C. 1738C.

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Many states followed suit and enacted defense of marriage statutes. Idaho already
limited marriage to a man and a woman. See 1993 Idaho Att'y Gen. Ann. Rpt. 119, 132
("The State of Idaho does not legally recognize either homosexual marriages or
homosexual domestic partnerships."). However, Idaho modified its marriage laws to bar
recognition of same-sex marriages formed in other jurisdictions. Idaho Code 32-201(1)
states:
Marriage is a personal relation arising out of a civil contract between
a man and a woman, to which the consent of parties capable of making it is
necessary. Consent alone will not constitute marriage; it must be followed
by a license and solemnization as authorized and provided by law.
Marriage created by a mutual assumption of marital rights, duties or
obligations shall not be recognized as a lawful marriage.
Idaho Code 32-209 states:
All marriages contracted without this state, which would be valid by
the laws of the state or country in which the same were contracted, are valid
in this state, unless they violate the public policy of this state. Marriages
that violate the public policy of this state include, but are not limited to,
same-sex marriages, and marriages entered into under the laws of another
state or country with the intent to evade the prohibitions of the marriage
laws of this state.
Despite DOMA, over the past decade a growing number of state courts have
followed Baehr and struck down marriage statutes that limit marriage to a man and a
woman under their state constitutions. See, e.g., Baker v. State of Vermont, 744 A.2d
864, 886 (Vt. 1999) (exclusion of same-sex couples from benefits and protections of
marriage violated Vermont Constitution); Goodridge v. Dept. of Public Health, 798
N.E.2d 941,969 (Mass. 2003) (limitation of marriage to persons of opposite sex violated
equal protection principles under the Massachusetts Constitution).
In response, several states have passed defense of marriage amendments to their
state constitutions.
1
Some marriage amendments only define marriage as between a man
and a woman. Other marriage amendments define marriage as between a man and a
1 See, e.g., Ala. Const. art. I, 25 (1999); Ark. Const. amend. 83 (2004); Ga. Const. art. I, 4 ~ I
(2004); Ky. Const. 233A (2004); La. Const. art. XII, 15 (2004); Mich. Const. art. I, 25 (2004);
Miss. Const. art. XN, 263A (2004); Mo. Const. art. I, 33 (2004); Mont. Const. art. XIII, 7 (2004);
Nev. Const. art. I, 21 (2002); N.D. Const. art. XI, 28 (2004); Ohio Const. art. XV, 11 (2004); Okla.
Const. art. II, 35 (2004); Or. Const. art. XV, 52 (2004); Tex. Const. art. I, 32 (2005); Utah Const.
art. I, 29 (2005).
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woman and also prohibit legal recognition of other domestic relationships, such as same-
sex marriages, domestic partnerships and civil unions. The broader the scope of the
amendment, the more likely a constitutional challenge will be brought.
ANALYSIS
I.
EFFECTS OF THE PASSAGE OF A MARRIAGE AMENDMENT UPON
SAME-SEX UNIONS ENTERED INTO IN OTHER STATES
You have asked whether, without a marriage amendment to the Idaho Constitution,
the Idaho Supreme Court could recognize a marriage solemnized in another state that is
not between a man and a woman. Your question actually poses two inquiries. First,
without a marriage amendment, could the Idaho Supreme Court conclude that the
prohibition of same-sex marriage under Idaho Code 32-201 and 32-209 violates the
Idaho Constitution? Second, even though same-sex marriages are not recognized under
the Idaho Code, could the Idaho Supreme Court be required to recognize a same-sex
marriage formed in another state?
It is unlikely that the Idaho Supreme Court would adopt marriage policies contrary
to those articulated in Idaho Code 32-201 and 32-209. However, as discussed below, a
marriage amendment would preclude a state constitutional challenge and would reinforce
Idaho's public policy against recognizing same-sex marriages solemnized in other states.
A. Without a Marriage Amendment, Whether a State Constitutional Challenge
Could be Brought Against Idaho's Marriage Statutes
Without a marriage amendment, a challenge could be brought that prohibiting
same-sex marriage under Idaho Code 32-201 and 32-209 violates the due process and
equal protection clauses of the Idaho Constitution. Idaho Const. art. I, 1-2. A state
constitutional challenge might be brought by a same-sex couple who wishes to solemnize
a marriage or other domestic union (e.g., a domestic partnership or civil union) in Idaho,
or by a same-sex couple who asks Idaho to recognize a marriage or other domestic union
solemnized in another state. Other courts have faced similar challenges.
A growing number of cases have struck down marriage statutes as
unconstitutional. In 1993, in Baehr v. Lewin, same-sex couples who were denied
marriage licenses claimed that Hawaii's marriage statute violated the Hawaii
Constitution's equal protection provisions. 852 P.2d at 64. The Hawaii Supreme Court
agreed and held that limiting marriage to opposite-sex couples discriminated against
same-sex couples on the basis of sex. ld. The court concluded that the discrimination
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was unlawful because the marriage statute was not narrowly drawn to support a
compelling state interest. Id. at 67. The court reasoned that the equal protection
provisions of the Hawaii Constitution were more "elaborate" than the equal protection
provisions of the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution. Id. at 64.
In 1999, in Baker v. State of Vermont, the Vermont Supreme Court upheld the
right of same-sex couples under the Vermont Constitution to receive the common benefits
and protections that flow from marriage. The court reasoned that the Common Benefits
Clause of the Vermont Constitution requires that the same benefits and protections
afforded to married opposite-sex couples be afforded to same-sex couples. 744 A.2d at
887. The court did not hold that the same-sex couples had any right to a marriage license,
but rather only to the common benefits and protections that flow from marriage under
Vermont law. Id. at 878. The court distinguished its analysis from a federal
constitutional analysis, holding that interpreting the Vermont Constitution must reflect an
"inclusionary principle" rather than track a federal constitutional analysis. Id.
In 2003, in Goodridge v. Dept. of Public Health, the Massachusetts Supreme Court
held that same-sex couples in Massachusetts are entitled to marry, on the grounds that
prohibiting same-sex marriage does not satisfy substantive due process or equal
protection requirements under the Massachusetts Constitution. 798 N.E.2d at 961. The
court reasoned, "[t]he Massachusetts Constitution is, if anything, more protective of
individual liberty and equality than the Federal Constitution; it may demand broader
protection for fundamental rights; and it is less tolerant of government intrusion into the
protected spheres of private life." Id. at 948-49. The court's holding was challenged
unsuccessfully in the federal courts, in Largess v. Supreme Judicial Court for the State of
Massachusetts, 317 F. Supp. 2d 77 (D. Mass.), afJ'd, 373 F.3d 219 (1st Cir.), cert. denied,
543 U.S. 1002, 125 S. Ct. 618, 160 L. Ed. 2d 461 (2004), which rejected an attempt by
state legislators to enjoin enforcement of Goodridge on the grounds of judicial
overreaching.
In 2004 and 2005, additional courts rejected state marriage statutes. Among them
are two cases pending on appeal before the Washington Supreme Court. See, Castle v.
State of Washington, No. 04-2-00614-4, 2004 WL 1985215, at **16-17 (Wash. Super.
Sept. 7, 2004) (unpublished decision) (holding that DOMA violates the privileges or
immunities clause of the Washington Constitution); Andersen v. King County, No. 04-2-
04964-4,2004 WL 1738447, at *11 (Wash. Super. Aug. 4, 2004) (unpublished decision)
(holding that Washington's marriage statutes, which prohibit same-sex marriages, violate
the privileges or immunities clause and due process clause of the Washington
Constitution). The Washington Supreme Court held oral argument in March 2005 and a
decision is pending. Six more cases are pending on appeal in a consolidated action before
the California Court of Appeals. See, Judicial Council Coordination Proceeding
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(Marriage Cases), No. 4365, 2005 WL 583129 (Cal. Super. Ct. March 14, 2005)
(unpublished decision) (holding limitation of marriage to opposite-sex couples under
California's marriage statute is unconstitutional under California Constitution). See also,
Deane v. Conaway, No. 24-C-04-005390, 2006 WL 148145 (Md. Cir. Ct. Jan. 20,2006)
(striking down Maryland's prohibition of same-sex marriages, under the equal protection
and due process provisions of the Maryland Constitution).
However, other courts have upheld marriage statutes. Several federal courts have
upheld DOMA as compatible with the United States Constitution. See, In re Kandu, 315
B.R. 123, 148 (Bankr. W.D. Wash. 2004) (upholding DOMA and concluding that a
lesbian couple who married in Canada could not jointly file a Chapter 7 bankruptcy);
Smelt v. County of Orange, 374 F. Supp. 2d at 880 (upholding DOMA, finding no due
process or equal protection violations); Wilson v. Ake, 354 F. Supp. 2d 1298, 1309 (M.D.
Fla. 2005) (holding that DOMA does not violate Full Faith and Credit Clause or the due
process or equal protection protections of the United States Constitution); see also,
Morrison v. Sadler, 821 N.E.2d 15, 35 (Ind. Ct. App. 2005) (upholding DOMA).
Also, several state courts have upheld state marriage statutes as compatible with
state constitutions, holding that marriage is properly limited to opposite-sex couples. See,
Li v. State of Oregon, 110 P.3d 91, 102 (Or. 2005) (upholding prohibition of same-sex
marriages under Oregon law); Hernandez v. Robles, 805 N.Y.S.2d 354, 377 (N.Y. App.
Div. 2005) (holding denial of same-sex marriage does not violate due process or equal
protection provisions of New York Constitution); Standhardt v. Superior Court of
Arizona, 77 P.3d 451, 464 (Ariz. Ct. App. 2004) (holding denial of same-sex marriage
does not violate any fundamental due process or equal protection right under Arizona or
United States Constitutions); Dean v. District of Columbia, 653 A.2d 307, 333 (D.C. Ct.
App. 1995) (holding same-sex marriage is not a fundamental right protected by due
process).
Given this wide split in the case law, there is no majority rule to guide the Idaho
Supreme Court if a state constitutional challenge to Idaho's marriage statutes is brought.
However, the court should consider federal cases upholding DOMA. See, In re Kandu,
315 B.R. at 148; Smelt v. County of Orange, 374 F. Supp. 2d at 880; Wilson v. Ake, 354
F. Supp. 2d at 1309. The Idaho Constitution is "separate and in many respects
independent" from the United States Constitution, but Idaho courts can interpret the Idaho
Constitution by considering federal court rulings interpreting the United States
Constitution. Rudeen v. Cenarrusa, 136 Idaho 560, 568, 38 P.3d 598, 606 (2001), citing
Thompson v. Engelking, 96 Idaho 793, 818, 537 P.2d 635, 660 (1975). "The majority of
Idaho cases . . . state that the equal protection guarantees of the federal and Idaho
Constitutions are substantially equivalent." ld. An Idaho court "is free to interpret its
constitution as more protective than the United States Constitution." Garcia v. State Tax
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Commission, 136 Idaho 610, 615, 38 P.3d 1266, 1271 (2002), citing State v. Thompson,
114 Idaho 746, 748, 760 P.2d 1162, 1164 (1988). However, "independent analysis under
the Idaho Constitution does not mean that [the Idaho Supreme] Court will reach a
different result from that reached by the U.S. Supreme Court under a similar
constitutional provision." Garcia, 136 Idaho at 614,38 P.3d at 1270.
The court could very well disregard case law from Hawaii, Vermont and
Massachusetts that struck down state marriage statutes on the basis that the state
constitutional provisions at issue were more protective than their federal constitutional
counterparts. See, Baehr v. Lewin, 852 P.2d at 572 (holding the equal protection
provisions of the Hawaii Constitution were more "elaborate" than the equal protection
provisions of the Fourteenth Amendment); Baker v. State of Vermont, 744 A.2d at 878
(holding that interpretation of the Common Benefits Clause of the Vermont Constitution
must reflect an "inclusionary principle" rather than track a federal constitutional analysis);
Goodridge v. Dept. of Public Health, 798 N.E.2d at 948-49 ("The Massachusetts
Constitution is, if anything, more protective of individual liberty and equality than the
Federal Constitution; it may demand broader protection for fundamental rights; and it is
less tolerant of government intrusion into the protected spheres of private life").
Thus, Idaho's marriage statutes are probably less vulnerable than the statutes
challenged in Vermont, Hawaii and Massachusetts. However, a marriage amendment
would articulate Idaho's marriage policy at a constitutional level and preclude a state
constitutional challenge.
B. Without a Marriage Amendment, Whether the Idaho Supreme Court Would
Be Required to Recognize Same-Sex Marriages Formed in Other States
You have asked whether, without a marriage amendment, the Idaho Supreme
Court could be required to recognize a same-sex marriage formed in another state. The
answer is most likely "no."
The Full Faith and Credit Clause of the United States Constitution generally
requires that full faith and credit be given to the public acts, records and judicial
proceedings of sister states, as follows:
Full faith and credit shall be given in each state to the public acts,
records, and judicial proceedings of every other state. And the Congress
may by general laws prescribe the manner in which such acts, records and
proceedings shall be proved, and the effect thereof.
U.S. Const. art. IV, 1. See also 28 U.S.c. 1738; 28 U.S.C. 1739 (implementing
statutes governing attestation for recognition of, respectively, acts of legislature and
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records and judicial proceedings of courts, and nonjudicial records or books of public
offices). Pursuant to the Full Faith and Credit Clause, a valid judgment entered into in a
sister state with jurisdiction is entitled to full faith and credit in Idaho. See, Mitchell v.
Pincock, 99 Idaho 56, 58, 577 P.2d 343, 345 (1978) (upholding rights of birth mother in
adoption dispute that was adjudicated in California, under Full Faith and Credit Clause).
The Full Faith and Credit Clause does not, however, create a license for a single
state to create national policy regarding marriage. Wilson v. Ake, 354 F. Supp. 2d at
1309, citing Nevada v. Hall, 440 U.S. 410, 423-24, 99 S. Ct. 1182, 1189, 1190,591. Ed.
2d 416 (1979). Idaho retains some attributes of sovereignty to enact its own laws and, in
effect, defme its own public policy. See, Pacific Emp. Ins. Co. v. Indus. Accident Comm.
306 U.S. 493, 501, 59 S. Ct. 629, 632 (1939); Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen &
Enginemen v. Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific RR Co., 393 U.S. 129, 142, 89 Ct. 323,
330, 83 1. Ed. 940 (1968) ("policy decisions are for the state legislature") (citation
omitted). "[T]he Full Faith and Credit Clause does not require a State to apply another
State's law in violation of its own legitimate public policy." Nevada v. Hall, 440 U.S. at
422,99 S. Ct. at 1189.
Several courts have held that the Full Faith and Credit Clause does not require one
state to recognize a same-sex marriage formed in another state. See Wilson v. Ake, 354
of. Supp. 2d at 1309 (upholding Florida's right to reject a same-sex couple's marriage
entered into in Massachusetts); Bums v. Bums, 560 S.E.2d 47,49 (Ga. Ct. App. 2002) (in
child custody matter, holding that Full Faith and Credit Clause did not require Georgia to
recognize a civil union formed in Vermont); Hennefeld v. Township of Montclair, 22 N.J.
Tax 166 (2005) (in matter regarding disabled veteran's property tax exemption, holding
that Full Faith and Credit Clause did not require New Jersey to recognize civil union
formed in Vermont); Langan v, St. Vincent's Hospital of New York, 802 N.Y.S.2d 476,
(N.Y. App. Div. 2005); (holding that Full Faith and Credit Clause did not require New
York to allow a wrongful death action brought on behalf of the decedent's same-sex
partner); Raum v. Restaurant Assoc., 675 N.Y.S.2d 343, 370 (N.Y. App. Div. 1998)
(same); Rosengarten v. Downes, 802 A.2d. 170, 172, 174-75 (Conn. Ct. App. 2002)
(rejecting demand that Connecticut provide a forum to dissolve a same-sex civil union
formed in Vermont); see also, In re Kandu, 315 B.R. at 134 (rejecting claim for comity
regarding same-sex marriage formed in Canada).
Also, Congress adopted DOMA pursuant to its powers under the Full Faith and
Credit Clause to determine the effect of a marriage entered into in one state on other
states. Wilson v. Ake, 354 F. Supp. 2d at 1303; see U.S. Const. art. IV, 1 ("And the
Congress may by general laws prescribe the manner in which such acts, records and
proceedings shall be proved, and the effect thereof'). DOMA expressly protects a state's
right to reject same-sex marriages formed in other states. 28 U.S.C. 1738C.

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Idaho's public policy to limit marriage to a man and a woman and prohibit
recognition of same-sex marriages and other domestic relationships is articulated in Idaho
Code 32-201 and 32-209. The Full Faith and Credit Clause and DOMA do not require
an Idaho court to recognize domestic relationships that are contrary to this stated public
policy.
However, although the public policy exception to the Full Faith and Credit Clause
and DOMA allow an Idaho court to reject an out-of-state same-sex marriage or other
domestic relationship, neither mandate that an Idaho court reject such a marriage or
relationship. Thus, as discussed above, without a marriage amendment an Idaho court
could consider a state constitutional challenge to Idaho Code 32-201 and 32-209. (See
Sec. LA, supra.) Additionally, Idaho Code 32-201 and 32-209 are limited to
"marriages" and do not expressly prohibit civil unions, domestic partnerships or other
marriage equivalents. Thus, under current Idaho law a court could recognize such a
relationship formed in another state, as compatible with Idaho's marriage statutes. See
Idaho Code 32-201, 32-209 (addressing "marriage"). Adopting a marriage amendment
would more clearly articulate Idaho's public policies concerning marriage, as well as bar
a state constitutional challenge to Idaho Code 32-201 and 32-209.
II.
POTENTIAL FEDERAL CONSTITUTIONAL CHALLENGES
TO A MARRIAGE AMENDMENT
You have asked whether a defense of marriage amendment will directly conflict
with any provisions of the United States Constitution. The United States Supreme Court
will ultimately face and decide the constitutionality of marriage amendments. At that
time, the Court will probably uphold their constitutionality, but there are no guarantees.
A. Baker v. Nelson May Preclude a Federal Constitutional Challenge
Baker v. Nelson, which upheld the prohibition of same-sex marriage, could
preclude a federal constitutional challenge to Idaho's proposed amendment. Baker v.
Nelson, 191 N.W.2d at 186-87, appeal dismissed, Baker v. Nelson, 409 U.S. 810, 93 S.
Ct. 37, 34 L. Ed. 2d 65. After the Minnesota Supreme Court rejected the plaintiffs' claim
that same-sex marriages should be recognized, the plaintiffs sought review of the court's
decision by invoking the mandatory appellate jurisdiction of the United States Supreme
Court (since repealed). Baker v. Nelson, 409 U.S. 810, 93 S. Ct. 37, 34 L. Ed. 2d 65.
The Supreme Court summarily decided the case, without a full opinion on the merits,
dismissing the appeal "for want of a substantial federal question." Id.

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A dismissal for want of a substantial federal question is a decision on the merits
that is binding on lower courts, except when doctrinal developments indicate otherwise.
Smelt v. County of Orange, 374 F. Supp. 2d at 872, citing Hicks v. Miranda, 422 U.S.
332, 344-45, 95 S. Ct. 2281, 45 L. Ed. 2d 223 (1975). The scope of this rule is narrow;
the decision is dispositive only of "the specific challenges presented in the statement of
jurisdiction." Smelt, 374 F. Supp. 2d at 872, citing Mandel v. Bradley, 432 U.S. 173,
176, 97 S. Ct. 2238, 53 L. Ed. 2d 199 (1977) (per curium). The rationale is to prevent
"lower courts from coming to opposite conclusions on the precise issues presented and
necessarily decided by the dismissal, but it does not affirm the reasoning or the opinion of
the lower court whose judgment is appealed." Smelt, 374 F. Supp. 2d at 872, citing
Mandel, and Washington v. Confederated Bands & Tribes, 439 U.S. 463, 476, n.20, 99
S. Ct. 740, 58 L. Ed. 2d 740 (1979).
The statement of jurisdiction in Baker v. Nelson presented the specific question of
whether a "county clerk's refusal to authorize a same-sex marriage deprived plaintiffs of
their liberty to marry and of their property without due process of law under the
Fourteenth Amendment, their rights under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth
Amendment, or their right to privacy under the Ninth and Fourteenth Amendments."
Smelt, 374 F. Supp. 2d at 872, citing Baker v. Nelson, Jurisdictional Statement, No. 71-
1027 (Oct. Term 1972).
Several courts have recognized Baker v. Nelson as binding precedent and, on that
basis, have dismissed federal constitutional challenges to defense of marriage laws. In
Wilson v. Ake, the court held, "The Supreme Court has not explicitly or implicitly
overturned its holding in Baker or provided the lower courts, including this Court, with
any reason to believe that the holding is invalid today." 354 F. Supp. 2d at 1305. See
also, Morrison v. Sadler, 821 N.E.2d at 20 (finding no grounds for a Fourteenth
Amendment challenge in light of Baker v. Nelson); Adams v. Howerton, 486 F. Supp. at
1124 (holding that Baker v. Nelson precluded claim to same-sex marriage).
Thus, a federal constitutional challenge to an Idaho marriage amendment could be
dismissed under Baker v. Nelson for want of a substantial federal question. However,
some courts have rejected Baker v. Nelson as binding precedent and other cases have
ignored the decision. See, Smelt v. County of Orange, 374 F. Supp. 2d at 874 (holding
Baker v. Nelson was not binding precedent); In re Kandu, 315 B.R. at 138 (same).
Because a court addressing an Idaho marriage amendment might reject Baker v. Nelson
as binding precedent, the potential federal constitutional challenges are discussed below.
B. Potential Challenges Under the Fourteenth Amendment
Courts addressing marriage laws under the Due Process and Equal Protection
Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment generally answer three legal questions: (1) whether
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same-sex couples have a fundamental right to marry; (2) for purposes of equal protection,
whether homosexuals are a suspect or quasi-suspect classification or whether marriage
laws discriminate on the basis of sex, which is a suspect or quasi-suspect classification;
and (3) depending on how a court answers the first two questions, whether the marriage
law should be reviewed under the rational basis test or heightened scrutiny.
1. Whether There Is a Fundamental Right to Same-Sex Marriage
The Due Process Clause "protects those fundamental rights and liberties which are,
objectively, 'deeply rooted in this Nation's history and tradition. ,,, Wilson v. Ake, 354 F.
Supp. 2d at 1305, quoting Washington v. Glucksberg, 521 U.S. 702, 721, 117 S. Ct. 2258,
2268, 138 L. Ed 2d 772 (1997). Fundamental rights are those liberties that are "implicit
in the concept of ordered liberty, such that neither liberty nor justice would exist if they
were sacrificed." Glucksberg, 521 U.S. at 721, 117 S. Ct. at 2268. "The Supreme Court
has cautioned courts to 'exercise the utmost care' in conferring fundamental-right status
on a newly asserted interest." In re Kandu, 315 B.R. at 140, citing Glucksberg, 521 U.S.
at 720, 117 S. Ct. at 2268.
The United States Supreme Court has never held that same-sex couples have a
fundamental right of marriage. Three years ago in Lawrence v. Texas, 539 U.S. 558, 575,
123 S. Ct. 2472, 2482, 156 L. Ed. 2d 508 (2003), the Court reversed longstanding
precedent and held unconstitutional a Texas statute outlawing sodomy between two
persons of the same sex. Id. (reversing Bowers v. Hardwick, 478 U.S. 186, 106 S. Ct.
2841, 92 L. Ed. 2d 140 _ (1986), holding that the continuance of Bowers as precedent
would "demean[] the lives of homosexual persons"). However, Lawrence declined to
address the validity of same-sex marriage, concluding that the case did "not involve
whether the government must give formal recognition to any relationship that homosexual
persons seek to enter." 539 U.S. at 578, 123 S. Ct. at 2484.
Most lower courts have found that same-sex couples do not have a fundamental
right of marriage. See, Wilson v. Ake, 354 F. Supp. 2d at 1307 (no fundamental right to
marry person of same sex); In re Kandu, 315 B.R. at 139-40 (same); Smelt v. County of
Orange, 374 F. Supp. 2d at 879 ("the fundamental due process right to marry does not
include a fundamental right to same-sex marriage"); Hernandez v. Robles, 805 N.Y.S.2d
at 362 ("we reject plaintiffs' argument in support of a fundamental right"); Dean v.
District of Columbia, 653 A.2d at 333 (quoting Moore v. City of East Cleveland, 431
U.S. 494, 503, 97 S. Ct. 1932, 52 L. Ed. 2d 531 (1977): "[W]e cannot say that same-sex
marriage 'is deeply rooted in this Nation's history and tradition"'); Standhardt v. Superior
Court of Arizona, 77 P.3d at 457 (rejecting claim by same-sex couple of fundamental
right to marry). On the weight of the case law, there is most likely no fundamental right
to same-sex marriage which would require heightened scrutiny of marriage laws.
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2. Whether a Marriage Amendment Would Discriminate Against a Suspect or
Quasi -Suspect Class
Most likely, marriage laws that reject same-sex marriages and related domestic
relationships would not be found to discriminate on the basis of a suspect or quasi-suspect
class.
The United States Supreme Court and the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals have not
recognized homosexuals as a suspect or quasi-suspect class for equal protection purposes.
In Romer v. Evans, the United States Supreme Court applied a rational basis review to a
constitutional amendment that discriminated against homosexuals. 517 U.S. 620, 631-32,
116 S. Ct. 1620, 1626-27, 134 L. Ed. 2d 855 (1996). In High Tech Gays v. Def. Indus.
Sec. Clearance Office, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals held that homosexuality is not
a suspect or quasi-suspect classification. 895 F.2d 563,573-74 (9th Cir. 1990). In Smelt
v. County of Orange, the court held that homosexuals are not a suspect or quasi-suspect
class for purposes of evaluating whether DOMA violates equal protection principles. 374
F. Supp. 2d at 875, citing Romer, 517 U.S. at 631-32, 116 S. Ct. at 1626-27 and High
Tech Gays, 895 F.2d at 573-74. In re Kandu reached the same conclusion, holding that
homosexuals are not a suspect or quasi-suspect class. In re Kandu, 315 B.R. at 143-44,
citing Lawrence v. Texas, 539 U.S. at 579-81, 123 S. Ct. 2472 (O'Connor, J., concurring)
and High Tech Gays, 895 F.2d at 574. But see, Castle v. State of Washington, 2004 WL
1985215, at *13 (holding homosexuality is a suspect class for equal protection purposes;
case pending appeal before the Washington Supreme Court). Thus, homosexuals are
most likely not a suspect or quasi-suspect class.
Whether marriage laws discriminate on the basis of sex is less certain, but they
probably do not. Several cases have held that defense of marriage laws do not
discriminate on the basis of sex. See, Smelt, 374 F. Supp. 2d at 877 (holding DOMA
does not discriminate on the basis of sex); In re Kandu, 315 B.R. at 143 ("There is no
evidence from the voluminous legislative history or otherwise, that DOMA's purpose is
to discriminate against men or women as a class"); Singer v. Hara, 522 P.2d at 1192-93
(holding that prohibiting same-sex marriages is not discrimination on the basis of sex).
The rationale is that marriage laws do not make any distinctions on the basis of sex. Men
and women are treated the same; neither men nor women receive the benefits of marriage
in same-sex relationships. Id. at 1196 ("Appellants were not denied a marriage license
because of their sex; rather they were denied a marriage license because of the nature of
marriage itself').
Other courts have reached a contrary result, holding that marriage laws
discriminate on the basis of sex. See, e.g., Baehr v. Lewin, 852 P.2d at 63-64 (rejecting
argument that there was no sex discrimination on the grounds that marriage statute
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prohibited both men and women in same-sex relationships from marrying). See also,
Loving v. Virginia, 388 U.S. at 9, 12, 87 S. Ct. at 1822-23 (rejecting claim that a law
which punishes members of different races equally for entering into interracial marriages
does not discriminate on the basis of race).
Thus, although the law is uncertain, several courts evaluating marriage
amendments have refused to find the suspect classification of sex at issue. These cases
are probably more closely aligned with Romer v. Evans, which applied a rational basis
review to a constitutional amendment that discriminated against homosexuals. 517 U.S.
at 631-32, 116 S. ct. at 1626-27.
3. Whether a Marriage Amendment Would Satisfy Rational Basis Review
Because most courts refuse to find a fundamental right to same-sex marriage or
discrimination on the basis of a suspect classification, courts typically evaluate the
constitutionality of defense of marriage laws under rational basis scrutiny. It is under the
rational basis test, however, where the wide breadth of judicial disagreement concerning
defense of marriage laws is most evident. Courts have reached dramatically different
conclusions when considering substantially similar state interests and arguments.
The rational basis test is stated as follows: "Where ... a law does not make a
quasi-suspect or suspect classification (the equal protection issue) and does not burden a
fundamental right (the due process issue), it will be upheld if it is rationally related to a
legitimate government interest." Smelt v. County of Orange, 374 F. Supp. 2d at 879
(citing Romer v. Evans, 517 U.S. at 631, 116 S. Ct. 1620). The burden is on the plaintiff
challenging the defense of marriage law to negate "every conceivable basis" for support
of the law. Smelt, 374 F. Supp. 2d at 880, citing Lehnhausen v. Lake Shore Auto Parts
Co., 410 U.S. 356, 364, 93 S. Ct. 1001,35 L. Ed. 2d 351 (1973).
The plaintiff s burden is heavy and difficult to satisfy. "Courts are compelled
under rational-basis review to accept a legislature's generalizations even when there is an
imperfect fit between means and ends .... A statutory classification fails rational-basis
review only when it 'rests on grounds wholly irrelevant to the achievement of the State's
objective.'" In re Kandu, 315 B.R. at 144, quoting Heller v. Doe, 509 U.S. 312, 321, 324,
113 S. Ct. 2637, 125 L. Ed. 2d 257 (1993). The rational basis scrutiny "is not a license
for courts to judge the wisdom, fairness, or logic of legislative choices." Id. (citation
omitted). However, "[m]oral disapproval of a group cannot be a legitimate governmental
interest under the Equal Protection Clause because legal classifications must not be
'drawn for the purpose of disadvantaging the group burdened by the law. '" Lawrence v.
Texas, 539 U.S. at 583, 123 S. Ct. at 2486 (O'Connor, J., concurring), quoting Romer v.
Evans, 517 U.S. at 633,116 S. Ct. at 1620.

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Many courts have applied the rational basis test and held that marriage laws are
rationally related to a legitimate government interest. In Smelt v. County of Orange, the
court found DOMA to be rationally related to the government's interest of encouraging
the optimal union for procreation and for rearing children by both biological parents, and
to communicate to citizens that opposite-sex relationships have special significance. 374
at F. Supp. at 880. In re Kandu held that DOMA is rationally related to the government's
legitimate interest in promoting marriage to encourage stable relationships and facilitate
the rearing of children by both biological parents. 315 B.R. at 146.
In Adams v. Howerton, the court upheld a marriage law under heightened strict
scrutiny based upon a similar rationale: "In traditional equal protection terminology, it
seems beyond dispute that the state has a compelling interest in encouraging and fostering
procreation of the race and providing status and stability to the environment in which
children are raised." 486 F. Supp. at 1124. See also, Standhardt v. Superior Court, 77
P.3d at 464 (upholding marriage statute under rational basis test); Singer v. Hara, 522 P.
2d at 1191-92 (same).
However, other courts have held that denying same-sex couples the status or
benefits of marriage does not satisfy a rational basis review. In Goodridge v. Dept of
Public Health, the Massachusetts Supreme Court rejected the state's assertion that
prohibiting same-sex couples from marrying promoted a favorable setting for procreation,
promoted an optimal setting for child rearing in a two-parent family with one parent of
each sex, and preserved scarce state and private financial resources. 798 N.B. 2d at 961-
68. The court found there was no evidence that "forbidding marriage to people of the
same sex will increase the number of couples choosing to enter into opposite-sex
marriages in order to have and raise children." Id. at 963.
In Baker v. State of Vermont, the Vermont Supreme Court held that the laudable
government goal of promoting the commitment of married couples to ensure the security
of their children provided no reasonable basis for denying the benefits of marriage to
same-sex couples. 744 A.2d at 884. The court reasoned that many opposite-sex couples
marry for reasons unrelated to procreation and, therefore, there was no logical connection
to the stated governmental purpose. Id. at 88l. See also, Deane v. Conaway, No. 24-C-
04-005390, 2006 WL 148145 (Md. Cir. Ct. Jan. 20, 2006) (unpublished decision, p. 15)
("This Court, like others, can find no rational connection between the prevention of same-
sex marriages and an increase or decrease in the number of heterosexual marriages or of
children born to those unions"). Under a heightened strict scrutiny standard, similar state
arguments have been closely examined and rejected. See, Baehr v. Miike, No. 91-1394,
1996 WL 694235 (Haw. Cir. Ct. Dec. 3, 1996), on remand/rom Baehr v. Miike, 852 P.2d
44 (Haw. 1993) (fmding under heightened scrutiny standard that there was no causal link
between allowing same-sex marriage and adverse effects on children).
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The enforceability of marriage laws is a highly disputed area of law, which will
remain so until the United States Supreme Court resolves the issue. Thus, states that
adopt marriage amendments should anticipate and be prepared to defend legal challenges.
C. A Marriage Amendment That Precludes Recognition of Other Domestic
Relationships Could Face Additional Constitutional Challenges
A marriage amendment that both defmes marriage and also bars recognition of
domestic relationships outside of marriage furthermore could be challenged under the
recent case of Citizens for Equal Protection, Inc. v. Bruning, 368 F. Supp. 2d 980 (D.
Neb. 2005). In Citizens for Equal Protection, a federal district court struck down
Nebraska's constitutional marriage amendment, which bans recognition of same-sex civil
unions, domestic partnerships, and other similar relationships. ld. at 989.
At issue in Citizens for Equal Protection was Nebraska's marriage amendment,
which provides:
Only marriage between a man and a woman shall be valid or
recognized in Nebraska. The uniting of two persons of the same sex in a
civil union, domestic partnership, or other similar same-sex relationship
shall not be valid or recognized in Nebraska.
Neb. Const. art. I, 29. The court held that the Nebraska amendment's broad scope
violated the First and Fourteenth Amendments of the United States Constitution by
imposing "significant burdens on both the expressive and intimate associational rights of
the plaintiffs' members and creat[ing] a significant barrier to the plaintiffs' right to
petition or to participate in the political process." Citizens for Equal Protection, 368 F.
Supp. 2d at 995. The court also held that the amendment was an illegal bill of attainder
because it singled out gays and lesbians for legislative punishment by limiting their access
to lobby for benefits and protections. ld. at 1008. In reaching these conclusions, the
court reasoned that the scope of the amendment was too broad: "The amendment goes far
beyond merely defming marriage as between a man and a woman." ld. at 995.
In support of these holdings, the court cited Romer v. Evans, 517 U.S. 620, 116 S.
Ct. 1620, 134 L. Ed. 2d 855 (1996). In Romer v. Evans, the United States Supreme Court
struck down, under a rational basis review, an amendment to Colorado's constitution that
precluded all state and local government action designed to protect the status of persons
based on their "homosexual, lesbian or bisexual orientation, conduct, practices or
relationships." 517 U.S. at 620, 116 S. Ct. at 1622. The Court held that the Colorado
amendment violated the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment by singling
out homosexuals and imposing barriers that made it more difficult for them to seek aid
from the government. 517 U.S. at 633, 116 S. Ct. at 1628.

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Citizens for Equal Protection is on appeal to the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals
and may not be upheld; oral argument is scheduled for later this month. (Case No. 05-
2604). However, the case is notable for its criticism of a marriage amendment with a
broad scope.
Under Romer, a constitutional amendment may not single out homosexuals and
impose barriers that make it more difficult for them to seek aid from the government.
Attorney General Opinion No. 93-11, dated November 3, 1993, reached a similar
conclusion. 1993 Idaho Att'y Gen. Ann. Rpt. 119. In that opinion, former Idaho
Attorney General Larry EchoHawk evaluated a proposed initiative to articulate state
policies concerning homosexuals. The Attorney General opined that the initiative's
proposal to preclude any grant of minority status to persons engaging in homosexual
activities barred the homosexual community from obtaining anti-discrimination laws and
thus violated equal protection principles, by "denying homosexuals equal access to the
political process." Id. at 132. However, the Attorney General also recognized that "[t]he
State of Idaho does not legally recognize either homosexual marriages or homosexual
domestic partnerships." Id.
Romer and Attorney General Opinion No. 93-11 should not invalidate marriage
amendments that simply limit marriage to a marriage between a man and a woman. In re
Kandu rejected a challenge under Romer, distinguishing Romer and holding that DOMA
is "not so exceptional and unduly broad as to render the ... reasons for its enactment
'inexplicable by anything but animus' towards same sex couples." In re Kandu, 315 B.R.
at 147-48. See also, Standhardt v. Superior Court of Arizona, 77 P.3d at 465 (rejecting a
Romer analogy, holding that a marriage statute was not enacted to make same-sex couples
unequal).
The inapplicability of Romer and Opinion No. 93-11 becomes less clear, however,
regarding a marriage amendment that furthermore bans any legal recognition of all non-
marital domestic relationships. However, Romer addressed a constitutional amendment
that precluded all legislative, executive or judicial action at any level of state or local
government designed to protect the status of homosexuals. Romer, 517 U.S. at 620,116
S. Ct. at 1622. Citizens for Equal Protection likely stretches Romer too far by applying
the principles of Romer to the limited context of marriage laws.
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III.
UNDER PRINCIPLES OF CONSTITUTIONAL CONSTRUCTION, COURTS
ARE UNLIKELY TO RULE THAT A MARRIAGE AMENDMENT GOVERNS
RELATIONSHIPS THAT ARE UNLIKE MARRIAGE
Several of your questions focus on the effect of a constitutional amendment on
current rights and benefits of domestic relationships outside of marriage. An amendment
should not cancel current rights and obligations that are not dependent upon the status of
marriage.
2
However, an amendment that not only defines marriage but also bars
recognition of other domestic relationships carries a greater risk of claims of interference
with such relationships. Terms in marriage amendments adopted by other states, such as
"domestic union," "legal union," "identical or substantially similar to marriage" or
"approximate " to marriage, may require judicial interpretation to determine their effect
on other domestic relationships. See, e.g., Ky. Const. 233A (2004); La. Const. art. XII,
15 (2004); N.D. Const. art. XI, 280 (2004); Ohio Const. art. XV, 11 (2004).
General principles of statutory construction apply to the construction of the Idaho
Constitution. State v. Blaine County, 139 Idaho 348, 350, 79 P.3d 707, 709 (2003);
Keenan v. Price, 68 Idaho 423, 437, 195 P.2d 662, 670 (1948). Where the language is
plain and unambiguous, an Idaho court must give effect to the provision as written
without engaging in statutory construction. State v. Knott, 132 Idaho 476, 478, 974 Pold
1105, 1107 (1999). Where, however, the language of a constitutional provision or statute
is not plain and unambiguous, a court must ascertain the legislative intent and give effect
to that intent. Id. at 478, 974 P.2d at 1107. "All statutes must be liberally construed with
a view to accomplishing their aims and purposes, and attaining substantial justice, and
courts are not limited to the mere letter of the law, but may look behind the letter to
2 "The benefits accessible only by way of a marriage license are enormous, touching nearly
every aspect of life and death." Goodrich v. Department of Health, 798 N.E.2d at 955. Goodrich
identified a list of numerous rights arising out of marriage under Massachusetts law, including, for
example, joint income tax filing, rights to inherit property from a spouse without a will, certain health
care, pension and veteran benefits for spouses, presumptions of parentage of children born to a married
couple, evidentiary protections for private marital conversations, bereavement and medical leave to care
for family members, a preference for family members to make medical decisions about an incompetent or
disabled spouse, and predictable rules of child custody, visitation, support and removal out of state upon
a divorce. Id. at 955-56. See also, Baehr v. Lewin, 852 P.2d at 59 (listing the more "salient" of a
"multiplicity of rights and benefits that are contingent upon [marital] status," including, for example,
community property rights, rights regarding the disposition of property upon a spouse's death, awards of
child custody and support payments in divorce proceedings, post-divorce rights regarding support and
property division, evidentiary benefits for the spousal privilege and confidential marital communications,
exemptions of real property from attachment or execution and the right to bring a wrongful death action
upon a spouse's death).
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determine its purpose and effect, the object being to determine what the legislature
intended, and to give effect to that intent." Keenan, 68 Idaho at 438, 195 P.2d at 670.
"To ascertain the intent of the legislature, not only must the literal words of the statute be
examined, but also the context of those words, the public policy behind the statute and its
legislative history." State v. Rhode, 133 Idaho 459, 462,988 P.2d 685,688 (1999).
Thus, if an Idaho court concludes that the language of a marriage amendment is
not plain and unambiguous, the court should consider the context of the amendment, the
public policy behind the amendment and its legislative history. The context should
include references to marriage within the text of the amendment and current limits on
marriage articulated in Idaho Code 32-201 and 32-209. Consideration of public policy
behind the amendment should include any statement of purpose for the proposed
amendment as well as the public debate on this topic. The legislative history also will be
relevant. These guidelines should discourage an Idaho court from upholding a marriage
amendment's unintended consequence to relationships that are dissimilar to marriage.
With these principles in mind, answers to your questions are provided below.
A. Contract Rights and Powers of Attorney
The language of a marriage amendment need not interfere with individuals
conducting business via contract or executing enforceable powers of attorney. Both the
United States Constitution and the Idaho Constitution prohibit the enactment of laws that
impair the obligations of contracts. U.S. Const. art. I, 10; Idaho Const. art. I, 16.
Therefore, a marriage amendment should not be interpreted to automatically impair all
existing contract rights. See, Steward v. Nelson, 54 Idaho 437, 32 P.2d 843, 846-47
(1934). Additionally, contracts with third parties outside of a domestic relationship
should not be affected. For example, employers and employees should continue to be
allowed to contract for the provision of, for example, health care benefits or leave
benefits to be provided to same-sex couples where one of the individuals works for the
employer.
Same-sex couples would likely continue to enter into enforceable contracts that
document their obligations to each other. One partner might later allege that a contract
between a same-sex couple is an unenforceable legal union or legal relationship under a
marriage amendment. However, under the statutory construction principles discussed
above, this challenge should fail. The determinative issue in a same-sex couple's contract
dispute should be the enforceability of the contract rather than the status of their domestic
relationship. A remark in the amendment or its statement of purpose that the marriage
amendment is not intended to interfere with contracts would support this conclusion.
Idaho Code 15-5-501, et seq., governs durable powers of attorney under Idaho
law. Idaho Code 39-4510 governs durable powers of attorney for health care. Neither
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statutory scheme makes a distinction between married and unmarried persons. There "is
no presumption of agency between husband and wife in dealing with each other's
property resulting from the mere fact of the marital relationship." 41 c.J.S. Husband and
Wife 58. "An agency relationship between husband and wife will not be established
merely by virtue of their marriage." Zukowski v. Dunton, 650 F.2d 30, 34 (4th Cir.
1981). Thus, because marital status does not control powers of attorney, a marriage
amendment should not interfere with powers of attorney under Idaho law. To avoid
potential challenges, the amendment's statement of purpose and the legislative history can
make clear that the amendment is not intended to interfere with powers of attorney.
B. The Disposition of Property Upon Death
A marriage amendment should not interfere with the right of a person to leave
property by a will to anyone of his or her choosing. The Uniform Probate Code, at title
15 of the Idaho Code, governs wills. Because the right to dispose of property by will is
not dependent upon marriage, a marriage amendment will most likely not affect that right.
A statement of purpose that the amendment is not intended to interfere with the right of a
person to provide for the disposition of their property at death will support this result.
The Uniform Probate Code gives some preferences based upon marriage and
divorce that will not be available to unmarried couples. For example, Idaho Code 15-2-
301 favors a surviving spouse who marries a testator after the execution of his or her will
but is omitted from the will. Idaho Code 15-2-508 provides that if a testator divorces
after executing a will, the divorce revokes the will's disposition of property to the former
spouse. These statutes are compatible with a constitutional marriage amendment and thus
should not be affected by adoption of an amendment.
C. Other Relationships
You have also asked about the potential for interference with other relationships,
such as existing rights of unmarried persons to cohabitate, existing rights of extended
family members to help raise minor members of that extended family, rules regarding the
making of medical care decisions by unmarried persons, and whether it would be more
difficult for unmarried persons to visit each other if one is hospitalized. A marriage
amendment probably would not be interpreted to cancel the rights and benefits of these
relationships. However, the broader the net that a marriage amendment casts over
domestic relationships outside of marriage, the more uncertain the amendment's effect
will be on the types of relationships you have described.

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1. Unmarried Couples and Cohabitation
An unmarried couple's decision to cohabitate should not be impaired. Interpreting
a marriage amendment to prohibit any and all cohabitation would be a slippery slope
towards prohibiting ordinary roommate arrangements. This interpretation would stretch
too far the context and public policy of the amendment. But see, Citizens for Equal
Protection, Inc. v. Bruning, 368 F. Supp. 2d at 995-96 (holding that breadth of Nebraska's
marriage amendment threatened relationships such as "roommates, co-tenants, foster
parents, and related people who share living arrangements, expenses, custody of children,
or ownership of property").
A related question is whether a marriage amendment would invalidate Idaho's
domestic violence statute as applied to unmarried couples who cohabitate. Idaho Code
18-918(2) makes it a felony for one household member to inflict a traumatic injury upon
another household member. A household member includes a "spouse, former spouse, or
a person who has a child in common regardless of whether they have been married or a
person with whom a person is cohabiting, whether or not they have married or have held
themselves out to be husband or wife." Idaho Code 18-918(1)(a). In State v. Hart, the
court held that Idaho's domestic violence laws apply even where a domestic relationship
no longer exists. 135 Idaho 827, 830,25 P.3d 850, 853 (2001).
In the unpublished case of State v. Burk, a criminal defendant asserted that Ohio's
domestic violence statute as applied to unmarried couples who cohabitate was
unconstitutional under Ohio's marriage amendment. No. 86162, 2005 WL 3475812, at
*1 (Ohio Ct. App. Dec. 20, 2005) (unpublished decision). Ohio's marriage amendment
bars recognition of any legal status for "relationships or unmarried individuals that
intends to approximate the design, qualities, significance or effect of marriage." fd.,
citing Ohio Const. art. XV, 11. The trial court held that Ohio's domestic violence
statute was invalid because it "confers a legal status upon cohabiting, unmarried
individuals that approximates 'the design, qualities, significance or effect of marriage'
simply because a 'family or household member' includes a person 'living as a spouse. ,,,
fd. at *2. However, the appellate court reversed the decision, holding instead that Ohio's
domestic violence statute properly protects household relationships outside of marriage,
including persons living as spouses, parents, children and blood relatives of the offender.
fd. at *4. The court reasoned, "[w]hile 'cohabitation' defines a relationship between
people, that status is factual not legal. 'Cohabitant' is therefore not a legal status, let
alone a legal status that 'intends to approximate the design, qualities, significance or
effect of marriage'" within the meaning of Ohio's marriage amendment. fd. (citation
omitted).
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Burk is an unpublished decision that is not binding on an Ohio court, much less an
Idaho court, facing the same issue. However, the reasoning in Burk is persuasive. The
public health and welfare is not advanced by limiting the right to be free from family
violence to those relationships connected by marriage and excluding unmarried couples
from such protection. Idaho's domestic violence laws, which recognize domestic
relationships outside of marriage, should not be invalidated by a marriage amendment.
2. Extended Families
Your question as to whether a marriage amendment would interfere with existing
rights of extended family members to help raise minor children of the extended family is
more difficult. Terms such as "legal union" or "domestic union" in marriage amendments
arguably apply to grandparent-grandchild, uncle-nephew, sibling or other familial
relationships. However, a legal challenge arising out of such terms should be defeated
based upon the context, public policy and legislative history of a marriage amendment.
Various sections of the Idaho Code address parental and other child custody
relationships. Title 32 of the Idaho Code governs child custody issues arising out of
marriage and divorce. See, Idaho Code 32-1001, et seq. (Parent-Child Relations);
Idaho Code 32-11-101, et seq. (Uniform Child Custody Jurisdiction and Enforcement
Act). Title 16 of the Idaho Code governs juvenile proceedings. See, Idaho Code 16-
1501, et seq. (Adoptions); Idaho Code 16-1601, et seq. (Child Protective Act). It is
unlikely that a marriage amendment would be construed to invalidate these statutes or the
familial relationships sanctioned by them.
Also, Idaho courts will not invalidate a parent-child relationship solely because
one parent is in a same-sex relationship. The recent case of McGriff v. McGriff
addressed a divorced father's shared custody of his children, after the father moved in
with another man. 140 Idaho 642, 644, 99 P.3d Ill, 113 (2004). The Idaho Supreme
Court held that parental custody can not be determined solely based upon a parent's
sexual orientation. The court reasoned, "only when the parent's sexual orientation is
shown to cause harm to the child, such that the child's best interests are not served,
should sexual orientation be a factor in determining custody." Id. at 648,99 P.3d at 117.
The court held that custody was properly transferred to the mother based on conduct in
the record, such as inappropriate conduct by the father's partner toward the children's
mother and the father's failure to cooperate in communicating his lifestyle to the children.
Id. at 648-52,99 P.3d at 117-21.
3
3 Idaho case law recognizes familial relationships outside of marriage between a man and a
woman in a variety of circumstances. For purposes of determining gratuitous services to family members
(for which no wages are due), Idaho law defines a family relationship as "a collective body of persons
who form one household under one head and one domestic government, and who have reciprocal, natural
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Thus, a marriage amendment should be generally compatible with the current
Idaho laws discussed above governing parental, child custody and familial statuses.
3. Medical Decisions and Hospital Visitation
Your concerns about medical care decisions and hospital visitation are common in
the public debate about marriage laws. The adoption of a marriage amendment to the
Idaho Constitution should not interfere with current rights regarding these issues.
The making of health care decisions for a loved one implicates federal and state
law. The privacy regulations under the federal Health Insurance and Portability
Accountability Act ("HIPAA"), at 45 C.F.R. 164.510, allow a health care provider to
disclose certain protected health care infornlation about a patient to a family member,
relative or other "close friend," where the patient is unable to consent or object to the
disclosure. 45 C.F.R. 164.510. A state constitutional marriage amendment would not
interfere with this federal right to obtain protected health infonnation.
Idaho Code 39-4503 establishes the order of persons who may give consent to
health care treatment for minors and other persons who are incapable of deciding for
themselves. The order gives priority, in part, first to a legal guardian, then to a person
named in a Living Will and Durable Power of Attorney for Health Care, then to a spouse,
then to a parent, then to another relative who is responsible to act under the circumstances
and then to any other competent individual who is responsible for the health care of the
patient. Idaho Code 39-4503. A marriage amendment should not mandate a change in
this order. Unmarried couples can execute Living Wills and Durable Powers of Attorney
for Health Care to protect their rights to make health care decisions.
Some states have enacted statutes to recognize rights to hospital visitation. See
e.g., HRS 323-2 LSA-R.S. 40:2005 (Louisiana statute providing that adult patient may
designate individuals who will be denied access to hospital visitation); 22 M.R.S.A.
1711-D (Maine statute providing that a hospital patient may designate persons to be
considered immediate family members for purposes of visitation). However, Idaho has
no comparable statutory scheme governing hospital visitation. Thus, a marriage
amendment should not interfere with current rules in Idaho regarding hospital visitation.
and moral duties to support and care for one another." McMahon v. Auger, 83 Idaho 27, 39, 357 P.2d
374,381 (1960). As discussed above, Idaho's domestic violence laws protect household members, even
where a domestic relationship no longer exists. State v. Hart, 135 Idaho at 830, 25 P.3d at 853.

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IV.
CONCLUSION
If Idaho adopts a marriage amendment to the Idaho Constitution, Idaho will join a
growing number of states that are taking similar action.
Importantly, the scope of an adopted marriage amendment must accurately reflect
the legislature's intended state policy regarding marriage. Enforcement issues for a
marriage amendment that only defines marriage as between a man and a woman are
limited to whether prohibiting same-sex marriage is constitutional. However, an
amendment that only defines marriage will not prohibit courts, future legislatures or the
state's political subdivisions from recognizing domestic partnerships, civil unions or other
relationships that approximate marriage. Accordingly, a narrow amendment is
insufficient to articulate a public policy that seeks not only to define marriage as between
a man and a woman but also to prohibit recognition of other relationships such as same-
sex marriages, civil unions and domestic partnerships. The trade-off is that marriage laws
that prohibit recognition of relationships outside of marriage contain an inherent degree
of ambiguity as to scope and therefore pose a greater risk of a successful legal challenge.
When the United States Supreme Court ultimately addresses marriage laws under
the United States Constitution, the Court will probably defer to state rights to govern
marriage and uphold the traditional view that a marriage is between a man and a woman.
However, given the unsettled state of the law, there is no guarantee that a proposed
marriage amendment to the Idaho Constitution would comply with all requirements of the
United States Constitution.
1.
AUTHORITIES CONSIDERED
United States Constitution:
Art. I, 10.
Art. I, 16.
Art. IV, l.
First Amendment.
Fourteenth Amendment.
2. Idaho Constitution:
Art. I, l.
Art. I, 2.
Art. I, 16.

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3. United States Code:
1 U.S.C. 7.
28 U.S.c. 1738.
28 U.S.C. 1738C.
28 U.S.C. 1739.
4. Idaho Code:
15-2-301.
15-2-508.
15-5-501.
16-150l.
16-1601.
18-918(1)(a).
18-918(2).
18-6605.
32-11-101.
32-201.
32-201(1).
32-209.
39-4503.
39-4510.
5. U.S. Supreme Court Cases:
Baker v. Nelson, 409 U.S. 810,93 S. Ct. 37, 34 L. Ed. 2d 65 (1972).
Bowers v. Hardwick, 478 U.S. 186, 106 S. Ct. 2841, 92 L. Ed. 2d 140 (1986).
Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen & Enginemen v. Chicago, Rock Island &
Pacific RR Co., 393 U.S. 129, 89 Ct. 323, 83 L. Ed. 940 (1968).
Heller v. Doe, 509 U.S. 312, 113 S. Ct. 2637, 125 L. Ed. 2d 257 (1993).
Hicks v. Miranda, 422 U.S. 332, 95 S. Ct. 2281,45 L. Ed. 2d 223 (1975).
Lawrence v. Texas, 539 U.S. 558, 123 S. Ct. 2472, 156 L. Ed. 2d 508 (2003).

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Lehnhausen v. Lake Shore Auto Parts Co., 410 U.S. 356, 93 S. Ct. 1001, 35 1. Ed.
2d 351 (1973).
Loving v. Commonwealth of Virginia, 388 U.S. 1, 87 S. Ct. 1817, 18 1. Ed. 2d
1010 (1967).
Mandel v. Bradley, 432 U.S. 173,97 S. Ct. 2238, 53 1. Ed. 2d 199 (1977).
Moore v. City of East Cleveland, 431 U.S. 494, 97 S. Ct. 1932, 52 1. Ed. 2d 531
(1977).
Nevada v. Hall, 440 U.S. 410, 99 S. Ct. 1182,591. Ed. 2d 416 (1979).
Pacific Emp. Ins. Co. v. Indus. Accident Comm. 306 U.S. 493, 59 S. Ct. 629, 83
1. Ed. 940 (1939).
Romer v. Evans, 517 U.S. 620, 116 S. Ct. 1620, 1341. Ed. 2d 855 (1996).
Washington v. Confederated Bands & Tribes, 439 U.S. 463, 99 S. Ct. 740, 58 1.
Ed. 2d 740 (1979).
Washington v. Glucksberg, 521 U.S. 702, 117 S. Ct. 2258, 138 1. Ed 2d 772
(1997).
6. Idaho Cases:
Garcia v. State Tax Commission, 136 Idaho 610, 38 P.3d 1266 (2002).
Keenan v. Price, 68 Idaho 423, 195 P.2d 662 (1948)
McGriffv. McGriff, 140 Idaho 642, 99 P.3d 111 (2004).
McMahon v. Auger, 83 Idaho 27, 357 P.2d 374 (1960).
Mitchell v. Pincock, 99 Idaho 56, 577 P.2d 343 (1978).
Rudeen v. Cenarrusa, 136 Idaho 560, 38 P.3d 598 (2001).
State v. Blaine County, 139 Idaho 348, 79 P.3d 707 (2003).

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State v. Hart, 135 Idaho 827, 25 P.3d 850 (2001).
State v. Knott, 132 Idaho 476, 974 P.2d 1105 (1999).
State v. Rhode, 133 Idaho 459, 988 P.2d 685 (1999).
State v. Thompson, 114 Idaho 746, 760 P.2d 1162 (1988).
Steward v. Nelson, 54 Idaho 437,32 P.2d 843 (1934).
Thompson v. Engelking, 96 Idaho 793, 537 P.2d 635 (1975).
7. Other Cases:
Adams v. Howerton, 486 F. Supp. 1119 (C.D. Cal. 1980).
Andersen v. King County, No. 04-2-04964-4, 2004 WL 1738447 (Wash. Super.
Aug. 4, 2004).
Anonymous v. Anonymous, 325 N.Y.S.2d 499 (N.Y. Sup. Ct. 1971).
Baehr v. Lewin, 852 P.2d 44 (Haw. 1993).
Baehr v. Miike, No. 91-1394, 1996 WL 694235 (Haw. CiT. Ct. Dec. 3, 1996).
Baehr v. Miike, 852 P.2d 44 (Haw. 1993).
Baker v. Nelson, 191 N.W.2d 185 (Minn. 1971).
Baker v. State of Vermont, 744 A.2d 864 (Vt. 1999).
Burns v. Burns, 560 S.E.2d 47 (Ga. Ct. App. 2002).
Castle v. State of Washington, No. 04-2-00614-4, 2004 WL 1985215 (Wash.
Super. Sept. 7, 2004).
Citizens for Equal Protection, Inc. v. Bruning, 368 F. Supp. 2d 980 (D. Neb.
2005).
Dean v. District of Columbia, 653 A.2d 307 (D.C. Ct. App. 1995).

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Deane v. Conaway, No. 24-C-04-005390, 2006 WL 148145 (Md. Cir. Ct. Jan. 20,
2006).
Goodridge v. Dept. of Public Health, 798 N.E.2d 941 (Mass. 2003).
Hennefeld v. Township ofMontc1air, 22 N.J. Tax 166 (2005).
Hernandez v. Robles, 805 N.Y.S.2d 354 (N.Y. App. Div. 2005).
High Tech Gays v. Def. Indus. Sec. Clearance Office, 895 F.2d 563 (9th Cir.
1990).
In re Kandu, 315 B.R. 123 (Bankr. W.D. Wash. 2004).
Jones v. Hallahan, 501 S.W.2d 588 (Ky. Ct. App. 1973).
Judicial Council Coordination Proceeding (Marriage Cases), No. 4365, 2005 WL
583129 (Cal. Super. Ct. March 14,2005) (unpublished decision).
Langan v. St. Vincent's Hospital of New York, 802 N.Y.S.2d 476 (N.Y. App. Div.
2005).
Largess v. Supreme Judicial Court for the State of Massachusetts, 317 F. Supp. 2d
77 (D. Mass.), aff'd, 373 F.3d 219 (1st Cir.), cert. denied, 542 U.S. 1002, 125 S.
Ct. 618, 160 L. Ed. 2d 461 (2004).
Li v. State of Oregon, 110 P.3d 91 (Or. 2005).
Morrison v. Sadler, 821 N.E.2d 15 (Ind. Ct. App. 2005).
Raum v. Restaurant Assoc., 675 N.Y.S.2d 343 (N.Y. App. Div. 1998).
Rosengarten v. Downes, 802 A.2d 170 (Conn. Ct. App. 2002).
Singer v. Hara, 522 P.2d 1187 (Wash. Ct. App. 1974), rev. denied, 84 Wash. 2d
1008 (1974).
Smelt v. County of Orange, 374 F. Supp. 2d 861 (C.D. Cal. 2005).

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Standhardt v. Superior Court of Arizona, 77 P.3d 451 (Ariz. Ct. App. 2004).
State v. Burk, No. 86162,2005 WL 3475812 (Ohio Ct. App. Dec. 20,2005).
Wilson v. Ake, 354 F. Supp. 2d 1298 (M.D. Fla. 2005).
Zukowski v. Dunton, 650 F.2d 30 (4th Cir. 1981).
8. Other Constitutions:
9.
Ala. Const. art. I, 25 (1999).
Ark. Const. amend. 83 (2004).
Ga. Const. art. I, 4 'U I (2004).
Ky. Const. 233A (2004).
La. Const. art. XII, 15 (2004).
Mich. Const. art. I, 25 (2004).
Miss. Const. art. XIV, 263A (2004).
Mo. Const. art. I, 33 (2004).
Mont. Const. art. XIII, 7 (2004).
Neb. Const. art. I, 29.
Nev. Const. art. I, 21 (2002) .
N.D. Const. art. XI, 28 (2004).
Ohio Const. art. XV, 11 (2004).
Okla. Const. art. I I ~ 35 (2004).
Or. Const. art. XV, 52 (2004).
Tex. Const. art. I, 32 (2005).
Utah Const. art. I, 29 (2005).
Other Authorities:
22 M.R.S.A. 1711-D.
41 C.J.S. Husband and Wife 58.
45 C.P.R. 164.510.
1993 Idaho Att'y Gen. Ann. Rpt. 119.
HRS 323-2 LSA-R.S. 40:2005.
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DATED this 8th day of February, 2006.
Analysis by:
EMILY A. MAc MASTER
LAWRENCE G. WASDEN
Attorney General

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EXHIBIT F
000294
DATE: February 5, 2004
TIME: 1:30 p.m.
PLACE: GOLD ROOM
MEMBERS: Chairman Field(18), Vice Chairman Clark, Representatives Sali, Ellsworth,
Smith(24), Ridinger, Harwood, Edmunson, Kulczyk, Nielsen, Ring, Shirley, Wills,
Boe, Andersen, Pasley-Stuart
ABSENT/
EXCUSED:
Replacing Vice Chairman Clark was Mike Jorgenson
GUESTS: See attached sign-in sheets
MINUTES: Chairman Field called the meeting to order and asked the members to review the
minutes. Representative Wills moved to accept the minutes of the meeting held on
January 29, as written. Motion carried.
The Chairman welcomed everyone and said the members received hundreds of
emails and phone calls about the resolution before the committee. The purpose
of the resolution is to define marriage. The members would not be here
discussing this issue if it was one of hate. There also have been many people
asking if this issue could not be put aside and more important issues studied.
The Chairman said there are over 700 bills printed for this session of the
legislature. However, this is the most emotional issue. Civility to all is the rule.
HJR 9: Chairman Field said there were long lists of people who wanted to testify.
Therefore, except for opening remarks by one of the sponsors, the testimony
would be limited to three minutes in order that all might be heard. The same
testimony should not be repeated. If that is the case, it would be appreciated if the
testifiers would state their name and whether they are for or against the
resolution. Representative Kulczyk was recognized to explain the legislation.
Representative Kulczyk started his remarks by thanking the Chairman and his
Co-sponsors for taking the time to work on and hear this proposed
constitutional amendment. On line 17 of the resolution a new Section 28 has
been added which defines marriage by saying one man and one woman at one
time shall be recognized as valid in this state. This constitutional amendment
will not change the policy in the state of Idaho. This is being done in view of the
overturning of the Massachusetts law regarding marriage. In order to pass, this
amendment would require a 2/3 majority vote in the House, a 2/3 majority vote
in the Senate and a 2/3 majority vote by the people. The cost would be
approximately $40,000 to $45,000 if this goes into law. In closing,
Representative Kulczyk quoted President Bush as saying: "Marriage is a sacred
institution between a man and a woman. If activist judges insist on re-defining
marriage by court order, the only alternative will be the constitutional process.
We must do what is legally necessary to defend the sanctity of marriage."
CON: John Hummel was recognized to testify. Mr. Hummel said he is an Idaho native and
a licensed attorney who has practiced law in the state of Idaho since 1986. He is
also a gay man. He opposes passing the resolution for many reasons. We are
debating this discriminatory legislation when there are many other important
issues confronting this state. The resolution is redundant since the Legislature
enacted legislation covering this issue several years ago. The mere act of
presenting this amendment to the electorate for consideration in a costly election
will stir up prejudice and create division among Idahoans. The cost of placing this
issue on the ballot will be $40,000 to $50,000. Mr. Hummel said he would rather
see this money spent on education. Also, five years ago his partner of nine years
died suddenly. At the hospital, Mr. Hummel used his medical power of attorney to
make decisions about his care. He had written a will that left his property to Mr.
Hummel, and Mr. Hummel probated that will in Ada County and received his
property. If this resolution passes, those decisions might be challenged by a court.
This amends the highest law in this state and should be changed only when
absolutely necessary and when the public is presented with compelling reasons for
doing so.
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PRO: Allen Gorin was recognized. Mr. Gorin said he represents the Idaho Chapter of
Jewish Coalition. The concept of marriage came from the Jews. Adding this
amendment is necessary to protect that concept.
CON: Bishop Harry Bainbridge, Episcopal Diocese of Idaho, was recognized. The Bishop
said all of us are interested and concerned that we have a healthy society and
strong family values. This bill under consideration does not promote this goal. It
says that liberty and justice are not for all, but just for the majority of the
population. It will divide our community.
PRO: Julie Lynde was recognized. Ms. Lynde said she represents Cornerstone which fully
supports the resolution.
CON: Don and Susan Curtis of Boise were recognized. They have been married for 37
years. This current legislation is not aimed at solving any problem. It makes a
scapegoat out of gays and lesbians. No gain will be had by passing this legislation.
The gay and lesbian population are not enemies, but are part of the human family.
Please do not pass this legislation.
PRO: Darci Gromolski was recognized. Mrs. Gromolski said she is a housewife and
mother and she supports the resolution.
CON: Robert McDiarmid was recognized to testify. Mr. McDiarmid said he is a board
member of Your Family Friends and Neighbors, and a gay citizen of Idaho. This
proposed amendment to the constitution would bar marriage between gay people.
This proposal bashes gay people in Idaho. This bill is really about hate. The
Chairman corrected Mr. McDiarmid by saying hate is not the issue here. Mr.
McDiarmid said he respectfully disagreed. He concluded his remarks by saying he
and his partner love Idaho and lead a quiet life. They are not a threat to the state.
PRO: Brian Gromolski was recognized. Mr. Gromolski said he is a father of three and has
been married for ten years. He supports the legislation. Marriage is a sacred
institution between one man and one woman.
CON: Agnes Burkholder was recognized to testify. Mrs. Burkholder said she has been
married for 61 years. She asked the members to table this resolution. She doesn't
feel that it will help the families at all.
CON: Paul Rolig was recognized. Mr. Rolid said he opposes this bill because he doesn't
believe that all marriages have to be exactly the same. It is his family's belief that
legalizing same-sex marriage in no way threatens his marriage or anyone else's.
His wife and he believe the most important purpose of government is to secure
people's rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. This proposed
amendment secures no one's life, no one's liberty and no one's happiness.
PRO: David Snyder was recognized. The question is not whether we are going to have an
amendment. It is whether morality can be legislated. Government established
marriage between a man and woman. God legislates morality. This legislation
would secure a building block on what marriage is all about.
CON: Marty Durand was recognized. Ms. Durand said the ACLU of Idaho strongly objects
to the proposed anti-gay constitutional amendment. This amendment seeks to
deprive loving lesbian and gay couples in this state of any mechanism for ensuring
that the law recognizes their emotional and financial commitment to one another.
The proposed amendment is fundamentally unfair and, moreover, constitutionally
deficient. If the state legislature were to approve this amendment, it would do so
with the intent of fencing lesbian and gay couples out of any form of civil equality.
Such action would violate the constitutional guarantee of equal protection of the
laws.
PRO: Jean Luze Revaul stood in support of the resolution.
CON: Mary Knodell of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Boise was recognized. Ms.
Knodell said legislation should honor the worth and dignity of each human being.
Please vote against this resolution.
PRO: Gloria Pfost was recognized. Ms. Pfost said she supports this resolution. She
believes it would be good to give a message to the rest of the country that Idaho
stands for marriages between men and women. Man was created to be able to
reproduce with a woman. The citizens of Idaho stand with our legislators.
CON: Tina Alexanderson was recognized. Ms. Alexanderson said she is opposed to this
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legislation. She reveres the constitution. This legislation hurts her and her family.
They cannot enjoy the benefits enjoyed by heterosexual couples. She said she
didn't choose homosexuality and asked the members not to sanction
discrimination.
CON: Reverend Susan Watterson, First Congregational Church of Boise, was recognized.
Pastor Watterson said she is in opposition to the passage of the resolution for
many reasons, but chiefly because of her Christian convictions. The United Church
traces its roots back to the Reformers, Martin Luther, John Calvin and other
courageous and visionary men and women of faith who worked for justice for all
God's people. She said we are many members, but are all one body in Christ. We
all have different gifts. We are called to love our neighbor as ourselves. We believe
that lesbian, gay and bisexual people share with all others the worth that comes
from being unique individuals.
CON: James Mandell was recognized. Mr. Mandel said he has been married for 22 years
and has three children. He teaches the children love and kindness and honesty. If
one of his children turns out to be gay, he will love that child just as much. We
should spend more time helping and loving others.
CON: Reverend Betty Luginbill was recognized to testify. She said sometimes in our
efforts to fix something we don't like, we open a can of worms that is far worse
than what we wanted to fix. Certain basis human rights and civil liberties are due
all persons, including homosexual persons. There is an issue of simple justice in
protecting their rightful claims where they have shared material resources,
pensions, guardian relationship. Mutual powers of attorney and other lawful claims
attendant to contractual relationships.
CON: Lee Flinn, Idaho Women's Network, was recognized. The network opposes HJR 9.
The legislation is divisive and discriminatory. Please protect the quality of life for all
citizens of Idaho.
CON: Marilyn Stein was recognized. She prefaced her speech by saying much of what the
committee is here today to decide is already in Idaho Statute. She works for an
ammunition company which allows her to take advantage of most of the medical,
dental and vision insurance benefits for herself and her same-sex partner, Karen
Ross. She and her partner have documentation attesting to their committed union
in wills, durable powers of attorney, notarization of our union for proof for her
company. However, she is taxed on the insurance money for her partner. Also,
under today's marriage rules, her partner would get nothing from Social Security.
This is about the state of Idaho being fair and doing right.
CON: Karen Ross was recognized. Ms. Ross said she is a direct descendant of Betsy Ross
of American Flag/Daughters of the American Revolution fame. She was raised in a
Fundamentalist family. She met her soulmate and the two have committed
themselves to each other. We are not a threat to society.
PRO: Fred Riggers was recognized to give his testimony. Mr. Riggers said he has been
married to the same woman for 40 years. He has a lot of children and
grandchildren. He puts his trust in the legislature. He believes the legislature will
do the right thing.
CON: Leslie Goddard, director of the Idaho Human Rights Commission, spoke in
opposition to the resolution. Idaho already has a statute holding that same-sex
marriages violate the public policy of this state and are not recognized here. This
law was passed in 1996. There is currently a division of opinion as to whether it is
a good or a bad law. There is no need to rush into an amendment of the Idaho
Constitution because of what happened in Massachusetts. Give the courts a chance
to look at Idaho's law and let us know if we have a problem. Let's give the very
important issues about marriage time for considered judgment by the people of
Idaho and the court system. Do not carve out certain people from our Constitution
and deny them the right to equal treatment under the law.
CON: Brian Anthony was recognized. Mr. Anthony said he cannot enjoy the benefits of
marriage. The world is divided into two camps - those who have rights and those
who do not. The sponsors of this bill don't understand equal protection for all. He
and his partner are proud Idaho natives and deserve better.
CON: Nicole LeFavour was recognized. Ms. LeFavour pointed to a lack of merit of this
constitutional amendment. The majority of the people in this room oppose this bill.
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Ms. LeFavour asked the members to vote their conscience.
CON: Alex Neiwirt was recognized. Mr. Neiwirt is a fourth generation Idahoan. This is a
constitutional amendment which would alter the Idaho Constitution. He urged the
representatives to stand against its passage.
CON: Rev. Elizabeth Beck, pastor of the First Presbyterian Church of Emmett, was
recognized. Rev. Beck stood in opposition to the resolution. It seeks to radically
change the Constitution which was written to protect the rights of all citizens of this
state. The proposed legislation seeks to deny the rights of non-heterosexuals to
enter into committed relationships that are the equivalent of marriage. Most people
of faith are strongly in favor of granting civil rights to every citizen of Idaho,
regardless of sexual orientation. She asked the Committee to take a positive stand
for all the people of Idaho and vote against this mean-spirited legislation.
CON: Sara Kelly was recognized. Ms. Kelly said she and her partner are raising a
beautiful son, Nicholas. She wants her son to be raised in a loving, accepting
community.
CON: Heather Scott was recognized. Ms. Scott said this resolution shows discrimination.
This will not protect the children. Children will learn that only a relationship
between a man and woman is recognized as a family. She asked the Committee to
consider whether the Committee needs to pass the bill and, if so, why.
CON: Warren Bean was recognized. Mr. Bean asked the Committee to table this
resolution. This is a national issue. Study what the consequences would be if it is
passed. Society is moving to be more gracious.
PRO: David Snyder was recognized. He said the institution of marriage is an ancient one.
Because of the times, it has been necessary to redefine marriage. Homosexual
couples cannot have biological children. It is essential that we define marriage and
the state should make laws on moral issues.
PRO: Jared Hawk was recognized. Mr. Hawk said this issue is not about money.
Relationships between homosexuals are real. If they adopt, the genes don't
determine the degree of love that a child will receive. However, our society has
shown that children are raised best by having a mother and a father. Therefore,
Mr. Hawk said he supports the resolution.
CON: Sean Kelly was recognized. Mr. Kelly said he is a teacher. We try to promote
tolerance in our school. What kind of message will this resolution send to our
young people. Many children grow up with only one parent and they don't do very
well. Children need two parents, regardless of their sexual orientation.
PRO: House Republican Leader Lawerence Denney was recognized to give closing
remarks. Representative Denney said this is a moral issue and it is necessary to
establish boundaries. If everyone is allowed to do what they want, we will have
chaos. Tolerance is considered to be one of the highest values of modern society.
You cannot make people moral through legislation. However, we can and we must
legislate moral laws. The family is the cornerstone of our society. When the family
collapses, it is the children who are damaged. On a massive scale, the community
crumbles. In closing, Representative Denney reiterated that we must establish
boundaries and this is one of those boundaries.
MOTION: Representative Sali moved to send HJR 9 to the floor without
recommendation.
SUBSTITUTE
MOTION:
Representative Pasley-Stuart moved to hold HJR 9 in Committee.
AMENDED
SUBSTITUTE
MOTION:
Representative Nielsen moved to send HJR to the floor with a Do Pass
recommendation. During a discussion on the motion, Representative Boe said
she was opposed to the legislation. It is unnecessary and divisive. It is
irresponsible to try to change our Constitution. Representative Shirley said he
respects the right of people to make their choices. Most choice in this country is
made under the umbrella of law. He said he has the obligation to preserve those
parts of our culture and past that are most beneficial to the whole community. He
supports the amendment. Representative Ring said he had some heartburn with
the bill. He felt it was mean-spirited and overkill. Therefore, he stands in opposition
to its passage. Representative Pasley-Stuart said she was opposed to the motion.
We currently have laws in place and it violates the 14
th
amendment. It is
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unnecessary and unwise. Representative Sali said it would be irresponsible not to
send this to the floor. The public policy of this state should not be established by
the court system. Representative Smith spoke in opposition to sending the
resolution to the floor. Representative Andersen said this should go to the people
of the state in order for them to vote their conscience. A roll call vote was
requested.
ROLL CALL VOTE: Voting Aye - Representatives Field, Sali, Ellsworth, Harwood, Edmunson, Kulczyk,
Nielsen, Shirley, Wills and Jorgenson, substituting for Clark. Voting Nay -
Representatives Smith, Ridinger, Ring, Boe, Andersen and Pasley Stuart. 10-6-0.
Motion carried.
ADJOURN: Chairman Field thanked all those who attended the meeting. There being no
further business to come before the Committee, the meeting was adjourned at
4:35 p.m.

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EXHIBIT G
000300
ATTORNEY GENERAL OPINION NO. 93-11

Honorable Mary Lou Reed Honorable Dennis M. Davis
Minority Leader Assistant Minority Leader
Idaho State Senate Idaho State Senate
10 Giesa Road 816 Sherman Avenue
Coeur d'Alene, ID 83814 Coeur d'Alene, ID 83814

Honorable Mary Ellen Lloyd
Minority Caucus Chair
Idaho State Senate
162 Hawthorne
Pocatello, ID 83204

Per Request for Attorney General Opinion
Regarding the Idaho Citizens Alliance's Revised Initiative
Dear Senators Reed, Davis and Lloyd:
QUESTIONS PRESENTED
1. Section 67-8002 addresses minority status of those who engage in homosexual
behavior as well as special classifications based upon homosexuality or sexual
orientation. What would be the effect of this section and does it violate the United
States Constitution?
2. Section 67-8003 addresses same-sex marriages and domestic partnerships. What,
if any, is the legal effect of this provision and what does the term "domestic
partnership" mean?
3. Section 67-8004 limits the discussion of homosexuality in the public elementary
and secondary schools. Does this provision violate the United States
Constitution?
4. Section 67-8005 limits expenditure of public funds and access to library materials
discussing homosexuality. Does this provision violate the United States
Constitution?
5. Section 67-8006 addresses consideration of private sexual behavior in the public
employment context. What does this section mean? What is its scope and how
000301
would a court likely construe this provision in context with the balance of the
initiative's provisions?
6. Does the initiative violate any rights guaranteed under the Idaho Constitution?
7. If certain provisions of the initiative are unconstitutional, can the other provisions
be given effect by employment of the initiative's severability clause?
CONCLUSION
1. Section 67-8002 essentially authorizes discrimination against homosexuals in such
contexts as employment, housing, education and health care. This provision
violates equal protection guarantees of the United States Constitution by officially
condoning discrimination against homosexuals and by denying them equal access
to the political process.
2. Section 67-8003, addressing same-sex marriages and domestic partnerships, is
merely a statement of the current law already in place in Idaho. The term
"domestic partnership" presumably means an arrangement whereby two
homosexuals have agreed to share their home, financial resources and life
together. Because the provision simply restates current law, it has no legal effect.
3. Section 67-8004 violates First Amendment protections. A state may reasonably
restrict school-endorsed curriculum-related speech in elementary and secondary
schools to further legitimate pedagogical concerns. Significant discretion is given
to the state and local authorities in determining whether such restrictions are
reasonable and whether the concerns they further are, in fact, legitimate
pedagogical ones. Nevertheless, there are limits. Suppression of a viewpoint not
based on legitimate pedagogical concerns but because the state disagrees with it
falls outside the bounds of the state's permitted discretion. As to curriculum-
related speech, section 67-8004 goes beyond the bounds of the state's discretion
and violates the First Amendment. Further, the section restricts some non-
curriculum-related speech as well as advice a counselor may offer a student/
patient. These restrictions are also violations of free speech rights.
4. Section 67-8005, addressing expenditure of public funds and access to library
materials for minors, is unconstitutional. The government can place some
restrictions on the expenditure of public funds to ensure those funds are not spent
on speech which falls outside of the scope of the particular government program
being subsidized. However, restricting funds to suppress an idea in numerous
programs at state and local government levels falls far beyond what is a legitimate
000302
restriction. Moreover, there are certain traditional areas, such as universities,
public forums, doctor-patient relationships, artistic expression and scientific
research, in which the government cannot censor speech even if that speech is
directly subsidized by the government. Section 67-8005 is drafted in sweeping
terms and violates this precept. Additionally, the provision addressing access to
library materials is overbroad and violates the First Amendment rights of minors.
5. Section 67-8006 allows discrimination against homosexuals in the public
employment context, but does not require it. More importantly, the section does
not address discrimination in housing, education, health care and private
employment contexts. Thus, section 67-8006 does not remedy the constitutional
problems created by section 67-8002.
6. Like the United States Constitution, the Idaho Constitution guarantees equal
protection of the law and free speech. These independent state constitutional
rights are also violated by the initiative's sweeping terms.
7. The severability clause would not salvage this initiative because so many of its
provisions violate the federal and state constitutions. A reviewing court will not
rewrite a law when its basic core and purpose have been invalidated.
BACKGROUND
The Idaho Citizens Alliance ("ICA") is sponsoring an effort to place its initiative
regarding homosexuality on the 1994 election ballot. The ICA submitted a draft of its
initiative on March 4, 1993, and this office, in its March 18, 1993, Certificate of Review,
stated that almost every provision of the proposed initiative was unconstitutional. The
ICA subsequently redrafted the initiative, making, in at least some of the provisions,
substantial changes. Consequently, this office's Certificate of Review is no longer
completely germane as to each provision. This formal opinion will review afresh each of
the initiative's provisions and discuss their validity.
ANALYSIS
I.
SECTION 67-8002
The first section of the ICA initiative, section 67-8002, provides:

SPECIAL RIGHTS FOR PERSONS WHO ENGAGE IN
HOMOSEXUAL BEHAVIOR PROHIBITED. No agency, department,
000303
or political subdivision of the State of Idaho shall enact or adopt any law,
rule, policy, or agreement which has the purpose or effect of granting
minority status to persons who engage in homosexual behavior, solely on
the basis of such behavior; therefore, affirmative action, quota preferences,
and special classifications such as "sexual orientation" or similar
designations shall not be established on the basis of homosexuality. All
private persons shall be guaranteed equal protection of the law in the full
and free exercise of all rights enumerated and guaranteed by the U.S.
Constitution, the Constitution of the State of Idaho, and federal and state
law. All existing civil rights protections based on race, color, religion,
gender, age, or national origin are reaffirmed, and public services shall be
available to all persons on an equal basis.
This section violates the Equal Protection Clause of the United States Constitution, both
by promoting discrimination against homosexuals and by denying them equal access to
the political process.
A. The Legal Effect of Section 67-8002
A constitutional analysis of proposed section 67-8002 cannot be undertaken
without first discussing the section's legal effect.
The section begins by forbidding any "agency, department or political subdivision
of the State of Idaho" from enacting any "law, rule, policy or agreement" which has the
"purpose or effect of granting minority status to persons who engage in homosexual
behavior." Thus, the section is directed at three legal entities--agencies, departments and
political subdivisions of the state. Agencies and departments include an array of
governmental or public organizations ranging from the Department of Health and
Welfare to the State Board of Education which governs public universities. The term
"political subdivision[s] of the State of Idaho" clearly encompasses counties, entities such
as county hospitals, and other subdivisions such as school, highway and irrigation
districts. Finally, the term includes cities and public organizations which they fund.
1

What the initiative targets is the enactment of certain "law[s], rule[s], polic[ies], or
agreement[s]." The use of the term "law" is confusing in this context as it would
normally refer to statutes, which only the legislature can enact. Consequently, the
question arises as to whether this initiative is directed at the state legislature as well as
agencies, departments and political subdivisions. However, it is well settled that the

1
"Political subdivision" is commonly defined in the Idaho Code to include numerous local
governmental entities including counties, cities and other municipal corporations. See, e.g., Idaho Code 6-902,
21-101, 31-4510 and 63-3622 J.J. We assume a similar meaning was intended in the proposed initiative.
000304
legislature cannot be bound by an initiative. Luker v. Curtis, 64 Idaho 703, 136 P.2d 978
(1943). Indeed, this settled principle likely accounts for the legislature not being
expressly mentioned in the initiative. This office concludes that, while section 67-8002 is
not entirely clear, the term "law" is probably used in a generic sense meaning enactments
such as ordinances, rules and policies that have the force of law, and that its use is not
intended to pull the legislature within the scope of this section.
Having addressed which public entities are restricted by the initiative, the next
question is which group of citizens is burdened by these restrictions. Section 67-8002
forbids the granting of "minority status to persons who engage in homosexual behavior,"
but then adds that "special classifications such as 'sexual orientation' or similar
designations" based on "homosexuality" cannot be established. (Emphasis added.) Thus,
the provision is not limited to overt conduct, but encompasses the mere status of
homosexuality. The "homosexual behavior" which falls within the section's reach is not
defined by the initiative but is, instead, left vague. Arguably, the term encompasses
conduct ranging from sexual acts criminalized by Idaho Code 18-6605 (infamous
crimes against nature) to clearly legal conduct such as holding hands.
2
See Watkins v.
U.S. Army, 875 F.2d 699, 715 (9th Cir. 1989) (alleged knee-squeezing described as
homosexual act). As to the status of "homosexuality," it is not necessarily linked to any
behavior at all and includes within its scope feelings, thoughts and preferences, and an
identification with a particular group.
Section 67-8002 of the initiative first precludes "granting minority status" to
homosexuals. The term "minority status" alone has little legal significance. Idaho's
statutory and case law recognize some legal classifications based upon race, color,
religion, gender, age and national origin. In Idaho, the primary legal significance of these
classifications is that they form the bases for legally required equal treatment in the areas
of employment, real estate transactions, educational services and public accommodations.
See Idaho Code 18-7301 and 67-5909. Additionally, these legal classifications can
be used to enhance penalties for "hate crimes." Idaho Code 18-7902 and 18-7903.
It is important to note that Idaho law, as presently structured, does not confer
special status upon any minority. Idaho Code 18-7301 and 67-5909, for example,
prohibit discrimination on the basis of race, national origin and religion. But those
statutes offer no more protection to "minorities" such as blacks, Hispanics, or adherents
of particular religions than to "non-minority" whites of mainstream religions.

2
It is important to note that, while the term "homosexual behavior" includes conduct proscribed by
Idaho Code 18-6605, that criminal statute is not limited to homosexual conduct alone. Idaho Code 18-6605
proscribes heterosexual as well as homosexual sodomy. It also criminalizes oral sex, both heterosexual and
homosexual. See State v. Goodrick, 102 Idaho 811, 641 P.2d 998 (1982).
000305
To implement its "minority status" provision, however, section 67-8002 of the
initiative further provides that "affirmative action, quota preferences and special
classifications such as 'sexual orientation' or similar designations" may not be
"established on the basis of homosexuality." (Emphasis added.) Idaho's statutory and
case law do not have "affirmative action" or "quota preferences" for any specific group of
people. However, Idaho does have legal classifications based upon characteristics such
as race, gender, religion, age and national origin to legally require equal treatment for
these groups. This initiative, in forbidding "special classifications such as 'sexual
orientation'" or "similar designations . . . established on the basis of homosexuality,"
limits the protection homosexuals can obtain against discrimination. The true harm of
section 67-8002 is its mandate precluding classifications based on homosexuality or
sexual orientation. Under even the most narrow construction, this initiative, by
forbidding classifications based upon "homosexuality" or "sexual orientation," ensures
that homosexuals cannot receive the protections against discrimination in areas of
employment, real estate transactions, educational services and public accommodations
that other identifiable groups either currently receive or can seek. Section 67-8002, at a
minimum, assures that rules, policies and agreements enacted or adopted by agencies,
departments and political subdivisions of this state cannot require equal treatment of
homosexuals.
3

Finally, it is our opinion that the section's statement that "all private persons shall
be guaranteed equal protection of the law" does not ameliorate the pragmatic
consequences of section 67-8002. The equal protection guarantees provided in the state
and federal constitutions reach only state action, not private acts of discrimination. Other
types of legal provisions must be enacted or adopted to reach such private discrimination.
Consequently, stating the Equal Protection Clause remains in effect does not soften the
section's pragmatic effect of uniquely limiting the ability of agencies, departments and
political subdivisions to legally require equal treatment of homosexuals. Indeed, this
provision, reiterating equal protection guarantees, is little more than surplusage, as the
ICA does not have the authority to suspend the Equal Protection Clause by initiative.

3
This is the most narrow reading of section 67-8002. Under a broader
construction, by forbidding "special classifications" based upon homosexuality
or sexual orientation, other types of beneficial legal provisions are arguably
also precluded, such as AIDS education programs created by county hospitals
and targeted at the homosexual community, or express policies at county
sheriffs' offices to aggressively enforce criminal laws to combat local
violence against homosexuals. In short, under a broader reading of section
67-8002, agencies, departments or political subdivisions of the state are
forbidden to adopt any beneficial legal provision to address unique problems
faced by the homosexual community because such provisions would invariably
require a "special classification" based upon homosexuality.
000306
In short, this section has significant pragmatic effects on the homosexual
community. It prohibits agencies, departments and political subdivisions from adopting
any laws, rules, policies or agreements requiring that homosexuals be treated equally.
B. Encouragement of Private Discrimination and the Equal Protection Clause
Given the legal effect of section 67-8002 of the ICA initiative, the next question is
what the constitutional implications are likely to be. At the outset, the provision, even
under its most narrow construction, violates the Equal Protection Clause by condoning
discrimination against homosexuals.
Under current Idaho law, the state has taken no position on discrimination against
homosexuals. Thus, for example, a private landlord can refuse to rent an apartment to
someone because the landlord thinks (rightly or wrongly) that the person is a
homosexual. That is a private bias. The state does not prohibit or approve of it; it simply
does not address it. Its position is neutral, and the Equal Protection Clause is not
implicated.
This initiative, however, goes one step further. It effectively gives state approval
to that private bias by announcing that this bias cannot be prohibited by agencies,
departments and political subdivisions of the state. Moreover, the initiative also
forecloses public agencies, departments and political subdivisions of the state from
adopting policies or rules to prohibit such a bias in the decisions made within their own
structure.
4
The initiative, in essence, promises those who would discriminate that, no
matter how serious the problems created by their discrimination or how dire the need for
legal protections, absent a statute enacted by the legislature, the state will not interfere.
By taking this position, the government becomes a partner in the discrimination against
homosexuals, fostering that discrimination and placing upon it the state's endorsement.
Similar official sanctions of discrimination have been found to violate equal
protection guarantees. One of the earliest cases, Reitman v. Mulkey, 387 U.S. 369, 87
S. Ct. 1627, 18 L. Ed. 2d 830 (1967), involved a California amendment which prohibited
the state from forbidding any person from selling or renting his real property to "such
persons . . . as he, in his absolute discretion, chooses." The U.S. Supreme Court first
reviewed the history of the amendment, noting its purpose was to overturn state laws
prohibiting racial discrimination in housing and real estate, and concluded: "Section 26

4
As discussed below at p. 29, section 67-8006 of the initiative allows public employers to treat "private
sexual behaviors" as a non-job-related factor. However, that section does not preclude discrimination against
homosexuals in public employment, and it does not address discrimination in the areas of real estate, educational
services, public accommodations and private employment, leaving the discriminatory effect of section 67-8002
intact as to these matters.
000307
was intended to authorize, and does authorize, racial discrimination in the housing
market. . . . [T]he section will significantly encourage and involve the State in private
discriminations . . . ." Id. at 381. The Court struck down the amendment, holding that it
violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution.
Reitman involved discrimination against a racial minority. However, the Equal
Protection Clause guarantees against invidious discrimination apply to all citizens, not
just those who are members of traditionally "suspect" classes such as racial minorities.
For example, in City of Cleburne, Texas v. Cleburne Living Center, Inc., 473 U.S. 432,
105 S. Ct. 3249, 87 L. Ed. 2d 313 (1985), the U.S. Supreme Court reviewed a zoning
ordinance banning group homes for the mentally retarded in a particular zoning district.
Acknowledging the mentally retarded are not a suspect class under the Equal Protection
Clause, the Court, using a lesser standard of judicial scrutiny, nevertheless struck down
the ordinance on the ground that it arbitrarily and invidiously discriminated against the
mentally retarded:

Our refusal to recognize the retarded as a quasi-suspect class does not leave
them entirely unprotected from invidious discrimination. To withstand
equal protection review, legislation that distinguishes between the mentally
retarded and others must be rationally related to a legitimate government
purpose . . . . [S]ome objectives--such as "a bare . . . desire to harm a
politically unpopular group"--are not legitimate state interests . . . .
473 U.S. at 446-47 (emphasis added; citations omitted). Thus, it is apparent that the
Equal Protection Clause applies to all citizens, and state encouragement of private
discrimination violates constitutional protections even if the targeted group is not a
suspect class such as a racial minority.
Indeed, the holding of Reitman, that state encouragement of private discrimination
violates the Equal Protection Clause, has already been held to encompass discrimination
against the homosexual community. In Citizens for Responsible Behavior v. Superior
Court, 2 Cal. Rptr. 2d 648 (Cal. App. 4 Dist. 1991), a California court examined an
initiative which would have prohibited the City of Riverside, California, from enacting
"any policy or law which . . . classifi[ed] AIDS or homosexuality as the basis for
determining an unlawful discriminatory practice . . . ." The court found that the proposed
ordinance was designed to promote bias against a selected class of citizens--homosexuals
--in violation of the Equal Protection Clause: "Private biases may be outside the reach of
the law, but the law cannot, directly or indirectly, give them effect." 2 Cal. Rptr. 2d at
658 (quoting Palmore v. Sidoti, 466 U.S. 429, 433, 104 S. Ct. 1879, 80 L. Ed. 2d 421
(1984)).
000308
The ICA initiative, like the amendment in Reitman and the initiative in Citizens
for Responsible Behavior, does not require private discrimination against homosexuals,
but it condones it. It condones it by officially forbidding state agencies, departments and
political subdivisions, like counties, from using their authority to require equal treatment
of homosexuals. Thus, for example, a state agency contracting with builders could not
include an anti-discrimination clause in its agreement. Likewise, a county could not use
its inherent police power under art. 12, sec. 2 of the Idaho Constitution to require equal
treatment of homosexuals in businesses within its borders. Moreover, the section
condones public as well as private discrimination, as agencies, departments and political
subdivisions are also forbidden to adopt policies prohibiting bias against homosexuals
within their own confines. Importantly, this state-condoned discrimination is not based
upon criminal conduct of the targeted group. As noted, this section of the initiative
encompasses both conduct and status; behavior defined and prohibited by Idaho Code
18-6605 as well as other behavior, feelings, preferences and an identification with a
particular group. Thus, under the initiative's terms, the state is encouraging
discrimination against a broad range of Idahoans, many of whom may be in absolute
compliance with Idaho law.
When the state expressly announces that in many instances discrimination against
a targeted group will not be halted, that discrimination bears the state's imprimatur. It is
the opinion of this office that this state involvement in discrimination would not pass the
most relaxed standard of review under the Equal Protection Clause--that the law be
rationally related to a legitimate government purpose. Making the state a partner to
discrimination against homosexuals in central areas of life is not a "legitimate" state
objective nor a "legitimate" use of the government's power. City of Cleburne, 473 U.S. at
447; Citizens for Responsible Behavior, 2 Cal. Rptr. 2d at 658. Rather, it is an abuse of
power based upon hostility to a particular group. An Idaho court would find that section
67-8002 is unconstitutional.
C. Access to the Political Process and the Equal Protection Clause
Section 67-8002 singles out homosexuals as a group and substantially limits their
ability to have many of their problems addressed by agencies, departments and political
subdivisions of the state. While homosexuals may still seek beneficial legislation at the
statewide legislative level, agency, department and political subdivision avenues are
foreclosed to them. The same is not true for any other independently identifiable group
in Idaho seeking comparable legal protections. This redefining of the political structure
as to homosexuals alone is an unconstitutional denial of their right to equal access to the
political process.
000309
In Evans v. Romer, 854 P.2d 1270 (Colo. 1993), the recent opinion addressing
Colorado's Amendment 2, which, among other things, forbade "any statute, regulation,
ordinance or policy . . . whereby homosexual[ity]" could "entitle any person" to a "claim
of discrimination," the Colorado Supreme Court discussed at length the right of equal
access to the political process. After reviewing a series of opinions from the U.S.
Supreme Court, the Colorado court concluded that "[t]he Equal Protection Clause
guarantees the fundamental right to participate equally in the political process" and,
further, "laws may not create unequal burdens on identifiable groups with respect to the
right to participate in the political process absent a compelling state interest." 854 P.2d at
1279.
This principle of equal access to the political process has been implicated in
situations, like the one here, involving legislation intended to prevent an independently
identifiable group of voters from using the normal political institutions and processes for
obtaining legal protections beneficial to them. The landmark case is Hunter v. Erickson,
393 U.S. 385, 89 S. Ct. 557, 21 L. Ed. 2d 616 (1969), which involved an Akron city
charter amendment that required any fair housing ordinance to be approved directly by
the electorate, while all other types of ordinances could be enacted by the city council.
The Court invalidated the amendment under the Equal Protection Clause because it
"place[d] special burdens on racial minorities within the governmental process." 393
U.S. at 391. While the law reviewed targeted a particular racial minority, the principle at
stake was broader. The Supreme Court stated that Akron was free to require a plebiscite
as to "all its municipal legislation," but, having chosen to do otherwise, Akron could "no
more disadvantage any particular group by making it more difficult to enact legislation
on its behalf than it [could] dilute any person's vote or give any group a smaller
representation than another of comparable size." Id. at 392-93 (emphasis added).
In Washington v. Seattle School District No. 1, 458 U.S. 457, 102 S. Ct. 3187, 73
L. Ed. 2d 896 (1982), the U.S. Supreme Court reviewed an initiative which prohibited
local school districts from using busing as a means to achieve integration. Due to the
initiative, unlike all other local education issues, busing alone could only be decided at
the statewide level. Revisiting Hunter, the Supreme Court held that the voters of
Washington had impermissibly interfered with the political process and unlawfully
burdened the efforts of an independently identifiable group to secure public benefits.
Washington, 458 U.S. at 467-70. The Court stated that the Equal Protection Clause
reaches political structures that "distort[] governmental processes in such a way as to
place special burdens on the ability of minority groups to achieve beneficial legislation."
Id. at 467. The Court distinguished the Washington initiative from "laws structuring
political institutions or allocating political power according to 'neutral principles' . . .
[which] are not subject to equal protection attack." Id. at 470. Because laws based upon
000310
neutral principles "make it more difficult for every group in the community to enact
comparable laws, they 'provide a just framework within which the diverse political
groups in our society may fairly compete.'" Id. (citation omitted). The Court held that
the initiative invalidated in Washington was not based upon a "neutral principle" which
burdened all seeking comparable laws equally, but instead used "the racial nature of an
issue to define the governmental decisionmaking structure." Id.
The principles articulated in Hunter and Washington are clearly not limited to race
and, indeed, have already been applied to laws restructuring the political process in order
to burden the homosexual community's ability to obtain beneficial legislation. The
Colorado Supreme Court in Evans concluded that the homosexual community's access to
the political process was burdened by Colorado's recent amendment barring
discrimination claims brought by homosexuals because, unlike any other identifiable
group, homosexuals alone would now have to amend the state constitution in order to be
protected from discrimination:

Rather than attempting to withdraw antidiscrimination issues as a whole
from state and local control, Amendment 2 singles out one form of
discrimination and removes its redress from consideration by the normal
political processes.

Amendment 2 expressly fences out an independently identifiable
group. Like the laws that were invalidated in Hunter, which singled out the
class of persons "who would benefit from laws barring racial, religious or
ancestral discriminations," Amendment 2 singles out that class of persons
(namely gay men, lesbians, and bisexuals) who would benefit from laws
barring discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. No other
identifiable group faces such a burden--no other group's ability to
participate in the political process is restricted and encumbered in a like
manner. . . . Strict scrutiny is thus required because the normal political
processes no longer operate to protect these persons. Rather, they, and they
alone, must amend the state constitution in order to seek legislation which
is beneficial to them.
854 P.2d at 1285. The Colorado Supreme Court remanded the case for trial, but also
upheld the trial court's preliminary injunction that enjoined the amendment from going
into effect, making it clear that the amendment would ultimately be struck down unless
the state succeeded in proving a compelling interest justifying the burden placed upon the
fundamental right of equal access to the political process.
000311
Likewise, in Citizens for Responsible Behavior, the California court concluded
that an initiative requiring voter approval only for ordinances prohibiting discrimination
against homosexuals or AIDS victims, while all other comparable anti-discrimination
laws could be enacted directly by the city council, violated the Equal Protection Clause:

It is obvious that this provision raises obstacles in the path of
persons seeking to have such ordinances enacted. The city council itself
may enact ordinances barring discrimination against persons suffering from
cancer or tuberculosis, or against families with children. However, under
the proposed ordinance, persons seeking protective legislation against
discrimination based on sexual orientation or AIDS must attempt to
persuade a majority of the voters that such an ordinance is desirable.
Precisely this arrangement was condemned in Hunter v. Erickson . . . .

. . . .

We are simply unable to conceive of any rational reason why the
city council should be permitted to enact an ordinance barring
discrimination against persons with any other disease, no matter how
serious or communicable, but not one dealing with persons suffering from
AIDS. Nor does any significant justification exist for allowing the City to
continue to deal with housing difficulties faced by large families, but not
with those confronting homosexuals.
2 Cal. Rptr. 2d at 655-56 (citations omitted).
5

The ICA initiative also uses homosexuality to redefine the governmental decision-
making structure. While the initiative does not require homosexuals to amend the state
constitution or seek direct voter approval before obtaining beneficial laws, the initiative
does foreclose to the homosexual community certain normal political avenues--namely,
access to agencies, departments and political subdivisions which otherwise might be used
to address their concerns. Thus, unlike all other identifiable political groups,
homosexuals are barred from having their problems remedied via these regular political
processes. Other identifiable groups can seek comparable anti-discrimination laws, rules,
policies and agreements from an "agency, department or political subdivision of the State
of Idaho." The homosexual community cannot. Regardless of the narrowness of the

5
In Citizens for Responsible Behavior, the court further noted that prohibiting local government from
addressing local issues encountered by a specific group might also violate the First Amendment right to petition the
government for redress of grievances as "the right becomes a hollow exercise if the local government has been
deprived of the power to grant redress of the subject grievance." Id. at 655, n.9.
000312
issue they need addressed or the local level of the interests involved, statewide legislative
decision-making is all that is available to them.
If an initiative were proposed stating that farmers could not seek relief for their
problems through the normal political processes, it would clearly be unconstitutional.
Yet, that is what is happening here. An independently identifiable group is being
subjected to political obstacles not because of the substantive nature of their problems,
but, rather, because of who they, as a group, are. Using homosexuality as the basis to
redefine the governmental decision-making structure and to foreclose normal routes of
relief available to all other Idahoans seeking comparable protections violates the
homosexual citizens' fundamental right to equal access to the political process. Under the
strict scrutiny test and even under the rational basis test, it is difficult to conceive of a
legitimate justification for this distinction. The Idaho judiciary would conclude that the
distinction violates the Equal Protection Clause.
D. Summary
Section 67-8002 of the initiative, at a minimum, precludes the homosexual
community from obtaining anti-discrimination laws, rules, policies or agreements from
agencies, departments and political subdivisions of the state. This violates the Equal
Protection Clause both by using the state to encourage discrimination against
homosexuals and by denying homosexuals equal access to the political process. The
section's statement that "equal protection of the law" continues to be protected under the
federal and state constitutions does not ameliorate the constitutional problems raised by
section 67-8002. A law which specifically deprives individuals of constitutional rights
cannot be remedied by an additional boilerplate clause stating the constitution has not
been suspended. This section, if it is passed and challenged, will not withstand judicial
scrutiny.
II.
SECTION 67-8003
The next section of the initiative, section 67-8003, states:

EXTENSION OF LEGAL INSTITUTION OF MARRIAGE TO
DOMESTIC PARTNERSHIPS BASED ON HOMOSEXUAL
BEHAVIOR PROHIBITED. Same-sex marriages and domestic
partnerships are hereby declared to be against public policy and shall not be
legally recognized in any manner by any agency, department or political
subdivision of the State of Idaho.
000313
This provision provides that same-sex marriages and domestic partnerships may not be
legally recognized in Idaho. While the term "domestic partnership" is not defined in the
initiative, presumably, the drafters intended to refer to arrangements whereby two
homosexuals have agreed to share their home, financial resources and life together.
The legal effect of this provision is nil. The State of Idaho does not legally
recognize either homosexual marriages or homosexual domestic partnerships. By statute,
marriage is limited in Idaho to the union between a man and a woman. See Idaho Code
32-202. Moreover, "domestic partnerships" are nowhere officially recognized in Idaho
law. Thus, the state currently has a policy on the institution of marriage, and section 67-
8003 is merely a restatement of state law and policy.
III.
SECTION 67-8004
Section 67-8004 of the initiative addresses speech relating to homosexuality in
public elementary and secondary schools. The section provides:

PUBLIC SCHOOLS. No employee, representative, or agent of any
public elementary or secondary school shall, in connection with school
activities, promote, sanction, or endorse homosexuality as a healthy,
approved or acceptable behavior. Subject to the provisions of federal law,
any discussion of homosexuality within such schools shall be age-
appropriate as defined and authorized by the local school board of trustees.
Counseling of public school students regarding such students' sexual
identity shall conform in the foregoing.
This provision restricts speech that endorses the viewpoint that homosexuality is
"healthy, approved or acceptable behavior." As with section 67-8002, the provision's
language is inconsistent, referencing both homosexual "behavior," i.e., conduct, as well
as the status of "homosexuality."
The section restricts curriculum-related speech regarding homosexuality. In
addition, the section's restrictions go beyond the classroom, preventing any "employee,
representative or agent" from expressing those viewpoints in "connection with school
activities." Finally, the section limits the discussion of homosexuality between
counselors and students. Each of these restrictions will be discussed in turn.
000314
A. Curriculum-Related Speech
When this office reviewed the proposed initiative on March 18, 1993, the public
school provision under review encompassed all public schools, from elementary through
the doctorate level. We concluded that the provision violated basic principles of
academic freedom. Much of our focus was upon censorship of unpopular or
controversial ideas at the university level. The "public schools" section of the ICA
initiative has been substantially altered by its drafters and now encompasses only
elementary and secondary schools and no longer addresses universities.
6
The question
now is whether the restrictions placed upon teachers' and other school employees' speech
in elementary and secondary schools, particularly as those restrictions relate to
curriculum, violate any First Amendment rights of students or their teachers.
At the outset, it should be noted that schoolchildren and their instructors, even
through the high school level, do not enjoy the same degree of First Amendment
protections as do university students and faculty. The Supreme Court's recent opinions
have upheld restrictions on speech at the high school level. These recent opinions
indicate that, although teachers and students in secondary schools retain some First
Amendment protections, teachers' and students' speech which is curriculum-related and
appears to carry the school's endorsement--such as statements made by a teacher in a
classroom, articles in a student newspaper prepared by a journalism class, and statements
made by students during school assemblies or school theater productions--may be
restricted if the restrictions are both reasonable and further "legitimate pedagogical
concerns." Hazelwood School Dist. v. Kuhlmeier, 484 U.S. 260, 108 S. Ct. 562, 98
L. Ed. 2d 592 (1988).
Initially, the Supreme Court appeared poised to apply extensive First Amendment
protections at the secondary school level similar to those associated with academic
freedom at the university level. See Keyishian v. Board of Regents of U. of St. of N.Y.,
385 U.S. 589, 87 S. Ct. 675, 17 L. Ed. 2d 629 (1967). Two years after Keyishian, the
Court upheld the right of schoolchildren to wear black armbands to class in protest of the
Vietnam war, stating in now-famous language that it could "hardly be argued that either
students or teachers shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at
the schoolhouse gate." Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School Dist., 393
U.S. 503, 506, 89 S. Ct. 733, 21 L. Ed. 2d 731 (1969). Tinker swept broadly in its
protection of First Amendment rights while its description of exceptional situations
justifying interference was narrow. The court stated that, in order to justify prohibiting

6
While public universities have now been excluded from section 67-8004, the "public schools" section
of the initiative, they continue to be included within the broad scope of the "public funding" provision. The
application and validity of the public funding restrictions as they relate to universities will be addressed at p. 22
discussing section 67-8005 of the initiative.
000315
expression, the speech must "'materially and substantially interfere with the requirements
of appropriate discipline in the operation of the school.'" Id. at 509 (citation omitted).
Thirteen years later, in Board of Education v. Pico, 457 U.S. 853, 102 S. Ct. 2799,
73 L. Ed. 2d 435 (1982), the Supreme Court revisited free speech in public secondary
schools and held that a school board could not remove books from a school library
merely because of content objectionable to the board. In Pico, the Court began
differentiating between school-sponsored as opposed to non-school-sponsored
expression. Justice Brennan's plurality opinion focused on the library as the embodiment
of the marketplace of ideas and, impliedly, less a part of the school curriculum than an
opportunity for students' self-education. Chief Justice Burger's dissent viewed the library
as part of the school's curricular environment and the selection of library materials as part
and parcel of the school officials' authority to establish school curriculum. 457 U.S. at
889. Chief Justice Burger urged that school officials should be given wide discretion in
exercising this authority.
In Bethel School District No. 403 v. Fraser, 478 U.S. 675, 106 S. Ct. 3159, 92
L. Ed. 2d 549 (1986), the Court addressed the power of schools to impose standards not
merely on formal curriculum but upon students' speech in school-sponsored forums. The
Court in Fraser balanced free speech concerns against a high school's role in teaching
"appropriate behavior" and "shared values." Holding that a school district had acted
within its permissible authority in imposing sanctions upon a student in response to a
speech he delivered at a voluntary school assembly in which he used elaborate and
explicit sexual metaphors, the Court stated:

These fundamental values of "habits and manners of civility" essential to a
democratic society must, of course, include tolerance of divergent political
and religious views, even when the views expressed may be unpopular.
But these "fundamental values" must also take into account consideration
of the sensibilities of others, and, in the case of a school, the sensibilities of
fellow students. The undoubted freedom to advocate unpopular and
controversial views in schools and classrooms must be balanced against the
society's countervailing interest in teaching students the boundaries of
socially appropriate behavior.

. . . .

. . . The determination of what manner of speech in the classroom or
in the school assembly is inappropriate properly rests with the school
board. The process of educating our youth for citizenship in public schools
000316
is not confined to books, the curriculum, and the civics class; schools must
teach by example the shared values of a civilized social order. Consciously
or otherwise teachers--and indeed the older students--demonstrate the
appropriate form of civil discourse and political expression by their conduct
and deportment in and out of class.
478 U.S. at 681, 683 (citations omitted). Thus, in Fraser, the Supreme Court clarified
that schoolchildren in school-sponsored forums do not have the full panoply of First
Amendment free speech rights available to adults in other settings. Importantly,
however, in reaching its holding the Court also emphasized that the penalties imposed
and upheld in Fraser "were unrelated to any political viewpoint." 478 U.S. at 685.
The Court's subsequent opinion in Kuhlmeier dealt with a school's prepublication
control of the content of a school newspaper. In Kuhlmeier, the principal had banned
from a school newspaper an article concerning divorce and an article addressing teen
pregnancy. The Court first determined that the newspaper was not a public forum but
instead part of the school's journalism curriculum. The Court then upheld the restriction,
stating:

[E]ducators do not offend the First Amendment by exercising editorial
control over the style and content of student speech in school-sponsored
expressive activities so long as their actions are reasonably related to
legitimate pedagogical concerns.
484 U.S. at 273 (emphasis added). The Court described "legitimate pedagogical
concerns" expansively:

In addition, a school must be able to take into account the emotional
maturity of the intended audience. . . . A school must also retain the
authority to refuse to sponsor student speech that might reasonably be
perceived to advocate drug or alcohol use, irresponsible sex, or conduct
otherwise inconsistent with "the shared values of a civilized social order
. . ." or to associate the school with any position other than neutrality on
matters of political controversy . . . .
484 U.S. at 272. Likewise, the Court used a broad definition of "curriculum" which it
said encompassed "school-sponsored publications, theatrical productions, and other
expressive activities that students, parents and members of the public might reasonably
perceive to bear the imprimatur of the school." Id. at 271.
000317
Under the Supreme Court's recent jurisprudence, it is clear that elementary and
secondary school speech that is curriculum-related may be reasonably restricted to further
legitimate pedagogical concerns. A school may take into account the age of the audience
and the sensitivity of issues being addressed. This is particularly so when sexual issues
are involved, as Kuhlmeier held. See also Fraser, 478 U.S. 675. Thus, there is clearly no
constitutional problem with section 67-8004's requirement that any discussion of
homosexuality within public schools be "age-appropriate."
On the other hand, it does not necessarily further a "legitimate pedagogical
concern" if a school opens up a topic for political discussion and then bans the opposing
viewpoint. A school could not, for example, establish a rule that during class discussions
on current events, students who criticized one political party would be suspended while
students who criticized another political party would receive higher marks. See, e.g.,
Searcey v. Harris, 888 F.2d 1314 (11th Cir. 1989) (once school board determines
students should learn about career opportunities at "career day," it cannot exclude peace
organization solely because organization disagrees with board's views regarding the
military). At some point, the state, the school board and educators' discretion to establish
and control school curriculum can be abused. This abuse occurs if restrictions, rather
than furthering "legitimate pedagogical concerns," are simply pretexts for suppressing
political viewpoints with which the state does not agree.
When it comes to homosexuality, the balance is more difficult. Arguably, the state
could exclude the issue from teachers' discussions altogether in curriculum-related
activities. However, the ICA initiative does not do this. Age-appropriate discussion of
the topic is allowed, but one viewpoint on the issue is prohibited. Yet, it is also true that
homosexual sodomy, like heterosexual sodomy, is a crime in Idaho, see Idaho Code
18-6605, and Kuhlmeier certainly holds that the advocacy of illegal or irresponsible
behavior can be restricted in the classroom. The language of section 67-8004 of the
initiative, however, goes beyond mere "endorsement" of the specific conduct prohibited
by Idaho Code 18-6605. It prohibits the "promot[ion], sanction[ing] or endorse[ment]
[of] homosexuality as a healthy, approved or acceptable behavior." "Homosexuality" as
used throughout the initiative is a broad term, encompassing both conduct and status;
behavior defined and prohibited by Idaho Code 18-6605; as well as other behavior,
feelings, preferences and an identification with a particular group.
The ICA initiative abuses the discretion given the state and educators over school
curriculum. Curriculum-related speech endorsing illegal or irresponsible sexual conduct
can be restricted in elementary and secondary schools and, thus, the state could preclude
teachers from advocating, in the classroom, illegal homosexual sodomy. But, the
wording of the initiative goes beyond this. It would affect the discussion of topics
000318
ranging from homosexuals in the military to AIDS. A court would be troubled by the
breadth of the ICA initiative. The initiative, for example, would allow a teacher to raise,
in a high school civics class, gays in the military as a topic for discussion, with the state
officially dictating the outcome of the discussion and prohibiting one viewpoint on this
topic from being addressed. The ICA initiative permits the state to cross the line between
refusing to endorse illegal conduct and requiring the classroom to choose sides in an
ongoing political debate and banning the viewpoint with which the state disagrees.
Therefore, it is the opinion of this office that the ICA initiative has crossed that line by
either prohibiting or chilling expression which is protected by the First Amendment.
B. Non-Curriculum-Related Speech
While the government has the discretion to significantly limit curriculum-related
speech to further legitimate pedagogical concerns, this authority does not extend to non-
curriculum-related or non-school-sponsored speech. Public school employees do not lose
their First Amendment rights merely because they work for the state. See Pickering v.
Board of Education, 391 U.S. 563, 88 S. Ct. 1731, 20 L. Ed. 2d 811 (1968) (holding
teacher could not be fired for letter to editor of local newspaper criticizing school board);
City of Madison v. Wis. Emp. Rel. Com'n, 429 U.S. 167, 97 S. Ct. 421, 50 L. Ed. 2d 376
(1976) (non-union teacher cannot be prohibited from speaking on negotiation issue at
open school board meeting); Levin v. Harleston, 966 F.2d 85 (2d Cir. 1992) (teacher
cannot be disciplined for letters he wrote to New York Times); National Gay Task Force
v. Board of Education of the City of Oklahoma, 729 F.2d 1270 (10th Cir. 1984), aff'd,
470 U.S. 903, 105 S. Ct. 1858, 84 L. Ed. 2d 776 (1985) (teacher cannot be punished for
publicly advocating the repeal of an anti-sodomy law).
The ICA initiative prohibits speech sanctioning homosexuality by any "employee,
representative or agent" of a public elementary or secondary school "in connection with
school activities." The scope of this provision is much too broad. Not only does it
encompass curriculum-related speech, it also encompasses such statements as those made
by teachers at faculty meetings and by board members at board meetings. Discussion and
opinion on homosexual issues cannot be censored by the state at these adult, non-
curriculum-related functions. To even attempt to do so is a violation of First Amendment
principles and would be enjoined by a court.
C. Counseling Services
Finally, section 67-8004 mandates that counseling of public school students must
conform with the standard on homosexuality enunciated in that section. In short, a
counselor must not indicate to a troubled youth seeking counseling that homosexual
behavior can ever be considered "healthy, approved or acceptable."
000319
This provision prohibits a non-judgmental approach toward sexual orientation and
requires an institutional stance against homosexuality. Under this restriction, a
counselor's independent judgment relative to the best interests of a minor client is
subordinated to the state's endorsed sexual identity preference, regardless of the
psychological needs of the client or the harm potentially inflicted.
The U.S. Supreme Court recently addressed First Amendment implications of
restrictions placed upon government counseling services and upheld a regulation
prohibiting funds granted under the federal Title X family planning program from being
expended on abortion counseling. Rust v. Sullivan, ___ U.S. ___, 111 S. Ct. 1759, 114
L. Ed. 2d 233 (1991). The Court reasoned that the speech at issue was simply beyond the
scope of the narrow federal program being funded, 111 S. Ct. at 1773, also noting that
fund recipients remained "free to pursue abortion-related activities when they [were] not
acting under the auspices of the Title X project." 111 S. Ct. at 1775. Importantly, the
Court further stated that some types of speech could not be censored by the government
even if directly subsidized by the government, and that this "could" include speech that is
part of a "traditional" relationship such as that between a "doctor and patient." 111 S. Ct.
at 1776. The Court in Rust went on to conclude that the doctor-patient relationship in
that case was so limited under the narrow federally funded program at issue, a patient
would not be justified in expecting "comprehensive medical advice." Moreover, as the
Title X program did not provide "post-conception medical care," a "doctor's silence with
regard to abortion" would not "mislead a client into thinking that the doctor [did] not
consider abortion an appropriate option for her." Id.
The counseling services at issue appear to fall within the scope of traditional
relationships that, according to Rust, cannot be controlled by the state, even if the state is
the funding source for that relationship. Moreover, unlike the doctor-patient relationship
at issue in Rust, when a student seeks counseling on issues of sexual identity, that student
is justified in expecting comprehensive and accurate information. To withhold such
information either by silence or by offering only state-approved advice would be
misleading and possibly harmful. Of course, this is not to say that counselors necessarily
will sanction homosexuality as "acceptable" behavior. However, counselors should be
able to exercise independent judgment and give accurate advice as to the psychological,
medical and legal implications of homosexuality. They should be able to counsel
students in a manner that serves the students' best interests and that is neither misleading
nor harmful. In our opinion, to require otherwise in the name of an institutionalized
position on homosexuality violates the First Amendment.
000320
D. Summary
In short, section 67-8004 of the initiative restricts curriculum-related speech, some
non-curriculum-related speech, and the discussions between school counselors and
students. Generally, discretion is allowed as to restrictions of curriculum-related speech,
but this initiative exceeds the bounds of that discretion to the extent it allows curriculum-
related discussions concerning ongoing controversies while banning one particular point
of view on those issues. A court would conclude that "legitimate pedagogical concerns"
are not at the core of these curriculum-related restrictions, and that the restrictions are
overly broad and violate the First Amendment. As to the potential non-curriculum-
related censorship at school activities such as faculty and board meetings, the initiative
clearly violates the First Amendment rights of school employees, representatives and
agents. Finally, the counseling restrictions may also run afoul of the First Amendment.
Taken as a whole, section 67-8004 is unconstitutional.
IV.
SECTION 67-8005
Section 67-8005 addresses public funding as well as access to library materials.
This opinion will discuss each of these provisions separately.
A. Public Funding
The public funding portion of section 67-8005 states:

EXPENDITURE OF PUBLIC FUNDS. No agency, department
or political subdivision of the State of Idaho shall expend public funds in a
manner that has the purpose or effect of promoting, making acceptable, or
expressing approval of homosexuality. This section shall not prohibit
government from providing positive guidance toward persons experiencing
difficulty with sexual identity . . . .
This provision restricts both public funding and, potentially, counseling services. The
funding restrictions are clearly unconstitutional; the counseling restrictions raise serious
constitutional concerns.
1. Funding
The funding restriction prohibits the expenditure of public funds "in a manner"
that would have the "purpose or effect of promoting, making acceptable, or expressing
approval of homosexuality." The substance of this funding restriction is sweeping and,
000321
again, it is aimed at homosexuality, not just homosexual behavior. For example,
government funding of artistic endeavors which treat favorably homosexuality, such as
the play La Cage aux Folles, would be prohibited. Likewise, a program addressing the
pros as well as the cons of homosexual lifestyles could not be aired on public television
without first being censored. Academic freedom at public universities would be curtailed
to ensure public funds were not expended in a manner that could have the "effect" of
"expressing approval" of homosexuality. This could impact the manner in which
homosexual issues are discussed in sociology, psychology and law classes, the type of
articles published in university publications, the research conducted at the university
level and even the books purchased for university libraries.
Nor is the provision's array of consequences necessarily limited to the suppression
of ideas. Public health and safety issues could also fall within its scope. By illustration,
publicly funded AIDS education programs directed at high-risk groups might have to be
tailored to avoid the "effect" of "expressing approval" of homosexuality--which could
severely impact the candor and efficacy of such programs. Not only does this section
constitute an aggressive effort to suppress controversial ideas, its terms could potentially
be construed in a manner that would increase public health and safety risks for that
segment of Idaho citizens that it targets.
This funding provision is repugnant to First Amendment free expression
principles. The landmark case on restricting expenditure of public funds to regulate the
content of expression is Perry v. Sindermann, 408 U.S. 593, 597, 92 S. Ct. 2694, 33
L. Ed. 2d 570 (1972). In that opinion, the U.S. Supreme Court held that a state college
could not refuse to rehire a professor solely because of his public criticism of the college
administration. In so holding, the Court stated:

For at least a quarter-century, this Court has made clear that even though a
person has no "right" to a valuable governmental benefit and even though
the government may deny him the benefit for any number of reasons, there
are some reasons upon which the government may not rely. It may not
deny a benefit to a person on a basis that infringes his constitutionally
protected interests--especially, his interest in freedom of speech. For if the
government could deny a benefit to a person because of his constitutionally
protected speech or associations, his exercise of those freedoms would in
effect be penalized and inhibited. This would allow the government to
"produce a result which [it] could not command directly."
Under Perry, the government cannot indirectly burden protected speech through its
funding mechanisms.
000322
In Rust, the Court revisited this issue in the context of a federal funding restriction
on abortion counseling. The Court drew a distinction between the denial of a benefit to a
recipient on account of his speech (which is unconstitutional) and an insistence that
public funds be spent for the program purposes for which they are specifically authorized
(which the Constitution allows). In so holding, the Court emphasized that it was not
addressing a "general law singling out a disfavored group on the basis of speech content,"
but was instead only reviewing speech which was simply beyond the scope of the narrow
federal program being funded. 111 S. Ct. at 1773. Moreover, even within the realm of
government-subsidized programs and speech, the Court carved out areas as to which
restrictions on the content of government-funded speech are not allowable, including
open forums, universities, and traditional relationships such as that between a doctor and
patient:

This is not to suggest that funding by the government, even when coupled
with the freedom of the fund recipients to speak outside the scope of the
Government-funded project, is invariably sufficient to justify Government
control over the content of expression. For example, this Court has
recognized the existence of a government "subsidy" in the form of
government-owned property, does not justify the restriction of speech in
areas that have "been traditionally open to the public for expressive
activity" . . . or have been "expressly dedicated to speech activity" . . . .
Similarly, we have recognized that the university is a traditional sphere of
free expression so fundamental to the functioning of our society that the
Government's ability to control speech within that sphere by means of
conditions attached to the expenditure of Government funds is restricted by
the vagueness and overbreadth doctrines of the First Amendment . . . . It
could be argued by analogy that traditional relationships such as that
between doctor and patient should enjoy protection under the First
Amendment from Government regulation, even when subsidized by
Government.
111 S. Ct. at 1776 (citations omitted).
In short, under Rust, the government's interest is in ensuring that the money it
raises and appropriates for a particular program is spent to further the purpose of that
program. The government does not have a valid interest in simply suppressing speech
with which it disagrees, and Rust does not stand for that proposition. Further, there are
certain traditional areas such as government-owned open forums, universities and doctor-
patient relationships where the content of speech cannot be controlled through funding
expenditure restrictions, even if the government is the funding source for those programs
000323
or relationships. In those areas, the historic value placed upon free speech overrides the
government's interest in strictly controlling all of its funds.
Since Rust, lower courts have had the opportunity to clarify the list of areas that
are "traditionally" open to free expression and, therefore, immune from government
efforts to attach content-based conditions to the expenditure of subsidies. For example,
in Board of Tr. of Leland Stanford Univ. v. Sullivan, 773 F. Supp. 472 (D.D.C. 1991),
the court set aside the confidentiality clause in a research contract, stating it
unconstitutionally impinged upon freedom of expression in the area of scientific research:

The Supreme Court decided in Rust v. Sullivan that when the
government grants money to an institution or a program, it may under
certain circumstances condition that grant upon curtailment of the program
participants' rights under the First Amendment. Defendants' argument in
this case is that that decision is applicable to government grants and
contracts generally, without substantial limitation. The Rust decision
opened the door to government review and suppression of speech and
publication in areas which had theretofore been widely thought immune
from such intrusion; the government's position in this case, if endorsed by
the courts, would take that door off its hinges.

That position must be viewed in the context of the fact that few
large-scale endeavors are today not supported, directly or indirectly, by
government funds--from the health care of senior citizens, to farm
subsidies, to the construction of weaponry, to name but a few of the most
obvious. Defendants' proposal would, at least potentially, subordinate the
free speech rights of the participants in the program receiving such federal
monies to the government's wishes. To put it another way, if the Supreme
Court decision were to be given the scope and breadth defendants advocate
in this case, the result would be an invitation to government censorship
wherever public funds flow, and acceptance by the courts of defendants'
position would thus present an enormous threat to the First Amendment
rights of American citizens and to a free society.
773 F. Supp. at 478 (emphasis added).
Likewise, in Finley v. National Endowment for the Arts, 795 F. Supp. 1457 (C.D.
Cal. 1992), the court held that as artistic expression, like academic speech, is "at the core
of a democratic society's cultural and political vitality," the government is without free
reign to impose whatever content restrictions it chooses on funding for the arts:
000324

In both settings, limited public funds are allocated to support expressive
activities, and some content-based decisions are unavoidable. Nonetheless,
this fact does not permit the government to impose whatever restrictions it
pleases on speech in a public university, nor should it provide such license
in the arts funding context.
795 F. Supp. at 1475.
The public funding restrictions contained in the ICA initiative fall far beyond what
Rust and its progeny have held is permissible. It would be apparent to a reviewing court
that, unlike the narrow restriction upheld in Rust, these initiative provisions are not a
good faith effort to ensure that specifically earmarked funds raised by the state are spent
for the program purposes for which they are authorized. Rather, it is an effort to censor a
controversial idea in numerous public programs at all levels, regardless of whether the
censored speech falls within the scope of the funded programs' purposes. Worse, the
restrictions cut severely into areas which the courts have expressly granted heightened
free speech protection from government conditions on funding, such as universities,
scientific research and the arts. In the words of the U.S. Supreme Court:

We can have intellectual individualism and the rich cultural diversities that
we owe to exceptional minds only at the price of occasional eccentricity
and abnormal attitudes. When they are so harmless to others or to the State
as those we deal with here, the price is not too great. But freedom to differ
is not limited to things that do not matter much. That would be a mere
shadow of freedom. The test of its substance is the right to differ as to
things that touch the heart of the existing order.
West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette, 319 U.S. 624, 641-42, 63 S. Ct.
1178, 87 L. Ed. 1628 (1943) (emphasis added). The public funding provision of section
67-8005 violates this First Amendment principle and would be struck down by a
reviewing court.
2. Counseling Restrictions
Like the public school section, the public funding section also contains a
counseling provision. Here, "positive guidance toward persons experiencing difficulty
with sexual identity" is allowed. What constitutes "positive guidance" is not defined.
The context of this initiative and its general tenor regarding homosexuality suggest that
"positive guidance" on "sexual identity" difficulties means disapproving of
homosexuality regardless of the client's needs and interests. As with the school
000325
counseling provision addressed above, if this provision divests counselors and doctors of
their independent judgment and intrudes upon the therapist-patient relationship to
suppress an unpopular viewpoint, regardless of the health needs of the patient or the
medical accuracy of the state-approved view, freedom of speech in a traditionally
protected relationship is violated.
B. Library Materials
Section 67-8005 of the initiative addresses library materials as well as public
funding, stating:

This section shall not limit the availability in public libraries of books and
materials written for adults which address homosexuality, provided access
to such materials is limited to adults and meets local standards as
established through the normal library review process.
Under the terms of this provision, materials "written for adults" which "address
homosexuality" may still be retained in public libraries and adults may have access to
them. However, such access is denied to minors. This provision violates the First
Amendment of the United States Constitution.
As noted above, minors do have limited First Amendment rights, although these
rights are not as broad as the rights of adults. As already discussed, substantial
restrictions on free expression are allowed in the school classroom to further legitimate
pedagogical concerns. Moreover, materials that are "pervasively vulgar," obscene or
otherwise age-inappropriate for impressionable young minds may be denied to minors in
or out of the classroom. See Ginsberg v. New York, 390 U.S. 629, 88 S. Ct. 1274, 20
L. Ed. 2d 195 (1968). However, despite these limits, minors nevertheless retain some
First Amendment rights to receive information and gain knowledge. For example, in
Pico, 457 U.S. at 871, the U.S. Supreme Court held that local school boards may not
remove books from secondary school libraries simply because they dislike the ideas
contained in those books:

Our Constitution does not permit the official suppression of ideas. Thus,
whether petitioners' removal of books from their school libraries denied
respondents their First Amendment rights depends upon the motivation
behind petitioners' actions. If petitioners intended by their removal
decision to deny respondents access to ideas with which petitioners
disagreed, and if this intent was the decisive factor in petitioners' decision,
then petitioners have exercised their discretion in violation of the
Constitution.
000326
In reaching its holding, the Court emphasized that minors have First Amendment rights
to receive information and ideas and to "'remain free to inquire, to study and to evaluate,
to gain new maturity and understanding.'" 457 U.S. at 868 (citation omitted). Under this
analysis, it is evident that while minors may not have the full panoply of First
Amendment rights as do adults, certainly, when it comes to library reading materials,
minors cannot be denied access to those materials for no other reason than that the state
disagrees with the ideas expressed therein.
The provision at issue here severely limits the library books that minors may read.
The term "materials written for adults which address homosexuality" is both vague and
overbroad. Arguably, it encompasses virtually any reading material not written for
children that contains homosexual themes, references, allusions, etc. The list of books
and other written materials affected by this provision includes literary works by Socrates,
Plato, Thomas Mann, E.M. Forster, James Baldwin, Tennessee Williams and Walt
Whitman, to name a few. Likewise, historical biographies on important figures such as
Michelangelo, Alexander the Great, Oscar Wilde and King James I would be off-limits.
Added to this are the numerous legal, political, scientific and social science writings
which may address homosexuality. Moreover, access to widely read magazines generally
available at libraries, such as Time or Newsweek, which periodically contain articles
discussing homosexual issues would have to be strictly curtailed.
The provision's broad restrictions do not appear to be tied to any valid
considerations such as the "age-appropriateness" of the banned material. Notably, under
the provision, minors are not denied access to adult materials which address
heterosexuality. Indeed, under the provision's terms, even explicit age-inappropriate
material addressing heterosexuality would not be restricted. The provision is a
transparent effort to prevent exposure to ideas with which the initiative's proponents
disagree. This sweeping content-based restriction on minors' First Amendment rights to
receive information and ideas violates the Constitution and is invalid.
Moreover, the library restriction is also unworkable. It is simply unrealistic to
assume that librarians are aware of all adult materials which address homosexuality, and
a librarian can hardly be expected to go through the library book-by-book, magazine-by-
magazine, reading each one and separating any that address the topic. Indeed, a likely
consequence of this unreasonable legal duty is that librarians, in an effort to comply with
the law, will deny to minors materials to which they should have access even under this
provision's restrictive terms. This foreseeable "chilling" effect further exacerbates the
constitutional problems at play here.
In sum, while there are certainly materials in public libraries minors ought not to
read, section 67-8005's sweeping provision does not address that problem in a realistic or
000327
constitutional manner, but instead creates an unworkable scheme which violates the First
Amendment rights of minors.
V.
SECTION 67-8006
Section 67-8006 states:

EMPLOYMENT FACTORS. With regard to public employees,
no agency, department or political subdivision of the State of Idaho shall
forbid generally the consideration of private sexual behaviors as non-job
factors, provided that compliance with Title 67, Chapter 80, Idaho Code is
maintained, and that such factors do not disrupt the work place.
This section, unlike the other sections of the proposed initiative, does not address
homosexuality alone, but, rather, addresses all private sexual behavior. This provision
certainly clarifies that, in the public employment context at least, discrimination against
either homosexuals or heterosexuals based upon their private sexual behavior is not
required by the initiative, although it is permitted. The provision does not purport to
address such areas as real estate transactions, public accommodations, education and
private employment. Thus, the official state policy of section 67-8002 permitting
discrimination against homosexuals in these areas remains firmly intact, as does the equal
protection abridgment. Section 67-8006 does not cure any of the other constitutional
problems discussed in this opinion.
VI.
THE IDAHO CONSTITUTION
The constitutional issues raised throughout this opinion have been analyzed under
the United States Constitution. Idaho has its own state constitutional provisions which
also protect freedom of speech and equal protection of the law. See art. 1, secs. 2, 9 and
10, Idaho Constitution. Importantly, the Idaho Supreme Court has held that the
protections provided by the Idaho Constitution can be given broader scope than those
provided under the United States Constitution. See, e.g., State v. Guzman, 122 Idaho
981, 842 P.2d 660 (1992). Thus, the Idaho Supreme Court is not limited by the federal
judiciary's interpretation of the United States Constitution. Rather, it can and has relied
upon its own authority and responsibility to independently construe and apply state
constitutional protections.
000328
The placement of our own state "Bill of Rights" first in the Idaho Constitution
reveals how deeply Idahoans cherish both their civil liberties and principles of fairness to
others. This initiative, which burdens freedom of expression and equal treatment of all
Idaho citizens, clearly violates the principles of the Idaho Constitution. The Idaho
Supreme Court is unlikely to stand by and allow a segment of Idaho's citizens to be
targeted for state-condoned discrimination and denial of equal access to the political
process. Likewise, the court will no doubt find repugnant to free speech guarantees the
burdens placed upon the expression of controversial ideas.
VII.
SECTION 67-8007
Section 67-8007 of the initiative is a severability clause stating that if any section
of the "enactment" is "found unconstitutional," the "remaining parts will survive in full
force and effect." Generally, courts favor severing unconstitutional provisions in a
statute from the remaining portion, if such was the intent of the drafters. However, when
the purpose of an act fails, the entire act must also fail. See, e.g., State Water
Conservation Board v. Enking, 56 Idaho 722, 58 P.2d 779 (1936). A court is not
obligated to rewrite an entire statute when its purpose has been defeated.
This initiative could not survive constitutional scrutiny with respect to many,
perhaps all, of its substantive portions. The purpose and concept of this initiative is
fundamentally flawed, and it is unlikely that a court would invoke the severability clause
in an attempt to salvage a portion of it. Indeed, even if a court were so inclined, it is
doubtful the initiative could be severed in a constitutionally suitable manner.
CONCLUSION
The past holds a lesson for the present. In 1879, when U.S. Supreme Court Justice
Stephen Field was handling circuit duties in California, he was presented with a San
Francisco ordinance requiring that every male entering the county jail have his hair cut to
a uniform length of one inch. Despite the innocuous terms in which the ordinance was
written, Justice Field understood it to be legislation designed to punish the then-
unpopular Chinese by subjecting them to the loss of their traditional "queue." In striking
down the seemingly innocent ordinance, Justice Field had this to say:

We cannot shut our eyes to matters of public notoriety and general
cognizance. When we take our seats on the bench we are not struck with
blindness, and forbidden to know as judges what we see as men . . . .
000329
Ho Ah Kow v. Nunan, 12 F. Cas. 546, p. 252 (D. Cal. 1879) (No. 6).
In the history of a nation composed of ever-initially unpopular groups, citizens of
a homosexual orientation are but the most recent of frequently persecuted persons who
look to the law and those who enforce it for fairness and decency. The ICA initiative
seeks to corrupt that law, using it as an instrument of division and discrimination rather
than for equal protection and equal rights. We live in a country in which our highest
court has unequivocally held that some objectives such as "'a bare . . . desire to harm a
politically unpopular group' . . . are not legitimate state interests." City of Cleburne, 473
U.S. at 447 (citation omitted). Further, that Court has stated:

The very purpose of a Bill of Rights was to withdraw certain subjects from
the vicissitudes of political controversy, to place them beyond the reach of
majorities and officials . . . . One's right to life, liberty, and property, to
free speech, a free press, freedom of worship and other fundamental rights
may not be submitted to vote; they depend on the outcome of no elections.
West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette, 319 U.S. 624, 638, 63 S. Ct. 1178,
87 L. Ed. 1628 (1943) (emphasis added).
Freedom of speech, equal protection, fair access to the political process--these are
all basic principles upon which our society rests. They are the principles which allow our
society to flourish. This initiative, while purporting to deny special or unusual protection
to one group, in fact seeks to deprive this group of the full enjoyment of these essential
principles. The Idaho Supreme Court will not permit this to happen. It is our opinion
that even if this initiative marking a politically unpopular group of Idahoans for
abridgment of their core constitutional rights succeeds at the ballot, it will never be
allowed to go into effect.

AUTHORITIES CONSIDERED
1. United States Constitution:
First Amendment.
Fourteenth Amendment.

000330
2. Idaho Constitution:

Art. 1, sec. 2.
Art. 1, sec. 9.
Art. 1, sec. 10.

3. Idaho Code:

18-6605.
18-7301.
18-7902.
18-7903.
32-202.
67-2402.
67-5909.

4. U.S. Supreme Court Cases:

Board of Education v. Pico, 457 U.S. 853, 102 S. Ct. 2799, 73 L. Ed. 2d 435
(1982).

Bethel School District No. 403 v. Fraser, 478 U.S. 675, 106 S. Ct. 3159, 92
L. Ed. 2d 549 (1986).

City of Cleburne, Texas v. Cleburne Living Center, Inc., 473 U.S. 432, 105 S. Ct.
3249, 87 L. Ed. 2d 313 (1985).

City of Madison v. Wis. Emp. Rel. Com'n, 429 U.S. 167, 97 S. Ct. 421, 50
L. Ed. 2d 376 (1976).

Ginsberg v. New York, 390 U.S. 629, 88 S. Ct. 1274, 20 L. Ed. 2d 195 (1968).

Hazelwood School Dist. v. Kuhlmeier, 484 U.S. 260, 108 S. Ct. 562, 98 L. Ed. 2d
592 (1988).

Hunter v. Erickson, 393 U.S. 385, 89 S. Ct. 557, 21 L. Ed. 2d 616 (1969).

Keyishian v. Board of Regents of U. of St. of N.Y., 385 U.S. 589, 87 S. Ct. 675,
17 L. Ed. 2d 629 (1967).

000331
Palmore v. Sidoti, 466 U.S. 429, 104 S. Ct. 1879, 80 L. Ed. 2d 421 (1984).

Perry v. Sindermann, 408 U.S. 593, 92 S. Ct. 2694, 33 L. Ed. 2d 570 (1972).

Pickering v. Board of Education, 391 U.S. 563, 88 S. Ct. 1731, 20 L. Ed. 2d 811
(1968).

Reitman v. Mulkey, 387 U.S. 369, 87 S. Ct. 1627, 18 L. Ed. 2d 830 (1967).

Rust v. Sullivan, ___ U.S. ___, 111 S. Ct. 1759, 114 L. Ed. 2d 233 (1991).

Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School Dist., 393 U.S. 503, 89
S. Ct. 733, 21 L. Ed. 2d 731 (1969).

Washington v. Seattle School District No. 1, 458 U.S. 457, 102 S. Ct. 3187, 73
L. Ed. 2d 896 (1982).

West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette, 319 U.S. 624, 63 S. Ct. 1178,
87 L. Ed. 1628 (1943).

5. Idaho Cases:

Luker v. Curtis, 64 Idaho 703, 136 P.2d 978 (1943).

State v. Goodrick, 102 Idaho 811, 641 P.2d 998 (1982).

State v. Guzman, 122 Idaho 981, 842 P.2d 660 (1992).

State Water Conservation Board v. Enking, 56 Idaho 722, 58 P.2d 779 (1936).

6. Other Cases:

Board of Tr. of Leland Stanford Univ. v. Sullivan, 773 F. Supp. 472 (D.D.C.
1991).

Citizens for Responsible Behavior v. Superior Court, 2 Cal. Rptr. 2d 648 (Cal.
App. 4 Dist. 1991).

Evans v. Romer, 854 P.2d 1270 (Colo. 1993).

000332
Finley v. National Endowment for the Arts, 795 F. Supp. 1457 (C.D. Cal. 1992).

Ho Ah Kow v. Nunan, 12 F. Cas. 546, p. 252 (D. Cal. 1879) (No. 6).

Levin v. Harleston, 966 F.2d 85 (2d Cir. 1992).

National Gay Task Force v. Board of Education of the City of Oklahoma, 729
F.2d 1270 (10th Cir. 1984), aff'd, 470 U.S. 903, 105 S. Ct. 1858, 84 L. Ed. 2d 776
(1985).

Searcey v. Harris, 888 F.2d 1314 (11th Cir. 1989).

Watkins v. U.S. Army, 875 F.2d 699 (9th Cir. 1989).
DATED this 3rd day of November, 1993.

LARRY ECHOHAWK
Attorney General

Analysis by:

MARGARET HUGHES
000333

EXHIBIT H
000334
OFFICIAL BALLOT
PROPOSED BY INITIATIVE PETITIONS
_______ COUNTY, IDAHO
2226
GENERAL ELECTION - NOVEMBER 8, 1994
PRECINCT NAME
-------------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------
OFFICIAL BALLOT
PROPOSED BY INITIATIVE PETITIONS
____ COUNTY, IDAHO
GENERAL ELECTION- NOVEMBER 8, 1994
INSTRUCTIONS TO VOTER: To vote on the following, mark a cross (X) in the square at the right of "Yes" or "No."
PROPOSITION ONE PROPOSITION TWO
AN ACT ESTABLISHING STATE POLICIES REGARDING
HOMOSEXUALITY.
INITIATIVE RELATING TO HOMOSEXUALITY AND THE STATE'S
AUTHORITY TO AFFORD HOMOSEXUALS MINORITY STATUS; EN-
ACTING A NEW CHAPTER, CHAP. 80, TITLE 67, IDAHO CODE: PRO-
VIDING THAT NO STATE AGENCY, DEPARTMENT OR POLITICAL
SUBDIVISION SHALL GRANT MINORITY STATUS TO PERSONS
WHO ENGAGE IN HOMOSEXUAL BEHAVIOR; PROVIDING THAT
SAME-SEX MARRIAGES AND DOMESTIC PARTNERSHIPS SHALL
NOT BE LEGALLY RECOGNIZED; PROVIDING THAT ELEMENT-
ARY AND SECONDARY SCHOOL EDUCATORS SHALL NOT DISCUSS
HOMOSEXUALITY AS ACCEPTABLE BEHAVIOR; PROVIDING THAT
NO STATE FUNDS SHALL BE EXPENDED IN A MANNER THAT
HAS THE EFFECT OF ACCEPTING OR APPROVING HOMOSEXUAL-
ITY; LIMITING TO ADULTS ACCESS TO LIBRARY MATERIALS
WHICH ADDRESS HOMOSEXUALITY; PROVIDING THAT PRIVATE
SEXUAL PRACTICES MAY BE CONSIDERED NON-JOB FACTORS
IN PUBLIC EMPLOYMENT; AND PROVIDING A SEVERABILITY
CLAUSE.
Shall the above-entitled measure proposed
by Proposition One be approved?
YES D
NoD
AN INITIATIVE ESTABLISHING TERM LIMITS FOR ELECTED
FEDERAL. STATE, COUNTY, MUNICIPAL AND SCHOOL
DISTRICT OFFICIALS.
INITIATIVE RELATING TO THE NUMBER OF YEARS AN ELECTED
OFFICIAL MAY SERVE: PROVIDING A NEW SECTION TO THE
IDAHO CODE, 34-907, LIMITING THE NUMBER OF YEARS A PER-
SON MAY SERVE IN THE FOLLOWING ELECTED OFFICES BY RE-
STRICTING ELIGIBILITY TO APPEAR ON THE BALLOT AFl'ER
SERVING A PRESCRIBED NUMBER OF YEARS: UNITED STATES
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, UNITED STATES SENATE, STATE
EXECUTIVE OFFICES, STATE LEGISLATURE, COUNTY ELECTED
OFFICES; PROVIDING A NEW SECTION TO THE IDAHO CODE,
50-478, RESTRICTING MUNICIPAL OFFICERS' ELIGIBILITY TO AP-
PEAR ON THE BALLOT AFTER SERVING EIGHT YEARS IN ONE
POSITION; PROVIDING A NEW SECTION TO THE IDAHO CODE,
33-443, RESTRICTING SCHOOL DISTRICT TRUSTEES' ELIGIBILITY
TO APPEAR ON THE BALLOT AFTER SERVING SIX YEARS IN ONE
DISTRICT; PROVIDING THAT ANY PERSON MAY STAND FOR
ELECTION AS A WRITE-IN CANDIDATE; PROVIDING AN EFFEC-
TIVE DATE OF JANUARY 1, 1995; PROVIDING THAT SERVICE
PRIOR TO THAT DATE SHALL NOT BE COUNTED FOR PURPOSES
OF BALLOT ELIGIBILITY AND PROVIDING A SEVERABILITY
CLAUSE.
Shall the above-entitled measure proposed
by Proposition Two be approved?
YESD
NoD
000335
1

P.O. Box 83720
Boise, ID 83720-0034
Telephone: (208) 334-2100
Facsimile: (208) 334-3454




ROBERTSON,

Plaintiffs,

vs.


Defendants,

and

STATE OF IDAHO,


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STATEMENT OF UNDISPUTED
MATERIAL FACTS

Defendant Governor C.L. Butch Otter submits this Statement of Undisputed Material
Facts in connection with his Motion for Summary Judgment pursuant to Fed. R. Civ. P. 56(a).
000336
2

I. History of Idahos Marriage Laws.
The history of Idahos definition of marriage begins before Idaho became a State. At
least since 1863, the States definition was derived from adoption of the common law, Idaho
Code 73-116 (adopting common law of England), which defined marriage as the voluntary
union for life of one man and one woman, to the exclusion of all others. Hyde v. Hyde, (1866) 1
L.R.P. & D. 130, 134 (Lord Penzance).
Around the time that Idaho became a State, in 1890, the U.S. Congress was concerned
about prohibiting polygamous marriages, and required several western States to include anti-
polygamy provisions in their state constitutions as a condition of statehood. See Arizona
Enabling Act, 36 Stat. 569; New Mexico Enabling Act, 36 Stat. 558; Oklahoma Enabling Act, 34
Stat. 269; and Utah Enabling Act, 28 Stat. 108. The enabling acts for these States required the
provisions that forever prohibited polygamous marriage to be irrevocable without the consent
of the United States and the people of said State, thereby making adherence to monogamous
marriage (at the time undoubtedly understood as between one man and one woman) the only
alternative. Idaho voluntarily included an anti-polygamy provision in its constitution, see Idaho
Const. art I, 4 (Bigamy and polygamy are forever prohibited in the state . . . .), which
Congress expressly found to be republican in form and . . . in conformity with the Constitution
of the United States, when Idaho was admitted into the Union, Act of Admission of Idaho, 26
Stat. 215.
Since then, the State has always adhered to a definition of marriage as the union of one
man and one woman and has never recognized as a marriage any other kind of relationship.
Subsequent legal challenges to the traditional definition of marriage in other parts of the
country prompted Idaho (and many other States) to enact laws to further protect the historic
000337
3

definition of marriage. While a few scattered cases were filed earlier, in the 1990s same-sex
couples began filing suits in state courts asserting that defining marriage as between one man and
one woman violated their state constitutional rights. Several state courts rejected these
arguments. See, e.g., Dean v. District of Columbia, 653 A.2d 307 (D.C. 1995); Standhardt v.
Super. Ct., 77 P.3d 451 (Ariz. Ct. App. 2003); Hernandez v. Robles, 855 N.E.2d 1 (N.Y. 2006).
However, some reached the opposite conclusion, ruling that their state constitutions required the
state to permit single-sex marriages, or at least afford such couples the benefits of marriage. See,
e.g., Baehr v. Lewin, 952 P.2d 44 (Haw. 1993).
In 1995, the Idaho legislature enacted Idaho Code 32-201, which provides in pertinent
part: Marriage is a personal relation arising out of a civil contract between a man and a woman
. . . . 1995 Idaho Sess. Laws ch. 104, 3. The Compilers Notes to 32-201 stated:
It is the intent of this act to promote the stability and best interests of marriage and
the family. Marriage is the institution that is the foundation of the family and of
society. Its stability is basic to morality and civilization and of vital interest to
society and the state.

(emphasis added).
The 1996 legislature enacted Idaho Code 32-209, which provides:
All marriages contracted without this state, which would be valid by the laws of
the state or country in which the same were contracted, are valid in this state,
unless they violate the public policy of this state. Marriages that violate the
public policy of this state include, but are not limited to, same-sex marriages, and
evade the prohibitions of the marriage laws of this state.

1996 Idaho Sess. Laws ch. 331, 1.
In 1999, the Vermont Supreme Court ruled that Vermont had to offer all the benefits of
marriage to same sex-couples, Baker v. State, 744 A.2d 864, 88687 (Vt. 1999). That action led
the Vermont legislature to create a new legal status called civil unions. 1999 Adj. Sess. No.
000338
4

91, 3; Vt. Stat. Ann. Tit. 15, 23. Likewise, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court in
2003 held that its state constitution required the redefinition of marriage to include same-sex
unions. Goodridge v. Dept of Pub. Health, 798 N.E.2d 941 (Mass. 2003).
Against this background, a measure was introduced in the 2004 Idaho legislature to place
a proposed amendment to the Idaho constitution on the ballot to let Idaho voters choose whether
to give State constitutional protection to the States historical definition of marriage. H.R.J. Res.
9, 57th Leg., 2d Reg. Sess. (Idaho 2004), see App. 116. That measure was passed in the Idaho
House but was not approved in the State Senate to be placed on the ballot. App. 116. The
following year, a similar measure was introduced and thoroughly debated in the State Senate.
S.J. Res. 101, 58th Leg., 1st Reg. Sess. (Idaho 2005), see App. 130. That measure also failed to
get the necessary two-thirds vote in the Senate, App. 130, but the debate generated a more
complete discussion of the pros and cons of the proposed amendment. See generally
Minutes, Senate State Affairs Committee, 58th Leg., 1st Reg. Sess. (Idaho Jan21, 2005; Jan. 28,
2005), App. 132-46.
In 2006, another joint resolution was introduced in the House to have the proposed
constitutional amendment placed on the general election ballot. H.R.J. Res. 2, 58th Leg., 2d
Reg. Sess. (Idaho 2006), see App. 147. The 2006 debate on House Joint Resolution No. 2 (HJR
2) continued the themes that had been developed during the 2004 and 2005 debates. See
generally Minutes, House State Affairs Committee, 58th Leg., 2d Reg. Sess. (Idaho Feb. 2,
2006), App. 153-60. In February 2006, the Idaho legislature approved HJR 2 by the necessary
two-thirds margins in both chambers (House vote 53-17; Senate vote 26-9), placing the proposed
amendment on the November 2006 general election ballot. App. 147. The proposal, which
became known as Amendment 2 and became Article III, 28 of Idahos constitution, stated: A
000339
5

marriage between a man and a woman is the only domestic legal union that shall be valid or
recognized in this state. Idaho Const. art. III, 28.
After approval by the Idaho electorate, Amendment 2 would prevent the type of judicial
redefinition of marriage that had occurred in Massachusetts and Vermont. That is because the
amendment provides constitutional protection against a state court redefinition of Idahos
existing statutory definition of marriage, and prevents judicial attempts to side-step that
definition. As explained to the voters:
1. Same gender marriages are not currently allowed under Idaho statutes, and
this amendment provides for the same prohibition at the state constitutional
level to ensure that Idaho state courts do not allow or require the recognition
of same gender marriages.
2. This amendment would prevent Idaho state courts from recognizing same
gender marriages that are legally allowed in other states or other countries.
3. Because marriage is a public institution with special importance to society, the
state of Idaho has a legitimate interest in establishing the marriage policy for
its citizens.
4. This amendment does not prevent private industry from extending certain
benefits to its employees nor does it limit a persons right to name medical
and financial agents or to enter into contractual agreements.
5. This amendment does not deny existing rights under Idaho law, but Idahos
current marriage laws could be weakened in the future without this
amendment.

Idaho Secretary of State Page: Elections, Campaign Disclosure and Lobbyists; 2006 HJR2
Statements For and Against, http://www.sos.idaho.gov/elect/inits/06_hjr2_stmnt_forand
against.htm, App. 183.
The proposed amendment spurred a healthy and robust public debate. The views of both
sides were well-articulated and well-supported by prominent political figures and scholars, as
well as by business, religious, and other community leaders. See, e.g., App. 164-83 (2006
General Election materials and information provided to voters by the Idaho Secretary of State);
Affidavit of Julie Lynde and accompanying exhibits, App. 1-104; App. 217-77 (collection of
000340
6

news articles, press releases, and editorials articles concerning 2006 HJR2). The tenor of the
political discourse tended toward the intellectual and legalisticremarkable for a campaign on
an issue that stirs strong and deep feelings among most citizens. App. 217-77 (news articles).
Idahos voters approved the amendment by a margin of 63.3% to 36.7%, Idaho Secretary
of State Page: Election Division; Nov. 7, 2006 General Election Results, Constitutional
Amendments, Propositions and Advisory Vote by county, http://www.sos.idaho.gov/elect/
RESULTS/2006/general/cnty_issues.htm, App. 184-85, and Amendment 2, now known as
Article III, 28, became part of the Idaho constitution.
II. Recent Experimentation in Other States.
Most States have followed a path similar to Idahos. Currently, 33 States define marriage
as between one man and one woman, including 29 states that have a constitutional provision so
providing. Addendum at A-5 to A-7.
Same-sex marriage is legal in 17 states. Id. Eleven states have voluntarily authorized the
marriages through the political process, almost half of them within the past year. Id. The other
six States that allow same-sex marriages were compelled to do so by judicial decision. Id.
III. This Case.
Plaintiffs are four same-sex couples, all residents of Idaho. Two of those couples want to
marry in Idaho, while the other two coupleshaving previously married in New York and
Californianow desire the State to recognize their foreign marriages. First Amended Complaint
(FAC) 1520. The unmarried Plaintiffs seek, as their ultimate relief, to marry in Idaho with
the States sanction; and the Plaintiffs with foreign marriages, seek to have Idaho recognize those
marriages. FAC 1. Such relief requires Idaho to change (or be compelled to change) its
000341
7

definition of marriage from the union of a man and a woman to the union of two persons without
regard to gender.
Invoking 28 U.S.C. 1983, Plaintiffs initiated this action against the Governor of Idaho
and the recorder/clerk/registrar of Ada County, in their official capacities. FAC 2122. They
contend that Idahos definition of marriage violates the Due Process and Equal Protection
Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. FAC 14, 41, 46, 55
57, 63-66, 7180, 8489. They request a declaratory judgment so stating, and a permanent
injunction barring enforcement of the challenged laws. FAC 9192.

THOMAS C. PERRY
000342
8


I HEREBY CERTIFY that on this 18th day of February, 2014, I electronically filed the
foregoing with the Clerk of the Court using the CM/ECF system, which caused the following
parties or counsel to be served by electronic means, as more fully reflected on the Notice of
Electronic Filing:

Deborah A. Ferguson


Shannon P. Minter


W. Scott Zanzig

Clay R. Smith

/s/ Thomas C. Perry
THOMAS C. PERRY

000343
P.O. Box 83720
Boise, ID 83720-0034
Telephone: (208) 334-2100
Facsimile: (208) 334-3454




ROBERTSON,

Plaintiffs,

vs.


Defendants,

and

STATE OF IDAHO,

)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)


MOTION FOR SUMMARY
JUDGMENT

Defendant, Idaho Governor C.L. Butch Otter pursuant to Fed R. Civ P. 56(a)
respectfully moves this Court for summary judgment in his favor on all claims asserted in
Plaintiffs First Amended Complaint (Doc. 42). This motion is supported by Defendant
000344
Governor Otters contemporaneously filed Memorandum in Support of Motion for Summary
Judgment, Statement of Undisputed Material Facts and materials in the accompanying Appendix.

THOMAS C. PERRY


I HEREBY CERTIFY that on this 18th day of February, 2014, I electronically filed the
foregoing with the Clerk of the Court using the CM/ECF system, which caused the following
parties or counsel to be served by electronic means, as more fully reflected on the Notice of
Electronic Filing:

Deborah A. Ferguson


Shannon P. Minter


W. Scott Zanzig

Clay R. Smith

/s/ Thomas C. Perry
THOMAS C. PERRY

000345


/s/W. Scott Zanzig
W. SCOTT ZANZIG

Case Nos. 14-35420 & 14-35421


vs.
and
STATE OF IDAHO,

D.C. No. 1:13-cv-00482-CWD

APPELLANTS EXCERPTS OF RECORD, VOL. III

LAWRENCE G. WASDEN
ATTORNEY GENERAL
STEVEN L. OLSEN
Telephone: (208) 334-2400
Fax: (208) 854-8073
J une 19, 2014
TABLE OF CONTENTS
VOLUME I

DOCUMENTS
DOCKET
NUMBER
EXCERPT
PAGE
VOLUME II

DOCUMENTS
DOCKET
NUMBER
EXCERPT
PAGE
104 00061-00063
J udgment 101 00067-00068
81-2 00069-00072
81-1 00073-00207
Lamb
76-2 00208-00218
Summary J udgment
76-1 00219-00222
74 00223-00225

J udgment (Dkt. 45)
73-1 00226-00228
60 00229-00335
Material Facts
57-1 00336-00343
J udgment
57 00344-00345
VOLUME III

DOCUMENTS
DOCKET
NUMBER
EXCERPT
PAGE
46 00496-00510
43 00516-00518
Injunctive Relief
42 00519-00548
(2008)
30-10 00559-00603
No. 2 (Fall 2005)
30-8 00611-00633
VOLUME IV

DOCUMENTS
DOCKET
NUMBER
EXCERPT
PAGE
30-7 00634-00643
30-6 00644-00692
Statistics Reports
30-5 00693-00713
30-4 00714-00715
2010 Census Briefs
30-2 & 30-
3
00716-00738

202 N. 9
th
Street, Suite 401 C
Boise, Idaho 83702
Tel.: (208) 484-2253

Boise, Idaho 83702
Tel.: (208) 345-5183

Shannon P. Minter
Tel.: (415) 392-6257




Plaintiffs,
v.

Defendants,
and
STATE OF IDAHO,



EXPERT DECLARATION
OF DR. MICHAEL E. LAMB

00346
2

PRELIMINARY STATEMENT
1. I am a Professor of Psychology in the Department of Psychology at the University
of Cambridge in the United Kingdom. I have been retained by counsel for plaintiffs in this case
to prepare this expert report in connection with the above-referenced litigation. I have actual
knowledge of the matters stated in this expert report and could and would so testify if called as a
witness.
2. My background, experience, and list of publications from the last 10 years are
summarized in my curriculum vitae, which is attached as Exhibit A to this expert report.
3. I hold a Bachelors degree in psychology and economics from the University of
Natal in Durban, South Africa (1972), Masters degrees in psychology from Johns Hopkins
University (1974) and Yale University (1975), and a Ph.D. in psychology from Yale University
(1976).
4. I have held academic positions as Assistant Professor of Psychology at the
University of Wisconsin, Assistant Professor of Psychology at the University of Michigan, and
Professor of Psychology, Psychiatry, and Pediatrics at the University of Utah. In 2004, I took a
position as Professor and Head of the Department of Social and Developmental Psychology at
the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom.
5. From 1987 until 2004, I was head of the Section on Social and Emotional
Development and a Senior Research Scientist at the United States National Institute of Child
Health and Human Development (NICHD), an institute within the National Institutes of Health
(NIH).
6. I have authored more than 600 publications that have appeared either in peer-
reviewed professional journals or in professional books published by academic presses primarily
00347
3

for the readership of other professionals. I have written or edited about 45 books in the field of
developmental psychology. The professional publications that I have written have focused on
development in infancy, mother-child relationships, father-child relationships, the role of the
father, sibling relationships, the effects of nontraditional rearing circumstances (including same-
sex parent families), the effects of daycare, child abuse, and forensic interview practices. A
number of my books, including my books on nontraditional families, are used widely as texts in
graduate courses.
7. I have been a peer-reviewer for various professional journals regularly for more
than 35 years, and I edit the journal Psychology, Public Policy, and Law for the American
Psychological Association. I currently average five to ten reviews of other professionals work
per week. In connection with my work as a peer-reviewer, I have peer-reviewed dozens of
articles that address the parenting abilities of gay men and/or lesbians and/or their childrens
adjustment.
8. In the past four years, I have testified as an expert either at trial or through
declaration or been deposed as an expert in In the Matter of the Adoption of X.X.G. and N.R.G.
in the Circuit Court of the 11th Judicial Circuit in and for Miami-Dade County, Florida, Case
No. 06-43881 FC 04; Cole v. The Arkansas Department of Human Services in the Circuit Court
of Pulaski County, Arkansas, Case No. CV2008-14284; Perry v. Schwarzenegger, 704 F.
Supp.2d 921 (N.D. Cal. 2010); Gill et al. v. Office of Personnel Management, 699 F.Supp.2d 374
(D. Mass. 2010); Massachusetts v. Dept Health and Human Serv., 698 F.Supp.2d 234 (D. Mass.
2010); Windsor v. U.S., 833 F. Supp.2d 394 (S.D.N.Y. 2011); Golinski v. Office of Personnel
Management, 824 F.Supp.2d 968 (N.D. Cal. 2012); Pedersen v. Office of Personnel
Management, 881 F. Supp. 2d 294 (D. Conn. 2012); Dragovich v. U.S. Dept of the Treasury,
00348
4

872 F. Supp. 2d 944 (N.D. Cal. 2012); Sevcik v. Sandoval, No. 2:12-CV-00578-RCJ-PAL (D.
Nev. 2012); Darby v. Orr, Lazaro v. Orr, Nos. 12 CH 19718 & 19719 (Circuit Ct., Cook Cty);
Cooper-Harris v. U.S., No. 2:12-cv-887-CBM (W.D. Cal. 2013); Harris v. McDonnell, No.
5:13-CV-077-MFU (W.D. Va. 2013); De Leon v. Perry, No. 5:13-CV-982-OLG (W.D. Tex.
2013); and Whitewood v. Wolf, No. 13-1861-JEJ (M.D. Pa. 2014).
9. Over the past 40 years, I have pursued two broad areas of research. One line of
research has focused on forensic issues such as the credibility of children and the best ways of
eliciting accurate information from victims of child abuse. This work is not directly relevant to
the present litigation. The other line of research is concerned with childrens development and
adjustment, especially the formative effects of the relationships that children establish with their
parents and the ways in which these relationships shape childrens development over time. In
this context, I have also examined factors that are likely to have an adverse effect on
development, such as child abuse, and I have explored variations in rearing experiences that
might affect child development, such as the effects of various types of nontraditional family
forms. I am familiar with the research on families headed by gay and lesbian individuals and
couples.
10. My initial research in the United States was about the formation of relationships
between babies and their parents in households with a mother and a father. When I began my
research, I focused on the role played by fathers in childrens development. I later expanded my
research in order to understand better the role that fathers play in childrens lives when they
live with their children and when they do not, in both divorced and married families, and when
they are highly involved or uninvolved in childcareas well as the roles played by factors such
as out-of-home care, family structure, and cultural background.
00349
5

11. In preparing this report, I reviewed the materials listed in the attached reference
list (Exhibit B). I may rely on those documents, in addition to the documents specifically cited
as supportive examples in particular sections of this report, as additional support for my
opinions. I have also relied on my years of experience in this field, as set out in my curriculum
vitae (Exhibit A), and on the materials listed therein. The materials I have relied upon in
preparing this report are the same types of materials that experts in my field of study regularly
rely upon when forming opinions on the subject.
12. I am being compensated at an hourly rate for actual time devoted, at the rate of
$350.00 per hour for preparation of reports and for testimony. My compensation does not
depend on the outcome of this litigation, the opinions I express, or the testimony I provide.
I. Summary Of Ultimate Conclusions.
13. Children and adolescents raised by same-sex parents are as likely to be well-
adjusted as children raised by different-sex parents, including biological parents. Numerous
studies of youths raised by same-sex parents conducted over the past 30 years by respected
researchers and published in peer-reviewed academic journals conclude that children and
adolescents raised by same-sex parents are as successful psychologically, emotionally, and
socially as children and adolescents raised by different-sex parents, including biological parents.
14. It is beyond scientific dispute that the factors that account for the adjustment of
children and adolescents are the quality of the youths relationships with their parents, the quality
of the relationship between the parents or significant adults in the youths lives, and the
availability of economic and social resources. These factors affect adjustment in both traditional
and nontraditional families, including families headed by same-sex parents. The parents sexual
00350
6

orientation, gender or biological relatedness to the child do not affect the capacity to be good
parents or their childrens healthy development.
15. Same-sex couples are forming families with children whether or not they reside in
states in which they are permitted to marry. Children of lesbian and gay couples would benefit
from the protections marriage affords to families and children if their parents had the option of
marrying.
16. Thus, the assertion by the defendants in this case that Idahos exclusion of same-
sex couples from marriage promotes the well-being of children is simply wrong.
II. The Factors That Determine Childrens And Adolescents Adjustment.
17. Psychologists use the term adjustment to refer to psychological well-being.
Adjustment refers to characteristics (including the absence of psychological or psychiatric
symptoms and the absence of behavior problems) that allow children or adolescents to function
well in their everyday life. Well-adjusted youths have sufficient social skills to get along with
others, to get along and comply with adults, to function well in school, and, when they grow up,
to function effectively in the workplace and establish meaningful intimate relationships. In
contrast, maladjustment might be manifested by behavior problems, such as bullying and acting
aggressively with others, or deficient social skills, which make it difficult for individuals to
establish relationships with others and leave them socially isolated.
18. Over the last 50 years, more than 1000 studies have examined the factors that
predict healthy adjustment in children and adolescents. As a result of this significant body of
research, psychologists have reached consensus on the factors that predict healthy development
and adjustment. Among these are:
00351
7

a) the quality of childrens or adolescents relationships with their parents or parent
figures;
b) the quality of the relationships between the parents or significant adults in the youths
lives; conflict between them is associated with maladjustment while harmonious
relationships between the adults support healthy adjustment;
c) the availability of adequate economic and social resources, with poverty and social
isolation being associated with maladjustment, and adequate resources supporting healthy
adjustment.
19. The quality of parent-offspring relationships is determined by the degree to which
parents offer love and affection, emotional commitment, reliability and consistency, as well as
the extent to which the parents read their children or adolescents effectively and provide
appropriate stimulation, guidance, and limit-setting. The better the quality of parent-child
relationships, the better the childrens or adolescents adjustment is likely to be, whether the
parents have same- or different-sex orientations.
20. Not all differences among youths are differences in adjustment. Many ways in
which children or adolescents differ from each other are simply normal variations among people,
and are unrelated to adjustment. There clearly are endogenous differences in personality,
temperament, or physiological function that affect individual responses to psychological
challenges and thus affect adjustment both directly and indirectly, in interaction with
(complementing, dampening, or exaggerating) the influence of the other factors I discuss in more
detail. For example, there has been considerable research on intelligence, but individual
differences in intelligence are not viewed as markers of adjustment or maladjustment. Other
00352
8

normal variations can result from cultural differences (such as in assertiveness or individualism)
or differences in personality (e.g., some children are extroverted while others are introverted).
III. The Factors Predicting Healthy Adjustment Are The Same For Traditional
and Nontraditional Families, And Children Or Adolescents In
Nontraditional Families Are Just As Capable Of Healthy Adjustment As
Those In Traditional Settings.

21. In the social sciences, the term traditional family refers to the childrearing
environment that social scientists formerly considered the norm a middle-class family with a
bread-winning father and a stay-at-home mother, married to each other and raising their
biological children. Nontraditional family forms, by definition, involve any kind of variation
from this pattern. Thus, families with fathers who assume responsibility for childcare would
qualify as nontraditional, as would families with employed mothers, with two employed parents,
with one parent, with same-sex parents, or that rely on childcare centers instead of performing
childcare exclusively within the home. Nontraditional families constitute the vast majority of
families in the United States today.
22. Societys early assumptions about the superiority of the traditional family form
have been challenged by the results of empirical research. Early in the twentieth century, it was
widely believed that traditional family settings were necessary in order for children to adjust
well. This view derived directly from psychoanalytic thinking that was based on clinical
observations, but not on empirical research. As psychoanalysis yielded to more empirically-
based psychology over the early parts of the last century, it became clear that this notion was
unsupported. Research beginning in the late 1940s and continuing until the present has tested
many of the hypotheses that flowed from the assumption that children and adolescents need to be
raised in traditional families in order to develop healthily. Specifically, there have been over 50
years of research into the effects on children or adolescents of having one parent, of divorce, and
00353
9

of maternal employment. Intense interest in the effects of daycare began in the 1970s, as did
interest in highly involved fathers (stay-at-home fathers or families in which mothers and fathers
share childcare responsibilities) and in same-sex parent families and households.
23. This research has demonstrated that the correlates of childrens or adolescents
adjustment listed above are important regardless of whether children and adolescents are raised
in traditional family settings or in nontraditional families. Childrens or adolescents adjustment
depends overwhelmingly upon the quality of the childrens or adolescents relationships with
their parents, the quality of the relationships between the parents or significant adults in the
youths lives, and the availability of sufficient economic and social resources. Since the end of
the 1980s, as a result, it has been well established that children and adolescents can adjust just as
well in nontraditional settings as in traditional settings.
24. Although family structure does not dictate childrens adjustment, some normal
variations do characterize children and adolescents raised in nontraditional family settings. For
example, such children often have distinctive attitudes about sex-role norms. Within the field,
sex-role norms refer to the awareness of and beliefs in behavioral differences between boys and
girls or men and women. In nontraditional families, children may have more flexible sex-role
standards. This means, for example, that the children are more likely to think that both boys and
girls can be astronauts or doctors, and that it is acceptable for both girls and boys to play with
both trucks and dolls. By contrast, children raised in traditional family settings tend to have
more sex-stereotypical notions about appropriate gender roles. Again, this variation with respect
to sex-role norms is a normal variation, and has nothing to do with adjustment.
A. Difficulties some children experience in single-parent families have nothing
to do with parental gender.

00354
10

25. Numerous studies show that most of the children and adolescents who grow up in
single-parent families are well adjusted. However, there is a significant body of research on the
impact of divorce and single-parent family life demonstrating that children and adolescents in
single-parent families are more likely to have adjustment difficulties than children and
adolescents in two-parent families. Research shows that the reasons for this disparity are
consistent with the predictors of adjustment generally. The primary causes of increased risk of
maladjustment among children or adolescents in single-parent families are the reduced resources
often available when there is just one parent, and the disruptive effects of and conflict associated
with parental separation, which often precedes single-parent family life.
26. Many children and adolescents of parents whose relationships dissolve lose one of
their supportive parental relationships, and do not get the benefit of both psychological and
financial support from their non-resident parents. Additionally, many divorces expose children
and adolescents to parental conflict both preceding and following the separation, and may also
involve rejection by or separation from one of the parents and possible dislocations, such as
moving to a new neighborhood and school. Finally, families headed by single mothers, in
particular, often suffer considerable degrees of financial hardship because of a combination of
factors including the continuing disparity in pay received by men and by women, and because
many women, whether or not they were once married, have taken time out from the workforce to
raise children.
B. Male and female parents can be equally competent; the gender of the parents
does not affect childrens development.

27. Fifty years ago, it was widely assumed that the absence of a male parent figure
accounted for the problems in adjustment encountered by some children and adolescents in
single-parent families. However, extensive empirical research on nontraditional families has
00355
11

demonstrated that the presence or absence of a male parent is not important to adjustment;
instead, it is the quality of the childrens experiences more broadly and, specifically the quality
of the parent-child relationships, the quality of the relationship between the parents, and the
adequacy of resources that explain the higher levels of maladjustment on the part of children and
adolescents in one-parent families. It is well-established that both men and women have the
capacity to be good parents, and that having parents of both genders does not enhance
adjustment.
28. Studies have shown that, at the time that parents first receive their children,
whether by birth or adoption, men and women are equivalently competent (or incompetent) at
parenting. Most parenting skills are learned on the job. Because women in this society on
average spend more time on the job, they often become more skillful at it over time. However,
this disparity in parenting skills simply reflects womens greater experience and greater
opportunities to learn rather than a biologically given capacity. When men actively care for their
children, they become more skillful, too. Nothing about a persons sex determines the capacity
to be a good parent.
29. Many studies have pointed to average differences between the ways in which
mothers and fathers interact with their children, but these differences are not significant to
adjustment. These studies suggest that, on average, mens patterns of interaction with children
are dominated by a more boisterous, playful, unpredictable interaction, while womens patterns
are more soothing, containing, and restrictive. However, these differences do not apply across
the board to all men or to all women, nor is it harmful when parents do not assume traditional
gender roles with respect to interactive parenting styles.
00356
12

30. Moreover, the observed differences in parenting style appear to reflect, in large
part, differences in the type of responsibility that the parent has within the home (i.e., differences
between being the primary or secondary parent). When fathers are the primary caregivers, for
example, the style of interaction between fathers and children often becomes more like typical
mother-child interaction. Many children in all kinds of families (including those headed by
different-sex couples) do not have parents who offer both of these parenting styles and this does
not negatively affect them.
31. There is no empirical support for the notion that the presence of both male and
female role models in the home enhances the adjustment of children and adolescents. Society is
replete with male and female role models for children and adolescents.
IV. Research Specific To Parenting By Same-Sex Couples Demonstrates That The
Children And Adolescents Of Same-Sex Parents Are Just As Well-Adjusted As
Those With Different-Sex Parents.

A. Based on a significant and well-respected body of research, the scientific
community has reached consensus that parental sexual orientation does not
affect adjustment.

32. The body of research that has examined childrens and adolescents adjustment in
the specific context of parenting by same-sex couples represents approximately 30 years of
scholarship and includes more than 50 peer-reviewed empirical reports. The earliest reports
from studies of same-sex parents were published in the late 1970s, and research has continued to
the present. More than 100 articles about same-sex parents and/or their offspring have been
published in respected academic journals or as chapters in books for use by other professionals.
These present both qualitative research (relying primarily on interviews and discussions with
either the youths or with the parents) and quantitative research.
00357
13

33. The results of these studies support and are consistent with the results of the
broader body of research on socialization in both traditional and nontraditional families. They
demonstrate that the adjustment of children and adolescents of same-sex parents is determined
by the quality of the youths relationships with the parents, the quality of the relationship
between the parents, and the resources available to the families.
34. The results of these studies further demonstrate that adjustment is not affected by
the gender or sexual orientation of the parent(s). Research comparing the adjustment of children
and adolescents of same-sex parents with the children and adolescents of different-sex parents
consistently shows that the children or adolescents in both groups are equivalently adjusted. The
children and adolescents of same-sex parents are as emotionally healthy, and as educationally
and socially successful, as children and adolescents raised by different-sex parents. The social
science literature overwhelmingly rejects the notion that there is an optimal gender mix of
parents or that children and adolescents with same-sex parents suffer any developmental
disadvantages compared with those with two different-sex parents.
35. There is consensus within the scientific community that parental sexual
orientation has no effect on childrens and adolescents adjustment. The leading professional
organizations representing mental health and child welfare professionals have issued statements
confirming that same-sex parents are as effective as different-sex parents in raising well-adjusted
children and adolescents and should not face discrimination. These organizations include the
American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry,
the American Psychiatric Association, the American Psychological Association, the American
Psychoanalytic Association, the National Association of Social Workers, the Child Welfare
00358
14

League of America, the North American Council on Adoptable Children, and the American
Academy of Family Physicians.
1

36. Advocacy organizations opposed to marriage for same-sex couples sometimes
claim that a study by Mark Regnerus
2
shows that children raised by same-sex parents fare worse
than children raised by different-sex parents. But this study allows for no such conclusion
because it did not actually assess individuals raised by same-sex parents. The majority of the
respondents in the studys so-called lesbian mother and gay father groups were the product
of failed heterosexual unions whose parents had same-sex relationships at some point.
3
Most of
the children spent very little if any time living in households headed by same-sex

1
Those opposed to parenting by same-sex couples sometimes refer to a group called the
American College of Pediatricians, which takes a contrary view. This group should not be
confused with the American Academy of Pediatrics, which is the well-established professional
organization of pediatricians in the United States. According to the American College of
Pediatricians website, the group was formed in 2002, and [o]f particular importance to the
founders were (as it is today) the sanctity of human life from conception to natural death and the
importance of the fundamental mother-father family (female-male) unit in the rearing of
children. http://www.acpeds.org/about-us/about-the-college. The group promotes fringe,
unsupported views about sexual orientation, including that [f]or unwanted sexual attractions,
therapy to restore heterosexual attraction has proven effective and harmless. See American
College of Pediatricians publication Facts About Youth, available at
http://factsaboutyouth.com/getthefacts/quickfacts. All of the leading professional groups have,
by contrast, criticized such therapies and have drawn attention to their ineffectiveness.
2
Mark Regnerus, How different are the adult children of parents who have same-sex
relationships? Findings from the New Family Structures Study, Social Science Research 41
(2012) 752-770.
3
Individuals were deemed to have gay fathers or lesbian mothers if they
affirmatively answered the following question: From when you were born until age 18 (or until
you left home to be on your own), did either of your parents ever have a romantic relationship
with someone of the same sex?
00359
15

couples.
4
Moreover, most of Regneruss gay father and lesbian mother participants were in
families that went through divorces and transitions to single-parent or step-family life, which, as
I have discussed above, are known correlates of poorer child outcomes. In contrast, Regnerus
excluded from his comparison group all the heterosexual parent families that went through
divorce, including only those that remained intact throughout the respondents childhoods. Thus,
the piece merely documented the well-established fact that children tend to do better in stable,
intact families than they do after experiencing their parents divorce. Regnerus himself
recognized that [c]hild outcomes in stable, planned [gay, lesbian or bisexual] families and
those that are the product of previous heterosexual unions are quite likely distinctive, as previous
studies conclusions would suggest.
5
Simply put, Regnerus did not study the adjustment of
children raised by same-sex parents at all, and this study does not tell us anything about children
who grow up in families with same-sex parents.
6
The same is true of a recent study by an
economist called Douglas W. Allen.
7
The study purported to show lower high school graduation
rates for Canadian adolescents and young adults raised by same-sex parents rather than married
heterosexual parents. However, because the Canadian Census only provided information about

4
Just over half of the respondents in the lesbian mother group lived with their mothers
and their partners for at least 4 months; under a quarter did so for more than 3 years. For the
gay father group, under a quarter lived with their fathers and their same-sex partners for at
least 4 months; under 2% did so for more than 3 years.

5
Id., at 765.
6
Moreover, Regnerus study has been discredited by an internal audit conducted by the
journal that published it. See Darren E. Sherkat, The Editorial Process and Politicized
Scholarship: Monday Morning Editorial Quarterbacking and a Call for Scientific Vigilance,
Social Science Research 41 (2012) 13461349. The auditor concluded that the paper has
serious flaws and distortions and should not have been published. Id. at 1347, 1349.
7
Douglas W. Allen, High school graduation rates among children of same-sex
households, Rev. Econ. Household (2013) 11:635-658.
00360
16

the childrens residence for the five years before the survey, we do not know about the kinds of
families in which the children lived during most of their childhoods. This is important because
problems that predict dropping out tend to emerge well before high school. And because
planned same-sex parent families were uncommon when these children were born (the 1980s), it
is very likely that many of the children in the gay and lesbian parent groups were the product of
prior heterosexual relationships that subsequently broke up and, thus, spent some portion of their
childhood in different types of families. Moreover, because no data about prior family
dissolutions were obtained, Allen was unable to account for the impact of family dissolution,
which (as noted above) is frequently associated with maladjustment in children and adolescents.
For these reasons, no conclusions can be drawn from this study about the effects of being raised
by same-sex couples.
B. Studies identifying differences in the children or adolescents of same-sex
parents have identified only normal variations, and not differences in
adjustment.

37. Like children and adolescents in other nontraditional families, children and
adolescents with same-sex parents have sometimes been found to have less sex-stereotyped
beliefs, and to be more open in their views of societal norms and standards about appropriate
behavior for males and females. For example, some studies of young children suggest that girls
raised by lesbian mothers may be more likely than girls raised by heterosexual mothers to play
with both dolls and trucks, and to think that being an astronaut or being a doctor are appropriate
aspirations for girls as well as boys. Although there was a time when some developmental
psychologists believed that conformance to sex-based stereotypes was a component of healthy
adjustment, this view has been discredited and abandoned. The observed differences in sex-
stereotyped beliefs and behavior between children of lesbian and heterosexual parents are not
00361
17

differences in adjustment. Children and adolescents raised by same-sex parents do not differ
from those raised by different-sex parents with respect to how they identify their sexual
orientation later in life. Neither do they differ with respect to gender identity.
C. The methodology used in the research examining same-sex parenting meets
the rigorous standards accepted in the field.

38. Social scientists use and value diverse methodologies, research designs, and types
of data that vary depending on the discipline involved, the specific area of research, the questions
being raised, and the theories being applied and evaluated. Developmental psychologists (and
psychologists more generally) tend to emphasize intensive examination of relatively small
numbers of individuals, often studied in the context of social relationships and influences. For
example, most studies documenting that children are more likely to form secure attachments
when their parents are sensitively responsive involve samples that are small and selective, yet the
findings are recognized as conclusive. Developmental psychologists use research methods based
on statistically representative national samples much less often than demographers and
quantitative sociologists. Such large-scale survey research methods are often too blunt to
address adequately the complex and nuanced questions that generally are at issue when scholars
attempt to assess and compare the course of child development in different circumstances. It is
common for researchers to use what are often referred to as convenience samples, and to
explore those samples intensively, rather than to study large samples more superficially.
39. The major studies of same-sex parent families employ a range of methodologies,
including both intensive examination of small convenience samples and large-scale
representative surveys. These studies meet the standards for research in the field of
developmental psychology and psychology generally. The studies specific to same-sex parenting
from which I draw my conclusions were published in leading journals in the field of child and
00362
18

adolescent development, such as Child Development, Developmental Psychology and The
Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry. The journals Child Development, published by the
Society for Research in Child Development, Developmental Psychology, published by the
American Psychological Association, and The Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry are
the flagship peer-reviewed journals in the field of child development. Most of the studies on
which I rely appeared in these (or similar) rigorously peer-reviewed and highly selective
journals, whose standards represent expert consensus on generally accepted social scientific
standards for research on child and adolescent development. Prior to publication in these
journals, these studies were required to go through a rigorous peer-review process, and as a
result, they constitute the type of research that members of the respective professions consider
reliable. The body of research on same-sex families is consistent with standards in the relevant
fields and produces reliable conclusions.
8

V. Data Concerning Single-Parent Families Does Not Support Conclusions About The
Impact Of Parental Gender Or Sexual Orientation On Childrens Development.

40. Advocacy groups opposed to parenting by same-sex couples sometimes point to
research showing that children and adolescents in single-parent families are at greater risk of
maladjustment than those raised by two parents to support the view that youths need both

8
Advocacy organizations opposed to marriage for same-sex couples sometimes cite an
article by sociologist Loren Marks to argue that the body of literature on children of same-sex
parents is flawed. The article, entitled Same-Sex Parenting and Childrens Outcomes: A Closer
Examination of the American Psychological Associations Brief on Lesbian and Gay Parenting,
is a review of the literature that mischaracterizes the extensive research about same-sex parents
published before 2005, and curiously, although published in 2012, ignores entirely the many
informative studies published since 2005.
00363
19

mothers and fathers, and therefore that heterosexual couples make the best parents.
9
This
mischaracterizes the research into single-parent families, which typically does not explore the
effects of parental sexual orientation or gender.
41. Studies on the impact of single-parent family life generally compare single-parent
and married-couple heterosexual parents; I am aware of no such study that includes same-sex
couples. Consequently, it is inappropriate to attribute the differences resulting from the number
of parents (and the disruption, exposure to conflict and lack of resources often associated with
single-parent family life) to parental gender or sexual orientation, or to draw conclusions about
the children of same-sex parents from these studies. The relevant studies do suggest, however,
that, all other things being equal, children and adolescents tend to do better with two parents than
one, and therefore, that children and adolescents with same-sex parents, like their peers, likely
would benefit if their parents could choose to marry and solidify their family ties.
VI. Opposition To Marriage For Same-Sex Couples Based On The Purported
Superiority Of Biological Parenthood Is Not Supported By Research.

42. Advocacy organizations opposed to marriage for same-sex couples sometimes
argue that gay and lesbian couples should not be permitted to marry because, they claim,
children do best in families with two biological parents and, by implication, that having same-sex
parents is bad for children.
43. However, the practice of forming families in which the children are not
biologically related to one or both parents is hardly unique to same-sex couples. Many
heterosexual couples become parents through adoption or the use of assisted reproduction

9
For instance, defendant Rich cites Benjamin Scafide, The Taxpayer Costs of Divorce
and Unwed Childbearing: First Ever Estimate for the Nation and All Fifty States
(2008), which falls into this category.
00364
20

involving donor sperm or ova. Indeed, most couples using donor sperm are heterosexual
couples.
44. In any case, there is no basis for the asserted superiority of biological parenthood.
Children adopted early in life (as opposed to children who were adopted later, often after
difficult early life experiences) have outcomes similar to those of children raised by their
biological parents. And children conceived through the use of donor sperm or ova (whether to
different-sex or same-sex parents) fare no differently than children raised by two biological
parents. In addition, a substantial body of research on parents who have chosen to raise
biologically unrelated children shows that such parents are at least as competent as parents
raising their biological children; indeed, many studies show that these parents are more
competent or committed in some respects.
45. While some studies show that children do better when raised by both of their
parents than when raised by one parent and the parents new partner (i.e., step-parent), these
differences are not due to biological relatedness. They are due to the fact that children in step-
families have experienced family disruption and typically also the conflict and loss of a parental
relationship, which, as discussed above, all put children at higher risk for adverse outcomes. The
studies comparing two parent families to step-parent families have not examined children being
raised by same-sex couples who jointly planned to bring children into their families either by
birth or adoption, and jointly raise the children.
10
One would not expect the difficulties
experienced by children in step-families to appear in same-sex parent families rearing children in

10
For instance, the Amato article cited by defendant Rich falls into this category.
Defendant Rich also refers to Elizabeth Wildsmith, Childbearing Outside of Marriage: Estimates
and Trends in the United States, Child Research Brief (Nov. 2011), but that study does not
evaluate same-sex parents or parenting. Rather, it provides information about the number of
children born outside marriage.
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21

intact families. As explained above, the research comparing children with same-sex and
different-sex parents shows no differences in outcome.
46. Studies examining the impact of step-family life sometimes use the term
biological parents as shorthand to distinguish between parents (whether biologically related to
the child or not) and step-parents. Unfortunately, advocacy groups opposed to marriage for
same-sex couples sometimes erroneously cite these studies when claiming that biological
parenthood best promotes childrens well-being even though these studies offer no support for
this proposition.
11

VII. Excluding Same-Sex Couples From Marriage Does Not Prevent Them From
Forming Families with Children. And The Children In These Families Would
Benefit If Their Parents Were Permitted To Marry Or Have Their Marriages
Recognized.

47. Lesbian and gay couples are forming families with children. Census data show
that families with children headed by same-sex couples are living in every state, including states
in which they cannot marry.
48. Marriage can yield important benefits for children and families, including state
and federal legal protections, economic resources, family stability, and social legitimacy. These
benefits are equally advantageous for children and adolescents in families headed by same-sex
and different-sex couples. Allowing same-sex couples to have equal access to those benefits
afforded through marriage is in the best interests of the children in these families.

11
The article by W. Bradford Wilson, Why Marriage Matters: Thirty Conclusions for
Social Sciences (3d ed. 2011), cited by defendant Rich, falls into this category. In fact, the
authors of one such study commonly relied on in litigation by opponents of marriage for same-
sex couples, including in this case, have publicly disclaimed the mischaracterization of their
study. See Kristen Anderson Moore, et al., Marriage from a Childs Perspective: How Does
Family Structure Affect Children, and What Can We Do About It, Child Trends Research Br.
(June 2002), introductory note (no conclusions can be drawn from this research about the
wellbeing of children raised by same-sex parents or adoptive parents.).
00366
00367

EXHIBIT A
00368
1
Curriculum Vitae

MICHAEL E. LAMB

Professor of Psychology in the Social Sciences
Department of Psychology
University of Cambridge
Free School Lane
Cambridge CB2 3RQ
United Kingdom

Phone: (44)-01223-334523
Fax: (44)-01223-334550
E-Mail: mel37@cam.ac.uk

Education:

BA University of Natal, Durban (South Africa) ...................................1972
MA Johns Hopkins University ...............................................................1974
MS Yale University ...............................................................................1975
M. Phil. Yale University ...............................................................................1975
Ph.D. Yale University (degree completed 10/75) .....................................1976

Employment History:

Assistant Professor of Psychology, University of Wisconsin-Madison: June 1976 to
August 1978
Assistant Professor of Psychology, University of Michigan: January 1978 to December 1980
Professor of Psychology, Psychiatry, and Pediatrics, University of Utah: January 1981 to
June 1987
Visiting Professor, School of Social Work, University of Haifa (Israel): Spring 1981.
Visiting Professor, School of Education, University of Hokkaido, Sapporo (Japan):
Summer 1985.
Senior Research Scientist and Chief, Section on Social and Emotional Development, National
Institute of Child Health and Human Development: July 1987
to August 2004.
Visiting Professor, Department of Psychology, University of Osnabrck (Germany),
Fall 1995.
Visiting Professor, Department of Psychology, Martin-Luther University of Halle-Wittenberg
(Germany), Fall 1996.
Professor of Psychology in the Social Sciences, Faculty of Social and Political Sciences,
University of Cambridge, September 2004 to present.
Weiswasser Visiting Professor of Pediatrics, Yale University School of Medicine, Spring 2007.

00369
2
Distinctions and Honors:

Certificates of Merit for Outstandingly Good Work in Psychology and Economics,
University of Natal .............................................................................1971, 1972
Economics Society of South Africa Annual Essay Prize ..........................................1972
Prize Fellowship in the Social Sciences, Yale University .........................................1975/76
Young Psychologist Award, American Psychological Association ..........................1976
Boyd R. McCandless Young Scientist Award
(American Psychological Association) ..............................................1978
Superior Research Award, College of Social and Behavioral Sciences,
University of Utah..............................................................................1985
Distinguished Research Award, University of Utah .................................................1986
Distinguished Speaker Award, American Family Therapy Association ...................1987
Ph.D. (Honoris Causa), University of Goteborg, Sweden.1995
Hammer Award for Helping to build a better government (Co-recipient),
Vice-President Albert Gore................................................................1998
James McKeen Cattell Fellow Award for Lifetime Achievement, American
Psychological Society. 2003
Doctor of Civil Law (Honoris Causa), University of East Anglia, UK. 2006
Salt Lake County Childrens Justice Award...2011
Awarded status of Academician by Academy of Social Sciences..2013
Distinguished Contribution Award, American Psychology-Law Society..2013
Tom Williamson Award for "Promoting best practices in investigative
interviewing in respect of fundamental human rights,
International Investigative Interviewing Research Group.2013
G. Stanley Hall Award for Distinguished Contribution to Developmental
Psychology (American Psychological Association).......2014

Professional Committee Membership and Services:

American Psychological Association, Boyd R. McCandless Award Selection Committee, 1979
and 1980
Society for Research in Child Development, Committee on Study Groups and Institutes,
1983-1987
Social Science Research Council Committee: Biosocial perspectives on parental behavior,
1983-1991
Consultant, Municipality of Jerusalem (Israel), Department of Community and Family Services
(1987-1994)
Advisory Working Group, U. S. Department of Education, Observational Study of Early
Childhood Programs (1990-1993)
International Advisory Committee, Interdisziplinres Zentrum fr Angewandte
Sozialisationsforschung, Berlin (1991-1996)
External Advisory (Visiting) Committee, Michigan State University, Institute for Children,
Youth and Families (1992-1999)
Advisory Panel, American Enterprise Institute, Project on Disconnected Youth (1992-1995)
International Committee, Division 7 (Developmental Psychology), American Psychological
Association (1993-1996)
00370
3
National Advisory Board, Mens Health Network (1993-1997)
National Advisory Board, Program in Teacher Preparation and Special Education, George
Washington University (1994-1997)
National Advisory Council, SOS Childrens Villages-USA (1994-1997)
National Advisory Board, National Fatherhood Initiative (1994-2004)
International Advisory Committee, Human Development Resource Centre, Bamenda, Cameroon
(1995-present)
American Professional Society on the Abuse of Children (National Research Committee
member, 1999-2004; Maryland State Board, 1998-2001; Executive
Committee, Maryland Chapter, 1998-2000; Chair, Maryland Training and
Education Committee, 1998-2000)
Board of Directors, National Center for Policy Research for Women and Families (1999-2003)
National Advisory Committee on Early Care and Education, Institute for Womens Policy
Research (2001-2003)
Steering Committee, Center for Substance Abuse Preventions FAS (Fetal Alcohol Syndrome)
Center for Excellence (2001-2002)
Board of Trustees, Fatherhood Institute [formerly Fathers Direct] (2005 2009)
Advisory Board, Center for the International Study of Youth and Political Violence, University
of Tennessee (2005- present)
Joseph Rowntree Foundation Advisory Group for research on Fathering in early-middle
childhood in UK South Asian families (2006- 2009)
Joseph Rowntree Foundation Advisory Group for research on Understanding fatherhood:
Masculinity, diversity and change (2006- 2008)
U. K. Economic and Social Science Research Council (2006 2011; Chair, International
Advisory Committee, 2007-2011; Member, Audit Committee, 2006-
2011)
British Council Science and Engineering Advisory Group and Council Member (2007-present)
Association for Psychological Science Cattell Award Selection Committee (2009-present; Chair,
2013-present)
Wissenschaftlichen Beirat, Niedersachsischen Instituts fur fruhkindliche Bildung und
Entwicklung [Scientific Advisory Committee, Lower Saxony Institute for
Child Development and Education] (2009-2011)
Wissenschaftlichen Beirat, Fakultt fr Psychologie, Universitt Wien [Scientific Advisory
Board, Faculty of Psychology, University of Vienna] (2011-2015)
U. K. Higher Education Funding Councils Research Excellence Framework 2014: Member of
sub-panel 4: Psychology, Psychiatry, and Neuroscience (2011-2015)

Grant Proposal Review Committees:

National Science Foundation Experimental Program Review and Study Committee (1980)
National Institute of Mental Health, Study Committee for Review of Proposed Research on the
Effects of Divorce (1980)
National Institute on Child Health and Human Development, Study Panel on Human
Development and Aging (1981)
National Institute of Mental Health, Panel on Cognition, Emotion and Personality (1985-1989)

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4
Ad-hoc Grant Proposal Review:

Australian Research Grants Committee, Big Lottery Fund, Carnegie Foundation, Economic and
Social Research Council, Grant Foundation, Leverhulme Foundation, US National Institute of
Child Health and Human Development, US National Institute of Education, US National
Institute of Mental Health, US National Science Foundation, New Zealand Research Grants
Committee, Nuffield Foundation, Research Council of Canada, Social Science and Humanities
Research Council of Canada, Spencer Foundation, Thrasher Foundation

Editorial Board Memberships:

Apprentissage et Socialisation (1992-1994)
Applied Cognitive Psychology (2007-present)
Applied Developmental Science (2005-present)
Archives of Scientific Psychology (Associate Editor, 2012-present)
Behavioral Assessment (1982-1983)
The Behavioral and Brain Sciences (1979-1990)
Child Abuse and Neglect (2002-present; Associate Editor: 2005-present)
Child Development (1979-1984; 1993-1996)
Childbirth Educator (1982-1989)
Developmental Psychology (1981-1986; 1992-1994)
Developmental Review (2000-present)
Early Education and Development (1989-1993)
Family Court Review (2002-2008)
Fathering (2002-present)
Human Nature (1989-1996)
Infant Behavior and Development (1980-present)
Infant Mental Health Journal (1984-1987)
International Journal of Behavioral Development (1993-2001)
Journal of Adolescent Research (1986-present)
Journal of Aggression, Maltreatment, and Trauma (1997-2005)
Journal of Child Custody (2002-2013)
Journal of Credibility Assessment and Witness Psychology (1996-2000)
Journal of Marriage and the Family (1992-1999; 2001-2002)
Journal of Social and Personal Relations (1983-1987)
Psychology, Public Policy, and Law (2010-present; Editor-Elect, 2012; Editor,
2013-2018)
Social Development (1990-present)

Editorial Consultant:

American Psychologist, American Scientist, Canadian Journal of Behavioural Science, Child
Maltreatment, Current Directions in Psychological Science, Developmental Psychobiology,
Early Childhood Research Quarterly, Family Coordinator, Family Relations, Human
Development, Human Organization, Human Relations, Journal of Applied Developmental
Psychology, Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, Journal of Consulting and Clinical
Psychology, Journal of Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrics, Journal of Experimental
00372
5
Child Psychology, Journal of Family Psychology, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology,
Law and Human Behavior, Legal and Criminological Psychology, Merrill-Palmer Quarterly,
Pediatrics, Personality and Individual Differences, Psychological Bulletin, Psychological
Science, Science

Conference Review Panels:
American Psychological Association, 1983, 1984
American Psychology-Law Society Convention, 1996, 2000, 2006, 2008, 2009, 2011, 2012,
2113
European Conference on Traumatic Stress, 2009
Head Start National Research Conference, 1992, 1994, 1996, 1998, 1999, 2000,
2002, 2004 (Program Committee)
International Conference on Infant Studies, 1982, 1984 (panel chair), 1986, 1990
International Society for the Study of Behavioural Development, 2002, 2004
Society for Research in Child Development, 1979, 1981, 1989, 2001, 2007, 2009, 2013
World Congress on Infant Psychiatry and Allied Disciplines, 1986

Publication Review:
Academic Press, Blackwell Press, Cambridge University Press, Cummings Publishing Co.,
Harvard University Press, Holt, Rinehart, & Winston, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, McGraw
Hill, Michigan State University Press, Oxford University Press, Pergamon, Psychology Press,
Random House, Sage, University of Chicago Press, University of Wisconsin Press, Wiley.

Society Memberships:
American Psychological Association
American Psychology-Law Society
Association for Psychological Science (Fellow)
British Psychological Association (Fellow)
Society for Research in Child Development
International Investigative Interviewing Research Group (member, Scientific Committee)

University, Institutional, and Community Service:
Chair, Colloquium Committee, Department of Psychology, University of Michigan, 1978-1980
Graduate Committee, Department of Psychology, University of Michigan, 1978-1980
Chair, Admissions Committee, Developmental Psychology Area, University of Michigan,
1978-1979
Executive Committee, Center for Human Growth and Development, University of Michigan,
1980
Member, Deans Steering Committee to Develop and Establish a Graduate Program in the
Neurosciences, University of Utah School of Medicine, 1982-1985
Academic Freedom and Tenure Committee, University of Utah, 1982-1985
Executive Committee, Department of Psychology, University of Utah, 1982-1986
Personnel Committee, Department of Psychology, University of Utah, 1981-1984
Coordinator, Developmental Area, Department of Psychology, University of Utah, 1982- 1986
University Promotion and Tenure Advisory Committee, University of Utah, 1985-1987
University of Utah Campus representative, nationwide TIAA Divestment Campaign (1985-87)
00373
6
College of Social and Behavioral Sciences, Superior Research Award Committee, University of
Utah, 1986
National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, Equal Employment Opportunity
Committee, 1988-1990; 1993-1995 (Co-chair, 1994-1995)
National Institutes of Health Day Care Oversight Board, 1995-1997 (Chair, Evaluation
Subcommittee, 1997)
National Institutes of Health, Office of Behavioral and Social Sciences Research Working Group
on Intramural Activities, Committee member, 1996.
International Advisory Board, Center for Global Law and Human Rights, University of Natal,
South Africa, 2003-2005.
Membre dHonneur Fondateur: Association Poesie, Arts, et Vie, 2004 present.
Management Committee, Centre for Family Research, University of Cambridge, 2004 - present.
Board of Electors (Convenor), Professorship of Family Research, University of Cambridge,
2004-2005.
Faculty Board, Faculty of Social and Political Sciences, University of Cambridge, 2004 - 2009.
Psychology Research Ethics Committee, University of Cambridge, 2004 present.
General Purposes Committee, Faculty of Social and Political Sciences, University of Cambridge,
2005 2010 (Chair, 2007-2008).
Board of Electors, Professorship of Evidence-Based Intervention, University of Oxford, 2006.
Head, Department of Social and Developmental Psychology, University of Cambridge, 2005-
2012.
Research Policy Committee, University of Cambridge, 2007- 2012.
Deputy Chair, Faculty of Social and Political Sciences, University of Cambridge, 2007-2008.
Faculty Board, Faculty of Politics, Psychology, Sociology, and International Studies, 2009-2011.
Faculty board, Faculty of Human, Social, and Political Science, 2012.
Cambridge University Research Ethics Committee, 2012-2015.

Memberships in Community Organizations

American Civil Liberties Union, Cambridge: Past, Present, & Future, Human Rights Watch.

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Research Grant Support History

The development of father-infant and mother-infant relationships in the first year of life.
(7/1/74 to 6/30/75: $5,200). Ecology of Human Development Program of the Foundation for
Child Development (Principal Investigator).

The development of parent-infant relationships in the second year of life (7/1/75 to 6/30/76:
$5,200). Ecology of Human Development Program of the Foundation for Child Development
(Principal Investigator).

Mother-, father-, and sibling-infant relationships in the first two years of life (7/1/76 to
6/30/77: $10,000). Graduate School Research Committee of the University of
Wisconsin-Madison (Principal Investigator).

Familial antecedents of achievement orientation in preschool-aged children. (7/1/76 to
6/30/77: $5,000). Spencer Foundation of Chicago (Principal Investigator).

The effects of infant signals and characteristics on parental physiological responses (9/1/76 to
8/31/77: $2,000). National Institutes of Health Biomedical Research Support Grant (Principal
Investigator).

Study group to explore Methodological problems in the study of social interaction (July 1977:
$7,000). Society for Research in Child Development (Principal Organizer; co-organizers
Stephen J. Suomi, Gordon R. Stephenson).

The development of social relationships within and beyond the family in infancy (7/1/77 to
6/30/78: $9,000). Graduate School Research Committee of the University of
Wisconsin-Madison (Principal Investigator).

The determinants and consequences of security of parent-infant attachments (5/1/78 to
4/30/79: $5,000). Faculty Research Grant from the Rackham School of Graduate Studies at the
University of Michigan.

Determinants of early cognitive development in preterm infants (3/1/78 to 2/28/80: $26,000).
The National Foundation/March of Dimes (Co-Investigator; Principal Investigator was Gary M.
Olson).

Infant social development in traditional and nontraditional families (7/1/78 to 6/30/81:
$201,000). Riksbankens Jubileumsfond of Sweden (Principal Investigator).

Maternal employment and infant social development (1/1/79 to 12/31/81: $45,000). Spencer
Foundation of Chicago (Principal Investigator; Co-investigators were Margaret Owen and
Lindsay Chase-Lansdale).

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8
Study group to explore The role of the father in child development, social policy, and the law
(July 1980: approx. $6,000). Society for Research in Child Development (Co-organizer;
Principal organizer, Abraham Sagi).

Infant social and emotional development (7/1/80 to 6/30/81: $8000). University of Utah
Research Committee (Principal Investigator).

Infant social and emotional development (7/1/80 to 6/30/81: $6000). National Institute of
Mental Health Biomedical Research Support Grant (Principal Investigator).

Developing expectations in infancy: A longitudinal study of behavior in two social contexts
(4/1/81 to 3/31/83: $100,000). National Science Foundation (Principal Investigator).

The Fatherhood Project (9/1/81 to 8/31/83: $425,000). The Ford Foundation, The Levi
Strauss Foundation, The Ittelson Foundation, and The Rockefeller Family Foundation
(Co-Principal Investigator with James A. Levine and Joseph H. Pleck).

Effects of center day care, family day care, and home care on socioemotional development
(7/1/82 to 6/30/86: 1,405,000 Skr Riksbankens Jubileumsfond of Sweden (Co-Principal
Investigator with Carl-Philip Hwang).

Training program in developmental psychology (7/1/82 to 6/30/87: $215.940). National
Institute of Mental Health (Director of Training Program, University of Utah).

Study group to explore Adolescent Fatherhood (May 1984: approx. $6,000). Society for
Research in Child Development (Co-organizer: Principal organizer, Arthur Elster).

Quality of care and childrens adjustment to out-of-home care (12/1/83 to 11/30/84: $5000).
University of Utah Research Committee (Principal Investigator).

Study group to explore The interface between social scientists and the the real world.
(September 1984: $8,000). The Harris Foundation (Co-Principal Organizer with Abraham
Sagi).

Fathers of infants with adolescent mothers (10/1/84 to 9/30/88: $236967 in direct costs).
Office of Adolescent Pregnancy Programs (Co-Principal Investigator with Arthur B. Elster).

Section on Social and Emotional Development, Intramural Research Program, National Institute
of Child Health and Human Development (4/1987 to 9/2004: research costs averaging $850,000
per annum; 10/2004 to 9/2006: research costs averaging $500,000 per annum).

Long term effects of varying early life experiences (3/1988 to 2/1991: 950,000 Skr)..
Riksbanken Jubileumsfond of Sweden (Co-Principal Investigator with Carl-Philip Hwang).

Mother-son attributions and aggressive interactions (8/1990 to 7/1993: $338,599). National
Institute of Mental Health (Co-Investigator with Carol MacKinnon)

00376
9
The relation between mother-son attributions and the aggressiveness of their interactions
(10/1989 to 9/1992: $250,000). National Science Foundation (Co-Investigator with Carol
MacKinnon).

Long term effects of varying early life experiences (3/1997 to 2/1999: 1,000,000 Skr).

Long term effects of varying early life experiences (7/2002 to 7/2005: 1,950,000 Skr).

The development of living conditions of children (6/2005 to 5/2011: 1,350,000 Skr per
annum). Swedish Council for Working Life and Social Research (Co-Organizer; Principal
Organizer is Carl-Philip Hwang).

Facilitating eyewitness testimony in children with learning disabilities. (7/2004 to 6/2006:
149,842). Economic and Social Research Council (Co-investigator with Deidre Brown and
Charlie Lewis).

Do best practice forensic interviews with child abuse victims influence case outcomes?
(10/2006 to 3/2008: $173,089). US National Institute of Justice (Co-investigator with Margaret-
Ellen Pipe and Yael Orbach).

Strategies for interviewing children who are reluctant to disclose abuse (7/2007 to 6/2010:
199,529). The Nuffield Foundation (Principal Investigator).

Strategies for interviewing children who are reluctant to disclose abuse (7/2007 to 6/2010:
50,589). The Isaac Newton Trust (Principal Investigator).

Parenting and the psychological development of children in gay father families. (10/2009 to
9/2012: 351,863). The Economic and Social Research Council (Co-Investigator; Principal
Investigator is Susan Golombok).

Childrens evidence in criminal proceedings. (April 2011: 6000). Nuffield Foundation
Conference Grant (Co-Investigator is John Spencer).

Gay father families: The development of early parent-child relationships. (1/2013 to 12/2015:
approx. 900,000, including 629835 for British arm of study). U. K. Economic and Social
Research Council, French Agence Nationale de la Recherche, and Nederlands Organisatie voor
Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek (Principal Investigator; Co-Investigators are Hennie Bos
(Netherlands), Susan Golombok (UK), Martine Gross (France), and Olivier Vecho (France)).

Timely disclosures mean timely interventions for young offenders and victims. (1/2013 to
12/2017: 340,000). Jacobs Foundation (Principal Investigator).

Timely disclosures mean timely interventions for young offenders and victims. (1/2013 to
12/2017: 340,000). Nuffield Foundation (Principal Investigator).
00377
10
Publications

Lamb, M. E. The effects of maternal deprivation on the development of the concepts of object
and person. Journal of Behavioural Science, 1973, 1, 355-364.
Lamb, M. E. Review of Separation: Anxiety and anger by John Bowlby. Journal of
Behavioural Science, 1973, 1, 372-373.
Lamb, M. E. A defense of the concept of attachment. Human Development, 1974, 17, 376- 385.
Lamb, M. E. Physiological mechanisms in the control of maternal behavior in rats: A
review. Psychological Bulletin, 1975, 82, 104-119.
Lamb, M. E. The sociability of two-year-olds with their mothers and fathers. Child Psychiatry
and Human Development, 1975, 5, 182-188.
Lamb, M. E. Fathers: Forgotten contributors to child development. Human Development, 1975,
18, 245-266.
Lamb, M. E. The relationships between infants and their mothers and fathers. Dissertation
Abstracts International, 1976, 37 (6B), 3153.
Lamb, M. E. (Ed.) The role of the father in child development. New York: Wiley, 1976.
Japanese translation published in 1981 by Kasei Publishers.
Lamb, M. E. The role of the father: An overview. In M. E. Lamb (Ed.), The role of the father
in child development (pp. 1-63). New York: Wiley, 1976.
Lamb, M. E. Interactions between eight-month-old children and their fathers and mothers. In
M. E. Lamb (Ed.), The role of the father in child development (pp. 307-327). New York:
Wiley, 1976.
Lamb, M. E. Proximity seeking attachment behaviors: A critical review of the literature.
Genetic Psychology Monographs, 1976, 93, 63-89.
Lamb, M. E. Interactions between two-year-olds and their mothers and fathers. Psychological
Reports, 1976, 38, 447-450.
Lamb, M. E. Twelve-month-olds and their parents: Interaction in a laboratory playroom.
Developmental Psychology, 1976, 12, 237-244.
Lamb, M. E. Effects of stress and cohort on mother-and father-infant interaction. Developmental
Psychology, 1976, 12, 435-443.
Lamb, M. E. Parent-infant interaction in eight-month-olds. Child Psychiatry and Human
Development, 1976, 7, 56-63.
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Tracy, R. L., Lamb, M. E., & Ainsworth, M. D. S. Infant approach behavior as related to
attachment. Child Development, 1976, 47, 571-578.
Lamb, M. E., & Lamb, J. E. The nature and importance of the father-infant relationship. The
Family Coordinator, 1976, 25, 379-385.
Reprinted in E. Murray (Ed.), The childs first learning environment: Selected readings
in home economics (pp. 45-47). Paris: UNESCO, 1980.
Lamb, M. E. A re-examination of the infant social world. Human Development, 1977, 20,
65-85.
Lamb, M. E. Father-infant and mother-infant interaction in the first year of life. Child
Development, 1977, 48, 167-181.
Reprinted in Gladys K. Phelan (Ed.), Family relationship: Selected readings (pp.
171-183). Minneapolis: Burgess, 1979.
Lamb, M. E. Infant attachment to mothers and fathers. In S. Cohen & T.J. Comiskey (Eds.)
Child development: A study of growth processes (pp. 167-180). Itasca, Ill.: Peacock,
1977.
Lamb, M. E. The development of parental preferences in the first two years of life. Sex Roles,
1977, 3, 495-497.
Reprinted in Roger C. Bailey (Ed.), New horizons in applying psychology. Monterey
CA: Brooks/Cole, 1980.
Lamb, M. E. The development of mother-infant and father-infant attachments in the second year
of life. Developmental Psychology, 1977, 13, 637-648.
Lamb, M. E. The effects of divorce on childrens personality development. Journal of Divorce,
1977, 1, 163-174.
Lamb, M. E. Infant social cognition and second-order effects. Infant Behavior and
Development, 1978, 1, 1-10.
Lamb, M. E. (Ed.) Social and personality development. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston,
Inc., 1978.
Lamb, M. E. Sociopersonality development: Introduction to a burgeoning field. In M. E. Lamb
(Ed.), Social and personality development (pp. 1-21). New York: Holt, Rinehart &
Winston, Inc., 1978.
Lamb, M. E. Social interaction in infancy and the development of personality. In M. E. Lamb
(Ed.), Social and personality development (pp. 26-49). New York: Holt, Rinehart &
Winston, Inc., 1978.
00379
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Lamb, M. E., & Baumrind, D. Socialization and personality development in the preschool years.
In M. E. Lamb (Ed.), Social and personality development (pp. 50-69). New York: Holt,
Rinehart & Winston, Inc., 1978.
Lamb, M. E., & Urberg, K. A. The development of gender role and gender identity. In M. E.
Lamb (Ed.), Social and personality development (pp. 178-199). New York: Holt,
Lamb, M. E. Psychosocial development: A theoretical overview and a look into the future. In
M. E. Lamb (Ed.), Social and personality development (pp. 307-317). New York: Holt,
Lamb, M. E. The influence of the child on marital quality and family interaction during the
prenatal, paranatal, and infancy periods. In R. M. Lerner & G. B. Spanier (Eds.), Child
influences on marital and family interaction: A lifespan perspective (pp. 137-163). New
York: Academic Press, 1978.
Lamb, M. E. The fathers role in the infants social world. In J. H. Stevens & M. Mathews
(Eds.), Mother/child, father/child relationships (pp. 87-108). Washington: National
Association for the Education of Young Children, 1978.
Lamb, M. E. & Stevenson, M. D. Father-infant relationships: Their nature and importance.
Youth and Society, 1978, 9, 277-298.
Lamb, M. E. Interactions between eighteen-month-olds and their preschool-aged siblings. Child
Development, 1978, 49, 51-59.
Reprinted in J. Belsky (Ed.), In the beginning: Readings in infancy (pp. 227-232). New
York: Columbia University Press, 1982.
Lamb, M. E. Qualitative aspects of mother-and father-infant attachments. Infant Behavior and
Development, 1978, 1, 265-275.
Rajecki, D. W., Lamb, M. E., & Suomi, S. J. Effects of multiple peer separation in domestic
chicks. Developmental Psychology, 1978, 14, 379-387.
Frodi, A. M., Lamb, M. E., Leavitt, L. A., & Donovan, W. L. Fathers and mothers responses to
infant smiles and cries. Infant Behavior and Development, 1978, 1, 187-198.
Roopnarine, J. L., & Lamb, M. E. The effects of day care on attachment and exploratory
behavior in a strange situation. Merrill-Palmer Quarterly, 1978, 24, 85-95.
Reprinted in J. G. Howells (Ed.), Advances in family psychiatry. (Vol. 4, pp. 473-483).
New York: International Universities Press, 1981.
Lamb, M. E. Review of Part-time father by E. Atkin & E. Rubin. The Family Coordinator,
1978, 27, 477-478.
00380
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Frodi, A. M., Lamb, M. E., Leavitt, L. A., Donovan, W. L., Neff, C., & Sherry, D. Fathers and
mothers responses to the faces and cries of normal and premature infants.
Frodi, A. M., & Lamb, M. E. Sex differences in physiological and behavioral responses to infant
signals: A developmental study. Proceedings of the Iowa Academy of Science (Ames),
1978.
Lamb, M. E. The development of sibling relationships in infancy: A short-term longitudinal
study. Child Development, 1978, 49, 1189-1196.
Frodi, A. M., & Lamb, M. E. Sex differences in responsiveness to infants: A developmental
study of psychophysiological and behavioral responses. Child Development, 1978, 49,
1182-1188.
infant smiles and cries. Psychophysiology, 1978, 15, 276. (Abstract)
Lamb, M. E. I rapporti fra madri, padri, bambini e fratelli nei prima due anni di vita (The
relationship between mothers, fathers, infants, and siblings in the first two years of life.)
In M. Cesa-Bianchi & M. Poli (Eds.), Aspetti biosociali dello sviluppo. Vol. 1. Aspetti
medico-biologici (Atti del IV congresso biennale della ISSDB). Milan, Italy: Franco
Angeli, 1979.
Lamb, M. E., Suomi, S. J., & Stephenson, G. R. (Eds.). Social interaction analysis:
Methodological issues. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1979.
Lamb, M. E. Issues in the study of social interaction: An introduction. In M. E. Lamb, S. J.
Suomi & G. R. Stephenson (Eds.), Social interaction analysis: Methodological issues
(pp. 1-10). Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1979.
Lamb, M. E. The effects of the social context on dyadic social interaction. In M. E. Lamb, S. J.
Suomi & G. R. Stephenson (Eds.), Social interaction analysis: Methodological issues
(pp. 253-268). Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1979.
Rajecki, D. W. Lamb, M. E., and Obmascher, P. Toward a general theory of infantile
attachment: A comparative review of aspects of the social bond. Behavioral and Brain
Sciences, 1979, 1, 417-436.
Rajecki, D.W., & Lamb, M. E. Interpretations, reinterpretations, and alleged misinterpretations
of theory and data concerning attachment. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 1979, 1
461-464.
Lamb, M. E. Review of Fathers, mothers and society by Rappoport, Rappoport, and Strelitz.
American Scientist, 1979, 67, 112-113.
Lamb, M. E. Paternal effects and the fathers role: A personal perspective. American
Psychologist, 1979, 34, 938-943.
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Reprinted by Ginn Custom Publishing, Lexington, Mass., 1980 et seq.
Reprinted in UNESCO Ideas Forum, 1981, 1 (4), supplement 10, pp. 1-2, 6.
Reprinted in E. Zigler, M. E. Lamb & I. L. Child (Eds.), Socialization and personality
development. New York: Oxford University Press, 1982.
Reprinted in J. K. Gardner (Ed.), Readings in developmental psychology (Second
edition). Boston: Little, Brown, 1982.
Reprinted in Annual Editions: Social Psychology, 1982 (pp. 68-73). Guilford, CT:
Dushkin Publishing, 1982.
Stevenson, M. B., & Lamb, M. E. The effects of sociability and the caretaking environment on
infant cognitive performance. Child Development, 1979, 50, 340-349.
Lamb, M. E., Chase-Lansdale, P. L. & Owen, M. T. The changing American family and its
implications for infant social development: The sample case of maternal employment. In
M. Lewis & L. A. Rosenblum (Eds.) The child and its family (pp. 267-291). New York:
Plenum, 1979.
Lamb, M. E., Owen, M. T., & Chase-Lansdale, L. The father-daughter relationship: Past,
present and future. In C. B. Kopp & M. Kirkpatrick (Eds.), Becoming female:
Perspectives on development (pp. 89-112). New York: Plenum, 1979.
Lamb, M. E. Infant social development: Reflections on a theme. Human Development, 1979,
22, 68-72.
Easterbrooks, M. A., & Lamb, M. E. The relationships between quality of infant-mother
attachment and infant competence in initial encounters with peers. Child Development,
1979, 50, 380-387.
Lamb, M. E. Origins of the sense of security: A review of Patterns of attachment: A
psychological study of the strange situation. Science, 1979, 24, 730-731.
Reprinted in Infant Mental Health Journal, 1980, 1, 68-70.
Frodi, A. M., & Lamb, M. E. Psychophysiological responses to infant signals in abusive mothers
and mothers of premature infants. Psychophysiology, 1979, 16, 183. (Abstract)
Lamb, M. E., & Roopnarine, J. L. Peer influences on sex-role development in preschoolers.
Child Development, 1979, 50, 1219-1222.
Lamb, M. E. Separation and reunion behaviors as criteria of attachment to mothers and fathers.
Early Human Development, 1979, 3/4, 329-339.
Rajecki, D. W., & Lamb, M. E. Infant attachment: Some further thoughts about theory and
method. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 1979, 2, 644-647.
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Frodi, A. M., & Lamb, M. E. Research on parental physiological responses to infant signals. Cry
Research Newsletter, 1979, 1 (3).
Lamb, M. E., & Frodi, A. M. The role of the father in child development. In R. R. Abidin (Ed.),
Parent education and intervention handbook. Springfield, Ill.: Charles C. Thomas, 1980
(pp. 36-58).
Lamb, M. E., Owen, M. T., & Chase-Lansdale, L. The working mother in the intact family: A
process model. In R. R. Abidin (Ed.), Parent education and intervention handbook.
Springfield, Ill.: Charles C. Thomas, 1980 (pp. 59-81).
Lamb, M. E. What can `research experts tell parents about effective socialization? In M. D.
Fantini & R. Cardenas (eds.), Parenting in a multi-cultural society. London & New
York: Longmans, 1980 (pp. 160-169).
Reprinted in E. Zigler, M. E. Lamb & I. L. Child (Eds.), Socialization and personality
development. New York: Oxford University Press, 1982.
Updated, translated into Japanese, and republished in Child socialization and
parenting education (pp. 45-56). Saitama, Japan: National Womens Education
Center, 1991.
Lamb, M. E. The development of parent-infant attachments in the first two years of life. In F. A.
Pedersen (Ed.), The father-infant relationship: Observational studies in a family setting.
New York: Praeger Special Studies, 1980 (pp. 21-43).
Lamb, M. E., & Bronson, S. K. The role of the father in child development: Past presumptions,
present realities, and the future potential. In K. Berry (Ed.), Fatherhood and the male
single parent. Omaha: Eastern Nebraska Office of Mental Health, 1980.
Lamb, M. E. Growing up in the 1980s. In F. Littman (Ed.), Focus on the family: New images
of parents and children in the 1980s. Boston: Wheelock College, 1980 (pp. 39-60).
Lamb, M. E., & Bronson, S. K. Fathers in the context of family influences: Past, present, and
future. School Psychology Digest, 1980, 9, 336-353.
Roopnarine, J. L., & Lamb, M. E. Peer and parent child interaction before and after enrollment
in nursery school. Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, 1980, 1, 77-81.
Frodi, A. M., & Lamb, M. E. Child abusers responses to infant smiles and cries. Child
Development, 1980, 51, 238-241.
Lamb, M. E. The fathers role in the facilitation of infant mental health. Infant Mental Health
Journal, 1980, 1, 140-149.
Frodi, A. M., & Lamb, M. E. Infants at risk for child abuse. Infant Mental Health Journal,
1980, 1, 240-247.
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Lamb, M. E. Unfulfilled promises: A review of The dynamics of psychological development by
Alexander Thomas and Stella Chess. Contemporary Psychology, 1980, 25, 906- 907.
Lamb, M. E., Easterbrooks, M. A., & Holden, G. W. Reinforcement and punishment among
preschoolers: Characteristics, effects and correlates. Child Development, 1980, 51,
1230-1236.
Reprinted by Ginn Custom Publishing, Lexington, MA., 1982 et seq.
Lamb, M. E. On the origins and implications of sex differences in human sexuality. Behavioral
and Brain Sciences, 1980, 3, 192-193.
Frodi, A. M., Lamb, M. E., & Wille, D. Mothers responses to the cries of normal and premature
infants as a function of the birth status of their own child. Journal of Research in
Personality, 1981, 15, 122-133.
Lamb, M. E. Cultural differences in father-child relationshipsJapan and the United States
:Comments on Shwalb and Imaizumis paper. Hiroshima Forum for Psychology, 1981,
8, 65-67.
Stipek, D. J., Lamb, M. E., Zigler, E. F. OPTI: A measure of childrens optimism. Journal of
Educational and Psychological Measurement, 1981, 41, 131-143.
Hwang, C.-P., Lamb, M. E., Frodi, A. M., Frodi, M., & Steinberg, J. The parent-infant
relationship in traditional and nontraditional families: Attitudes and behavior. Goteborg
Psychological Reports, 1981, 11, whole number 6.
Perloff, R. M., & Lamb, M. E. The development of gender roles: An integrative life-span
perspective. J.S.A.S. Catalog of Selected Documents in Psychology, 1981, 11, 52
(Manuscript No. 2294).
Lamb, M. E., Garn, S. M., & Keating, M. T. Correlations between sociability and cognitive
performance among eight-month-olds. Child Development, 1981, 52, 711-713.
Lamb, M. E., & Brown, A. L. (Eds.) Advances in developmental psychology (Vol. 1). Hillsdale,
N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1981.
Lamb, M. E. Developing trust and perceived effectance in infancy. In L. P. Lipsitt (Ed.),
Advances in infancy research (Vol. 1). Norwood, N.J.: Ablex, 1981 (pp. 101- 127).
Lamb, M. E. Grief and mourning in children and adults: A review of Loss: Sadness and
depression by John Bowlby. The Yale Review, 1981, 70, 463-466.
Lamb, M. E. Mothers and fathers: The special childs special resources. The Forum (CEC New
York State), 1981, 7 (2), pp. 5, 21.
Lamb, M. E. But wheres the contribution? Contemporary Psychology, 1981, 26, 487.
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Lamb, M. E. (ed.) The role of the father in child development (Revised edition). New York:
Wiley, 1981.
Lamb, M. E. Fathers and child development: An integrative overview. In M. E. Lamb (Ed.), The
role of the father in child development (Revised edition). New York: Wiley, 1981 (pp.
1-70).
Lamb, M. E. The development of father-infant relationships. In M. E. Lamb (Ed.), The role of
the father in child development (Revised edition). New York: Wiley, 1981 (pp.
459-488).
Lamb, M. E. Six definitions of competenceReview of Aspects of the development of
competence: The Minnesota symposium on child psychology (Vol. 14), W. A. Collins
(Ed.). American Scientist, 1981, 69, 682.
Lamb, M. E. & Sherrod, L. R. (Eds.), Infant social cognition: Empirical and theoretical
considerations. Hillsdale, NJ: .: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1981.
Sherrod, L. R., & Lamb, M. E. Infant social cognition: An introduction. In M. E. Lamb & L. R.
Sherrod (Eds.), Infant social cognition: Empirical and theoretical considerations.
Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1981 (pp 1-10).
Lamb, M. E., & Easterbrooks, M. A. Individual differences in parental sensitivity: Origins,
components, and consequences. In M. E. Lamb & L. R. Sherrod (Eds.), Infant social
cognition: Empirical and theoretical considerations. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum
Associates, 1981 (pp. 127-153).
Lamb, M. E. The development of social expectations in the first year of life. In M. E. Lamb &
L. R. Sherrod (Eds.), Infant social cognition: Empirical and theoretical considerations.
Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1981 (pp. 155-175).
Stevenson, M. B., & Lamb, M. E. The effects of social experience and social style on cognitive
competence and performance. In M. E. Lamb & L. R. Sherrod (Eds.), Infant social
cognition: Empirical and theoretical considerations. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum
Associates, 1981 (pp. 375-394).
Lamb, M. E., Garn, S. M., & Keating, M. T. Correlations between sociability and cognitive
performance among eight-month-olds. Child Development, 1981, 52, 711-713.
Lamb, M. E. Paternal influences on early socioemotional development. Journal of Child
Psychology and Psychiatry, 1982, 23, 185-190.
Lamb, M. E. Review of Patterns of attachment: A psychological study of the Strange Situation.
Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 1982, 23, 85-87.
Lamb, M. E., Garn, S. M., & Keating, M. T. Correlations between sociability and motor
performance scores in eight-month-olds. Infant Behavior and Development, 1982, 5,
97-101.
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Olson G. M., & Lamb, M. E. Premature infants: Cognitive and social development in the first
year of life. In J. M. Stack (Ed.), An interdisciplinary approach to the optimal
development of infants: The special child. New York: Human Sciences Press, 1982 (pp.
71-89).
Hall, E. (with M. E. Lamb & M. J. Perlmutter) Child psychology today. New York: Random
House, 1982.
Lamb, M. E. Second thoughts on first touch. Psychology Today, 1982, 16 (4), 9-11.
Lamb, M. E. On the familial origins of personality and social style. In L. Laosa & I. Sigel
(Eds.), FamiliesResearch and practice Vol 1. Families as learning environments for
children. New York: Plenum, 1982 (pp. 179-202).
Lamb, M. E. Social interaction, attachment, and socioemotional development in infancy. In R.
N. Emde & R. J. Harmon (Eds.), Development of attachment and affiliative systems.
New York: Plenum, 1982 (pp. 195-212).
Lamb, M. E., Frodi, A. M., Hwang, C. -P., Frodi, M., & Steinberg, J. Effects of gender and
caretaking role on parent-infant interaction. In R. N. Emde & R. J. Harmon (Eds.),
Development of attachment and affiliative systems. New York: Plenum, 1982 (pp.
109-118).
Lamb, M. E., & Brown, A. L. (Eds.), Advances in developmental psychology (Vol. 2). Hillsdale,
N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1982.
Lamb, M. E., & Hwang, C.-P. Maternal attachment and mother-neonate bonding: A critical
review. In M. E. Lamb & A. L. Brown (Eds.), Advances in developmental psychology
(Vol. 2). Hillsdale, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1982 (pp. 1-39).
Lamb, M. E., & Goldberg, W. A. The father-child relationship: A synthesis of biological,
evolutionary and social perspectives. In L. W. Hoffman, R. Gandelman & H. R.
Schiffman (Eds.), Parenting: Its causes and consequences. Hillsdale, N.J.: Lawrence
Erlbaum Associates, 1982 (pp. 55-73).
Lamb, M. E., & Campos, J. J. Development in infancy: An introduction. New York: Random
House, 1982.
Lamb, M. E., Thompson, R. A. & Frodi, A. M. Early social development. In R. A. Vasta (Ed.),
Strategies and techniques of child study. New York: Academic Press, 1982 (pp. 42-91).
Lamb, M. E., Frodi, A. M., Frodi, M., & Hwang, C. -P. Characteristics of maternal and paternal
behavior in traditional and nontraditional Swedish families. International Journal of
Behavioral Development, 1982, 5, 131-141.
Lamb, M. E., Frodi, A. M., Hwang, C. -P., Frodi, M., & Steinberg, J. Mother-and father-infant
interaction involving play and holding in traditional and nontraditional Swedish families.
00386
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Reprinted in Psychologie Heute (German).
Reprinted in D. H. Olson & B. C. Miller (Eds.), Family Studies Review Yearbook (Vol.
II). Beverly Hills, CA: Sage, 1984.
Lamb, M. E., Hwang, C.-P., Frodi, A. M., & Frodi, M. Security of mother-and father- infant
attachment and its relation to sociability with strangers in traditional and nontraditional
Swedish families. Infant Behavior and Development, 1982, 5, 355-367.
Reprinted in S. Chess & A. Thomas (Eds.), Annual progress in child psychiatry and child
development. New York: Bruner/Mazel, 1983.
Thompson, R. A. , & Lamb, M E. Stranger sociability and its relationship to temperament and
social experiences during the second year. Infant Behavior and Development, 1982, 5,
277-288.
development. New York: Bruner/Mazel, 1983.
Thompson, R. A., Lamb, M. E., & Estes, D. Stability of infant-mother attachment and its
relationship to changing life circumstances in an unselected middle-class sample. Child
Development, 1982, 53, 144-148.
Zigler, E. F., Lamb, M. E., & Child, I. L. Socialization and personality development. New
York: Oxford University Press, 1982.
Lamb, M. E. Individual differences in infant sociability: Their origins and implications for
cognitive development. In H. W. Reese & L. P. Lipsitt (Eds.), Advances in child
development and behavior (vol. 16). New York: Academic Press, 1982 (pp. 213- 239).
Lamb, M. E. Raising caring, nurturing, sons. Sesame Street Parents Newsletter, 1982, 2 (7),
6-7.
Lamb, M. E. (Ed.) Nontraditional families: Parenting and child development. Hillsdale, N.J.:
Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1982.
Translated and published in Japanese by Japan Uni Agency, Tokyo, 1998.
Lamb, M. E. Parental behavior and child development in nontraditional families: An
introduction. In M. E. Lamb (Ed.), Nontraditional families: Parenting and child
development. Hillsdale, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1982 (pp. 1-12).
Lamb, M. E. Maternal employment and child development: A review. In M. E. Lamb (Ed.),
Nontraditional families: Parenting and child development. Hillsdale, N.J.: Lawrence
00387
20
Lamb, M. E., Frodi, A. M., Hwang, C. -P., & Frodi, M. Varying degrees of paternal
involvement in infant care: Attitudinal and behavioral correlates. In M. E. Lamb (Ed.),
Nontraditional families: Parenting and child development. Hillsdale, N.J.: Lawrence
Lamb, M. E., & Sutton-Smith, B. (Eds.) Sibling relationships: Their development and
significance across the lifespan. Hillsdale, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1982.
Lamb, M. E. Sibling relationships across the lifespan: An overview and introduction. In M. E.
Lamb & B. Sutton-Smith (Eds.), Sibling relationships: Their development and
significance across the lifespan. Hillsdale, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1982
(pp. 1-11).
Elster, A. B., & Lamb, M. E. Adolescent fathers: A group potentially at risk for parenting
failure. Infant Mental Health Journal, 1982, 3, 148-155.
Frodi, A. M., Lamb, M. E., Frodi, M., Hwang, C. -P., Forsstrom, B., & Corry, T. Stability and
change in parental attitudes following an infants birth into traditional and nontraditional
Swedish families. Scandinavian Journal of Psychology, 1982, 23, 53-62.
Lamb, M. E., & Hall, E. Bonding. Childbirth Educator, 1982, 2 (3), 18-23.
Lamb, M. E. The bonding phenomenon: Misinterpretations and their implications. Journal of
Pediatrics, 1982, 101, 555-557.
Lamb, M. E. Early contact and mother-infant bonding: One decade later. Pediatrics, 1982, 70,
763-768.
Reprinted in D. H. Olson & R. Markoff (Eds.), Inventory of Marriage and Family
Literature (Vol. 10). Beverly Hills, CA: Sage, 1984.
Lamb, M. E. Generalization and inferences about causality in research on nontraditional
families: Some cautions. Merrill-Palmer Quarterly, 1982, 28, 157-161.
Lamb, M. E. Why Swedish fathers arent liberated. Psychology Today, 1982, 18 (10), 74-77.
Lamb, M. E. La influencia de la madre y del padre en el desarrollo del nio (Mothers and
fathers influences on child development/Spanish). In H. R. Schaffer (Ed.), Nuevas
perspectivas en psicologa del desarrollo en lengua inglesa. Infancia y aprendizaje, 1983,
3, 83-101.
Lamb, M. E. Bonding: Does it really matter? The Health Connection, 1983, 1(6), 3-4.
Lamb, M. E. Fathers of exceptional children. In M. Seligman (Ed.), The family with a
handicapped child: Understanding and treatment. New York: Grune & Stratton, 1983
(pp. 125-146).
Lamb, M. E. Letters to the Editor: Reply. Pediatrics, 1983, 71, 864.
00388
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Lamb, M. E. Mother-infant bonding: A skeptical view. Faculty Journal (University of Utah
School of Medicine), 1983, 6 (1), 9.
Lamb, M. E., & Charnov, E. L. A case for less selfing and more outbreeding in reviewing the
literature. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 1983, 6, 109.
Lamb, M. E., & Sagi, A. (Eds.) Fatherhood and family policy. Hillsdale, N.J.: Lawrence
Erlbaum Associates, 1983.
Portuguese translation published 1998.
Lamb, M. E. Social policy issues pertaining to fatherhood: An introduction. In M. E. Lamb &
A. Sagi (Eds.), Fatherhood and family policy. Hillsdale, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum
Associates, 1983 (pp. 1-11).
Lamb, M. E., & Levine, J. A. The Swedish parental insurance policy: An experiment in social
engineering. In M. E. Lamb & A. Sagi (Eds.), Fatherhood and family policy. Hillsdale,
N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1983 (pp. 39-51).
Levine, J. A., Pleck, J. H., & Lamb, M. E. The Fatherhood Project. In M. E. Lamb & A. Sagi
(Eds.), Fatherhood and family policy. Hillsdale, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates,
1983 (pp. 101-111).
Lamb, M. E., Russell, G., & Sagi, A. Summary and recommendations for public policy. In M.
E. Lamb & A. Sagi (Eds.), Fatherhood and family policy. Hillsdale, N.J.: Lawrence
Elster, A. B., McAnarney, E., & Lamb, M. E. Parental behavior of adolescent mothers.
Pediatrics, 1983, 71, 494-503.
Lamb, M. E., Frodi, M., Hwang, C. -P., & Frodi, A. M. Effects of paternal involvement on
infant preferences for mothers and fathers. Child Development, 1983, 54, 450- 458.
Campos, J. J., Caplowitz-Barrett, K., Lamb, M. E., Goldsmith, H. H., & Stenberg, C.
Socioemotional development. In P. H. Mussen (General editor), Carmichaels handbook
of child psychology; Volume 2, M. Haith & J. J. Campos (Eds.), Infancy and
developmental psychobiology. New York: Wiley, 1983 (pp. 783-915).
Thompson, R. A., & Lamb, M. E. Individual differences in dimensions of socioemotional
development in infancy. In R. Plutchik & H. Kellerman (Eds.), Emotion: Theory,
research, and experience (vol. 2), Emotions in early development. New York: Academic
Press, 1983 (pp. 87-114).
Thompson, R. A., & Lamb, M.E. Security of attachment and stranger sociability in infancy.
Thompson, R. A., Lamb, M. E., & Estes, D. Harmonizing discordant notes: A reply to Waters.
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Lamb, M. E. Friendly and bright. Childbirth Educator, 1983, 2 (3), 50-52.
Lamb, M. E. Review of The place of attachment in human behavior by Colin Murray Parkes
and Joan Stevenson-Hinde. American Scientist, 1983, 71, 321.
Lamb, M. E., Frodi, A. M., Hwang, C. P., & Frodi, M. Interobserver and test retest reliability of
Rothbarts Infant Behavior Questionnaire. Scandinavian Journal of Psychology, 1983,
24, 153-156.
Lamb, M. E. Letters to the Editor: Reply to Sugarman and Goldberg. Journal of Pediatrics,
1983, 103, 830.
Lamb, M. E. Letters to the Editor: Reply to Emde and Osofsky. Pediatrics, 1983, 72, 750.
Lamb, M. E., Campos, J. J.. Hwang, C. -P., Leiderman, P. H., Sagi, A., & Svejda, M. Joint reply
to Mother-infant bonding: a joint rebuttal. Pediatrics, 1983, 72, 574- 576.
Lamb, M. E. Letters to the Editor: More on infant-maternal bonding. Journal of Pediatrics,
1983, 103, 829.
Lamb, M. E. Early mother-neonate contact and the mother-child relationship. Journal of Child
Psychology and Psychiatry, 1983, 24, 487-494.
Frodi, A. M., Lamb, M. E., Hwang, C. -P., & Frodi, M. Father-mother-infant interaction in
traditional and nontraditional Swedish families: A longitudinal study. Alternative
Lifestyles, 1983, 5, 142-163.
Lamb, M. E., & Zarbatany, L. Relationships among children. Science, 1983, 221, 356- 357.
(Book review)
Lamb, M. E. Fathers and child rearing. Childbirth Educator, 1984, 3(4), 42-45.
Lamb, M. E. Father-child relationships in humans. In D. Taub (Ed.), Primate paternalism: An
evolutionary and comparative view of male investment. New York: Van Nostrand, 1984
(pp. 407-430).
Lamb, M. E. Fathers, mothers, and childcare in the 1980s: Family influences on child
development. In K. Borman, D. Quarm, & S. Gideonse (Eds.), Women in the workplace.
Norwood, NJ: Ablex Publishing, 1984 (pp. 61-88).
Lamb, M. E. Fathers and child development. In Paternal absence and fathers roles: Hearing
before the Select Committee on Children, Youth, and Families, US House of
Representatives. Washington, D.C.: US Government Printing Office, 1984.
Lamb, M. E. Mothers, fathers, and childcare in a changing world. In J. Call, E. Galenson, & R.
L. Tyson (Eds.), Frontiers of infant psychiatry (Vol. 2). New York: Basic Books, 1985
(pp. 343-362).
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Lamb, M. E. Portraits of Aussies at home. Contemporary Psychology, 1984, 29, 569- 670.
(Book review)
Lamb, M. E. & Alvarez, W. F. Values: Development and intervention. Contemporary
Psychology, 1984, 29, 121-122. (Book review)
Lamb, M. E., Brown, A. L., & Rogoff, B. (Eds.), Advances in developmental psychology (Vol.
3). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1984.
Lamb, M. E., Thompson, R. A., Gardner, W., Charnov, E. L., Estes, D. Security of Infantile
attachment as assessed in the Strange Situation: Its study and biological interpretation.
Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 1984, 7, 127-147.
development. New York: Brunner/Mazel, 1985.
Lamb, M. E., Gardner, W., Charnov, E. L., Thompson, R. A., & Estes, D. Studying the security
of infant-adult attachment: A reprise. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 1984, 7, 163-171.
Bornstein, M. H., & Lamb, M. E. (Eds.) Developmental psychology: An advanced textbook.
Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1984.
Lamb, M. E. Social and emotional development in infancy. In M. H. Bornstein & M. E.Lamb
(Eds.), Developmental psychology: An advanced textbook. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence
Dickstein, S., Thompson, R. A., Estes, D., Malkin, C., & Lamb, M. E. Social referencing and
the security of attachment. Infant Behavior and Development, 1984, 7, 507-516.
Elster, A. B., & Lamb, M. E. Adolescent mother-infant-father relationships. Pediatric
Research, 1984, 18, 97A. (Abstract)
Frodi, A. M., Murray, A. D., Lamb, M. E., & Steinberg, J. Biological and social determinants of
responsiveness to infants in 10-to 15-year-old girls. Sex Roles, 1984, 10, 639-649.
Klinman, D., Kohl, R., and The Fatherhood Project [J. A. Levine, J. H. Pleck, & M. E. Lamb]
Fatherhood USA. New York: Garland Press, 1984.
Thompson, R. A., & Lamb, M. E. Infants, mothers, families, and strangers. In M. Lewis (Ed.),
Beyond the dyad. New York: Plenum, 1984 (pp 195-221).
Lamb, M. E. Another look at nonmaternal care. Contemporary Psychology, 1984, 29, 884-885.
(Book review)
Thompson, R. A., & Lamb, M. E. Continuity and change in socioemotional development during
the second year. In R. N. Emde & R. J. Harmon (Eds.), Continuity and discontinuity in
development. New York, Plenum, 1984 (pp. 315-338).
Lamb, M. E. Bonding controversy. Childbirth Educator, 1984 (Fall), 13. (Letter)
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Thompson, R. A., & Lamb, M. E. Assessing qualitative dimensions of emotional responsiveness
in infants: Separation reactions in the Strange Situation. Infant Behavior and
Development, 1984, 7, 423-445.
Lamb, M. E. The role of todays fathers. Medical Aspects of Human Sexuality, 1984, 18 (10),
102-109.
Lamb, M. E. A comparison of second order effects involving parents and siblings. Annual
Report: Research and Clinical Center for Child Development, Faculty of Education,
University of Hokkaido, Sapporo (Japan), 1984-85 (pp. 1-8).
Lamb, M. E. Family influences and the development of the young child. In C. S. Mcloughlin &
D. F. Gullo (Eds.), Young children in context: Impact of self, family, and society on
development. Springville, IL: Charles C. Thomas, 1985 (pp 154-182).
Lamb, M. E., Gaensbauer, T. J., Malkin, C. M., & Schultz, L. A. The effects of abuse and
neglect on security of infant-adult attachment. Infant Behavior and Development, 1985,
8, 35-45.
Lamb, M. E., Thompson, R. A., Gardner, W., & Charnov, E. L. Infant-mother attachment: The
origins and developmental significance of individual differences in Strange Situation
behavior. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1985.
Zarbatany, L., & Lamb, M. E. Social referencing as a function of information source: Mothers
versus strangers. Infant Behavior and Development, 1985, 8, 25-33.
Lamb, M. E., & Gilbride, K. Compatibility in parent-infant relationships: Origins and
processes. In W. Ickes (Ed.), Compatible and incompatible relationships. New York:
Springer, 1985 (pp 33-60).
Lamb, M. E., & Elster, A. B. Adolescent mother-infant-father relationships. Developmental
Psychology, 1985, 21, 768-773.
Lamb, M. E., Pleck, J. H., Charnov, E. L., & Levine, J. A. Paternal behavior in humans.
American Zoologist, 1985, 25, 883-894.
Lamb, M. E., Pleck, J. H., & Levine, J. A. The role of the father in child development: The
effects of increased paternal involvement. In B. B. Lahey & A. E. Kazdin (Eds.),
Advances in clinical child psychology (Vol. 8). New York: Plenum, 1985 (pp. 229-266).
Portions reprinted as Effects of increased paternal involvement on fathers and mothers,
in C. Lewis & M. OBrien (Eds.), Reassessing fatherhood: New observations on fathers
and the modern family. London: Sage, 1987 (pp. 109- 125).
Portions reprinted as Effects of paternal involvement on fathers and mothers, in R. A.
Lewis & M. Sussman (Eds.), Mens changing roles in the family. New York: Haworth,
1986 (pp. 67-83).
00392
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Also published in a special issue of Marriage and Family Review, 1986, 9 (3/4), 76-83.
Portions reprinted as Effects of increased paternal involvement on children in two parent
families, in R. A. Lewis & R. E. Salt (Eds.), Men in families. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage,
1986 (pp. 141-158).
Thompson, R. A., Cicchetti, D., Lamb, M. E., & Malkin, C. M. The emotional responses of
Down Syndrome and normal infants in the Strange Situation: The organization of
affective behavior in infants. Developmental Psychology, 1985, 21, 828-841.
Lamb, M. E. Paternal deprivation reassessed. Contemporary Psychology, 1985, 30, 960-966.
(Book review)
Sagi, A., Lamb, M. E., Lewkowicz, K. S., Shoham, R., Dvir, R., & Estes, D. . Security of
infant-mother, -father, and -metapelet attachments among kibbutz-reared Israeli children.
In I. Bretherton & E. Waters (Eds.), Growing points in attachment theory and research.
Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development, 1985, 50, serial no. 209,
257-275.
Sagi, A., Lamb, M. E., Shoham, R., Dvir, R., & Lewkowicz, K. S. Parent-infant interaction in
families on Israeli kibbutzim. International Journal of Behavioral Development, 1985, 8,
273-284.
Lamb, M. E. Changing family patterns: Effects on young children. In K. Seifert (Ed.), The
child in social context. Winnipeg, Canada: Faculty of Education Monograph Series,
University of Manitoba, 1985 (pp. 9-21).
Lamb, M. E. Fear of flying. Parents Magazine, 1985, (August), 48-51.
Goldberg, W. A., Michaels, G. Y., & Lamb, M. E. Husbands and wives adjustment to
pregnancy and first parenthood. Journal of Family Issues, 1985, 6, 483-503.
Lamb, M. E. Reply to Bachtold and Barton. Contemporary Psychology, 1985, 30.
Hall, E., Lamb, M. E., & Perlmutter, M. Child psychology today (2nd edition). New York:
Random House, 1986.
Elster, A. B., & Lamb, M. E. Adolescent fathers. In J. B. Lancaster & B. A. Hamburg (Eds.),
School-aged pregnancy and parenthood: Biosocial dimensions. New York: Aldine, 1986
(pp. 177-190).
Lamb, M. E. Review of The Psychobiology of Attachment and Separation edited by M. Reite
and T. Field. American Scientist, 1986, 74, 321-322.
Lamb, M. E., & Malkin, C. M. The development of social expectations in distress relief
sequences: A longitudinal study. International Journal of Behavioral Development,
1986, 9, 235-249.
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Pleck, J. H., Lamb, M. E., & Levine, J. A. Epilog: Facilitating future change in mens family
roles. In R. A. Lewis & M. Sussman (Eds.), Mens changing roles in the family. New
York: Haworth, 1986 (pp. 11-16).
Also published in a special issue of Marriage and Family Review, 1986, 9(3/4), 11-16.
Thompson, R. A., & Lamb, M. E. Infant-mother attachment: New directions for theory and
research . In P. B. Baltes, D. Featherman, & R. M. Lerner (Eds.), Life-span development
and behavior (Vol. 7). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1986 (pp. 1-41).
Lamb, M. E., Brown, A. L., & Rogoff, B. (Eds.) Advances in developmental psychology (Vol.
4). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1986.
Elster, A. B., & Lamb, M. E. (Eds.) Adolescent fatherhood. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum
Associates, 1986.
Lamb, M. E. & Elster, A. B. Parental behavior of adolescent mothers and fathers. In A. B.
Elster & M. E. Lamb (Eds.), Adolescent fatherhood. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum
Teti, D. & Lamb, M. E. Sex role development in adolescent males. In A. B. Elster & M. E.
Lamb (Eds.), Adolescent fatherhood. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1986
(pp. 19-30).
Elster, A. B. & Lamb, M. E. Epilogue: Research priorities. In A. B. Elster & M. E. Lamb
(Eds.), Adolescent fatherhood. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1986
(pp.193-195).
Lamb, M. E., Thompson, R. A., Gardner, W., & Charnov, E. L. Convergent approaches to
understanding Strange Situation behavior. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 1986, 9,
559-561.
Lamb, M. E. (Ed.) The fathers role: Applied perspectives. New York: Wiley, 1986.
Lamb, M. E. The changing roles of fathers. In M. E. Lamb (Ed.), The fathers role: Applied
perspectives. New York: Wiley, 1986 (pp. 3-27).
Reprinted in M. E. Lamb (Ed.), The fathers role: Cross-cultural perspectives. Hillsdale,
NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1987 (pp. 3-25).
Reprinted in J. L. Shapiro, M. J. Diamond, & M. Greenberg (Eds.), Becoming a father:
Contemporary, social, developmental, and clinical perspectives. New York: Springer,
1995 (PP. 18-35).
Translated (Portuguese) and reprinted in Analise Psicologica, 1992, 10, 19-34.
00394
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Sagi, A., Lamb, M. E., & Gardner, W. Relations between Strange Situation behavior and
stranger sociability among infants on Israeli kibbutzim. Infant Behavior and
Development, 1986, 9, 271-282.
Gardner, W., Lamb, M. E., Thompson, R. A., & Sagi, A. On individual differences in Strange
Situation behavior: Categorical and continuous measurement systems in a cross- cultural
data set. Infant Behavior and Development, 1986, 9, 355-375.
Lamb, M. E., Elster, A. B., Peters, L. J., Kahn, J. S., & Tavare, J. Characteristics of married and
unmarried adolescent mothers and their partners. Journal of Youth and Adolescence,
1986, 15, 487-496.
Reprinted in R. M. Lerner (Ed.), Adolescence: Development, diversity, and context.
Hamden, CT: Garland Press, in press.
Lamb, M. E., & Nash, A. Exploring the biologies of relationships. Contemporary Psychology,
1986, 31, 757-758. (Book review)
Lamb, M. E., Elster, A. B., & Tavare, J. Behavioral profiles of adolescent mothers and partners
with varying intracouple age differences. Journal of Adolescent Research, 1986, 1,
399-408.
Lamb, M. E., & Bornstein, M. B. Development in infancy. New York: Random House, 1987.
Lamb, M. E., Pleck, J. H., Charnov, E. L., & Levine, J. A. A biosocial perspective on paternal
behavior and involvement. In J. B. Lancaster, J. Altmann, A. S. Rossi, & L.R. Sherrod
(Eds.), Parenting across the lifespan: Biosocial dimensions. Hawthorne, N Y: Aldine,
1987 (pp. 111-142). Reprinted by Transaction/Aldine in 2010.
Lamb, M. E. (Ed.) The fathers role: Cross-cultural perspectives. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence
Elster, A. B., Lamb, M. E., Peters, L., Kahn, J., & Tavare, J. Judicial involvement and conduct
problems of fathers of infants born to adolescent mothers. Pediatrics, 1987, 79, 230-234.
Lamb, M. E. Review of Lewis and Saarni, The socialization of emotions. American Scientist,
1987, 75, 86-87. (Book review)
Lamb, M. E. Baby. In the New book of Knowledge. New York: Grolier, 1987.
Lamb, M. E. Will the real new father please stand up? Parents Magazine, 1987, 62(6), 77-80.
Lamb, M. E. Niche picking by siblings and scientists. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 1987, 10,
30.
Lamb, M. E. Distinctions, distinctions, distinctions.... Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 1987, 10,
79.
00395
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Lamb, M. E. Review of W. W. Hartup and Z. Rubin, Relations and development. American
Scientist, 1987, 75, 209-210. (Book review)
Lamb, M. E., Morrison, D., & Malkin, C. M. The development of infant social expectations in
face-to-face interaction. Merrill-Palmer Quarterly, 1987, 33, 241-254.
Teti, D. M., Lamb, M. E., & Elster, A. B. Long-range socioeconomic and marital consequences
of adolescent marriage in three cohorts of adult males. Journal of Marriage and the
Family, 1987, 49, 499-506.
Lamb, M. E., Hopps, K., & Elster, A. B. Strange Situation behavior of infants with adolescent
mothers. Infant Behavior and Development, 1987, 10, 39-48.
Elster, A. B., Lamb, M. E., Tavare, J., & Ralston, C. W. The medical and psychosocial impact
of comprehensive care on adolescent pregnancy and parenthood. Journal of the
American Medical Association, 1987, 258, 1187-1192.
Elster, A. B., Lamb, M. E., & Tavare, J. The association between behavioral and school
problems and fatherhood in a national sample of adolescent males. Journal of Pediatrics,
1987, 111, 932-936.
Lamb, M. E. Predictive implications of individual differences in attachment. Journal of
Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 1987, 55, 817-824.
Lamb, M. E., & Bornstein, M. H. (Eds.) Developmental psychology: An advanced textbook
(Revised Edition). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1988.
Translated into Italian by F. Simion and published as Lo sviluppo percettivo, cognitivo e
linguistico. Milano, Italy: Raffaelo Cortina Editore, 1992.
Lamb, M. E. Social and emotional development. In M. E. Lamb & M. H. Bornstein (Eds.),
Developmental psychology: An advanced textbook (Revised Edition). Hillsdale, NJ:
Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1988 (pp. 359-410).
Lamb, M. E., Hwang, C.-P., Bookstein, F. L., Broberg, A., Hult, G., & Frodi, M. The
development of social competence in Swedish preschoolers. Developmental Psychology,
1988, 24, 58-70.
Oppenheim, D., Sagi, A., & Lamb, M. E. Infant-adult attachments on the kibbutz and their
relation to socioemotional development four years later. Developmental Psychology,
1988, 24, 427-433.
Nakagawa, M., Lamb, M. E., & Miyake, K. Psychological experiences of Japanese infants in the
Strange Situation. Annual Report: Research and Clinical Center for Child Development,
Faculty of Education, University of Hokkaido, Sapporo (Japan), 1987-88, 13-24.
00396
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Lamb, M. E., Hwang, C.-P., Broberg, A., & Bookstein, F. L. The effects of out-of-home care on
the development of social competence in Sweden: A longitudinal study. Early Childhood
Research Quarterly, 1988, 3, 379-402.
Reprinted in N. Fox & G. G. Fein (Eds.), Infant day care: The current debate . Norwood,
NJ: Ablex, 1990 (pp. 145-168).
Lamb, M. E., Hwang, C.-P., Broberg, A., Bookstein, F. L., Hult, G., & Frodi, M. The
determinants of paternal involvement in primiparous Swedish families. International
Journal of Behavioral Development, 1988, 11, 433-449.
Lamb, M. E. The ecology of adolescent pregnancy and parenthood. In A. Pence (Ed.),
Ecological research with children and families: From concepts to methodology. New
York: Teachers College Press, 1988. (pp. 99-121)
Lamb, M. E. Review of Fatherhood today: Mens changing roles in the family by P.
Bronstein & C. P. Cowan. Child Development Abstracts and Bibliography, 1988, 62,
241. (Book Review)
Lamb, M. E., Hwang, C.-P., & Broberg, A. Associations between parental agreement regarding
child-rearing and the characteristics of families and children in Sweden. International
Journal of Behavioral Development, 1989, 12, 115-129.
Lamb, M. E., & Oppenheim, D. Fatherhood and father-child relationships: The last five years of
research. In S. Cath, A. Gurwitt, & L. Gunsberg (Eds.), Fathers and their families.
Hillsdale, NJ: Analytic Press, 1989. (pp. 11-26)
Lamb, M. E., & Nash, A. Parent-infant attachment and peer interaction. In T. J. Berndt & G. W.
Ladd (Eds.), Peer relationships in child development. New York: Wiley, 1989. (pp.
219-245)
Elster, A. B., Lamb, M. E. & Kimmerly, N. Perceptions of parenthood among adolescent
fathers. Pediatrics, 1989, 83, 758-765.
Hwang, C.-P., Lamb, M. E., & Broberg, A. The development of social and intellectual
competence in Swedish preschoolers raised at home and in out-of-home care facilities. In
K. Kreppner & R. M. Lerner (Eds.), Family systems and life-span development.
Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1989 (pp. 105-127).
Teti, D. M., & Lamb, M. E. Socioeconomic and marital outcomes of adolescent marriage,
adolescent childbirth, and their co-occurrences. Journal of Marriage and the Family,
1989, 51, 203-212.
Broberg, A., Hwang, C.-P., Lamb, M. E., & Ketterlinus, R. D. Child care effects on
socioemotional and intellectual competence in Swedish preschoolers. In J. S. Lande, S.
Scarr & N. Gunzenhauser (Eds.), Caring for children: Challenge to America. Hillsdale,
NJ: Erlbaum, 1989 (pp. 49-75).
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Lamb, M. E. & Sternberg, K. J. Tagesbetreuung [Daycare]. In H. Keller (Ed.), Handbuch der
Kleinkindforschung. Heidelberg: Springer-Verlag, 1989 (pp. 587-608).
Lamb, M. E. Fathers role or fathers roles? Contemporary Psychology, 1989, 34, 551.
Lamb, M. E. Social development. Pediatric Annals, 1989, 18, 292-297.
Ketterlinus, R. D., Bookstein, F. L., Sampson, P. D., & Lamb, M. E. Partial least squares
analysis in developmental psychopathology. Development and Psychopathology, 1989,
1, 351-371.
Lamb, M.E., & Sternberg, K.J. Some thoughts about infant daycare. Annual Report: Research
and Clinical Center for Child Development, University of Hokkaido, Sapporo, Japan,
1988-89 (pp. 71-77).
Lamb M. E. Biological functionalism and developmental (dis)-continuity. European Journal of
Psychology of Education, 1989, IV, 159-160.
Lamb, M. E. New approaches to the study of daycare. Human Nature, 1990, 1, 207-210.
Lamb, M. E., & Elster, A. B. Adolescent parenthood. In G. H. Brody & I. E. Sigel (Eds.),
Methods of family research: Biographies of research projects. Volume II: Clinical
populations. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1990 (pp. 159-190).
Broberg, A., Lamb, M. E., & Hwang, C.-P. Inhibition: Its stability and correlates in 16-to
20-month-old children. Child Development, 1990, 61, 1153-1163.
Elster, A. B., Ketterlinus, R. D. & Lamb, M. E. Association between parenthood and problem
behavior in a national sample of adolescents. Pediatrics, 1990, 85, 1044-1050.
Ketterlinus, R. D., Henderson, S., & Lamb, M. E. Maternal age, sociodemographics, prenatal
health and behavior: Influences on neonatal risk status. Journal of Adolescent Health
Care, 1990, 11, 423-431.
MacKinnon, C., Lamb, M. E., Belsky, J., & Baum, C. An affective-cognitive model of
mother-child aggression. Development and Psychopathology, 1990, 2, 1-14.
Broberg, A., Lamb, M. E., Hwang, P., & Bookstein, F. L. Factors related to verbal abilities in
Swedish preschoolers. British Journal of Developmental Psychology, 1990, 8, 335-349.
Lamb, M. E., & Sternberg, K. J. Do we really know how daycare affects children? Journal of
Applied Developmental Psychology. 1990, 11, 351-379.
Lamb, M. E., & Meyer, D. Fathers of children with special needs. In M. Seligman (Ed.), The
family with a handicapped child (Revised edition). Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1991 (pp.
151-179).
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Lamb, M. E., & Teti, D. M. Parenthood and marriage in adolescence: Associations with
educational and occupational attainment. In R.M. Lerner, A.C. Petersen, & J.
Brooks-Gunn (Eds.), Encyclopedia of adolescence. New York: Garland, 1991 (pp.
742-745).
Lamb, M. E., & Teti, D. M. Childbirth and marriage, adolescent: Associations with long-term
marital stability. In R.M. Lerner, A.C. Petersen, & J. Brooks-Gunn (Eds.), Encyclopedia
of adolescence. New York: Garland, 1991 (pp.111-114).
Lamb, M. E., & Ketterlinus, R. D. Parental behavior, adolescent. In R.M. Lerner, A.C.
Petersen, & J. Brooks-Gunn (Eds.), Encyclopedia of adolescence. New York: Garland,
1991 (pp. 735-738).
Ketterlinus, R. D., & Lamb, M. E. Childbearing, adolescent: Obstetric and filial outcomes. In
R.M. Lerner, A.C. Petersen & J. Brooks-Gunn (Eds.), Encyclopedia of adolescence.
New York: Garland, 1991 (pp. 107-110).
Lamb, M. E. Foreword. In F. W. Bozett & S. M. H. Hanson (Eds.), Fatherhood and families in
cultural context. New York & Heidelberg: Springer, 1991 (pp.ix-xii).
Hwang, C-P, Broberg, A., & Lamb, M. E. The Gothenburg child care project. In E.C. Melhuish
& P. Moss (Eds.), Day care and the young child: International perspectives. London:
Routledge, 1991 (pp. 102-120).
Lamb, M. E., Teti, D. M., Nash, A., & Bornstein, M. H. Infancy. In M. Lewis (Ed.),
Comprehensive textbook of child psychiatry. Baltimore: Williams and Wilkins, 1991
(pp. 222-256).
Lamb, M. E., Teti, D. M., Sternberg, K., & Malkin, C. M. Child maltreatment and the child
welfare system. In F.S. Kessel, M. H. Bornstein, & A. J. Sameroff (Eds.), Contemporary
constructions of the child: Essays in honor of William Kessen. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence
Sternberg, K. J., Lamb, M. E., Hwang, C-P., Broberg, A., Ketterlinus, R. D., & Bookstein, F. L.
Does out-of-home care affect compliance in preschoolers? International Journal of
Behavioral Development, 1991, 14, 45 -65.
Lamb, M. E. & Keller, H. (Eds.) Infant development: Perspectives from German-speaking
countries. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1991.
Lamb, M. E. & Keller, H. Introduction. In M. E. Lamb & H. Keller (Eds.), Infant development:
Perspectives from German-speaking countries. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum
Sternberg, K. J. & Lamb, M. E. Can we ignore context in the definition of child maltreatment?
Development and Psychopathology, 1991, 3, 87-93.
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Ketterlinus, R. D., Henderson, S. H., & Lamb, M. E. The effects of maternal age-at-birth on
childrens cognitive development. Journal of Research in Adolescence, 1991, 1,
173-188.
Ketterlinus, R. D., Lamb, M. E., & Nitz, K. Developmental and ecological sources of stress
among adolescent parents. Family Relations, 1991, 40, 435-441.
Lamb, M. E. N is for knowledge and the Nebraska Symposium. Contemporary Psychology,
1991,36, 1044-1046. (Book review)
Bornstein, M. H., & Lamb, M.E. Development in infancy (Third edition). New York: McGraw
Hill, 1992.
Lamb, M.E., Sternberg, K.J. & Prodromidis, M. Nonmaternal care and the security of
infant-mother attachment: A reanalysis of the data. Infant Behavior and Development,
1992, 15, 71-83.
Scholmerich, A., & Lamb, M. E. Check-list comportamentali nella ricerca sulle interazione
madre-bambino e padro-bambino. [The use of check-lists in research on mother-infant
and father infant interaction.] Eta Evolutiva, 1992,41, 77-85.
Lamb, M. E., & Sternberg, K. J. Establishing the design. Children and Youth Services Review,
1992, 14, 157-165.
Lamb, M. E., Sternberg, K. J., Hwang, C-P., & Broberg, A. (Eds.), Child care in context:
Cross-cultural perspectives. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1992.
Lamb, M. E., & Sternberg, K. J. Sociocultural perspectives on nonparental childcare. In M. E.
Lamb, K. J. Sternberg, C-P. Hwang, & A. Broberg (Eds.), Child care in context:
Cross-cultural perspectives. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1992 (pp.
1-23).
Partially reprinted as Laccueil du jeune enfant dans son milieu. In B. Pierrehumbert
(Ed.), Laccueil du jeune enfant: Politiques et recherches dans les differents pays. [Child
care in infancy: Policy and research issues in different countries]. Paris: ESF Editeur,
1992 (pp. 21-38).
Partially revised, translated, and reprinted as Tagesbetreuung im kulturellen Kontext.
In L. Ahnert (Ed.), Tagesbetreuung fr Kinder unter drei Jahren: Theorien und
Tatsachen. [Day care for children under three years: Theories and facts]. Berlin: Huber,
1998 (14-28).
Lamb, M. E., Sternberg, K. J., & Ketterlinus, R. D. Childcare in the United States: The modern
era. In M. E. Lamb, K. J. Sternberg, C-P. Hwang, & A. Broberg (Eds.), Child care in
context: Cross-cultural perspectives. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1992
(pp. 207-222).
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Lamb, M. E., & Sternberg, K. J. Un rexamen du lien entre garde non parentale et scurit de
lattachement mre-enfant. [Further examination of the relationship between
nonmaternal care and the security of infant-mother attachment.] In B. Pierrehumbert
(Ed.), Laccueil du jeune enfant: Politiques et recherches dans les differents pays. [Child
care in infancy: Policy and research issues in different countries]. Paris: ESF Editeur,
1992. (pp. 141-149)
Ketterlinus, R. D., Henderson, S. H., & Lamb, M. E. Les effets du type de garde, de lemploi
maternel et de lestime de soi sur le comportement des enfants. [The effect of type of
child care and maternal employment on childrens behavioral adjustment and
self-esteem]: In B. Pierrehumbert (Ed.), Laccueil du jeune enfant: Politiques et
recherches dans les differents pays. [Child care in infancy: Policy and research issues in
different countries]. Paris: ESF Editeur, 1992. (pp. 150-163)
Lamb, M. E. Foreword for Human development in cultural context: A third world perspective by
A. Bame Nsamenang. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage, 1992.(pp. ix-xi)
Ketterlinus, R. D., Lamb, M. E., Nitz, K., & Elster, A. B. Adolescent non-sexual and sex-
related problem behaviors. Journal of Adolescent Research, 1992, 7, 431-456.
Bornstein, M.H., & Lamb, M.E. (Eds.) Developmental psychology: An advanced textbook
(Third edition). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1992.
Lamb, M.E., Ketterlinus, R.D., & Fracasso, M.P. Parent-child relationships. In M.H. Bornstein
& M.E. Lamb (Eds.), Developmental psychology: An advanced textbook (Third edition).
Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1992 (pp. 465- 518).
Sternberg, K. J., & Lamb, M. E. Evaluations of attachment relationships by Jewish Israeli
day-care providers. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 1992, 23, 285-299.
Nakagawa, M., Lamb, M.E., & Miyake, K. Antecedents and correlates of the Strange Situation
behavior of Japanese infants. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 1992, 23, 300-310
Krispin, O., Sternberg, K. J., & Lamb, M. E. The dimensions of peer evaluation in Israel: A
cross-cultural perspective. International Journal of Behavioral Development, 1992, 15,
299-314.
Nakagawa, M., Teti, D. M., & Lamb, M. E. An ecological study of child-mother attachments
among Japanese sojourners in the United States. Developmental Psychology, 1992, 28,
584-592.
Lamb, M. E. Review of Family violence in cross-cultural perspective by David Levinson.
Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 1992, 23, 535-536. (Book review)
MacKinnon, C. E., Lamb, M. E., Arbuckle, B., Baradaran, L.P., & Volling, B. The relationship
between biased maternal and filial attributions and the aggressiveness of their
interactions. Development and Psychopathology, 1992, 4, 403-415.
00401
34
Lamb, M. E. Les effets de la garde non parentale: Que savons-nous au juste? [ The effects of
nonparental childcare: What do we really know?] Apprentissage et Socialisation, 1992,
15, 195-207.
Sternberg, K. J., Lamb, M. E., Greenbaum, C., Cicchetti, D., Dawud, S., Cortes, R. M., Krispin,
O., & Lorey, F. Effects of domestic violence on childrens behavior problems and
depression. Developmental Psychology, 1993, 29, 44-52.
Lamb, M. E. Collected essays on infant socialization. Review of Social influences and
socialization in infancy. Contemporary Psychology, 1993, 38, 93-94.
Lamb, M. E. Naziism, biological determinism, sociobiology, and evolutionary theory: Are they
necessarily synonymous? International Journal of Comparative Psychology, 1993, 6,
149-152. (Book review)
Lamb, M. E. Review of Fatherhood in America: A history by R.L. Griswold & Fathers and
families: Paternal factors in child development by H. B. Biller. Journal of Marriage
and the Family,1993, 55, 1047-1049.
Lamb, M. E. (Guest Editor) Birth management and perinatal care: Biosocial perspectives.
Human Nature,1993, 4(4), and 1994, 5(1). Guest editorial: 4(4), 323-328.
Nsamenang, A. B., & Lamb, M. E. The acquisition of socio-cognitive competence by Nso
children in the Bamenda Grassfields of Northwest Cameroon. International Journal of
Behavioral Development, 1993, 16, 429-441.
Lamb, M. E., Sternberg, K. J., & Esplin, P. W. Interviewing young victims of child
maltreatment. In M. Hovav (Ed.), Sexual abuse of children: The law, investigator, and
the court. Tel Aviv, Israel: Shirikova Publishers, 1993 (pp. 109-131). (Translated into
Hebrew for publication.)
Lamb, M. E. Biological determinism redux: Comment on Silverstein (1993). Journal of Family
Psychology, 1993, 7, 301-304.
Lamb, M. E., Sternberg, K. J., Knuth, N., Hwang, C.-P., & Broberg, A. G. Peer play and
nonparental care experiences. In. H. Goelman & E. V. Jacobs (Eds.), Childrens play in
child care settings. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1994 (pp. 37-52).
Nsamenang, A. B., & Lamb, M. E. Socialization of Nso children in the Bamenda Grassfields of
Northwest Cameroon. In. P. Greenfield & R. Cocking (Eds.), Cross-cultural roots of
minority child development. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1994
(pp.133-146).
Lamb, M. E. Infant care practices and the application of knowledge. In C. B. Fisher & R. M.
Lerner (Eds.), Applied developmental psychology. New York: McGraw Hill, 1994 (pp.
23-45).
00402
35
Ketterlinus, R. D., & Lamb, M. E. (Eds.) Adolescent problem behavior: Issues and research.
Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1994.
Ketterlinus, R. D., & Lamb, M. E. Adolescent problem behaviors: An introduction. In R. D.
Ketterlinus & M. E. Lamb (Eds.), Adolescent problem behavior: Issues and research.
Hillsdale, NJ : Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1994 (pp. vii-xii).
Ketterlinus, R. D., Lamb, M. E., & Nitz, K. A. Adolescent nonsexual and sex-related problem
behaviors: Their prevalence, consequences, and co-occurrence. In R. D. Ketterlinus &
M. E. Lamb (Eds.), Adolescent problem behavior: Issues and research. Hillsdale, NJ :
Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1994 (pp. 17-39).
Lamb, M. E. (Rapporteur) The investigation of child sexual abuse: An interdisciplinary
consensus statement. Expert Evidence, 1994, 2, 151-156; Journal of Child Sexual Abuse,
1994, 3(4), 93-106; Family Law Quarterly, 1994, 28, 151-162; Scandinavian Journal of
Social Welfare, 1994, 3, 175-180; BASPCAN News, 15 (September), 12-17; and Child
Abuse and Neglect, 1994, 18, 1021-1028.
Malkin, C. M., & Lamb, M. E. Child maltreatment: A test of sociobiological theory. Journal of
Comparative Family Studies, 1994, 25, 121-134.
Lamb, M. E., Sternberg, K. J., & Esplin, P. W. Factors influencing the reliability and validity of
statements made by young victims of sexual maltreatment. Journal of Applied
Reprinted in: Sexual abuse interviewing guidebook. Ithaca, NY: New York State Child
Protective Services Training Institute, 1997.
MacKinnon-Lewis, C., Volling, B. L., Lamb, M. E., Dechman, K., Rabiner, D., & Curtner, M. E.
A cross-contextual analysis of childrens social competence: From family to school.
Lamb, M. E. Heredity, environment, and the question why? Behavioral and Brain Sciences,
1994, 17, 751.
Fracasso, M. P., Porges, S. W., Lamb, M. E., & Rosenberg, A. A. Cardiac activity in infancy:
Reliability and stability of individual differences. Infant Behavior and Development,
1994, 17, 277-284.
Lamb, M. E. Review of John Snareys How fathers care for the next generation: A four decade
study. Human Development, 1994, 37, 385-387. (Book review).
Lamb, M. E. Response to Commentary on Early contact, bonding, and the development of
mother-infant relationships. Journal of Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrics, 1994,
15, 384-385.
00403
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Sternberg, K. J., Lamb, M. E., Greenbaum, C., Dawud, S., Cortes, R. M., & Lorey, F. The
effects of domestic violence on childrens perceptions of their perpetrating and
nonperpetrating parents. International Journal of Behavioral Development, 1994, 17,
779-795.
Lamb, M. E. De invloed van de vader op de ontwikkeling van het kind. [The influence of the
father on the development of the child]. Familia, 1994, 1, 53-64. [Dutch]
Reprinted as:
Lamb, M. E. Paternal influences on child development. In M. C.P. van Dongen, G. A.
B. Frinking, & M. J. G. Jacobs(Eds.), Changing fatherhood: An interdisciplinary
perspective. Amsterdam, The Netherlands: Thesis Publishers, 1995. (pp. 145- 157)
Prodromidis, M., Lamb, M. E., Sternberg, K. J., Hwang, C. P., & Broberg, A. G. Aggression
and noncompliance among Swedish children in center-based care, family day-care, and
home care. International Journal of Behavioral Development, 1995, 18, 43-62.
Haynie, D. L., & Lamb, M. E. Positive and negative facial expressiveness in 7-, 10-, and
13-month-old infants. Infant Behavior and Development, 1995, 18, 257-259.
Scholmerich, A., Fracasso, M. P., Lamb, M. E., & Broberg, A. G. Interactional harmony at 7
and 10 months of age predicts security of attachment as measured by Q-sort ratings.
Social Development, 1995, 4, 62-74.
Leyendecker, B., Lamb, M. E., Scholmerich, A., & Fracasso, M. P. The social worlds of 8- and
12-month-old infants: Early experiences in two subcultural contexts. Social
Development, 1995, 4, 194-208.
Lamb, M. E., Sternberg, K. J., & Esplin, P. W. Making children into competent witnesses:
Reactions to the amicus brief in re Michaels. Psychology, Public Policy, and the Law,
1995, 1, 438-449.
Nsamenang, A. B., & Lamb, M. E. The force of beliefs: How the parental values of the Nso of
Northwest Cameroon shape childrens progress toward adult models. Journal of Applied
Horowitz, S. W., Lamb, M. E., Esplin, P. W., Boychuk, T. D., Reiter-Lavery, L., & Krispin, O.
Establishing ground truth in studies of child sexual abuse. Expert Evidence, 1995, 4,
42-51.
Hwang, C. P., Lamb, M. E., & Sigel, I. (Eds.) Images of childhood. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence
Lamb, M. E., & Hwang, C. P. Images of childhood: An introduction. In C. P. Hwang, M. E.
Lamb, & I. Sigel (Eds.), Images of childhood. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum
Associates, 1996. (pp. 1-12)
00404
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Sternberg, K. J., Lamb, M. E., & Hershkowitz, I. Child sexual abuse investigations in Israel.
Criminal Justice and Behavior, 1996, 23, 322-337.
Also published as:
Child victims and witnesses in Israel: Evaluating innovative practices. B. L. Bottoms &
G. S. Goodman (Eds.), International perspectives on child abuse and childrens
testimony: Psychological research and law. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications,
1996. (pp. 62-76)
Lamb, M. E., Nash, A., Teti, D. M., & Bornstein, M. H. Infancy. In M. Lewis (Ed.), Child and
adolescent psychiatry: A comprehensive textbook (Second Edition). Baltimore:
Williams and Wilkins, 1996. (pp. 241-270)
Sternberg, K. J., Lamb, M. E., Hershkowitz, I., Esplin, P. W., Redlich, A., & Sunshine, N. The
relationship between investigative utterance types and the informativeness of child
witnesses. Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, 1996, 17, 439- 451.
Lamb, M. E. Effects of nonparental child care on child development: An update. Canadian
Journal of Psychiatry, 1996, 41, 330-342.
Lamb, M. E. Review of Fatherless America: Confronting our most urgent social problem.
Journal of Marriage and the Family, 1996, 58, 526-527. [Book review]
Wessels, H., Lamb, M. E., & Hwang, C. P. Cause and causality in daycare research: An
investigation of group differences in Swedish child care. European Journal of
Educational Psychology, 1996, 11, 231-245.
Lamb, M. E. Review of Divergent realities: The emotional lives of mothers, fathers and
adolescents. Social Service Review, 1996, 70, 489-490. [Book review]
Lamb, M. E. Fathering in America: New challenges and champions. Contemporary Psychology,
1996, 41, 911. [Book review]
Lamb, M. E, Hershkowitz, I., Sternberg, K. J., Esplin, P. W., Hovav, M., Manor, T., &
Yudilevitch, L. Effects of investigative utterance types on Israeli childrens responses.
International Journal of Behavioral Development, 1996, 19, 627-637.
Lamb, M. E., Hershkowitz, I., Sternberg, K. J., Boat, B., & Everson, M. D. Investigative
interviews of alleged sexual abuse victims with and without anatomical dolls. Child
Pierrehumbert, B., Ramstein, T., Krucher, R., El-Najjar, S., Lamb, M. E., & Halfon, O.
Levaluation du lieu de vie du jeune enfant. Bulletin de Psychologie, 1996, 49, 565-584.
Lamb, M. E. Review of Family, justice, and delinquency. Family Relations, 1996, 45, 355.
[Book review]
00405
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Lamb, M. E. What is selected in group selection? Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 1996, 19,
786-787.
Lamb, M. E., Sternberg, K. J., Esplin, P. W., Hershkowitz, I., Orbach, Y., & Hovav, M.
Criterion-based content analysis: A field validation study. Child Abuse and Neglect,
1997, 21, 255-264.
Lamb, M. E. Review of The book of David: How preserving families can cost childrens lives.
Journal of Marriage and the Family, 1997, 59, 235-236. [Book review]
Lamb, M. E. (Ed.) The role of the father in child development (Third edition). New York:
Wiley, 1997.
Lamb, M. E. Fathers and child development: An introductory overview and guide. In M. E.
Lamb (Ed.), The role of the father in child development (Third edition). New York:
Wiley, 1997. (pp. 1-18; 309-313)
Lamb, M. E. The development of father-infant relationships. In M. E. Lamb (Ed.), The role of
the father in child development (Third edition). New York: Wiley, 1997. (pp. 104-120;
332-342)
Lamb, M. E., & Billings, L. L. Fathers of children with special needs. In M. E. Lamb (Ed.), The
role of the father in child development (Third edition). New York: Wiley, 1997. (pp.
179-190; 356-360)
Sternberg, K. J., Lamb, M. E., & Dawud-Noursi, S. Using multiple informants and cross-
cultural research to study the effects of domestic violence on developmental
psychopathology: Illustrations from research in Israel. In S. S. Luthar, J. A. Burack, D.
Cicchetti, & J. R. Weisz (Eds.), Developmental psychopathology: Perspectives on
adjustment, risk, and disorder. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997. (pp.
417-436)
Broberg, A. G., Wessels, H., Lamb, M. E., & Hwang, C. P. The effects of day care on the
development of cognitive abilities in eight-year-olds: A longitudinal study.
Leyendecker, B., Lamb, M. E., Fracasso, M. P., Scholmerich, A., & Larson, C. Playful
interaction and the antecedents of attachment: A longitudinal study of Central American
and Euro-American mothers and infants. Merrill-Palmer Quarterly, 1997, 43, 24-47.
Horowitz, S. W., Lamb, M. E., Esplin, P. W., Boychuk, T. D., Krispin, O., & Reiter- Lavery, L.
Reliability of criteria-based content analysis of child witness statements. Legal and
Criminological Psychology, 1997, 2, 11-21.
Fracasso, M. P., Lamb, M. E., Scholmerich, A., & Leyendecker, B. The ecology of mother-
infant interaction in Euro-American and immigrant Central American families living in
the United States. International Journal of Behavioral Development, 1997, 20, 207-217.
00406
39
Lamb, M. E., Sternberg, K. J., Esplin, P. W., Hershkowitz, I., & Orbach, Y. Assessing the
credibility of childrens allegations of sexual abuse: Insights from recent research.
Learning and Individual Differences, 1997, 9, 175-194.
Lamb, M. E., Sternberg, K. J., & Thompson, R. A. The effects of divorce and custody
arrangements on childrens behavior, development, and adjustment. Expert Evidence,
1997, 5, 83-88, and Family and Conciliation Courts Review, 1997, 35, 393-404.
Reprinted in: M. E. Lamb (Ed.), Parenting and child development in nontraditional
families. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1999. (pp. 125-135)
Lamb, M. E. Linfluence du pere sur le developpement de lenfant. [Paternal influences on
child development]. Enfance, 1997(3), 337-349.
Scholmerich, A., Lamb, M. E., Leyendecker, B., & Fracasso, M. P. Mother-infant interactions
and attachment security in Euro-American and Central-American immigrant families.
Infant Behavior and Development, 1997, 20, 167-176.
Leyendecker, B. Lamb, M. E., Scholmerich, A., & Miranda Fricke, D. Contexts as moderators
of observed interactions: A study of Costa Rican mothers and infants from differing
socio-economic backgrounds. International Journal of Behavioral Development, 1997,
21, 15-34.
Lamb, M. E., & Wessels, H. Tagesbetreuung [Daycare]. In H. Keller (Ed.), Handbuch der
kleinkindforschung (2 Auflage) [Handbook of child study (2nd edition)]. Berlin:
Springer Verlag, 1997. (pp. 695 -717)
Leyendecker, B., Lamb, M. E., & Scholmerich, A. Studying mother-infant interaction: The
effects of context and length of observation in two subcultural groups. Infant Behavior
and Development, 1997, 20, 325-337.
Hershkowitz, I., Lamb, M. E., Sternberg, K. J., & Esplin, P. W. The relationships among
interviewer utterance type, CBCA scores, and the richness of childrens responses. Legal
and Criminological Psychology, 1997, 2, 169-176.
Hwang, C. P., & Lamb, M. E. Father involvement in Sweden: A longitudinal study of its
stability and correlates. International Journal of Behavioral Development, 1997, 21,
621-632.
Sternberg, K. J., Lamb, M. E., Hershkowitz, I., Yudilevitch, L., Orbach, Y., Esplin, P. W., &
Hovav, M. Effects of introductory style on childrens abilities to describe experiences of
sexual abuse. Child Abuse and Neglect, 1997, 21, 1133-1146.
Wessels, H., Lamb, M. E., Hwang, C. P., & Broberg, A. G. Personality development between
one and eight years of age in Swedish children with varying child care experiences.
00407
40
Sternberg, K. J., Lamb, M. E., & Dawud-Noursi, S. Understanding domestic violence and its
effects: Making sense of divergent reports and perspectives. In G. W. Holden, R.
Geffner, & E. W. Jouriles (Eds.), Children exposed to family violence (pp. 121- 156).
Washington, DC: American Psychological Association, 1998.
Lamb, M. E. Nonparental child care: Context, quality, correlates, and consequences. In W.
Damon, I. E. Sigel, & K. A. Renninger (Eds.), Handbook of child psychology (Vol. 4)
Child psychology in practice (Fifth Edition). New York: Wiley, 1998. (pp. 73- 133)
Lamb, M. E., Leyendecker, B. R., Scholmerich, A., & Fracasso, M. P. Everyday experiences of
infants in Euro-American and Central-American immigrant families. In M. Lewis & C.
Feiring (Eds.), Families, risk, and competence. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum
Associates, 1998. (pp. 113-131)
Dawud-Noursi, S., Sternberg, K. J., & Lamb, M. E. The relations among domestic violence,
peer relationships, and academic performance. In M. Lewis & C. Feiring (Eds.),
Families, risk, and competence. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1998. (pp.
207- 226)
Lamb, M. E. Fatherhood then and now. In A. Booth & N. Crouter (Eds.), Men in families:
When do they get involved? What difference does it make? Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence
Erlbaum Associates, 1998. (pp. 47-52)
Lamb, M. E. Revisiting fathers who actively parent. Contemporary Psychology, 1998, 43,
271-272. [Book review]
Poole, D. A., & Lamb, M. E. Investigative interviews of children: A guide for helping
professionals. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association, 1998.
Lamb, M. E. Assessing parent-infant interaction during the prenatal period: Some cautions.
Clinics in Perinatology, 1998, 25 (2), 461-469.
Hewlett, B. S., Lamb, M. E., Shannon, D., Leyendecker, B., & Scholmerich, A. Culture and
early infancy among Central African foragers and farmers. Developmental Psychology,
1998, 34, 653-661.
Lamb, M. E., Sternberg, K. J., & Esplin, P. W. Conducting investigative interviews of alleged
sexual abuse victims. Child Abuse and Neglect, 1998, 22, 813-823.
Lamb, M. E. Mea culpa but caveat emptor! Legal and Criminological Psychology, 1998, 3,
193-194.
Hershkowitz, I., Orbach, Y., Lamb, M. E., Sternberg, K. J., Horowitz, D., & Hovav, M. Visiting
the scene of the crime: Effects on childrens recall of alleged abuse. Legal and
Lamb, M. E. Assessments of childrens credibility in forensic contexts. Current Directions in
Psychological Science, 1998, 7, 43-46.
00408
41
Lamb, M. E. & Fracasso, M. P. Dimensions du temperament: Physiologie, comportement et
perceptions maternelles. [Dimensions of temperament: Physiology, behavior, and
maternal perceptions.] In G. M. Tarabulsy, R. Tessier, & A. Kappas (Eds.), Le
temperament de lenfant: Cinq etudes. [The childs temperament: Five studies]. Quebec
City, QU: Presses de lUniversite du Quebec, 1998. (pp. 77-92).
Lamb, M. E. Generative fathering: Beyond deficit perspectives. Contemporary Psychology,
1998, 43, 49-50. [Book review]
Lamb, M. E. (Ed.) Parenting and child development in nontraditional families. Mahwah,
NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1999.
Hungarian translation published by Educatio Tarsadalmi Szolgaltato Kozhasznu
Tarsasag, Budapest, in November 2008.
Lamb, M. E. Parental behavior, family processes, and child development in nontraditional and
traditionally understudied families. In M. E. Lamb (Ed.), Parenting and child
development in nontraditional families. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates,
1999. (pp. 1-14)
Lamb, M. E. Nonparental child care. In M. E. Lamb (Ed.), Parenting and child development in
nontraditional families. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1999. (pp.
39-55)
Leyendecker, B., & Lamb, M. E. Latino families. In M. E. Lamb (Ed.), Parenting and child
1999. (pp. 247-262)
Sternberg, K. J., & Lamb, M. E. Violent families. In M. E. Lamb (Ed.), Parenting and child
1999. (pp. 305-325)
Lamb, M. E., Sternberg, K. J., Orbach, Y., Hershkowitz, I., & Esplin, P. W. Forensic interviews
of children. In. A. Memon & R. A. Bull (Eds.), Handbook of the psychology of
interviewing. New York and Chichester, England: Wiley, 1999. (pp. 253-277)
Bornstein, M. H., & Lamb M. E. (Eds.) Developmental psychology: An advanced textbook
(Fourth Edition). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1999.
Lamb, M. E., Hwang, C. P., Ketterlinus, R. D., & Fracasso, M. P. Parent-child
relationships: Development in the context of the family. In M. H. Bornstein & M. E.
Lamb (Eds.), Developmental psychology: An advanced textbook (Fourth Edition).
Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1999. (pp. 411-450)
Orbach, Y., & Lamb, M. E. Assessing the accuracy of a childs account of sexual abuse: A case
study. Child Abuse and Neglect, 1999, 23, 91-98.
00409
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Lamb, M. E. Non-custodial fathers and their impact on the children of divorce. In R. A.
Thompson & P.R. Amato (Eds.), The post-divorce family: Research and policy issues.
Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1999. (pp. 105-125)
Lamb, M. E. Child witnesses: Recent research on childrens accounts of forensically relevant
experiences. Applied Developmental Science, 1999, 3, 2-5.
Roberts, K. P., & Lamb, M. E. Childrens responses when interviewers distort details during
investigative interviews. Legal and Criminological Psychology, 1999, 4, 23-31.
Sternberg, K. J., Lamb, M. E., Esplin, P. W., & Baradaran, L. Using a scripted protocol in
investigative interviews: A pilot study. Applied Developmental Science, 1999, 3, 70-76.
Lamb, M. E. The role of fathers in low-income families. In Children and families in an era of
rapid change: Creating a shared agenda for researchers, practitioners and policy
makers. Proceedings of Head Starts Fourth National Research Conference (July 9- 12,
1998) (pp. 205-207). Washington, DC: Department of Health and Human Services.
Lamb, M. E. Obituary: Mary D. Salter Ainsworth. American Psychological Society Observer,
1999, 12(5), 32, 34-35.
Roberts, K. P., Lamb, M. E., & Sternberg, K. J. Effects of the timing of postevent information
on preschoolers memories of an event. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 1999, 13,
541-559.
Dawud-Noursi, S., Lamb, M. E., & Sternberg, K. J. The effects of domestic violence on
childrens adjustment at school. Megamot, 1999, XL, 72-102. [Hebrew]
Orbach, Y., Hershkowitz, I., Lamb, M. E., Sternberg, K. J., & Horowitz, D. Interviewing at the
scene of the crime: Effects on childrens recall of alleged abuse. Legal and
Lamb, M. E. The effects of quality of care on child development. Applied Developmental
Science, 2000, 4, 112-115.
Campbell, J. J., Lamb, M. E., & Hwang, C. P. Early child care experiences and childrens social
competence between 1.5 and 15 years of age. Applied Developmental Science, 2000, 4,
166-175.
Hewlett, B. S., Lamb, M. E., Leyendecker, B., & Schlmerich, A. Internal working models,
trust, and sharing among foragers. Current Anthropology, 2000, 41, 287-297.
Cabrera, N. J., Tamis-LeMonda, C. S., Bradley, R. H., Hofferth, S., & Lamb, M. E. Fatherhood
in the twenty-first century. Child Development, 2000, 71, 127-136.
Lamb, M. E. The history of research on father involvement: An overview. Marriage and
Family Review, 2000, 29, 23-42.
00410
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Reprinted in: E. Peters & R. D. Day (Eds.), Fatherhood: Research, interventions and
policies. New York: Haworth, 2000. (pp. 23-42)
Marsiglio, W., Day, R. D., & Lamb, M. E. Exploring fatherhood diversity: Implications for
conceptualizing father involvement. Marriage and Family Review, 2000, 29, 269-293.
Reprinted in: E. Peters & R. D. Day (Eds.), Fatherhood: Research, interventions, and
policies. New York: Haworth, 2000. (pp. 269-293)
Ahnert, L., Rickert, H., & Lamb, M. E. Shared caregiving: Comparisons between home and
child care settings. Developmental Psychology, 2000, 36, 339-351.
Kelly, J. B., & Lamb, M. E. Using child development research to make appropriate custody and
access decisions for young children. Family and Conciliation Courts Review, 2000, 38,
297-311.
Orbach, Y., Hershkowitz, I., Lamb, M. E., Sternberg, K. J., Esplin, P. W., & Horowitz, D.
Assessing the value of structured protocols for forensic interviews of alleged child abuse
victims. Child Abuse and Neglect, 2000, 24, 733-752.
Lamb, M. E., Orbach, Y., Sternberg, K. J., Hershkowitz, I., & Horowitz, D. Accuracy of
investigators verbatim notes of their forensic interviews with alleged child abuse
victims. Law and Human Behavior, 2000, 24, 699-707.
Cederborg, A.-C., Orbach, Y., Sternberg, K. J., & Lamb, M. E. Investigative interviews of child
witnesses in Sweden. Child Abuse and Neglect, 2000, 24, 1355-1361.
Hewlett, B. S., Lamb, M. E., Leyendecker, B., & Scholmerich, A. Parental investment strategies
among Aka foragers, Ngandu farmers, and Euro-American urban- industrialists. In L.
Cronk, N. Chagnon, & W. Irons (Eds.), Adaptation and human behavior: An
anthropological perspective. New York: Aldine, 2000. (pp. 155- 178)
Lamb, M. E., Sternberg, K. J., & Esplin, P. W. Effects of age and delay on the amount of
information provided by alleged sex abuse victims in investigative interviews. Child
Development, 2000, 71, 1586-1596.
Marsiglio, W., Amato, P., Day, R. D., & Lamb, M. E. Scholarship on fatherhood in the 1990s
and beyond. Journal of Marriage and the Family, 2000, 62, 1173-1191.
Orbach, Y., & Lamb, M. E. Enhancing childrens narratives in investigative interviews. Child
Lamb, M. E. Exploring and defining early social ecologies and their impact: Mothers, fathers,
families and cultures. Marriage and Family Review, 2000, 30, 119-135.
Lamb, M. E. Fathering. In A. Kazdin (Ed.), Encyclopedia of psychology (Vol. 3, pp. 338- 341).
Washington DC and New York: American Psychological Association and Oxford
University Press, 2000.
00411
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Lamb, M. E. Attachment. In A.E. Kazdin (Ed.), Encyclopedia of psychology (Vol. 1, pp.
284-289). Washington, DC and New York: American Psychological Association and
Oxford University Press, 2000.
Ahnert, L., Lamb, M. E., & Seltenheim, K. Infantcare provider attachments in contrasting child
care settings I: Group-oriented care before German reunification. Infant Behavior and
Development, 2000, 23, 197-209.
Ahnert, L., & Lamb, M. E. Infantcare provider attachments in contrasting child care settings
II: Individual-oriented care after German reunification. Infant Behavior and
Development, 2000, 23, 211-222.
Scholmerich, A., Broberg, A. G., & Lamb, M. E. Precursors of inhibition and shyness in the first
year of life. In R. Crozier (Ed.), Shyness: Development, consolidation and change.
London: Routledge, 2000. (pp. 47- 63)
Fouts, H. N., Hewlett, B. S., & Lamb, M. E. Weaning and the nature of early childhood
interactions among Bofi foragers in Central Africa. Human Nature, 2001, 12, 27- 46.
Orbach, Y., & Lamb, M. E. The relationship between within-interview contradictions and
eliciting interviewer utterances. Child Abuse and Neglect, 2001, 25, 323-333.
Ahnert, L., & Lamb, M. E. The East German child care system: Associations with caretaking
and caretaking beliefs, childrens early attachment and adjustment. American Behavioral
Scientist, 2001, 44, 1843-1863.
MacKinnon-Lewis, C., Lamb, M. E., Hattie, J., & Baradaran, L. P. A longitudinal examination
of the associations between mothers and sons attributions and their aggression.
Development and Psychopathology, 2001, 13, 69-81.
Sternberg, K. J., Lamb, M. E., Davies, G. A., & Westcott, H. L. The Memorandum of Good
Practice: Theory versus application. Child Abuse and Neglect, 2001, 25, 669-681.
Hershkowitz, I., Orbach, Y., Lamb, M. E., Sternberg, K. J., & Horowitz, D. The effects of
mental context reinstatement on childrens accounts of sexual abuse. Applied Cognitive
Psychology, 2001, 15, 235-248.
Lamb, M E., & Kelly, J. B. Using the empirical literature to guide the development of parenting
plans for young children: A rejoinder to Solomon and Biringen. Family Courts Review,
2001, 39, 365-371.
Sternberg, K. J., Lamb, M. E., Orbach, Y., Esplin, P. W., & Mitchell, S. Use of a structured
investigative protocol enhances young childrens responses to free recall prompts in the
course of forensic interviews. Journal of Applied Psychology, 2001, 86, 997-1005.
Orbach, Y., Lamb, M. E., Sternberg, K. J., Williams, J. M. G., & Dawud-Noursi, S. The effect
of being a victim or witness of family violence on the retrieval of autobiographical
memories. Child Abuse and Neglect, 2001, 25, 1427-1437.
00412
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Lamb, M .E. Male roles in families at risk: The ecology of child maltreatment. Child
Maltreatment, 2001, 6, 308-311.
Lamb, M. E. Foreword. In J. R. Dudley & G. Stones Fathering-at-risk: Helping
nonresidential fathers. New York: Springer, 2001. (pp. ix-xi)
Hershkowitz, I., Orbach, Y., Lamb, M. E., Sternberg, K. J., Horowitz, D., & Hovav, M. Can a
visit to the scene of the crime improve childrens testimony in sexual abuse cases? In M.
Hovav, I. Hershkowitz, & D. Horowitz (Eds.), Young victims and offenders: Questioning
and interviewing in the legal process. Tel Aviv: Cherikover, 2001. (pp. 147-167)
Orbach, Y., Hershkowitz, I., Lamb, M. E., Sternberg, K. J., Esplin, P. W., & Horowitz, D.
Protocol based interviews with Israeli children: An evaluation study. In M. Hovav, I.
Hershkowitz, & D. Horowitz (Eds.), Young victims and offenders: Questioning and
interviewing in the legal process. Tel Aviv: Cherikover, 2001. (pp. 111-146)
Lamb, M. E., & Fauchier, A. The effects of question type on self-contradictions by children in
the course of forensic interviews. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 2001, 15, 483-491.
Hershkowitz, I., Orbach, Y., Lamb, M. E., Sternberg, K. J., & Horowitz, D. A comparison of
mental and physical context reinstatement in forensic interviews with alleged victims of
sexual abuse. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 2002, 16, 429-441.
Sternberg, K. J., Lamb, M. E., Esplin, P. W., Orbach, Y., & Hershkowitz, I. Using a structured
interview protocol to improve the quality of investigative interviews. In M. Eisen, J.
Quas, & G. Goodman (Eds.), Memory and suggestibility in the forensic interview.
Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2002. (pp. 409-436)
Lamb, M. E., Orbach, Y., Sternberg, K. J., Esplin, P. W., & Hershkowitz, I. The effects of
forensic interview practices on the quality of information provided by alleged victims of
child abuse. In H. L. Westcott, G. M. Davies, & R. Bull (Eds.), Childrens
testimony: Psychological research and forensic practice. Chichester, England: Wiley,
2002. (pp. 131-146).
Lamb, M. E., Sternberg, K. J., Orbach, Y., Esplin, P. W., & Mitchell, S. Is ongoing feedback
necessary to maintain the quality of investigative interviews with allegedly abused
children? Applied Developmental Science, 2002, 6, 35-41.
Lamb, M. E., Teti, D. M., Bornstein, M. H., & Nash, A. Infancy. In M. Lewis (Ed.), Child and
adolescent psychiatry: A comprehensive textbook (Third Edition; 293-323). New York:
Lippincott Williams and Wilkins, 2002.
Lamb, M. E. Infancy: The magical months. Introductory comments in K. B. Owens Child and
adolescent development: An integrated approach. New York: Wadsworth, 2002 (pp.
154-155).
00413
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Lamb, M. E. Father involvement and child development: Section preface. In C.S. Tamis-
LeMonda & N. Cabrera (Eds.), Handbook of father involvement: Multidisciplinary
perspectives (pp. 91-92). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2002.
Lamb, M. E. Infant-father attachments and their impact on child development. In C.S.
Tamis-LeMonda & N. Cabrera (Eds.), Handbook of father involvement: Multidisciplinary
perspective (pp. 93-117). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2002.
Lamb, M. E. Noncustodial fathers and their children. In C.S. Tamis-LeMonda & N. Cabrera
(Eds.), Handbook of father involvement: Multidisciplinary perspectives (pp. 169-184).
Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2002.
Lamb, M. E., Sternberg, K. J., Orbach, Y., Hershkowitz, I., Horowitz, D., & Esplin, P. W. The
effects of intensive training and ongoing supervision on the quality of investigative
interviews with alleged sex abuse victims. Applied Developmental Science, 2002, 6, 114-
125.
Leyendecker, B. L., Harwood, R. L., Lamb, M. E., & Schlmerich, A. Mothers socialization
goals and evaluations of desirable and undesirable everyday situations in two diverse
cultural groups. International Journal of Behavioral Development, 2002, 26, 248-258.
Lamb, M. E., Chuang, S. S., Wessels, H., Broberg, A. G., & Hwang, C. P. Emergence and
construct validation of the big five factors in early childhood: A longitudinal analysis of
their ontogeny in Sweden. Child Development, 2002, 73, 1517-1524.

Lamb, M. E. Placing childrens interests first: Developmentally appropriate parenting
plans. The Virginia Journal of Social Policy and the Law, 2002, 10, 98-119.

Reprinted in CRC Speak Out for Children, 2003, 18, 11-14, 17-19.

Schoelmerich, A., Leyendecker, B., Lamb, M.E., Hewlett, B.S., & Tessier, R.
Alltagserfahrungen von 3 Monate alten Suglingen in Nord- und Lateinamerika, Europa
und Afrika [Everyday experiences of 3-months old infants in North- and Latin-America,
Europe and Africa]. In K. Alt & A. Kemkes-Grottenthaler (Eds.), Kinderwelten:
Anthropologie Geschichte Kulturvergleich [Childhood: Anthropology, history, and
cross-cultural comparison] (pp. 386-399). Koeln: Boehlau Verlag, 2002.

Hewlett, B. S., & Lamb, M. E. Integrating evolution, culture and developmental psychology:
Explaining caregiver-infant proximity and responsiveness in Central Africa and the USA.
In H. Keller, Y. H. Poortinga, & A. Scholmerich (Eds.), Between culture and biology:
Perspectives on ontogenetic development. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002
(pp. 241-269).
Lindsey, E. W., MacKinnon-Lewis, C., Campbell, J., Frabutt, J. M., & Lamb, M. E. Marital
conflict and boys peer relationships: The mediating role of mother-son emotional
reciprocity. Journal of Family Psychology, 2002, 16, 466-477.

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Lamb, M. E., Bornstein, M. H., & Teti, D. M. Development in infancy (Fourth edition).
Lamb, M. E., Chuang, S. S., & Cabrera, N. Promoting child adjustment by fostering positive
paternal involvement. In R. M. Lerner, F. Jacobs, & D. Wertlieb (Eds.), Promoting
positive child, adolescent, and family development: A handbook of applied developmental
science. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2003. (pp. 211-232)
Lamb, M. E., & Garretson, M. E. The effects of interviewer gender and child gender on the
informativeness of alleged child sexual abuse victims in forensic interviews. Law and
Human Behavior, 2003, 27, 157-171.

Lamb, M.. E., & Ahnert, L. Institutionelle Betreuungskontexte und ihre
entwicklungspsychologische Relevanz fr Kleinkinder [Institutional care contexts and
their developmental relevance to young children]. In H. Keller (Hrsg.), Handbuch der
Kleinkindforschung [Handbook of child development] 3.Auflage [3rd edition]. Bern:
Huber, 2003. (pp. 525-564)
Lamb, M. E. Child development and the law. In R. M. Lerner, M. A. Easterbrooks, & J. Mistry
(Eds.), Comprehensive handbook of psychology. Volume 6: Developmental psychology.
New York: Wiley, 2003. (pp. 559-577)
Kelly, J. B., & Lamb, M. E. Developmental issues in relocation cases involving young
children: When, whether, and how? Journal of Family Psychology, 2003, 17, 193-205.

Ahnert, L., & Lamb, M. E. Shared care: Establishing a balance between home and child care
settings. Child Development, 2003, 74, 1044-1049.

Lamb, M. E., Sternberg, K. J., Orbach, Y., Esplin, P. W., Stewart, H., & Mitchell, S. Age
differences in young childrens responses to open-ended invitations in the course of
forensic interviews. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 2003, 71, 926-934.

Lamb, M. E., Sternberg, K, J., Orbach, Y., Hershkowitz, I., & Horowitz, D. Differences between
accounts provided by witnesses and alleged victims of child sexual abuse. Child Abuse
and Neglect, 2003, 27, 1019-1031.

Lewis, C., & Lamb, M. E. Fathers influences on childrens development: The evidence from
two-parent families. European Journal of the Psychology of Education, 2003, 18, 211-
228.

Thierry, K. L., Lamb, M. E., & Orbach, Y. Awareness of the origin of knowledge predicts child
witnesses recall of alleged sexual and physical abuse. Applied Cognitive Psychology,
2003, 17, 953-967.

Day, R. D., & Lamb, M. E. (Eds.) Conceptualizing and measuring father involvement.
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Day, R. D., & Lamb, M. E. Conceptualizing and measuring father involvement: Pathways,
problems, and progress. In R. D. Day & M. E. Lamb (Eds.), Conceptualizing and
measuring father involvement. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2004. (pp.
1-15)
Lamb, M. E., Chuang, S. S., & Hwang, C. P. Internal reliability, temporal stability, and
correlates of individual differences in paternal involvement: A 14-year longitudinal
study in Sweden. In R. D. Day & M. E. Lamb (Eds.), Conceptualizing and measuring
father involvement. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2004. (pp. 129-148)
Lamb, M. E. (Ed.). The role of the father in child development (Fourth edition). Hoboken, NJ:
John Wiley & Sons, 2004.

Lamb, M. E., & Tamis-Lemonda, C. S. The role of the father: An introduction. In M. E. Lamb
(Ed.), The role of the father in child development (Fourth edition). Hoboken, NJ: John
Wiley & Sons, 2004. (pp. 1-31)

Lamb, M. E., & Lewis, C. The development and significance of father-child relationships in
two-parent families. In M. E. Lamb, (Ed.), The role of the father in child development
(Fourth edition). Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2004. (pp. 272-306)

Ahnert, L., & Lamb, M. E. Child care and its impact on young children (2-5). In R. E.
Tremblay, R. G. Barr, & R. De V. Peters (Eds.), Encyclopedia on early childhood
development (online). Montreal, Quebec: Centre of Excellence for Early Childhood
Development, 2004, 1-6. available at:
http://www.excellence-earlychildhood.ca/documents/Ahnert-LambANGxp.pdf.

Published simultaneously in French as: Ahnert, L., & Lamb, M. E. Services la petite
enfance et ses impacts sur les jeunes enfants (2 5 ans). En R. E. Tremblay, R. G. Barr,
& R. De V. Peters (Eds.), Encyclopdie sur le dveloppement des jeunes enfants [en
ligne]. Montral, Qubec: Centre dExcellence pour le developpement des jeunes, 2004,
1-6. Disponible sur le site:
http://www.excellence-earlychildhood.ca/documents/Ahnert-LambFRxp.pdf.

Sternberg, K. J., Knutson, J. F., Lamb, M. E., Baradaran, L. P., Nolan C., & Flanzer, S. The
Child Maltreatment Log: A PC-based program for describing research samples. Child
Maltreatment, 2004, 9, 30-48.

Aldridge, J., Lamb, M. E., Sternberg, K. J., Orbach, Y., Esplin, P. W., & Bowler, L. Using a
human figure drawing to elicit information from alleged victims of child sexual abuse.
Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 2004, 72, 304-316.

Hershkowitz, I., Horowitz, D., Lamb, M. E., Orbach, Y., & Sternberg, K. J. Interviewing
youthful suspects in alleged sex crimes: A descriptive analysis. Child Abuse and
Neglect, 2004, 28, 423-438.

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Roberts, K. P., Lamb, M. E., & Sternberg, K. J. The effects of rapport-building style on
childrens reports of a staged event. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 2004, 18, 189-202.

Ahnert, L., Gunnar, M. R., Lamb, M. E., & Barthel, M. Transition to child care: Associations
with infant-mother attachment, infant negative emotion and cortisol elevations. Child
Development, 2004, 75, 639-650.

Lewis, C., & Lamb, M. E. Fathers: The research perspectives. In Supporting fathers:
Contributions from the International Fatherhood Summit 2003 (Early Childhood
Development: Practice and Reflections, Volume 20). The Hague, The Netherlands:
Bernard van Leer Foundation, 2004. (pp. 44-76)

Pipe, M. E., Lamb, M. E., Orbach, Y., & Esplin, P. W. Recent research on childrens testimony
about experienced and witnessed events. Developmental Review, 2004, 24, 440-468.

Lamb, M. E. Developmental theory and public policy: A cross-national perspective. In H.
Goelman, S. K. Marshall, & S. Ross (Eds.), Multiple lenses, multiple images:
Perspectives on the child across time, space and disciplines. Toronto: University of
Toronto Press, 2004. (pp. 122-146)
Tamis-LeMonda, C. S., Shannon, J. D., Cabrera, N. J., & Lamb, M. E. Fathers and mothers at
play with their 2- and 3-year-olds: Contributions to language and cognitive development.

Fouts, H. N., Lamb, M. E., & Hewlett, B. S. Infant crying in hunter-gatherer cultures.
Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 2004, 27, 462-463.

Lamb, M. E. Socio-emotional development and early schooling: experimental research.
Prospects, 2004, 34, 401-409.

Lamb, M. E. Testimony, childrens competence for. In C. B. Fisher & R. M. Lerner (Eds.),
Encyclopedia of applied developmental science. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2005. (Vol.
2, 1085-1086)

Lamb, M. E. Bonding, parent-child. In C. B. Fisher & R. M. Lerner (Eds.), Encyclopedia of
applied developmental science. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2005. (Vol. 1, pp. 169-170)

Lamb, M. E. Forensic interviewing. In C. B. Fisher & R. M. Lerner (Eds.), Encyclopedia of

Lamb, M. E. Eyewitness testimony. In C. B. Fisher & R. M. Lerner (Eds.), Encyclopedia of
applied developmental science. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2005. (Vol. 1, 433-434)

Lamb, M. E. Day care: Measuring quality of care. In C. B. Fisher & R. M. Lerner (Eds.),
Encyclopedia of applied developmental science. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2005.
(Vol. 1, pp. 322-324)

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Lamb, M. E. Attachment, child-parent. In C. B. Fisher & R. M. Lerner (Eds.), Encyclopedia of

Lamb, M. E. Parenting, divorce and. In C. B. Fisher & R. M. Lerner (Eds.), Encyclopedia of

Fouts, H. N., & Lamb, M. E. Ethical issues in cross-cultural research. In C. B. Fisher & R. M.
Lerner (Eds.), Encyclopedia of applied developmental science. Thousand Oaks, CA:
Sage, 2005. (Vol. 1, pp. 409-412)

Lamb, M. E. Day care: Effects on child development. In C. B. Fisher & R. M. Lerner (Eds.),
Encyclopedia of applied developmental science. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2005. (Vol.
1, pp. 320-322)

Lamb, M. E., & Thierry, K. L. Understanding childrens testimony regarding their alleged
abuse: Contributions of field and laboratory analog research. In D. M. Teti (Ed.),
Handbook of research methods in developmental science. Oxford, UK and Malden,
MA: Blackwell Publishers, 2005. (pp. 489 508)
Day, R. D., Lewis, C., OBrien, M., & Lamb, M. E. Emerging theories, constructs, and topics in
the study of father involvement. In V. Bengston, A. Acock, K. R. Allen, P. Dilworth-
Anderson, & D. M. Klein (Eds.), Sourcebook of family theory and research. Thousand
Oaks, CA: Sage, 2005. (pp. 341-351, 360-365)

Lamb, M. E. Attachments, social networks, and developmental contexts. Human Development,
2005, 48, 108-112.

Japanese translation published in 2007.

Bornstein, M. H., & Lamb, M. E. (Eds.). Developmental science: An advanced textbook (Fifth
edition). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2005.

Korean translation published as [Developmental Science]. (K. Kwak and the
SNU Developmental Psychology Laboratory, Trans.). Seoul, South Korea: Hakjisa, 2009.

Lamb, M. E., & Lewis, C. The role of parent-child relationships in child development. In M. H.
Bornstein & M. E. Lamb (Eds.), Developmental science: An advanced textbook (Fifth
edition). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2005. (pp. 429 - 468)

Fouts, H. N., Hewlett, B. S., & Lamb, M. E. Parent-offspring conflicts among the Bofi farmers
and foragers of Central Africa. Current Anthropology, 2005, 46, 29-50.

Hewlett, B. S., & Lamb, M. E. (Eds.) Hunter-gatherer childhoods: Evolutionary,
developmental, and cultural perspectives. New Brunswick, NJ: Aldine/Transaction,
2005.

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Hewlett, B. S., & Lamb, M. E. Recent research and emerging issues in the study of hunter-
gatherer childhoods. In B. S. Hewlett & M. E. Lamb (Eds.), Hunter-gatherer childhoods:
Evolutionary, developmental, and cultural perspectives. New Brunswick, NJ:
Aldine/Transaction, 2005. (pp. 3 - 18)

Lamb, M. E. Introduction to Part IV. In B. S. Hewlett & M. E. Lamb (Eds.), Hunter-gatherer
childhoods: Evolutionary, developmental, and cultural perspectives. New Brunswick,
NJ: Aldine/Transaction, 2005. (pp. 285 287)

Fouts, H. N., & Lamb, M. E. Weanling emotional patterns among the Bofi foragers of Central
Africa: The role of maternal availability and sensitivity. Hunter-gatherer childhoods:
Evolutionary, developmental, and cultural perspectives. New Brunswick, NJ:
Aldine/Transaction, 2005. (pp. 309 321)

Lamb, M. E., & Hewlett, B. S. Reflections on hunter-gatherer childhood. In B. S. Hewlett & M.
E. Lamb (Eds.), Hunter-gatherer childhoods: Evolutionary, developmental, and cultural
perspectives. New Brunswick, NJ: Aldine/Transaction, 2005. (pp. 407 415)

Sternberg, K. J., Lamb, M. E., Guterman, E., Abbott, C. B., & Dawud-Noursi, S. Adolescents
perceptions of attachments to their mothers and fathers in families with histories of
domestic violence: A longitudinal perspective. Child Abuse and Neglect, 2005, 29, 853-
869.

Oates, J., Lewis, C., & Lamb, M. E. Parenting and attachment. In S. Ding & K. Littleton
(Eds.), Children's personal and social development (pp. 11-51). Oxford: Blackwell,
2005.

Roopnarine, J. L., Fouts, H. N., Lamb, M. E., & Lewis-Elligan T. Y. Mothers' and fathers'
behaviors toward their 3-4 month-old infants in low-, middle-, and upper-socioeconomic
African American families. Developmental Psychology, 2005, 41, 7213-732.
Lamb, M. E. Dveloppement socio-motionnel et scolarisation prcoce: Recherches
exprimentale. In J.- J. Ducret (Ed.), Constructivisme et education (II): Scolariser la
petite enfance? (Vol. 1. pp 257-267). Genve, Suisse: Service de la Recherche en
Education (SRED), 2005.

Hershkowitz, I., Horowitz, D., & Lamb, M. E. Trends in childrens disclosure of abuse in Israel:
A national study. Child Abuse and Neglect, 2005, 29, 1203-1214.

Carter, S. C., Ahnert, L., Grossmann, K. E., Hrdy, S. B., Lamb, M. E., Porges, S. W., & Sachser,
N. (Eds.), Attachment and Bonding: A New Synthesis (Dahlem Workshop Report 92).
Boston, MA: MIT Press, 2005.

Carter, S. C., Ahnert, L., Grossmann, K. E., Hrdy, S. B., Lamb, M. E., Porges, S. W., & Sachser,
N. Introduction. In S. C. Carter, L. Ahnert, K. E. Grossmann, S. B. Hrdy, M. E. Lamb, S.
W. Porges, & N. Sachser (Eds.), Attachment and Bonding: A New Synthesis (Dahlem
Workshop Report 92). Boston, MA: MIT Press, 2005. (pp. 1-8)
00419
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Kraemer, G. W. (on behalf of M. E. Lamb, G. A. Liotti, K. Lyons-Ruth, G. Meinlschmidt, A.
Scholmerich, M. Steele, & C. Travarthen). Group report: Adaptive and maladaptive
outcomes. In S. C.Carter, L. Ahnert, K. E. Grossmann, S. B. Hrdy, M. E. Lamb, S. W.
Porges, & N. Sachser (Eds.), Attachment and Bonding: A New Synthesis (Dahlem
Workshop Report 92). Boston, MA: MIT Press, 2005. (pp. 429-474).

Thierry, K., Lamb, M. E., Orbach, Y., & Pipe, M. E. Developmental differences in the function
and use of anatomical dolls during interviews with alleged sexual abuse victims.
Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 2005, 73, 1125-1134.

Trinder, L., & Lamb, M. E. Measuring up? The relationship between correlates of childrens
adjustment and both family law and policy in England. Louisiana Law Review, 2005, 65,
1509-1537.

Lamb, M. E., & Brown, D. A. Conversational apprentices: Helping children become competent
informants about their own experiences. British Journal of Developmental Psychology,
2006, 24, 215-234.
Sternberg, K. J., Baradaran, L. P., Abbott, C. B., Lamb, M. E., & Guterman, E. Type of
violence, age, and gender differences in the effects of family violence on childrens
behavior problems: A mega-analysis. Developmental Review, 2006, 26, 89-112.

Sternberg, K. J., Lamb, M. E., Guterman, E., & Abbott, C. B. Effects of early and later family
violence on childrens behavior problems and depression: A longitudinal, multi-
informant perspective. Child Abuse and Neglect, 2006, 30, 283-306.

Lamb, M. E., & Ahnert, L. Nonparental child care: Context, concepts, correlates, and
consequences. In W. Damon, R. M. Lerner, K. A. Renninger & I. E. Sigel (Eds.),
Handbook of child psychology (Vol. 4) Child psychology in practice (Sixth Edition).
New York: Wiley, 2006. (pp. 950-1016)
Bassen, C. R., & Lamb, M. E. Gender differences in adolescents self-concepts of assertion and
affiliation. European Journal of Developmental Psychology, 2006, 3, 71-94.

Ahnert. L., Pinquart, M., & Lamb, M. E. Security of childrens relationships with non-parental
care providers: A meta-analysis. Child Development, 2006, 74, 664-679.

Hershkowitz, I., Orbach, Y., Lamb, M. E., Sternberg, K. J., Pipe, M. E., & Horowitz, D.
Dynamics of forensic interviews with suspected abuse victims who do not disclose
abuse. Child Abuse and Neglect, 2006, 30, 753-769.

Lewis, C., & Lamb, M. E. Father-child relationships and childrens development: A key to
durable solutions? In M. Thorpe & R. Budden (Eds.), Durable solutions: Collected
papers from the 2005 Interdisciplinary Dartington Hall Conference. Bristol, UK:
Jordans, 2006. (pp. 87-101)

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Lamb, M. E., Orbach, Y., Warren, A., Esplin, P. W., & Hershkowitz, I. Enhancing performance:
Factors affecting the informativeness of young witnesses. In M. P. Toglia, J. D. Read,
D. F. Ross, & R. C. L. Lindsay (Eds.), Handbook of eyewitness psychology. Vol 1:
Memory for events. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2006. (pp. 423-446)

Pipe, M. E., Thierry, K. S., & Lamb, M. E. The development of event memory: Implications for
child witness testimony. In M. P. Toglia, J. D. Read, D. F. Ross, & R. C. L. Lindsay
(Eds.), Handbook of eyewitness psychology. Vol 1: Memory for events (pp. 447-472).

Cederborg, A. C., & Lamb, M. E. How does the legal system respond when children with
learning difficulties are victimized? Child Abuse and Neglect, 2006, 30, 537-547.

Brown, D. A., & Lamb, M. E. Helping abused children talk about their experiences in forensic
interviews. Minerva Medicolegale, 2006, 126, 155-68.

Lewis, C., & Lamb, M. E. Fatherhood: Connecting the strands of diversity across time and
space. York: Joseph Rowntree Foundation, 2006.

Chuang, S. S., Lamb, M. E., & Hwang, C. P. Personality development from childhood to
adolescence: A longitudinal study of ego-control and ego-resilience in Sweden.

Lamb, M. E., & Larsson, A. S. Developmentally appropriate interview techniques. In B.
Brooks-Gordon & M. Freeman (Eds.), Law and psychology (pp. 143-153). Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2006.

Dubowitz, H., Lane, W., Greif, G. L., Jensen, T. K., & Lamb, M. E. Low income African
American fathers involvement in childrens lives: Implications for practitioners. Journal
of Family Social Work, 2006, 10, 25-41.

Pipe, M. E., Lamb, M. E., Orbach, Y., & Cederborg, A.-C. (Eds.) Child sexual abuse:
Disclosure, delay, and denial. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2007.

Pipe, M. E., Lamb, M. E., Orbach, Y., & Cederborg, A.-C. Seeking resolution in the disclosure
wars: An introduction. In M. E. Pipe, M. E. Lamb, Y. Orbach, & A. C. Cederborg
(Eds.), Child sexual abuse: Disclosure, delay, and denial (pp. 3-10). Mahwah, NJ:

Pipe, M. E., Lamb, M. E., Orbach, Y., Stewart, H. L., Sternberg, K. J., & Esplin, P. W. Factors
associated with nondisclosure of suspected abuse during forensic interviews. In M. E.
Pipe, M. E. Lamb, Y. Orbach, & A.-C. Cederborg (Eds.), Child sexual abuse:
Disclosure, delay, and denial (pp. 77 96). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum
Associates, 2007.

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Hershkowitz, I., Horowitz, D., & Lamb, M. E. Individual and family variables associated with
disclosure and non-disclosure of child abuse in Israel. In M. E. Pipe, M. E. Lamb, Y.
Orbach, & A.-C. Cederborg (Eds.), Child sexual abuse: Disclosure, delay, and denial
(pp. 65 75). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2007.

Hershkowitz, I., Orbach, Y., Lamb, M. E., Sternberg, K. J., Pipe, M. E., & Horowitz, D.
Suspected victims of abuse who do not make allegations: An analysis of their interactions
with forensic interviewers. In M. E. Pipe, M. E. Lamb, Y. Orbach, & A.-C. Cederborg
(Eds.), Child sexual abuse: Disclosure, delay, and denial (pp. 97 113). Mahwah, NJ:

Orbach, Y., Shiloach, H., & Lamb, M. E. Reluctant disclosers of child sexual abuse. In M. E.
Pipe, M. E. Lamb, Y. Orbach, & A.-C. Cederborg (Eds.), Child sexual abuse:
Disclosure, delay, and denial (pp. 115 - 134). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum
Associates, 2007.

Cederborg, A.-C., Lamb, M. E., & Laurell, O. Delay of disclosure, minimization, and denial
when the evidence is unambiguous: A multi-victim case. In M. E. Pipe, M. E. Lamb, Y.
Orbach, & A.-C. Cederborg (Eds.), Child sexual abuse: Disclosure, delay, and denial
(pp. 159 173). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2007.

Hershkowitz, I., Fisher, S., Lamb, M. E., & Horowitz, D. Improving credibility assessment in
child sexual abuse allegations: The role of the NICHD Investigative Interview Protocol.
Child Abuse and Neglect, 2007, 31, 99-110.

Hershkowitz, I., Lanes, O., & Lamb, M. E. Exploring the disclosure of child sexual abuse with
alleged victims and their parents. Child Abuse and Neglect, 31, 111-124.

Brown, D. A., Pipe, M. E., Lewis, C., Lamb, M. E., & Orbach, Y. Supportive or suggestive: Do
human figure drawings help 5- to 7-year-old children to report touch? Journal of
Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 2007, 75, 33-42.

Orbach, Y., & Lamb, M. E. Young childrens references to temporal attributes of allegedly
experienced events in the course of forensic interviews. Child Development, 2007, 78,
1100-1120.

Lamb, M. E. The Approximation Rule: Another proposed reform that misses the target. Child
Development Perspectives, 2007, 1, 135-136.

Lamb, M. E., Orbach, Y., Hershkowitz, I., Esplin, P. W., & Horowitz, D. Structured forensic
interview protocols improve the quality and informativeness of investigative interviews
with children: A review of research using the NICHD Investigative Interview Protocol.
Child Abuse and Neglect, 2007, 31, 1201-1231.

Lamb, M. E., Orbach, Y., Hershkowitz, I., Horowitz, D., & Abbott, C. B. Does the type of
prompt affect the accuracy of information provided by alleged victims of abuse in
forensic interviews? Applied Cognitive Psychology, 2007, 21, 1117-1130.
00422
55

Fouts, H., Roopnarine, J. L., & Lamb, M. E. Social experiences and daily routines of African
American infants in different socioeconomic contexts. Journal of Family Psychology,
2007, 21, 655-664.

Lamb, M. E. Improving the quality of parent-child contact in separating families. In M.
Maclean (Ed.), Parenting after partnering: Containing conflict after separation. Oxford
and Portland OR: Hart Publishing, 2007. (pp. 11-28)

Hershkowitz, I., Lamb, M. E., & Horowitz, D. Victimization of children with disabilities.
American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, 2007, 77, 629-635.

Cederborg, A. C., La Rooy, D., & Lamb, M. E. Repeated interviews with children who have
intellectual disabilities. Journal of Applied Research in Intellectual Disabilities, 2008, 21,
103-113.

Lamb, M. E. A view from abroad. Economic and Political Weekly (India), 2008 (Feb 2), 43(5),
40-41.

Reprinted in M. V. Nadkarni & R. S. Deshpande (Eds.), Social science research in India:
Institutions and structure (pp. 221-225). New Delhi: Academic Foundation.

Keselman, O., Cederborg, A. C., Lamb, M. E., & Dahlstrom, O. Mediated communication with
minors in asylum-seeking hearings. Journal of Refugee Studies, 2008, 21, 103-116.

Lamb, M. E., Hershkowitz, I., Orbach, Y., & Esplin, P. W. Tell me what happened: Structured
investigative interviews of child victims and witnesses. Chichester, UK and Hoboken,
NJ: Wiley, 2008.

Lamb, M. E. The many faces of fatherhood: Some thoughts about fatherhood and immigration.
In S. S. Chuang & R. P. Moreno (Eds.), On new shores: Understanding immigrant
fathers in North America (pp. 7 24). Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2008.

Brown, D., Lamb, M. E., Pipe, M.-E., & Orbach, Y. Pursuing the truth, the whole truth, and
nothing but the truth: Forensic interviews with child victims and witnesses of abuse. In
M. L. Howe, G. S. Goodman, & D. Cicchetti (Eds.), Stress, trauma, and childrens
memory development: Neurobiological, cognitive, clinical, and legal perspectives ( pp.
267-301). New York: Oxford University Press, 2008.

Cederborg, A. C., & Lamb, M. E. Interviewing alleged victims with intellectual disabilities.
Journal of Intellectual Disability Research, 2008, 52, 49-58.

Cederborg, A. C., & Lamb, M. E. The need for systematic and intensive training of forensic
interviewers. In T. I. Richardson & M. V. Williams (Eds.), Child abuse and violence.
New York: Nova Science Publishers, 2008. (pp. 1 17)

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La Rooy, D., & Lamb, M. E. What happens when young witnesses are interviewed more than
once? Forensic Update, 2008, Issue 95 (Autumn), 25-28.

Shannon, J. D., Cabrera, N. J., Tamis-LeMonda, C., & Lamb, M. E. Who stays and who leaves?
Father accessibility across childrens first 5 years. Parenting, 2009, 9, 78-100.

Cyr, M., & Lamb, M. E. Assessing the effectiveness of the NICHD investigative interview
Protocol when interviewing French-speaking alleged victims of child sexual abuse in
Quebec. Child Abuse and Neglect, 2009, 33, 257-268.

Brown, D. A., & Lamb, M. E. A two-way street: Supporting interviewers in adhering to best
practice recommendations and enhancing childrens capabilities in forensic interviews.
In K. Kuehnle & M. Connell (Eds.), The evaluation of child sexual abuse allegations:
A comprehensive guide to assessment and testimony. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2009. (pp.
299-325)

La Rooy, D., Lamb, M. E., and Pipe, M.-E. Repeated interviewing: A critical evaluation of the
risks and potential benefits. In K. Kuehnle & M. Connell (Eds.), The evaluation of child
sexual abuse allegations: A comprehensive guide to assessment and testimony.
Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2009. (pp. 327-361)

Lamb, M. E. and colleagues. Appendix: The NICHD Investigative Interview Protocol. In K.
Kuehnle & M. Connell (Eds.), The evaluation of child sexual abuse allegations:
A comprehensive guide to assessment and testimony. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2009. (pp.
531-545)

Lamb, M. E. & Bougher, L. D. How does migration affect mothers and fathers roles within
their families? Reflections on some recent research. Sex Roles, 2009, 60, 611-614.

Lamb, M. E., Orbach, Y., Sternberg, K. J., Aldridge, J., Pearson, S., Stewart, H. L., Esplin, P.
W., & Bowler, L. Use of a structured investigative protocol enhances the quality of
investigative interviews with alleged victims of child sexual abuse in Britain. Applied
Cognitive Psychology, 2009, 23, 449-467.

Lyon, T., Lamb, M. E., & Myers, J. The value of the NICHD Protocol has been well established
and recognized. Letter to the Editor. Child Abuse and Neglect, 2009, 33, 71-74.

Cederborg, A. C., Danielson, H., La Rooy, D., & Lamb, M. E. Repetition of contaminating
question types when children and youths with learning disabilities are interviewed about
abuse experiences. Journal of Intellectual Disability Research, 2009, 53, 440-449.

Larsson, A., & Lamb, M. E. Making the most of information-gathering interviews with children.
Infant and Child Development, 2009, 18, 1-16.

Fouts, H. N., & Lamb, M. E. Cultural and developmental variation in toddlers interactions with
other children in two small-scale societies in Central Africa. European Journal of
Developmental Science, 2009, 3, 389-407.
00424
57
Lamb, M. E., & Kelly, J. B. Improving the quality of parent-child contact in separating families
with infants and young children: Empirical research foundations. In R. M. Galatzer-
Levy, L. Kraus, & J. Galatzer-Levy (Eds.), The scientific basis of child custody decisions
(Second edition). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2009. (pp. 187-214)

Teoh, Y. S., Yang, P. J., Lamb, M. E., Larsson, A. Do human figure diagrams help alleged
victims of sexual abuse provide elaborate and clear accounts of physical contact with
alleged perpetrators? Applied Cognitive Psychology, 2010, 24, 287-300.

Lamb, M. E. (Ed.). The role of the father in child development (Fifth edition). Hoboken NJ:
Wiley, 2010.

Lamb, M. E. How do fathers affect childrens development?: Let me count the ways. In M. E.
Lamb (Ed.), The role of the father in child development (Fifth edition; pp. 1-26).
Hoboken NJ: Wiley, 2010.

Lamb, M. E., & Lewis, C. The development and significance of father-child relationships in two-
parent families. In M. E. Lamb (Ed.), The role of the father in child development (Fifth
edition; pp. 94-153). Hoboken NJ: Wiley, 2010.

Malloy, L. C., & Lamb, M. E. Biases in judging victims and suspects whose statements are
inconsistent. Law and Human Behavior, 2010, 34, 46-48.

Lamb, M. E. The changing landscape for research support in British universities. APS
Observer, 2010, 23(5), 19-20.

Lamb, M. E., & Malloy, L. C. The NICHD Investigative Interview Protocol: Looking back and
moving forward. The Advocate, 2010, 33(1), 9-13.

Thierry, K. L., Lamb, M. E., Pipe, M.E., & Spence, M. J. The flexibility of source-monitoring
training: Reducing young childrens source confusions. Applied Cognitive Psychology,
2010, 24, 626-644.

Lamb, M. E., & Freund, A. M. (Eds.). Handbook of life-span development, Volume 2: Social and
emotional development (Editor-in-Chief: Richard M. Lerner). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2010.

Freund, A. M., & Lamb, M. E. Introduction. In M. E. Lamb & A. M. Freund (Eds.), (2010).
Handbook of life-span development, Volume 2: Social and emotional development
(Editor-in-Chief: Richard M. Lerner). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2010. (pp. 1-8)

Ahnert, L. & Lamb, M. E. ffentliche Tagesbetreuung auf dem Prfstand entwicklungs
psychologischer Forschung [Public child care on trial by research in developmental
psychology]. In H. Keller (Ed.), Handbuch fr Kleinkindforschung (4 Auflage)
[Handbook of child study; 4
th
. Edition] (pp. 330-364). Bern: Huber, 2010.

Teoh, Y-S. & Lamb, M. E. Preparing children for investigative interviews: Rapport-building,
instruction, and evaluation. Applied Developmental Science, 2010, 14, 154-163.
00425
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Keselman, O., Cederborg, A. - C., Lamb, M. E., & Dahlstrm, O. Asylum seeking minors in
interpreter-mediated interviews: What do they say and what happens to their responses?
Child and Family Social Work, 2010, 15, 325-334.

Roberts, K. P., & Lamb, M. E. Reality-monitoring characteristics in confirmed and doubtful
allegations of child sexual abuse. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 2010, 24, 1049-1079.

LaRooy, D., Katz, C., Malloy, L. C., & Lamb, M. E. Do we need to rethink guidance on
repeated interviews? Psychology, Public Policy, and the Law, 2010, 16, 373-392.

Lamb, M. E. The evolution of childhood [Invited Presidential Column]. APS Observer, 2010,
23(11), 3, 16-17.

Bornstein, M. H., & Lamb, M. E. (Eds.) Developmental science: An advanced textbook (6
th

edition). New York: Taylor and Francis, 2011.

Reprinted as M. H. Bornstein & M. E. Lamb (Eds.), Cognitive development: An
advanced textbook. New York: Taylor & Francis, 2011, and M. E. Lamb & M. H.
Bornstein (Eds.), Social and personality development: An advanced textbook. New York:
Taylor & Francis, 2011.

Lamb, M. E., & Lewis, C. The role of parent-child relationships in child development. In M. H.
Bornstein & M. E. Lamb (Eds.), Developmental science: An advanced textbook (6
th

edition). New York: Taylor and Francis, 2011. (pp. 469-517)

Malloy, L. C., Lamb, M. E., & Katz, C. Children and the law: Examples of applied psychology
in action. In M. H. Bornstein & M. E. Lamb (Eds.), Developmental science: An
advanced textbook (6
th
edition). New York: Taylor and Francis, 2011. (pp. 645-686)

Lamb, M. E., & Bornstein, M. H. Social and personality development: An introduction and
guide. In M. E. Lamb & M. H. Bornstein (Eds.), Social and personality development: An
advanced textbook. New York: Taylor & Francis, 2011.

Bornstein, M. H., & Lamb, M. E. Neural, physical, motor, perceptual, cognitive, and language
development: An introduction and guide. In M. H. Bornstein & M. E. Lamb (Eds.),
Cognitive development: An advanced textbook. New York: Taylor & Francis, 2011.

Lamb, M. E. Unraveling the significance of human childhood. [Book review] American
Scientist, 2011, 99, 68.

Ahnert, L., & Lamb, M. E. Child care and its impact on young children (25). In J. Bennett
(topic Ed.); R. E. Tremblay, M. Boivin, R. De V. Peters, & R. G. Barr (Eds.),
Encyclopedia on early childhood development [online]. Montreal, Quebec: Centre of
Excellence for Early Childhood Development; 2011:1-6. Available at: http://www.child-
encyclopedia.com/documents/Ahnert-LambANGxp2.pdf. Accessed [insert date].

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Lamb, M. E., La Rooy, D. J., Malloy, L. C., & Katz, C. (Eds.) Childrens testimony: A handbook
of psychological research and forensic practice (Second edition). Chichester: Wiley,
2011.

Malloy, L. C., La Rooy, D. J., Lamb, M. E., & Katz, C. Developmentally sensitive interviewing
for legal purposes. In M. E. Lamb, D. J. La Rooy, L. C. Malloy, & C. Katz (Eds.),
Childrens testimony: A handbook of psychological research and forensic practice
(Second edition, pp. 1-13). Chichester: Wiley, 2011.

Lamb, M. E., Malloy, L. C., & La Rooy, D. J. Setting realistic expectations: Developmental
characteristics, capacities, and limitations. In M. E. Lamb, D. J. La Rooy, L. C. Malloy,
& C. Katz (Eds.), Childrens testimony: A handbook of psychological research and
forensic practice (Second edition; pp. 15-48). Chichester: Wiley, 2011.

La Rooy, D. J., Malloy, L. C., & Lamb, M. E. The development of memory in childhood. In M.
E. Lamb, D. J. La Rooy, L. C. Malloy, & C. Katz (Eds.), Childrens testimony: A
handbook of psychological research and forensic practice (Second edition; pp. 49-68).
Chichester: Wiley, 2011.

Malloy, L. C., La Rooy, D. J., & Lamb, M. E. Facilitating effective participation by children in
the legal system. In M. E. Lamb, D. J. La Rooy, L. C. Malloy, & C. Katz (Eds.),
Childrens testimony: A handbook of psychological research and forensic practice
(Second edition; pp. 423-429). Chichester: Wiley, 2011.

Malloy, L. C., Brubacher, S., & Lamb, M. E. Expected consequences of disclosure revealed in
investigative interviews with suspected victims of child sexual abuse. Applied
Developmental Science, 2011, 15, 8-19.

Peixoto, C. E., Ribeiro, C., & Lamb, M. E. Forensic interview protocol in sexual abuse: Why and
what for? In T. Magalhaes (Ed.), To improve the management of child abuse and neglect
(pp. 133-159). Porto: Portuguese Society for the Study of Child Abuse and Neglect
(SPECAN), 2011.

LaRooy, D. A., & Lamb, M. E. What happens when interviewers ask repeated questions in
forensic interviews with children alleging abuse? Journal of Police and Criminal
Psychology, 2011, 26, 20-25.

LaRooy, D. A., Lamb, M. E., & Memon, A. Forensic interviews with children in Scotland: A
survey of interview practices among police. Journal of Police and Criminal
Psychology, 2011, 26, 26-34.

Zaff, J. F., Kawashima-Ginsberg K., Lin E. S., Lamb M. E., Balsano, A., & Lerner, R. M.
Developmental trajectories of civic engagement across adolescence:
Disaggregation of an integrated construct. Journal of Adolescence, 2011, 34, 1207-1220.

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Fouts, H. N., Roopnarine, J. L., Lamb, M. E., & Evans, M. Infant social interactions with
multiple caregivers: The importance of ethnicity and socio-economic status. Journal of
Cross-Cultural Psychology, 2012, 43, 331-351.

Orbach, Y., Lamb, M. E., La Rooy, D. J., & Pipe, M.-E. A case study of witness consistency
and memory recovery across multiple investigative interviews. Applied Cognitive
Psychology, 2012, 26, 118-129.

Lamb, M. E. Critical analysis of research on parenting plans and childrens well-being. In K.
Kuehnle & L. Drodz (Eds.), Parenting plan evaluations: Applied research for the family
court. New York: Oxford University Press, 2012. (pp. 214-243)

Katz, C., Hershkowitz, I., Malloy, L. C., Lamb, M. E., Atabaki, A., & Spindler, S. Non-verbal
behaviour of children who disclose or do not disclose child abuse in investigative
interviews. Child Abuse & Neglect, 2012, 36, 12-20.

Brown, D., Pipe, M.-E., Lewis, C., Lamb, M. E. & Orbach, Y. How do body diagrams affect the
accuracy and consistency of children's reports of bodily touch across repeated interviews?
Applied Cognitive Psychology, 2012, 26, 174-181.

Hershkowitz, I., Lamb, M. E., Orbach, Y., Katz, C., & Horowitz, D. The development of
communicative and narrative skills among preschoolers: Lessons from forensic
interviews about child abuse. Child Development, 2012, 83, 611-622.

Lamb, M. E. British universities face funding woes. APS Observer, 2012, 25(4), 31-32.

Fouts, H. N., Hewlett, B. S., & Lamb, M. E. A bio-cultural approach to breastfeeding
interactions in Central Africa. American Anthropologist, 2012, 114, 123-136.

Lamb, M. E. Mothers, fathers, families, and circumstances: Factors affecting childrens
adjustment. Applied Developmental Science, 2012, 16, 98-111.

Lamb, M. E., & Malloy, L. C. Child development and the law. In R. M. Lerner, M. A.
Easterbrooks, & J. Mistry (Eds.), Comprehensive handbook of psychology (2
nd
edition).
Volume 6: Developmental psychology (pp. 571-593). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2012.
Spencer, J. R., & Lamb, M. E. (Eds.) Children and cross-examination: Time to change the rules?
Oxford: Hart Publishing, 2012.
Lamb, M. E. A wasted opportunity to engage with the literature on the implications of
attachment research for family court professionals. Family Court Review, 2012, 50, 481-
485.

La Rooy, D., Nicol, A., Halley, J., & Lamb, M. E. Joint investigative interviews with children in
Scotland. The Scots Law Times, 2012, 18, 163-172.

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Brown, D. A., Lewis, C. N., Lamb, M. E., & Stephens, E. The influences of delay and severity of
intellectual disability on event memory in children. Journal of Consulting and Clinical
Psychology, 2012, 80, 829-841.

Lamb, M. E. Non-parental care and emotional development. In S. Pauen (Ed.), Early childhood
development and later outcome (pp. 168-179). New York and Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2012.
Lamb, M. E. Taking science to court. APS Observer, 2012, 25(9).
Braver, S. L., & Lamb, M. E. Marital dissolution. In G. W. Peterson & K. R. Bush (Eds.),
Handbook of marriage and the family (3
nd
ed., pp. 487-516). New York: Springer, 2013.

Teoh, Y. S., & Lamb, M. E. Interview demeanor in forensic interviews of children. Psychology,
Crime & Law, 2013, 19, 145-159.

Lamb, M. E., & Lewis, C. Father-child relationships. In C. S. Tamis-LeMonda & N. Cabrera
(Eds.), Handbook of father involvement (2
nd
ed.; pp. 119-134). New York:
Psychology Press, 2013.

Shwalb, D. W., Shwalb, B. J., & Lamb, M. E. (Eds.) Fathers in cultural context. New York:
Routledge/Taylor & Francis, 2013.
Recipient of APA Division 52s 2014 Ursula Gielen Global Psychology Book Award.
Shwalb, D. W., Shwalb, B. J., & Lamb, M. E. Introduction. In D. W. Shwalb, B. J. Shwalb, & M.
E. Lamb (Eds.), Fathers in cultural context (pp. 3-14). New York: Routledge/Taylor &
Francis, 2013.
Li, X., & Lamb, M. E. Fathers in Chinese culture. In D. W. Shwalb, B. J. Shwalb, & M. E.
Lamb (Eds.), Fathers in cultural context (pp. 10-41). New York: Routledge/Taylor &
Francis, 2013.
Shwalb, D. W., Shwalb, B. J., & Lamb, M. E. Final thoughts, comparisons, and conclusions.
In D. W. Shwalb, B. J. Shwalb, & M. E. Lamb (Eds.), Fathers in cultural context (pp.
385-399). New York: Routledge/Taylor & Francis, 2013.
Lamb, M. E. Early experience, neurobiology, plasticity, vulnerability, and resilience. In D.
Narvaez, J. Panksepp, A. N Schore, & T. R. Gleason (Eds.), Human nature, early
experience and human development: From research to practice and policy (pp. 68-73).
New York: Oxford University Press, 2013.

La Rooy, D. J., Brown, D. & Lamb, M. E. Suggestibility and witness interviewing. In A. Ridley,
F. Gabbert, & D. J. La Rooy (Eds.), Investigative suggestibility: Theory, research and
applications (pp. 197-216). Oxford UK: Wiley-Blackwell, 2013.
Lamb, M. E. Inaugural editorial. Psychology, Public Policy, and Law, 2013, 19, 1-2.

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Lamb, M. E. The changing faces of fatherhood and father-child relationships: From
fatherhood as status to father as dad. In M. A. Fine & F. D. Fincham (Eds.), Handbook
of family theories: A content-based approach (pp. 87-102). New York: Routledge,
2013.

Pipe, M. E., Orbach, Y., Lamb, M. E., Abbott, C. B., & Stewart, H. L. Do case outcomes change
when investigative interviewing practices change? Psychology, Public Policy, & Law,
2013, 19, 179-190.

Brubacher, S. P., Malloy, L. C., Lamb, M. E., & Roberts, K. P. How do interviewers and
children discuss individual occurrences of alleged repeated abuse in forensic interviews?
Applied Cognitive Psychology, 2013, 27, 443-450.

Lamb, M. E., & Sim, M. P. Y. Developmental factors affecting children in legal contexts. Youth
Justice, 2013, 13, 131-144.

Lamb, M. E., Hershkowitz, I., & Lyon, T. D. Interviewing victims and suspected victims who
are reluctant to talk. APSAC Advisor, 2013, 25(4), 17-19.

Mellish, L., Jennings, S., Tasker, F., Lamb, M. E., & Golombok, S. (2013). Gay, lesbian
and heterosexual adoptive families: Family relationships, child adjustment and
adopters experiences. London: British Association for Adoption & Fostering.

Whitelock, C. F., Lamb, M. E., & Rentfrow, P. J. Overcoming trauma: Psychological and
demographic characteristics of child sexual abuse survivors in adulthood. Clinical
Psychological Science, 2013, 1, 351-362.

Brown, D. A., Lamb, M. E., Lewis, C. N., Pipe, M.-E., Orbach, Y., & Wolfman, M. The NICHD
Investigative Interview Protocol: An analogue study. Journal of Experimental
Psychology: Applied, 2013, 19, 367-382.

Van Gijn, E. L., & Lamb, M. E. Alleged sex abuse victims' accounts of their abusers' modus
operandi. Journal of Forensic Social Work, 2013, 3, 133-149.

Ahern, E. C., & Lamb, M. E. Child sexual abuse. Community Care Inform.
http://www.ccinform.co.uk/articles/2007/08/24/1612/sexual+abuse.html?keywords=sexu
al+abuse&subquerykeywords=&categoryname=all&topics=16269&gwa_searchtype=tab
bedsearch

Ahern, E. C., & Lamb, M. E. Guide to child investigative interviewing. Community Care
Inform.
http://www.ccinform.co.uk/articles/2013/06/20/7711/guide+to+child+investigative+inter
viewing.html?keywords=sexual+abuse&subquerykeywords=ahern&categoryname=guid
es&topics=16269&gwa_searchtype=tabbedsearch

Lamb, M. E. Foreword. In H. Keller & H. Otto (Eds.), Different faces of attachment.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, in press.
00430
63

Cederborg, A.-C., Alm, C., Da Silva Nises, D. L., & Lamb, M. E. Investigative interviewing of
alleged child abuse victims: An evaluation of a new training program for investigative
interviewers. Police Practice and Research, in press.

Sim, M. P. Y., & Lamb, M. E. Childrens disclosure of child sexual abuse: How motivational
factors affect linguistic categories related to deception detection. Psychology, Crime &
Law, in press.

Cyr, M., Dion, J., Hershkowitz, I., & Lamb, M. E. Laudition de mineurs tmoins ou victimes:
lefficacit du protocole du NICHD. Revue Internationale de Criminologie et de Police
Technique et Scientifique, in press.

Golombok, S. E., Mellish, L., Jennings, S., Casey, P., Tasker
,
F., & Lamb, M. E. Adoptive gay
father families: Parent-child relationships and children's psychological adjustment. Child
Development, in press.

Jennings, S., Mellish, L., Tasker, F., Lamb, M. E. & Golombok, S. E. Why adoption? Gay,
lesbian and heterosexual adoptive parents reproductive experiences and reasons for
adoption. Adoption Quarterly, in press.

Malloy, L. C., Brubacher, S. P., & Lamb, M. E. Because she's one who listens": Children
discuss disclosure recipients in forensic interviews. Child Maltreatment, in press.

Lamb, M. E. (Vol. Ed.), Lerner, R. M. (Series Ed.), Handbook of child psychology and
developmental science (7
th
edition; Volume 3), Social, emotional, and personality
development. Hoboken NJ: Wiley, in press.

Lamb, M. E. Unraveling the processes that underlie social, emotional, and personality
development: A preliminary survey of the terrain. In M. E. Lamb (Vol. Ed.), R. M.
Lerner (Series Ed.), Handbook of child psychology and developmental science (7
th

edition; Volume 3), Social, emotional, and personality development. Hoboken NJ:
Wiley, in press.

Lamb, M. E., Malloy, L. C., Hershkowitz, I., & La Rooy, D. Children and the law. In M. E.
Lamb (Vol. Ed.), R. M. Lerner (Series Ed.), Handbook of child psychology and
developmental science (7
th
edition; Volume 3), Social, emotional, and personality
development. Hoboken NJ: Wiley, in press.

Fagan, J. F., Day, R., Lamb, M. E. & Cabrera, N. J. Should researchers conceptualize differently
the dimensions of parenting for fathers and mothers? The Journal of Family Theory and
Review, in press.

Andrews, S. J., & Lamb, M. E. The effects of age and delay on responses to repeated questions
in forensic interviews with children alleging sexual abuse. Law and Human Behavior, in
press.
00431
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Wachi, T., Watanabe, K., Yokota, K., Otsuka, Y., Kuraishi, H., & Lamb, M. E. Police
interviewing styles and confessions in Japan. Psychology, Crime, and Law, in press.

Lamb, M. E. Dangers associated with the avoidance of evidence-based practice. Family Court
Review, in press.

Lamb, M. E. Drawn into the life of crime: Learning from, by, and for child victims and
witnesses. Applied Cognitive Psychology, in press.

Huang, C. Y. S., & Lamb, M. E. Are Chinese children more compliant? - Examination of
cultural differences in observed maternal control and child compliance. Journal of Cross-
Cultural Psychology, in press.

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Papers Presented to Scientific and Professional Conventions or Conferences

Tracy, R. L., Lamb, M. E., & Ainsworth, M. E. Proximity seeking in the first year as related to
attachment. Paper presented to the Southeastern Division of the Society for Research in
Child Development, Chapel Hill, NC, March 1974.
Lamb, M. E. Infants, fathers, and mothers: Interaction at eight-months-of-age in the home and
in the laboratory. Paper presented to the Eastern Psychological Association, New York,
April 1975.
Lamb, M. E. Infant attachment to mothers and fathers. Paper presented to the Society for
Research in Child Development, Denver, CO, April 1975.
Lamb, M. E. The one-year-olds interaction with its parents. Paper presented to the Eastern
Psychological Association, New York, April 1976.
Lamb, M. E. The effects of stress on the parental preferences of one-year-olds. Paper presented
to the XXIst International Congress of Psychology, Paris, July 1976.
Lamb, M. E. The effects of ecological variables on parent-infant interaction. Paper presented to
the Society for Research in Child Development, New Orleans, LA, March 1977.
Lamb, M. E. Development and function of parent-infant relationships in the first two years of
life. Paper presented to the Society for Research in Child Development, New Orleans,
LA, March 1977.
Lamb, M. E. Effective parenting in contemporary America: Some cautions and some
prescriptions. Paper presented to a Conference on Effective Parenting, New Orleans, LA,
April 1977.
Lamb, M. E. The influence of the infant on marital quality and family interaction during the
prenatal, paranatal, and infancy period. Paper presented to the Conference on
Contributions of the Child to Marital Quality and Family Interaction Across the Lifespan,
University Park, PA, April 1977.
Lamb, M. E., Suomi, S. J., & Stephenson, G. R. (Co-organizers) Methodological problems in
the study of social interaction. Study group that met in Madison, WI, July 1977, under
the auspices of the Society for Research in Child Development, and the financial support
of the Foundation for Child Development.
Lamb, M. E. Social interaction in triads: Mother, father, and infant. Paper presented to the study
group on Methodological Problems in the Study of Social Interaction, Madison, WI, July
1977.
Lamb, M. E. The relationships between mothers, fathers, infants, and siblings in the first two
years of life. Paper presented to the International Society for the Study of Behavioral
Development, Pavia (Italy), September 1977.
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66
Frodi, A. M. Lamb, M. E., Leavitt, L. A., & Donovan, W. L. Fathers and mothers responses to
infant smiles and cries. Poster presentation to the Society for Psychophysiological
Research, Philadelphia, PA, October 1977.
Lamb, M. E. Moderator of workshop on The problems of single parents and working mothers
families at the General Mills American Family Forum on Parenting -The Crucial
years, Washington, DC, October 1977.
Lamb, M. E. Family boundary and stress issues in child/human development, psychiatry,
sociology, and family studies: What are the shared issues and problems? Invited address
to a Conference on family boundaries: Research and therapy, Madison, WI, October
1977.
Lamb, M. E., Chase-Lansdale, P. L., & Owen, M. T. The changing American family and its
implications for infant social development. Paper presented to the ETS Conference on
The Social Network of the Developing Infant, Princeton, NJ, December 1977.
Lamb, M. E. The fathers role in the attainment and maintenance of infant mental health. Invited
address to the Michigan Infant Mental Health Association, Ann Arbor, MI, March 1978.
Lamb, M. E. Parent-infant bonding. Invited address to the Michigan State Medical Society
Conference on Maternal and Perinatal Health, Dearborn, MI, March 1978.
Stevenson, M. B., & Lamb, M. E. Effects of the caretaking environment on infant cognitive
competence. Paper presented to the International Conference on Infant Studies,
Providence, RI, March 1978.
Lamb, M. E. Observational analyses of sibling relationships in infancy. Paper presented to the
International Conference on Infant Studies, Providence, RI, March 1978.
the signals and characteristics of young infants. Paper presented to the International
Conference on Infant Studies, Providence, RI, March 1978.
Maurer, G. F., & Lamb, M. E. Personality characteristics of early-treated children with PKU and
the personality characteristics of their parents. Paper presented to the fourteenth General
Medical Conference, PKU Collaborative Study, Stateline, NV, March 1978.
Frodi, A. M., & Lamb, M. E. Baby responsiveness in eight-and fourteen-year-olds as assessed
by observational and psychophysiological measures. Paper presented to the Iowa
Academy of Sciences, Cedar Falls, Iowa, April 1978.
Lamb, M. E. Invited consultant at an interdisciplinary workshop on the observational study of
social interaction, Munich (Germany), July 1978.
Lamb, M. E., Frodi, A. M., Chase-Lansdale, P. L., & Owen, M. T. The fathers role in
nontraditional family contexts: Direct and indirect effects. Paper presented to the
American Psychological Association, Toronto, September 1978.
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Frodi, A. M., & Lamb, M. E. Psychophysiological responses to infant signals in abusive mothers
and mothers of premature infants. Paper presented to the Society for
Psychophysiological Research, Madison, WI, September 1978.
Lamb, M. E. The effects of nontraditional family styles on infant social development:
Implications for social policy. Invited address to the National Council of Family
Relations Convention, Philadelphia, PA, October 1978.
Lamb, M. E., & Bronson, S. K. Paternal influences on development in traditional and
nontraditional families. Invited address to a conference on Fatherhood and the Male
Single Parent, Nebraska Psychiatric Institute, Omaha, NE, November/December 1978.
Lamb, M. E. Infant social development: A personal perspective. Guest lecture series,
University of Goteborg (Sweden), February 1979.
Lamb, M. E. The father-child relationship: Changing conceptions of its nature and potential
importance. Invited address to the Merrill-Palmer Institute, Detroit, MI, February 1979.
Frodi, A. M., & Lamb, M. E. Sex differences in behavioral and psychopysiological
responsiveness to infants: A developmental study. Paper presented (on invitation) to the
Association for Women in Psychology, Dallas, TX, March 1979.
Lamb, M. E. Participant in Peer Interaction Conversation Hour at the Biennial Meeting of the
Society for Research in Child Development, San Francisco, March 1979.
Frodi, A. M., Wille, D., & Lamb, M. E. Parents responses to normal and premature infants.
Paper presented to the Society for Research in Child Development, San Francisco, March
1979.
Frodi, A. M., Schima, J., Ohman, R., & Lamb, M. E. Child abusers responses to infant smiles
and cries. Paper presented to the Society for Research in Child Development, San
Francisco, March 1979.
Olson, G. M., & Lamb, M. E. Premature infants: Cognitive and social development in the first
year of life. Workshop presentation to the Annual Convention of the Michigan
Association for Infant Mental Health, Ann Arbor, MI, April 1979.
Lamb, M. E., & Goldberg, W. A. The father child relationship: Biological, evolutionary, and
social perspectives. Paper presented to an invitational conference on Parental Behavior,
Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ, April 1979.
Lamb, M. E. Biological and social contributions to the development of social behavior. Guest
lecture series, University of Goteborg (Sweden), October 1979.
Lamb, M. C. On the origins of personality and social style. Invited presentation at the ETS
Conference on the Family, Princeton, N.J., November/December 1979.
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Lamb, M. E. The development of social understanding and social attachments in infancy.
Invited presentation to the Seminar on the Development of Infants and Parents, Boston,
MA, November 1979.
Lamb, M. E. Children in a changing culture: The effects of nontraditional family styles and
paternal roles in child development. Invited address to a Conference on Parenthood and
Families in the 1980s, Wheelock College, Boston, MA, March 1980.
Frodi, A. M., Lamb, M. E., Hwang, C.-P., & Frodi, M. Father-infant and mother-infant
interaction in traditional and nontraditional families. Paper presented to the International
Conference on Infant Studies, New Haven, CT, April 1980.
Lamb, M. E. Infant social cognition: The origins of early expectations. Paper presented to the
Denver Psychobiology Research Group Retreat, Estes Park, CO, May 1980.
Lamb, M. E., Frodi, A. M., Frodi, M., & Hwang, P. Effects of gender and caretaking role on
parent-infant interaction. Paper presented to the Denver Psychobiology Research Group
Retreat, Estes Park, CO, May 1980.
Lamb, M. E. The role of the father in child development: An overview. Invited public address,
School of Social Work, University of Haifa, Haifa, Israel, July 1980.
Lamb, M. E. Co-organizer of and participant in SRCD-sponsored study group on Social Policy,
Law, and the Father, held at the University of Haifa, Haifa, Israel, July 1980.
Lamb, M. E. The development of parent-child relationships in infancy. Invited presentation to
the International Congress of Psychology, Leipzig (East Germany), July 1980.
Lamb, M. E. The role of the father in child development. Invited address to the Board of Jewish
Education, Chicago, June 1980.
Lamb, M. E. The meaning and measurement of family interaction. Invited address to the
National Council on Family Relations, Portland, OR, October 1980.
Lamb, M. E. Child abuse: Causes and intervention. Workshop presentation at the School of
Social Work, University of Haifa (Israel), November 1980.
Lamb, M. E. Attachment, institutionalization, and child custody. Workshop presentation at the
School of Social Work, University of Haifa (Israel), November 1980.
Estes, D. E., Lamb, M. E., Thompson, R. A., & Dickstein, S. Maternal affective quality and
security of attachment at 12 and 19 months. Paper presented to the Society for Research
in Child Development, Boston, April 1981.
Frodi, A. M., Murrary, A. D., Lamb, M. E., & Steinberg, J. Behavioral responsiveness to infants
in pre-and post-menarcheal girls. Paper presented to the Society for Research in Child
Development, Boston, April 1981.
00436
69
Lamb, M. E. Child development and social policy. Minicourse offering, School of Social Work,
University of Haifa (Israel), June 1981.
Thompson, R. A., & Lamb, M. E. The relationship between stranger sociability, temperament,
and social experiences at 12 1/2 and 19 1/2 months of age. Paper presented to the
Midwestern Psychological Association, Detroit, MI, April 1981.
Thompson, R. A., & Lamb, M. E. Changes in family circumstances and their relationships to the
quality of infant-mother attachment: A short-term longitudinal study. Paper presented to
the Midwestern Psychological Association, Detroit, MI, April 1981.
Lamb, M. E. Fathers, mothers, and childcare in the 1980s. Invited presentation to a conference
on Families in transition: Children, work and housework, Cincinnati, Ohio, May 1981.
Thompson, R. A., & Lamb, M. E. Socioemotional development in a family context. Invited
address to a conference on Social connectedness beyond the dyad, Educational Testing
Service, Princeton, NJ, May 1981.
Lamb, M. E. Family bonds, springboards to...... Invited address to the Family Education
Conference on Families Alive: Roots and Wings of Relationships, Weber State
College, Ogden, UT, September 1981.
Sagi, A., Lamb, M. E., Estes, D., Shoham, R., Lewkowicz, K., & Dvir, R. Security of
infant-adult attachment among kibbutz-reared infants. Paper presented to the
International Conference on Infant Studies, Austin, TX, March 1982.
Frodi, A. M., Lamb, M. E., Hwang, C.-P., & Frodi, M. Increased paternal involvement and
family relationships. Paper presented to the International Conference on Infant Studies,
Austin, TX, March 1982.
Dickstein, S., Thompson, R. A., Estes, D., Malkin, C. M., & Lamb, M. E. Social referencing and
maternal contributions. Paper presented to the International Conference on Infant
Studies, Austin, TX, March 1982.
Lamb, M. E. The changing ecology of childhood: Fathers, mothers, and childcare in the 1980s.
Invited address to the National Association of School Psychologists, Toronto, March
1982.
Lamb, M. E., Sagi, A., Lewkowicz, K., Shoham, R., & Estes, D. Security of infant-mother,
-father, and -metapelet attachments in kibbutz-reared infants. Paper presented to the
Denver Psychobiology Research Group Retreat, Estes Park, CO, June 1982.
Lamb, M. E., Malkin, C. M., & Gaensbauer, T. J. Effects of child abuse on the security of
infant-mother attachment. Paper presented to the Denver Psychobiology Research Group
Retreat, Estes Park, CO, June 1982.
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70
Thompson, R. A., & Lamb, M. E. Continuity and change in socioemotional development in the
second year. Paper presented to the Denver Psychobiology Research Group Retreat,
Estes Park, CO, June 1982.
Lamb, M. E., Sagi, A., Lewkowicz, K., Shoham, R., & Estes, D. The effects of kibbutz-
rearing on the security of infant-mother, -father, and -metapelet attachments in
kibbutz-reared infants. Paper presented to the Second International Conference on
Kibbutz Studies, New York, June 1982.
Elster, A. B., & Lamb, M. E. Teenaged fathers and child development. Presentation to the Social
Science Research Council Study Group on School-aged Parenthood, Baltimore, June
1982.
Thompson, R. A., & Lamb, M. E. Temperamental influences on stranger sociability and the
security of attachment. Paper presented to the American Psychological Association,
Washington, DC, August 1982.
Thompson, R. A., & Lamb, M. E. Security of attachment and stranger sociability in infancy.
Paper presented to the American Psychological Association, Washington, DC, August
1982.
Lamb, M. E. The changing role of fathers: Impact on families and children. Invited address to a
Special Institute on Family Changes that Affect Children, Kent State University, Kent,
OH, September 1982.
Lamb, M. E. Mothers, fathers, and children in the 1980s. Address to a Conference on
Childcare arrangements in the 1980s, Ministry of Social Affairs, Singapore, January
1983.
Lamb, M. E. Effective parenting: Some cautions and some prescriptions. Public lecture
organized by the Ministry of Social Affairs, Singapore, February 1983.
Lamb, M. E. Parental influences on child development. Public lecture organized by the
Ministry of Social Affairs, Singapore, February 1983.
Lamb, M. E. Workshop on Attachment and bonding: Conceptual and assessment issues. Child
Psychiatric Clinic, Singapore, February 1983.
Lamb, M. E. Consultant to workshop on The development of parent education programs.
Ministry of Social Affairs, Singapore, February 1983.
Lamb, M. E. Consultant to workshop on The longitudinal study on the effects of childcare
arrangements on child development. Ministry of Social Affairs, Singapore, February
1983.
Lamb, M. E. Mothers, fathers, and childcare in a changing world. Invited Plenary Address to
the Second World Congress on Infant Psychiatry, Cannes (France), March/April 1983.
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Lamb, M. E. (Chair) Symposium on The origins of nurturance at the biennial convention of
the Society for Research in Child Development, Detroit, April 1983.
Adams, G. R., Hetherington, E. M., Lamb, M. E., & Parish, T. S. Divorce and changing familial
configurations: What effects might they have on children and how can they be
ameliorated? Discussion session at the biennial convention of the Society for Research in
Child Development, Detroit, April 1983.
Malkin, C. M., Lamb, M. E., & Burke, M. The development of social expectations in
distress-relief contexts. Paper presented to the Society for Research in Child
Development, Detroit, April 1983.
Zarbatany, L., & Lamb, M. E. Social referencing as a function of information source: Mothers
versus strangers. Paper presented to the Society for Research in Child Development,
Detroit, April 1983.
Lamb, M. E. Changing patterns of childcare: Effects on children and families. Invited address
to the Rocky Mountain Psychological Association, Snowbird (UT), April 1983.
Lamb, M. E. Invited participant in Social Science Research Council Conference on Parenting
across the lifespan, Belmont Conference Center, Belmont, MD, May 1983.
Lamb, M. E. The role of the father in child development. Invited address to The Fatherhood
Forum, New York City, June 1983.
Lamb, M. E. Assessing the quality of infant-parent relationships: Paper presented to the
International Society for the Study of Behavioral Development, Munich (West Germany),
July/August 1983.
Sagi, A., Lamb, M. E., Shoham, R., Lewkowicz, K., & Dvir, R. Development of parent- infant
interaction in Israeli kibbutzim. Paper presented to the International Society for the
Study of Behavioral Development, Munich (West Germany), August 1983.
Lamb, M. E. Bonding: Critical time or critical process? Invited presentation to the Utah
Perinatal Association, Park City, September 1983.
Lamb, M. E. Parents and children in a changing world. Invited plenary address to a joint
meeting of the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Academy of Child
Psychiatry, San Francisco, October 1983.
Lamb, M. E. Workshop on Parent-child relationships: Key issues for Pediatricians. American
Academy of Pediatrics, San Francisco, October 1983.
Lamb, M. E. Assessing the security of attachment using the Strange Situation: Approaches,
problems and prospects. Workshop presentation to the American Academy of Child
Psychiatry, San Francisco, October 1983.
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Lamb, M. E. The role of the father in child development. Invited presentation to the Select
Committee on Families and Children, US House of Representatives, November 1983.
Lamb, M. E., Pleck, J. H., & Charnov, E. L. Paternal behavior in humans. Paper presented to
the American Society for Zoologists and the Animal Behavior Society, Philadelphia,
December 1983.
Lamb, M. E. Fathers and children. Workshops offered to staff of the Arizona Department of
Economic Security in Phoenix and Tucson, January 1984.
Lamb, M. E. Helping parents and children grow together. Invited presentation to the
Intermountain Pediatric Society, Salt Lake City, February 1984.
Hwang, C.-P., Broberg, A., Frodi, M., & Lamb, M. E. Relationships between quality of childcare
and quality of peer play in Swedish infants. Presentation to the International Conference
on Infant Studies, New York City, April 1984.
Lamb, M. E., & Sagi, A. Fathering in the 1980s and beyond. Invited address to a Conference
on The Father/Family Connection: Theory, Research, and Implications for Policy,
Practice, and Life, University of Utah School of Social Work, Salt Lake City, April 1984.
Lamb, M. E. The role of the father in child development. Workshop presentation to Pediatric
Associates of Atlanta, Atlanta, GA, May 1984.
Lamb, M. E. Invited participant in Social Science Research Council Conference on Child abuse
and neglect: Biosocial perspectives, Boston, MA, May 1984.
Elster, A. B., & Lamb, M. E. (Co-organizers) Study group on Adolescent Fatherhood, funded
by the Society for Research in Child Development, Heber (Utah), May 1984.
Lamb, M. E. The role of the father in child development: An overview. Presentation to the
Study group on Adolescent Fatherhood, Heber (UT), May 1984.
Elster, A. B., & Lamb, M. E. Adolescent mother-infant-father relationships. Paper presented to
the Society for Pediatric Research, San Francisco, May 1984.
Lamb, M. E. The father-child relationship in a changing world. Invited address to the Chicago
area Fatherhood Forum, Chicago, June 1984.
Lamb, M. E. Fatherhood and institutional policy. Workshop at the Chicago area Fatherhood
Forum, Chicago, June 1984.
Lamb, M. E. The role of the father in child development. Invited presentation to the conference,
Advances in Child Development for Parent Educators, Dominican College, San Rafael,
CA, July 1984.
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73
Lamb, M. E. Changing patterns of childcare: Effects on children and families. Invited
presentation to a conference on The Child in Social Context, University of Manitoba,
Winnipeg (Canada), October 1984.
Lamb, M. E. The father-child relationship. Invited workshops at the Arizona Psychological
Association Convention, Flagstaff, AZ, October 1984.
Lamb, M. E. The changing role of fathers. Keynote address, Ninth Annual Regional
Intervention Program Conference, Nashville, TN, October 1984.
Lamb, M. E. Child care in a changing world. Keynote address to a conference on Diversity in
Family Style: Effects on children, Buffalo, October 1984.
Lamb, M. E. Changing patterns of child care and its effects on families and children. Nebraska
Wesleyan University Forum, Lincoln, NE, November 1984.
Lamb, M. E. The changing role of fathers. Carol Shigetomi Memorial Lecture, University of
Oregon Health Sciences Center, Portland, OR, January 1985.
Lamb, M. E. The changing roles of fathers. Invited presentation to a conference on The Future
of Parenting, University of California, Chico, CA, February 1985.
Lamb, M. E. Single fathers and their children. Invited presentation to the Child Psychology
Forum, Goteborg (Sweden), February 1985.
Sagi, A., & Lamb, M. E. Relationships between Strange Situation behaviors and stranger
sociability among infants on Israeli kibbutzim. Paper presented to the Society for
Research in Child Development, Toronto, April 1985.
Hwang, C.-P., Lamb, M. E., Broberg, A., Frodi, A., & Hult, G. Effects of early father
participation on later paternal involvement and responsibility. Paper presented to the
Society for Research in Child Development, Toronto , April 1985.
Lamb, M. E. Adolescent fatherhood. Invited presentation at the biennial meeting of the Society
for Research in Child Development, Toronto, April 1985.
Lamb, M. E. Fatherhood and father-child relationships in a changing world. Keynote address,
Fourth Interdisciplinary Symposium on Human Development, The Father in Human
Development, University of California-Davis, May 1985.
Lamb, M. E., Teti, D. M., Lewkowicz, K. S., & Malkin, C. M. Child maltreatment and the child
welfare system. Presentation to Study Group: Rethinking Child Welfare: International
Perspectives, Minneapolis, June 1985.
Elster, A. B., Lamb, M. E., & Ralston, C. Evaluation of a comprehensive adolescent pregnancy
program. Presentation to meeting of Program and Evaluation Directors, Office of
Adolescent Pregnancy Programs, Washington, DC, June 1985.
00441
74
Lewkowicz, K. S., & Lamb, M. E. Naive Israelis evaluations of Strange Situation behavior.
Paper presented to the International Society for the Study of Behavioral Development,
Tours (France), July 1985.
Sagi, A. & Lamb, M. E. Is there a congruence between Strange Situation assessments made by
trained vs. naive observers: A test of external validity. Paper presented to the
International Society for the Study of Behavioral Development, Tours (France), July
1985.
Lamb, M. E. The emergence of a new American father. Keynote address to the Seattle area
Fatherhood Forum, Seattle, WA, September 1985.
Lamb, M. E. Adolescent fatherhood. Invited presentation to the Convention of The American
Academy of Child Psychiatry, San Antonio, TX, October 1985.
Lamb, M. E. The long term effects of beneficial or adverse early life experiences. Invited
address to the Fifth ASEAN Forum on Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Singapore,
November 1985.
Lamb, M. E. Psychosocial aspects of adolescent fatherhood. Invited address to the Fifth
ASEAN Forum on Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Singapore, November 1985.
Lamb, M. E. The ecology of adolescent parenthood. Invited presentation to a symposium on
Ecological approaches to the study of children and families, University of Victoria,
Vancouver, March 1986.
Lamb, M. E. The changing roles of fathers. Lansdowne Memorial Lecture, University of
Victoria, Vancouver, March 1986.
Teti, D. M., Lamb, M. E., & Elster, A. B. Long-range educational, financial, and marital
consequences of teen marriage in three cohorts of adult males. Paper presented to the
Society for Research in Adolescence, Madison, WI, March 1986.
Lamb, M. E. Family relations: The changing roles of fathers. Keynote address to the Tulsa
Coalition for Parenting Education Annual Spring Event, Tulsa, OK, April 1986.
Teti, D. M., & Lamb, M. E. Attachment and caregiving between infants and older siblings.
Paper presented to the International Conference on Infant Studies, Los Angeles, April
1986.
Malkin, C. M., Lamb, M. E., & Gaensbauer, T. Mother-child interaction: Correlates of
maltreatment. Paper presented to the International Conference on Infant Studies, Los
Angeles, April 1986.
Lamb, M. E. Invited participant, Symposium on Young Unwed Fatherhood, Catholic University,
Washington, D.C., October 1986.
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Lamb, M. E. The formative role of mother-infant interaction. Invited presentation to the
International Conference on Infant Studies, Los Angeles, April 1986.
Oppenheim, D., Sagi, A., & Lamb, M. E. Classifications of infant-adult attachment on Israeli
kibbutzim in the first year of life and their relation to socio-emotional development four
years later. Paper presented to the International Conference on Infant Studies, Los
Angeles, April 1986.
Lamb, M. E. The determinants of social competence. Invited presentation to the International
Conference on The Family in Lifespan Perspective, Berlin, December 1986.
Elster, A. B., Lamb, M. E., Tavare, J., & Ralston, C. W. The effect of intervention on the health,
psychosocial, and parenting outcomes of adolescent mothers and their infants at one year.
Paper presented to the Society for Adolescent Medicine, Seattle, WA, March 1987.
Elster, A. B., Lamb, M. E., Tavare, J., & Ralston, C. W. The effect of intervention on the public
costs associated with adolescent parenthood. Paper presented to the Society for
Adolescent Medicine, Seattle, WA, March 1987.
Lamb, M. E. Contemporary fatherhood. Invited presentation to the Annual Parenting
Symposium, Los Angeles, March 1987.
Lamb, M. E., Hwang, C.-P., Bookstein, F. L., & Broberg, A. Determinants of social competence
in Swedish preschoolers. Paper presented to the Society for Research in Child
Development, Baltimore, MD, April 1987.
Nash, A., & Lamb, M. E. Becoming acquainted with unfamiliar adults and peers in infancy.
Paper presented to the Society for Research in Child Development, Baltimore, MD, April
1987.
Lamb, M. E. The changing roles of fathers. Keynote address, American Family Therapy
Association, Chicago, June 1987.
Lamb, M. E. Invited participant, Workshop on Biobehavioral concepts in development,
Bethesda, MD, June/July 1987.
Lamb, M. E. & Hwang, C.-P. Co-organizers: Symposium on Day care and its effects on
families and children. International Society for the Study of Behavioral Development,
Tokyo, July 1987.
Hwang, C.-P., Lamb, M. E., & Broberg, A. Day care in Sweden. Paper presented to the
International Society for the study of Behavioral Development, Tokyo, July 1987.
Teti, D. M., & Lamb, M. E. Socioemotional/marital outcomes associated with adolescent
marriage, childbirth, or both. Paper presented to the American Psychological
Association, New York City, August 1987.
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Lamb, M. E. Home and out-of-home influences on the development of social, personality and
intellectual competence in Swedish preschoolers. Opening address to the Developmental
Section, British Psychological Association, York (England), September 1987.
Lamb, M. E. Discussant at Society for Research in Child Development Study Group on The
history of child development. Belmont Conference Center, Belmont, MD, October
1987.
Lamb, M. E. Invited participant in workshop on The effects of day care. National Center for
Clinical Infant programs/National Academy of Science, Washington, DC, October 1987.
Lamb, M. E. Child care and the development of social and intellectual competence. Invited
address to the Symposium on the Future of Child Care in the United States, University of
Virginia, Charlottesville, VA, November 1987.
Lamb, M. E. The changing role of fathers. Invited presentation at Center for Early Education
and Development Symposium, Omaha, NE, November 1987.
Lamb, M. E. Social policy and father involvement. Invited address to Center for Early
Education and Development Symposium, Omaha NE, November 1987.
Lamb, M. E. Policy implications of Child Care Research. Panelist, National Research Council,
Washington, DC, February 1988.
Lamb, M. E. Quality of day care in Sweden and its effects on child development. Paper
presented to the International Child and Youth Care Conference, Washington, DC, March
1988.
Lamb, M. E., & Sternberg, K. J. Some thoughts about infant daycare. Paper presented to the
American Orthopsychiatric Association, San Francisco, March 1988.
Ralston, C. W., Elster, A. B., Lamb, M. E. & Dodd, D. H. Behavior patterns in infants of teen
mothers. Western Society for Pediatric Research, Carmel, CA, March 1988.
Hwang, C.-P., Broberg, A., & Lamb, M. E. Effects of setting on social competence with peers
among Swedish children receiving out-of-home care. Paper presented to the International
Conference on Infant Studies, Washington, DC, April 1988.
Lamb, M. E. The changing faces of fatherhood. Invited presentation to the Symposium on
Effective Parenting, Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY, June 1988.
Lamb, M. E. Fathers, mothers, and child care. NICHD Child Health Day Symposium,
Washington, D.C., October 1988.
Lamb, M. E. Quality variations in family and center day care. National Conference on Early
Childhood Issues, Washington, DC, November 1988.
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Lamb, M. E. The changing roles of fathers. Jing Lyman Lecture Series, Stanford University,
Palo Alto, CA, February 1989.
Lamb, M. E. High quality childcare inside and outside the family. Keynote address, Durham
Day Care Council, Durham, NC, March 1989.
Lamb, M. E., & Sternberg, K. J. The effects of out-of-home care on the development of Swedish
preschoolers. Invited Workshop, Durham Day Care Council, Durham, NC, March 1989.
Lamb, M. E., & Sternberg, K. J. Day care and parent-child attachment. Invited Workshop,
Durham Day Care Council, Durham, NC, March 1989.
Lamb, M. E. Out-of-home care and child development. D. O. Hebb Lecture, McGill University,
Montreal (Canada), April 1989.
Lamb, M. E. The interface between cognition and emotion in early childhood. Keynote address
to a conference on Emotion, Cognition, and Behavior, Greensboro, NC, April 1989.
Elster, A. B., Ketterlinus, R. D., & Lamb, M. E. The association between parental status and
problem behavior among female adolescents. Paper presented to the Society for
Research in Child Development, Kansas City, MO, April 1989.
Sternberg, K. J., Lamb, M. E., Broberg, A., Hwang, C.-P., & Prodromidis, M. Out-of- home
care history and compliance in Swedish preschoolers. Paper presented to the Society for
Research in Child Development, Kansas City, MO, April 1989.
Nakagawa, M., Lamb, M. E., & Miyake, K. The validity of the Strange Situation with Japanese
infants: Antecedents and correlates. Paper presented to the Society for Research in Child
Development, Kansas City, MO, April 1989.
Lamb, M. E., Sternberg, K. J., & Knuth, N. Quality of family daycare and the development of
peer social skills. Paper presented to the Society for Research in Child Development,
Kansas City, MO, April 1989.
Lamb, M. E., & Sternberg, K. J. The development of attachment relationships. Training
Seminar, Jerusalem MunicipalityDepartment of Community and Family Services,
Jerusalem (Israel), June 1989.
Broberg, A., Hwang, P., & Lamb, M. E. Sociability, play and out-of-home care experiences.
Paper presented to the International Society for the Study of Behavioral Development,
Jyvaskyla (Finland), July 1989.
Hwang, C-P, Broberg, A., & Lamb, M. E. The Gothenburg child care project. Paper presented
to the International Society for the Study of Behavioral Development, Jyvaskyla
(Finland), July 1989.
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Lamb, M. E. & Sternberg, K. J. (Co-organizers) Invitational conference on Nonparental
Childcare in Historical and Cultural Perspective, Coolfont Conference Center, Berkely
Springs, W VA, August 1989.
Lamb, M.E. The changing roles of fathers. Gender Studies Lecture Series, University of Notre
Dame, South Bend, IN, November 1989.
Sternberg, K. J., Lamb, M. E., Dawud, S., Lorey, F., Greenbaum, C., Krispin, O., Lowen, L.,
Sandler, L., Limor, D., & Musseri, S. The effects of domestic violence on childrens
perceptions of their parents. Paper presented to the National Council on Family
Relations, New Orleans, LA, November 1989.
Lamb, M. E., Sternberg, K. J., Hwang, C.-P., Broberg, A., Prodromidis, M., Ketterlinus, R., &
Bookstein, F. L. Families, day care, and the emergence of compliance in Swedish
preschoolers. Paper presented to the National Council on Family Relations, New
Orleans, LA, November 1989.
Lamb, M. E. Discussant: Symposium on The father-child relationship: Anthropological
perspectives. Symposium presented to the American Anthropological Association,
Washington, DC, November 1989.
Fracasso, M. P., Kimmerly, N., Nakagawa, M. & Lamb, M. E. Cultural and biological
influences on infant behavior in the Strange Situation. Paper presented to the
Southeastern Conference on Human Development, Richmond, VA, March 1990.
Sternberg, K. J., Lamb, M. E., Prodromidis, M., & Ketterlinus, R. D. Effects of nonparental care
on childrens development. Paper presented to the Southeastern Conference on Human
Development, Richmond, VA, March 1990.
Ketterlinus, R. D., Lamb, M. E., Henderson, S. H., Das, R. , & Nitz, K. The adolescent
parenthood project: Findings and future directions. Paper presented to the Southeastern
Conference on Human Development, Richmond, VA, March 1990.
Sternberg, K. J., Lamb, M. E., Dawud, S., Sandler, L., Krispin, O., & Cortez, R. M. The effects
of domestic violence on childrens development in Israel. Paper presented to the
Southeastern Conference on Human Development, Richmond, VA, March 1990.
Ketterlinus, R. D., Henderson, S. H., & Lamb, M. E. The relative effects of young maternal age,
intelligence, and sociodemographics on childrens math and reading achievement. Paper
presented to the Society for Research on Adolescence, Atlanta, GA, March 1990.
Ketterlinus, R. D., Das, R., Lamb, M. E., & Elster, A. B. The association between problem
behaviors and sexual behavior in a national sample of adolescent males and females.
Paper presented to the Society for Research in Adolescence, Atlanta, GA, March 1990.
Lamb, M. E. Risk factors and the future of families. Keynote address to the Association of
Oregon Community Mental Health Program Directors, Salishan, OR, April 1990.
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Lamb, M. E. The changing roles of fathers. Invited address to the Association of Oregon
Community Mental Health Program Directors, Salishan, OR, April 1990.
Lamb, M. E. The effects of daycare on child development. Invited speaker, Early Education and
Child Development Interest Group, American Educational Research Association, Boston,
April 1990.
Rosenberg, A., Haynie, D., Scaramella, L., Lamb, M. E. Porges, S., & Fracasso, M. Individual
differences in physical and affective functioning in infancy. Paper presented to the
International Conference on Infant Studies, Montreal (Canada), April 1990.
Lamb, M. E., Sternberg, K. J., & Prodromidis, M. On the association between daycare and
attachment. Paper presented to the International Conference on Infant Studies, Montreal
(Canada), April 1990.
Lamb, M. E. & Lancaster, J. B. (Co-organizers) Invitational conference on Birth Management:
Cross-cultural and Historical Perspectives. Coolfont Conference Center, Berkely
Springs, W VA, May 1990.
Sternberg, K. J., Lamb, M. E., Hwang, C.-P., & Broberg, A. Long-term effects of contrasting
early childcare arrangements: The Goteborg childcare project. Paper presented to the
International Symposium on Child Care in the Early Years, Lausanne (Switzerland),
September 1990.
Ketterlinus, R. D., Henderson, S. H., & Lamb, M. E. Non-parental care in the first three years of
life and its association with academic achievement and behavior problems in later
childhood: Evidence from a national (US) sample. Paper presented to the International
Symposium on Childcare in the Early Years, Lausanne (Switzerland), September 1990.
Lamb, M. E., & Sternberg, K. J. Nonparental childcare: Cross cultural issues and perspectives.
Paper presented to the International Symposium on Childcare in the Early Years,
Lausanne (Switzerland), September 1990.
Sternberg, K. J., Lamb, M. E. & Prodromidis, M. Association between nonparental care and the
security of infant-mother attachment. Paper presented to the International Symposium on
Childcare in the Early Years, Lausanne (Switzerland), September 1990.
Lamb, M.E. Overview and future prospects. Closing address to the International Symposium on
Childcare in the Early Years, Lausanne (Switzerland), September 1990.
Lamb, M. E. Interviewing young victims of sexual maltreatment: An introduction., Division of
Youth Investigation, Israeli Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs, Jerusalem, Israel,
December 1990.
Lamb, M. E. Evaluating the effectiveness of intensive home-based intervention relative to foster
care. Paper presented to an invitational conference on The Evaluation of Child Welfare
Reform, American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, Washington DC,
February 1991.
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Lamb, M. E. Successful parenting in the 1990s. Invited public lecture, Centre for Effective
Living, Singapore, March 1991.
Lamb, M. E. What research can tell us about effective parenting. Keynote address to the
International Seminar on Family Education, National Womens Education Centre,
Saitama, Japan, March 1991.
Ketterlinus, R. D., & Lamb, M. E. (Co-organizers) Conference on Problem Behavior in
Adolescence. Coolfont Conference Center, Berkeley Springs, WVA, April 1991.
Sternberg, K. J., Cortes, R. M., Dawud, S., Lamb, M. E., Greenbaum, C., & Krispin, O. Effects
of domestic violence on childrens behavior problems. Paper presented to the Society for
Research in Child Development, Seattle, WA, April 1991.
Dawud, S., Lewensohn, O., Hart, J., Posner, S., Cortes, R. M., Cohen, E., & Lamb, M. E.
Effects of domestic violence on childrens adjustment in school. Paper presented to the
Society for Research in Child Development, Seattle, WA, April 1991.
Scaramella, L. V., Lamb, M. E., Rosenberg, A. A., Haynie, D., & Ducrey, R. A longitudinal
assessment of adrenocortical activity in infancy. Paper presented to the Society for
Research in Child Development, Seattle, WA, April 1991.
Ketterlinus, R. D., Nitz, K., & Lamb, M. E. Adolescent deviance: Stability over time and
generations. Paper presented to the Society for Research in Child Development, Seattle,
WA, April 1991.
Nitz, K., Ketterlinus, R. D., & Lamb, M. E. Children of adolescent and young adult mothers:
Gender differences in the transmission of problem behavior. Paper presented to the
Society for Research in Child Development, Seattle, WA, April 1991.
Ketterlinus, R. D., Lamb, M. E., & Nitz, K. Sexual and nonsexual risk-taking in a national
sample of adolescent males. Paper presented to the Society for Research in Child
Development, Seattle, WA, April 1991.
Prodromidis, M., Hwang, C. P., Broberg, A., Lamb, M. E., & Sternberg, K. J. A composite
measure of aggression for children with and without out-of-home care experiences. Paper
presented to the Society for Research in Child Development, Seattle, WA, April 1991.
Henderson, S. H., Ketterlinus, R. D., & Lamb, M. E. The association among childrens
behavioral adjustment, maternal employment and attitudes, and childcare arrangements.
Paper presented to the Society for Research in Child Development, Seattle, WA, April
1991.
Nakagawa, M., Teti, D. M., Lamb, M. E., & Sugaya, S. Japanese mothers and children in the
United States: Life stress, parenting, and the security of attachment. Paper presented to
the Society for Research in Child Development, Seattle, WA, April 1991.
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Krispin, O., Sternberg, K. J., Lewensohn, O., Cohen E., & Lamb, M. E. The dimensions of peer
evaluation: A cross-cultural perspective. Paper presented to the Society for Research in
Child Development, Seattle, WA, April 1991.
Nsamenang, A. B., & Lamb, M. E. Socialization values in two generations of Bamenda
(Cameroon) Grassfields families. Paper presented to a Workshop on Continuities and
Discontinuities in the Cognitive Socialization of Minority Children, Washington, DC,
June/July 1991.
Sternberg, K. J., & Lamb, M. E. Physical child abuse: Assessment, research, and intervention.
Workshop for the Department of Community and Family Services, Municipality of
Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Israel, June 1991.
Esplin, P. W., Sternberg, K. J., & Lamb, M. E. Interviewing young victims of sexual abuse.
Workshop for the staff of the Israeli National Bureau of Youth Investigation, Herzaliya,
Israel, June 1991.
Scholmerich, A., Fracasso, M., & Lamb, M. E. Person, Dyade, Situation und Zeit: Zur
methodischen Problematik von Interaktionsbeobachtungen. Paper presented to the
Fachgruppe Entwicklungspsychologie, Deutsche Gesellschaft fr Psychologie, Kln
(Germany), September 1991.
Scholmerich, A., Genovese, S., & Lamb, M. E. Mtterliche Sensibilitt: Vergleich
mikroanalytischer Verhaltensbeobachtung mit globalen Ratings bei 8-monatigen
Kindern. Paper presented to the Fachgruppe Entwicklungspsychologie, Deutsche
Gesellschaft fr Psychologie, Kln (Germany), September 1991.
Lamb, M. E. Individual differences in infant behavior and development: Dimensions of
temperament. Keynote address to the Virginia Developmental Forum, Washington, DC,
November 1991.
Lamb, M. E. Childcare in cultural context. Keynote address to a conference on Childcare for
children under three: Theories and practices, Berlin, December 18, 1991.
Lamb. M. E., Sternberg, K. J., & Esplin, P. W. Techniques for interviewing young victims of
sexual abuse. Presentation to the Family Advocacy Model Program Directors Meeting,
San Antonio, TX, February 1992.
Ketterlinus, R. D., Lamb, M. E., Chace, S., & Barber, B. K. Factors associated with knowledge
of AIDS among pre-and early-adolescents. Paper presented to the Society for Research
in Adolescence, Washington, DC, March 1992.
Lamb, M. E., & Fracasso, M. P. The dimensions of temperament in infancy: Physiology,
behavior, and maternal perceptions. Invited address to the Quebec Symposium on
Childhood and the Family, Quebec City, March 1992.
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Estrada, M. T., & Lamb, M. E. Maternal sensitivity in Central American immigrants: Stability
and security of attachment. Paper presented to the International Conference on Infant
Studies, Miami, May 1992.
Broberg, A., Lamb, M. E., Fracasso, M., Scholmerich, A., & Rosenberg, A. A. Social inhibition
in infancy: Correspondence between laboratory measures and maternal reports. Paper
presented to the International Conference on Infant Studies, Miami, May 1992.
Horowitz, S. W., Lamb, M. E., Esplin, P. W., Boychuk, T. B., Krispin, O., & Reiter- Lavery, L.
Reliability of criteria-based content analysis of child witness statements. Paper presented
to the American Psychological Society, San Diego, June 1992.
Broberg, A., Hwang, C. P., & Lamb, M. E. Inhibition and out-of-home care. Paper presented to
the Vth European Conference on Developmental Psychology, Seville (Spain), September
1992.
Lamb, M. E., Hwang, C. P., & Sigel, I. (Conference co-organizers) Images of childhood: Their
historical and cultural origins and implications. Satra Bruk, Sweden, September 1992.
Lamb, M. E., Sternberg, K. J., & Esplin, P. W. Interviewing victims of child sexual abuse.
Workshop presented to the Family Advocacy Office, United States Air Force, San
Antonio, TX, November/December 1992.
Scholmerich, A., Shelley, L., Fracasso, M. P., & Lamb, M. E. Behavioral inhibition: Type or
continuum? Paper presented to the Society for Research in Child Development, New
Orleans, LA, March 1993.
Fracasso, M. P., Lamb, M. E., & Scholmerich, A. The relationship between behavioral
inhibition and maternal reports of security and dependency in infancy. Paper presented to
the Society for Research in Child Development, New Orleans, LA, March 1993.
Chace, S. V., & Lamb, M. E. Patterns of cross-informant ratings of child behavior problems.
Paper presented to the Society for Research in Child Development, New Orleans, LA,
March 1993.
White, K., & Lamb, M. E. Drinking patterns of young women before, during, and after
pregnancy: Perinatal and early childhood outcomes. Paper presented to the Society for
Research in Child Development, New Orleans, LA, March 1993.
MacKinnon-Lewis, C., Lamb, M. E., Dechman, K. K., & Baradaran, L. A longitudinal
investigation of the relation between biased maternal and filial attributions and
interaction aggressiveness. Paper presented to the Society for Research in Child
Development, New Orleans, LA, March 1993.
Lamb, M. E. Inhibition, reactivity, and individuality in infancy: Antecedents and correlates..
Invited address to the Eastern Psychological Association, Arlington, VA, March 1993.
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Lamb, M. E. The effects of nonparental care: What do we really know? 1992/93 Diversity and
Context Colloquium, Michigan State University, April 1993.
Lamb, M. E. The origins and correlates of individual differences in behavioral inhibition.
Invited address to the American Psychological Society Convention, Chicago, June 1993.
Lamb, M. E., & Keller, H. Patterns of early experience in divergent sociocultural contexts.
Symposium presented to the International Society for the Study of Behavioral
Development, Recife, Brazil, July 1993.
Lamb, M. E., & Fracasso, M. P. Antecedents and correlates of behavioural inhibition in infancy.
Paper presented to the International Society for the Study of Behavioural Development,
Recife, Brazil, July 1993.
Lamb, M. E., Sternberg, K. J., Hwang, C. P., & Esplin, P. W. (Conference Co-organizers) The
investigation of child sexual abuse: An international, interdisciplinary conference. Satra
Bruk, Sweden, September 1993.
Leyendecker, B., Scholmerich, A., Larson, C., Fracasso, M. P., & Lamb, M. E. Vokalisation von
Suglingen und ihre Mutternein Vergleich von Base und Responserates in zwei
subkulturellen Stichproben. Paper presented to the Deutsche Tagung fr
Entwicklungspsychologie, Osnabrck, September 1993.
Leyendecker, B., Fracasso, M. P., & Lamb, M. E. Alltag in Familien mit Suglingen-wieviel
Zeit bleibt zur Eltern-Kind Interaktion. Paper presented to the Deutsche Tagung fr
Entwicklungspsychologie, Osnabrck, September 1993.
Lamb, M. E. Nonparental childcare: Its contexts and effects. Invited presentation, American
Anthropological Association, Washington, DC, November 1993.
Lamb, M. E. Interviewing young victims of sexual maltreatment: Advanced training workshop,
Division of Youth Investigation, Israeli Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs, Maale
Hamisha, Israel, December 14 -15, 1993.
Sternberg, K. J. & Lamb, M. E. Child witnesses and victims. Presentation to the annual meeting
of the U.S. Air Force Area Defense Counsel, Andrews Air Force Base, Landover,
Maryland, January 1994.
Lamb, M. E., Hershkowitz, I., Sternberg, K. J., Esplin, P. W., Hovav, M., Manor, T., &
Yudilevitch, L. Effects of investigative style on Israeli childrens responses. Paper
presented to the American Psychology-Law Society Meeting, Santa Fe, NM, March
1994.
Lamb, M. E. The effects of custody arrangements on childrens development. Testimony
presented to the Judiciary Committee of the District of Columbia, Washington, DC, April
1994.
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Lamb, M. E.. Techniques for distinguishing between real and false child sexual abuse
allegations. Plenary session presented to the National Conference of the Childrens
Rights Council, Bethesda, MD, April 15, 1994.
Lamb, M. E. Paternal influences on child development. Paper presented to an international
invitational conference on Changing Fatherhood, Tilburg, The Netherlands, May 23-26,
1994.
Lamb, M. E. Foster care and its alternatives in the United States. Presentation to the Biennial
Conference of Social Pediatrics, Benesov, Czech Republic, May 1994.
Lamb, M. E. Nonparental child care in cultural and historical context. Keynote address to
interdisciplinary conference on The Family in a Democratic Society, Prague, Czech
Republic, May 1994.
Sternberg, K. J., & Lamb, M. E. The evaluation of childrens testimony regarding child abuse.
Keynote address to interdisciplinary conference on The Family in a Democratic Society,
Prague, Czech Republic, May 1994.
Fracasso, M. P., Lamb, M. E., & Miranda Fricke, D. Ecologies of Euro-and Central- American
families living in the United States and middle-and lower-middle class families living in
Costa Rica. Paper presented to the International Conference on Infant Studies, Paris,
June 1994.
Wessels, H., Lamb, M. E., Hwang, C. P., & Broberg, A. G. Long term effects of contrasting
forms of early childcare. Paper presented to the International Conference on Infant
Studies, Paris, June 1994.
Lamb, M. E. (Symposium organizer) Early social experiences in Euro-American, Central
American, and German families. Symposium presented to the International Conference
on Infant Studies, Paris, June 1994.
Broberg, A., Hwang, C. P., Wessels, H., & Lamb, M. E. Determinants of verbal abilities: A
longitudinal perspective. Paper presented to the International Society for the Study of
Behavioral Development, Amsterdam, July 1994.
Nsamenang, A. B., & Lamb, M. E. Beliefs and practices regarding pregnancy and childbirth
among the Nso of Northwest Cameroon. Paper presented to the International Society for
the Study of Behavioral Development, Amsterdam, July 1994.
Lamb, M. E. The development of mother-infant relationships. Keynote address to a symposium
on Contemporary Themes in European Psychiatry, Birmingham, England, September
1994.
Lamb, M. E. The role of the father in child development. Keynote address to a symposium on
Contemporary Themes in European Psychiatry, Birmingham, England, September 1994.
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Lamb, M. E. Fathers are parents too. Paper presented to the National Summit on Fatherhood,
Dallas-Fort Worth, October 1994.
Lamb, M. E., & Sternberg, K. J. (Co-organizers) Consensus conference on the effects of divorce
and custody arrangements on childrens development. Middleburg, Virginia, December
1994.
Sternberg, K. J., & Lamb, M. E. Child witnesses and victims. Presentation to the annual
meeting of the U.S. Air Force Area Defense Counsel, Andrews Air Force Base,
Landover, Maryland, January 1995.
Wessels, H., Lamb, M. E., Broberg, A. G., & Hwang, C. P. Antecedents of the Little Five in
early childhood: The validity of the Five Factor Model in Swedish preschool and
elementary children. Paper presented to the Society for Research in Child Development,
Indianapolis, IN, March 1995.
Sternberg, K. J., Lamb, M. E., Dawud-Noursi, S., & Greenbaum, C. The effects of domestic
violence on childrens perceptions of their parents. Paper presented to the Society for
Research in Child Development, Indianapolis, IN, March 1995.
Sternberg, K. J., Lamb, M. E., & Dawud-Noursi, S. Domestic violence in family context. Paper
presented to the Fifth Annual Conference of the Center for Human Development and
Developmental Disabilities, New Brunswick, New Jersey, May 1995.
Wessels, H., Lamb, M. E., Broberg, A. G., & Hwang, C. P. Der Einfluss vterlicher
Erziehungsbeteiligung auf die Persnlichkeitsentwicklung von Kindern im Vorschulalter:
Ergebnisse eines Lngsschnitts. [The influence of paternal childrearing involvement on
the personality development of preschool children: Some longitudinal results.] Paper
presented to the German Sociological Society, April 1995.
Leyendecker, B., Lamb, M. E., & Scholmerich, A. Synchrony of mother-infant interaction: The
effects of context, subcultural group, and length of observation. Paper presented to the
Applied Behavioral Analysis Association, Washington DC, May 1995.
Shelley-Sirici, L., Fracasso, M. P., Busch-Rossnagel, N. A., & Lamb, M. E. Mother-infant social
and instructional interaction in culturally diverse populations. Poster presented to the
American Psychological Society Convention, New York City, June 1995.
Wessels, H., Lamb, M. E., & Broberg, A. G. Antecedents of the five factor model in early
childhood: The validity of the five factor model in Swedish preschool and elementary
school children. Paper presented to the International Society on Social Relations,
Williamsburg VA, June 1995.
Sternberg, K. J., & Lamb, M. E. Effects of interview style on the informativeness of child
witnesses. Paper presented to the Annual Convention of the American Professional
Society on the Abuse of Children, Tucson AZ, June 1995.
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Shelley-Sirici, L., Fracasso, M. P., Busch-Rossnagel, N. A., & Lamb, M. E. A longitudinal
study of mother-infant social and instrumental interaction. Poster presented to the
American Psychological Association Convention, Washington DC, August 1995.
Leyendecker, B., Scholmerich, A., Lamb, M. E., & Miranda Fricke, D.
Interaktionsbeobachtungen im Kontext: Der Einfluss sozialer Schicht. Paper presented to
the Deutsche Tagung fr Entwicklungspsychologie, Leipzig, September 1995.
Sternberg, K. J., Lamb, M. E., & Dalenberg, C. Enhancing childrens competency as witnesses:
A research-based approach. Invited workshop presented to the annual San Diego
Conference on Responding to Child Maltreatment, San Diego, January 1996.
Lamb, M. E., Sternberg, K. J., Esplin, P. W., Hershkowitz, I., Orbach, Y., & Hovav, M.
Validation of criterion-based content analysis in a field study. Paper presented to the
American Psychology-Law Society Convention, Hilton Head, N.C., February/March
1996.
Lamb, M. E., Hershkowitz, I., Sternberg, K. J., Boat, B., & Everson, M. Informativeness of
childrens accounts in interviews with and without anatomical dolls. Paper presented to
the American Psychology-Law Society Convention, Hilton Head, N.C., February/March
1996.
Hershkowitz, I., Lamb, M. E., Sternberg, K. J., & Esplin, P. W. The relationships among
interviewer utterance type, CBCA scores, and the richness of childrens responses. Paper
presented to the American Psychology-Law Society Convention, Hilton Head, N.C.,
February/March 1996.
Sternberg, K. J., Lamb, M. E., Hershkowitz, I., Orbach, Y., Hovav, M., & Esplin, P. W. Effects
of introductory style on childrens accounts of sexual abuse. Paper presented to the
American Psychology-Law Society Convention, Hilton Head, N.C., February/March
1996.
Orbach, Y., Lamb, M. E., Sternberg, K. J., & Williams, J. M. G. The effect of domestic violence
on childrens retrieval of autobiographical memory. Paper presented to the American
Psychology-Law Society Convention, Hilton Head, N.C., February/March 1996.
Dawud-Noursi, S., Sternberg, K. J., Lamb, M. E., Kaufman, A., & Larson, C. The effects of
domestic violence on adolescents relationships and conflicts. Paper presented to the
Society for Research on Adolescence, Boston, March 1996.
Lamb, M. E. The long term effects of nonparental care arrangements on the development of
Swedish children. Paper presented by invitation to the International Conference on Infant
Studies, Providence, Rhode Island, April 1996.
Leyendecker, B., Scholmerich, A., Lamb, M. E., & Harwood, R. Central-and Euro- American
mothers evaluation of infant behavior in everyday contexts. Paper presented to the
International Conference on Infant Studies, Providence, Rhode Island, April 1996.
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Lamb, M. E. Whats a father for? Keynote address to an invitational conference on British
Fatherhood, London, April 30, 1996.
Lamb, M. E. What are fathers for? Invited presentation to the Conference on Developmental,
Ethnographic, and Demographic Perspectives on Fatherhood, National Institutes of
Health, Bethesda MD, June 1996.
Lamb, M. E. Infancy and childhood: The challenges and the opportunities. Visiting Faculty at
the Thirteenth Annual Conference on Infancy and Childhood: Current Directions in
Theory, Research, and Application. Utah State University, Ogden UT, June 1996.
Orbach, Y., Lamb, M.E., Sternberg, K.J., Williams, J.M.G., & Dawud-Noursi, S. The effect of
domestic violence on childrens retrieval of autobiographical memory. Paper presented
to the International Research Conference on Trauma and Memory, University of New
Hampshire, Durham, NH, July 1996.
Nsamenang, A. B., & Lamb, M. E. The environment of the infant among Nso of Northwest
Cameroon: Some theoretical issues and research implications. Paper presented to the
26th International Congress of Psychology, Montreal, August 1996.
Leyendecker, B., Lamb, M. E., Scholmerich, A., & Fricke, D. M. Observing mother-infant
interaction: Minimizing and maximizing the effects of SES. Paper presented to the
International Society for the Study of Behavioral Development, Quebec (Canada),
August 1996.
Leyendecker, B., Lamb, M. E., Harwood, R., & Scholmerich, A. The child or the circumstances:
Who is responsible? Parental evaluations of everyday situations in two diverse cultural
niches. Paper presented to the International Society for the Study of Behavioral
Development, Quebec (Canada), August 1996.
Ahnert, L., Freytag, R., Hermsdorf, C., Kuchler, E., Lamb, M. E., Sternberg, K. J., & Porges, S.
W. The impact of stress and coping on adaptation to day care in infancy. Paper presented
to the International Society for the Study of Behavioral Development, Quebec (Canada),
August 1996.
Eckensberger, L. & Lamb, M. E. (Co-organizers) Nature, culture, and the question, why?
Invited symposium at International Society for the Study of Behavioral Development,
Quebec (Canada), August 1996.
Lamb, M. E. The long term effects of nonparental care arrangements on the development of
Swedish children. Paper presented to the International Society for the Study of
Behavioral Development, Quebec (Canada), August 1996.
MacKinnon-Lewis, C., Lamb, M. E., Campbell, J., & Hattie, J. Antecedents and consequences
of boys aggression in the family and school. Paper presented to the International Society
for the Study of Behavioral Development, Quebec (Canada), August 1996.
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Dawud-Noursi, S., Sternberg, K. J., & Lamb, M. E. Childrens maltreatment experiences:
Perspectives of multiple informants. Paper presented to the 11th National Conference on
Child Abuse and Neglect, Washington, DC, September 1996.
Leyendecker, B., Scholmerich, A., Lamb, M. E., & Harwood, R. Langfristige Sozialisationsziele
und die Bewertung von Alltagsverhalten von Suglingen: ein Vergleich
zentralamerikanischer und U.S.-amerikanischer Mutter. Paper presented to the German
Psychology Association, Munich, September 1996.
Lamb, M. E. The development of father-infant relationships. Paper presented to the National
Center on Fathers and Families, Roundtable on Role Transitions, Philadelphia, October 8,
1996.
Lamb, M. E. Research on father involvement: An historical overview. Keynote address to the
NICHD Conference on Fathers Involvement, Bethesda MD, October 1996.
Lamb, M. E. Commentary on Mens roles in families: A look back, a look forward. Paper
presented to the Pennsylvania State University National Symposium on Men in Families,
University Park PA, October/November 1996.
Lamb, M. E. When we were very young......Invited address to a symposium in honor of
Professor Michael Lewis, Institute for the Study of Child Development, New Brunswick
NJ, January 1997.
Lamb, M. E. Fathers, children, and nontraditional families: Characteristics, consequences, and
strategies for change. Invited presentation to the American Association for the
Advancement of Science Annual Meeting, Seattle WA, February 1997.
Dawud-Noursi, S., Sternberg, K. J., & Lamb, M. E. Effects of family violence on Israeli
childrens adjustment at school. Paper presented to the Society for Research in Child
Development, Washington DC, April 1997.
Bassen, C., Braveman, J., Pearlman, J., & Lamb, M. E. Gender differences in normal
adolescents: Guilt, reparation, and shame. Poster presented to the Society for Research
in Child Development, Washington DC, April 1997.
Roberts, K. P., Lamb, M. E., Sternberg, K. J., Beresford, J., Domenici-Lake, P. L., & Heiges, K.
The effect of a delay on the incorporation of post event information into childrens
eyewitness memory. Poster presented to the Society for Research in Child Development,
Washington DC, April 1997.
Bassen, C., Braveman, J., Pearlman, J., & Lamb, M. E. Gender differences in normal
adolescents: Self assessment of traits according to role. Poster presented to the Society
for Research in Child Development, Washington DC, April 1997.
Lamb, M. E. Noncustodial fatherhood and its effects on child development. Plenary address to a
conference on The post-divorce family: research and policy issues, University of
Nebraska, Lincoln, May 1997.
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Weise, P., Hermsdorf, C., Barthel, M., Ahnert, L., & Lamb, M. E. The impact of infant
temperament on the adjustment to daycare. Poster presentation to the American
Psychological Society, Washington DC, May 1997.
Bressler, Y., Ahnert, L. & Lamb, M. E. Effects of maternal and infant age on German mothers
perceptions of stress. Poster presentation to the American Psychological Society,
Washington DC, May 1997.
Bressler, Y., Ahnert, L. & Lamb, M. E. Effects of enrollment in daycare on everyday
experiences of German toddlers. Poster presentation to the American Psychological
Society, Washington DC, May 1997.
Seltenheim, K., Ahnert, L. & Lamb, M. E. The formation of attachments between infants and
care providers in German daycare centers. Poster presentation to the American
Psychological Society, Washington DC, May 1997.
Roberts, K., Lamb, M. E., & Randall, D. W. Childrens responses to interviewers mistakes.
Paper presented to the International Family Violence Research Conference, Durham NH,
June/July 1997.
Scholmerich, A., & Lamb, M. E. Infant temperament, fear of novelty and behavioural inhibition:
A longitudinal study over the first year of life. Paper presented to an International
conference on shyness and self-consciousness, University of Wales, Cardiff, June 1997.
Roberts, K., Lamb, M. E., & Randall, D. W. Assessing the plausibility of allegations of sexual
abuse from childrens accounts. Paper presented to the Society for Applied Research in
Memory and Cognition, Toronto, July 1997.
Lamb, M. E. What psychology tells us about interviewing children. Keynote presentation to a
conference on Cleveland ten years on: Child protectionWhat really matters?, London,
England, September 10, 1997.
Lamb, M. E. Fatherhood and father-child relationships. Keynote address to the annual Mental
Health Association Conference of Northern Indiana, South Bend IN, October 17, 1997.
Marsiglio, W., Day, R., & Lamb, M. E. Social fatherhood and paternal involvement:
Conceptual, data, and policymaking issues. Paper presented to the Theory Construction
and Research Methods Workshop, National Council on Family Relations, Crystal City,
VA, November 5, 1997.
Lamb, M. E. Discussant in Symposium, Towards a maturing conceptualization of father
involvement, National Council on Family Relations, Crystal City, VA, November 9,
1997.
Lamb, M. E. Discussant in Symposium, Working with young fathers, National Council on
Family Relations, Crystal City, VA, November 10, 1997.
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Roberts, K. P., Lamb, M. E., & Randall, D. W. Bill touched me Bob touched you?:
Interviewers mistakes during investigative interviews. Poster presented to the
American Psychology-Law Society conference, Redondo Beach CA, March 1998.
Roberts, K. P., Lamb, M. E., Zale, J. L., & Randall, D. W. Qualitative differences in childrens
accounts of confirmed and unconfirmed incidents of sexual abuse. Poster presented to
the American Psychology-Law Society conference, Redondo Beach CA, March 1998.
Roberts, K. P., Sternberg, K. J., Lamb, M. E., & Zale, J. L. Effects of introductory style on
childrens accounts of a staged event. Poster presented to the American Psychology-Law
Society conference, Redondo Beach CA, March 1998.
Hershkowitz, I., Orbach, Y., Lamb, M. E., Sternberg, K. J., Fauchier, A., Horowitz, D., &
Hovav, M. Visiting the scene of the crime: Effects on childrens recall of alleged abuse.
Poster presented to the American Psychology-Law Society conference, Redondo Beach
CA, March 1998.
Scholmerich, A., & Lamb, M. E. (Co-chairs) Adult-infant interaction: Observations of
everyday behavior in diverse cultural settings. Symposium presented to the International
Conference on Infant Studies, Atlanta, April 1998.
Lamb, M. E. Discussant on The role of fathers in early affective development. Symposium
presented to the International Conference on Infant Studies, Atlanta, April 1998.
Lamb, M. E. Discussant on Studying the role of fathers in the lives of low-income infants and
toddlers. Symposium presented to the International Conference on Infant Studies,
Atlanta, April 1998.
Lamb, M. E., Hwang, C. P., & Sternberg, K. J. (Co-organizers) International conference on
investigative interviewing procedures. Satra Bruk, Sweden, April 25-29, 1998.
Lamb, M. E. The influence of father love on child development: A commentary. Presentation to
the American Psychological Society Annual Convention, Washington, DC, May 23,
1998.
Lamb, M. E. The role of fathers in low-income families. Invited presentation to Head Starts
Fourth National Research Conference, Washington, DC, July 10, 1998.
Lamb, M. E. Patterns of parent-child interaction across cultures and contexts. Paper presented
in a symposium on A baby and somebody: Effects of parental contact and proximity,
day and night, on human infant development at the University of Notre Dame, South
Bend IN, September 28, 1998.
Lamb, M. E., & Sternberg, K. A. Eliciting and evaluating childrens accounts of sexual abuse.
Invited presentation to the National Child Abuse Defense and Resource Center Annual
Convention, Las Vegas NV, October 23, 1998.
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Hewlett, B. S., Lamb, M. E.., Leyendecker, B., & Scholmerich, A. Internal working models,
trust, and sharing among foragers. Paper presented to the International Conference on
Hunting and Gathering Societies, Osaka, Japan, October 25, 1998.
Lamb, M. E., & Sternberg, K. J. Eliciting accurate investigative statements from children.
Invited workshop presentation to the Fifteenth National Symposium on Child Sexual
Abuse, Huntsville, AL, March 12, 1999.
Orbach, Y., Hershkowitz, I., Lamb, M. E., Sternberg, K. J., Fauchier, A., Shiloah, H., Horowitz,
D., & Hovav, M. Interviewing at the scene of the crime: Effects on childrens recall of
alleged abuse. Poster presented to the biennial meeting of the Society for Research in
Child Development, Albuquerque, NM, April 1999.
Cabrera, N., Boller, K., & Lamb, M. E. The demography and study of low income fathers. Paper
presented to the biennial meeting of the Society for Research in Child Development,
Albuquerque, NM, April 1999.
Lamb, M. E., & Sternberg, K. J. Effective interviewing techniques: Eliciting narrative accounts
from alleged victims. Invited workshop presentation to the American Professional
Society on Child Abuse and Neglect Annual Colloquium, San Antonio TX, June 5, 1999.
Roberts, K. P., Sternberg, K. J., Lamb, M. E., Zale, J. L., & Sirrine, N. K. The effectiveness of
open-ended and direct rapport-building styles on childrens reports of a staged event.
Paper presented to the biennial meeting of the Society for Applied Research into Memory
and Cognition, Boulder CO, July 1999.
Cabrera, N. J., Tamis-LeMonda, C. S., Lamb, M. E., & Boller, K. Measuring father involvement
in Early Head Start: A multidimensional conceptualization. Paper presented to the
National Conference on Health Statistics, Washington, DC, August 1999.
Orbach, Y., Lamb, M. E., Sternberg, K. J., Esplin, P. W., & Hershkowitz, I. Enhancing the
quality of forensic interviews in field settings by implementing interview protocols.
Invited presentation to the American Psychological Association Convention, Boston,
August 1999.
Lamb. M. E., & Sternberg, K. J. Lentrevue dinvestigation des jeunes victimes dabus sexuel.
[Investigative interviews of young victims of sexual abuse.] Forum sur les abus sexuels
de lAssociation des centres jeunesse du Qubec/Partenariat de recherche et
dintervention en matire dabus sexuel a lendroit des enfants, Montral, Qubec,
September 1999.
Scholmerich, A., Lamb, M. E., & Leyendecker, B. (Co-organizers) Infants in cultural context.
International workshop on early infant experiences in diverse cultural contexts. Bochum,
Germany, October 1999.
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Lamb, M.E., Sternberg, K.J., Orbach, Y., Hershkowitz, I. The development of the NICHD
Investigative Protocol. Presentation at a symposium on Training child investigators in
developmentally adapted interviews, Regional European Conference of International
Society for the Prevention of Child Abuse and Neglect, Jerusalem, Israel, October 1999.
Orbach, Y., Hershkowitz, I., Lamb, M.E., Sternberg, K.J. Implementing interview protocols in
forensic investigations of child witnesses. Presentation at a seminar on Interviewing
child-witnesses in legal settings, sponsored by the Youth Probation Service, Ministry of
Labour and Social Welfare, and The League for Children, School of Social Work,
Tel-Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel, October 1999.
Lamb, M. E. Post-divorce parent-child relationships and recommendations for policy.
Presentation to the Ohio Task Force on Family Law and Children, Columbus, January
2000.
Lamb, M. E., & Sternberg, K. J. Investigative interviews of alleged child abuse victims. Invited
workshop for 16th National Symposium on Child Sexual Abuse, Huntsville, AL, March
2000.
Lamb, M. E., Sternberg, K. J., Orbach, Y., Esplin, P. W., Hershkowitz, I., Horowitz, D. Eliciting
information about alleged abuse using open-ended prompts: An analysis of field
demonstration studies. Paper presented to the biennial American Psychology Law
Society meetings, New Orleans, March 2000.
Orbach, Y., Lamb, M. E., Sternberg, K. J., Esplin, P. W., Hershkowitz, I., Horowitz, D.
Assessing the value of scripted protocols for forensic interviews of alleged abuse victims.
Paper presented to the biennial American Psychology Law Society meetings, New
Orleans, March 2000.
Hershkowitz, I., Orbach, Y., Lamb, M. E., Sternberg, K. J., Horowitz, D. A comparison of
mental and physical context reinstatement in forensic interviews with alleged victims of
sexual abuse. Poster presented to the biennial American Psychology Law Society
meetings, New Orleans, March 2000.
Roberts, K. P., Sternberg, K. J., Lamb, M. E., & Sirrine, N. The effects of rapport building on
the quality of information reported by children about a staged event. Paper presented to
the biennial American Psychology Law Society meetings, New Orleans, March 2000.
Lamb, M. E. Post-divorce parent-child relationships. Keynote address to the 24th Annual
Colorado Conference on Children and Divorce, Denver, April 2000.
Lamb, M. E. Why are fathers important? Keynote address to the Delaware Governors
Conference on Fatherhood, Dover, Delaware, June 2000.
Campbell, J., Lamb, M. E., & Hwang, C. P. Early child care experiences and childrens social
competence between 1.5 and 15 years of age. Paper presented to the National Head Start
Research Conference, Washington, June 2000.
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Ahnert L., Rickert H., Porges S. W., Lamb M. E. Infant cardiac activity during adjustment to
child care and relations with attachment security. Paper presented to the International
Conference on Infant Studies, Brighton, England, July 2000.
Lamb, M. E., & Sternberg, K. J. Eliciting narrative accounts from alleged victims of child
sexual abuse. Invited workshop to the XXVII International Congress of Psychology,
Stockholm, Sweden, July 2000.
Lamb, M. E., Orbach, Y., Sternberg, K. J., & Esplin, P. W. (Organizers) Improving investigative
interview techniques. International Interdisciplinary Workshop, Salt Lake City, August
27 to September 1, 2000.
Lamb, M. E. Overview of recent research on the effectiveness of structured investigative
interview guides. Presentation to International Interdisciplinary Workshop on Improving
Investigative Interview Techniques. Salt Lake City, August 28 2000.
Lamb, M. E. Investigative interviews of alleged child abuse victims. Satellite Video
presentation, The National Childrens Advocacy Center, Huntsville AL, September 5,
2000.
Lamb, M. E. Forensic interview techniques that maximize the competence of child witnesses.
Invited workshop, 16th Annual Midwest Conference on Child Sexual Abuse and Incest,
Madison, WI, October 25, 2000.
Lamb, M. E., & Holliday, K. Parental relocation: Trying the out of state move case. National
Association of Counsel for Children Childrens Law Conference, Washington DC,
November 5, 2000.
Lamb, M. E. Male familial involvement: An update. Symposium on the Diverse experiences of
males in families, National Council on Family Relations Annual Conference,
Minneapolis, November 9, 2000.
Lamb, M. E. Cross-cultural perspectives on the role and importance of fathers in child
development. Keynote address to national conference on The Role and Importance of
Fathers in the Childs Life, Istanbul, Turkey, December 20, 2000.
Sternberg, K. J., & Lamb, M. E. Structured interview format for forensic interviewers.
Advanced workshop, San Diego Conference on Responding to Child Maltreatment, San
Diego, January 22 to 26, 2001.
Lamb, M. E., Chuang, S. S., & Hwang, C. P. Father involvement in Sweden: Exploring its
components and stability over time. Paper presented to an interdisciplinary workshop on
Measuring father involvement, Natcher Conference Center, National Institutes of Health,
Bethesda MD, February 2001.
Lamb, M. E. Developmental theory and public policy: A cross-national perspective. Green
College Lecture, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada, February 5, 2001.
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Lamb, M. E. Eliciting information from child sexual abuse victims. Tanner Lecture Series,
University of Utah, Salt Lake City, February 27, 2001.
Lamb, M. E. Commentary on a lecture by Sarah Blaffer Hrdy, The past, present, and future of
the human family. Tanner Lectures in Human Values, University of Utah, Salt Lake
City, February 28, 2001.
Kelly, J. B., & Lamb, M. E. Using child development research to make appropriate custody and
access decisions for young children. Workshop presentation to the Judicial Council of
Californias and Family Court Services Statewide Educational Institute, Costa Mesa CA,
March 23, 2001.
Lamb, M. E. Alleged child sexual abuse: The expert witness and the court. Fakultetsopponent
(Clara H. Gumpert), Institutionen for ForkhalsovetenskapAvdeling for stressforskning,
Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm (Sweden), March 30, 2001.
Lamb, M. E. Fathers, mothers, and families: Shaping child development. Invited address, VIII
Congress of the Association Internationale pour la Formation et la Recherche en
Education Familiale, Saint-Sauveur-des-Monts, Qubec, April 18, 2001.
Sternberg, K. J., Lamb, M. E., Orbach, Y., Esplin, P. W., & Mitchell, S. Can young children
respond informatively to open-ended questions posed by forensic interviewers? Paper
presented to the biennial conference of the Society for Research in Child Development,
Minneapolis, April 21, 2001.
Lamb, M. E., Orbach, Y., Sternberg, K. J., Hershkowitz, I., & Horowitz, D. The accuracy of
investigators verbatim notes of their forensic interviews with alleged child abuse
victims. Paper presented to the biennial conference of the Society for Research in Child
Development, Minneapolis, April 20, 2001.
Ahnert, L., & Lamb, M. E. Infant-care provider attachments in contrasting German child care
settings. Poster presented to the biennial conference of the Society for Research in Child
Development, Minneapolis, April 20, 2001.
Lamb, M. E. Developmentally appropriate visitation. Invited Workshop, Custody and Visitation
Symposium , National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges, Charlotte NC, June
5, 2001.
Lamb, M. E. Developmentally appropriate forensic interview techniques. Presentation to
National Childrens Law Conference, San Diego CA, October 2, 2001.
Lamb, M. E. Psychological issues in child custody. Invited presentation to the conference on
Advanced Family Law, National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges, Reno
NV, October 24, 2001.
Lamb, M. E. Psychological issues and custody. Invited presentation to the conference on
Recent Developments in Juvenile and Family Law: An Update for Appellate Judges,
National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges, Reno NV, October 25, 2001.
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Lamb, M. E. Using child development research to make appropriate custody and access
decisions for young children. Workshop presentation to the Judicial Council of
Californias and Family Court Services Statewide Educational Institute, Palm Springs
CA, October 26, 2001.
Lamb, M. E. Father-child relationships and developmentally appropriate parenting plans.
Keynote address to the annual conference of the Massachusetts Association of Guardians
ad Litem, Waltham MA, November 9, 2001.
Lamb, M. E. Maximizing the quality of information elicited from alleged victims of child abuse.
Invited address to Child witnessing: Current themes, University of Portsmouth,
Portsmouth, England, December 7, 2001.
Lamb, M. E. Parent-child relationships before and after divorce. Invited presentation in
Symposium on Custody in a mobile society, Pennsylvania Trial Courts Annual
Conference, Philadelphia, February 23, 2002.
Lamb, M. E. Placing childrens interests first: Developmentally appropriate parenting plans.
Invited address, Center for Children Families, and the Law, University of Virginia,
Charlottesville, February 28, 2002.
Lamb, M. E., Sternberg, K. J., Orbach, Y., Esplin, P. W., Stewart, H., & Mitchell, S. Age
differences in young childrens responses to open-ended invitations in the course of
forensic interviews. Paper presented to the American Psychology-Law Society
Conference, Austin TX, March 7-10, 2002.
Thierry, K. L., Lamb, M. E., & Orbach, Y. Relation between source monitoring and child
witness responses to open-ended questions about alleged abuse. Poster presented to the
American Psychology-Law Society Conference, Austin TX, March 7-10, 2002.
Lamb, M. E., & Sternberg, K. J. Developmentally sensitive interview practices. Invited
workshop, Eighteenth National Symposium on Child Sexual Abuse, Huntsville AL,
March 19-22, 2002.
Chuang, S. S., Lamb, M. E., & Hwang, C. P. The emergence of personality development in
early childhood: A longitudinal investigation of ego-resiliency and ego-control in
Sweden. Poster presentation to the Conference on Human Development, Charlotte NC,
April 4-7, 2002.
Lamb, M. E. Using child development research to make developmentally appropriate parenting
plans following divorce. Keynote address, Annual Meeting of the Interdisciplinary
Forum on Mental Health and Family Law, New York City, April 16, 2002.
Ahnert, L., Lamb, M. E., Porges, S. W., & Rickert, H. Infant emotions and cardiac reactivity
during adjustment to child care I: Perspectives from infant-mother attachment. Poster
presented at the International Conference on Infant Studies, Toronto, Canada, April 19,
2002.
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Ahnert, L., Lamb, M. E., Porges, S. W., & Rickert, H. Infant emotions and cardiac reactivity
during adjustment to child care II: The emerging infant-care provider attachment. Poster
presented at the International Conference on Infant Studies, Toronto, Canada, April 19,
2002.
Lamb, M. E. Assessing the strengths of child witness statements. Invited workshop for the 28th
Annual Interservice Military Judges Seminar, Montgomery AL, April 23, 2002.
Lamb, M. E. Special developmental needs of children under five years old. Invited workshop
for the Custody and Visitation Symposium, National Council of Juvenile and Family
Court Judges, Charleston SC, May 6, 2002.
Orbach, Y., Lamb, M. E., Sternberg, K. J., Esplin, P. W., Stewart, H. L., & Mitchell, S. Age
differences in young children's reports of temporal information in the course of forensic
interviews. Paper presented to the Jean Piaget Society, Philadelphia, June 7, 2002.

Hershkowitz, I., Orbach, Y., Lamb, M. E., Sternberg, K. J., Horowitz, D., & Esplin, P. W.
Improving credibility assessment in child sexual abuse investigations: The role of the
NICHD investigative interview protocol. Paper presented to the XXV International
Congress on Applied Psychology, Singapore, July 9, 2002.

Lamb, M. E. Developmentally appropriate visitation and access decisions. Invited presentation
to the Judicial Conference of Virginia for District Court Judges, Virginia Beach, August
12-13, 2002.

Hewlett, B. S., & Lamb, M. E. (Co-organizers) Culture and ecology of forager children. Pre-
conference workshop, Conference on the Hunters and Gatherers Society, Edinburgh
(Scotland), September 7-8, 2002.

Lamb, M. E. The role of non-parental child care in child development. Address and discussion
with Netherlands Delegation on Child Care, Washington DC, October 7, 2002.

Lewis, C., & Lamb, M. E. Research on fatherhood and father-child relationships. International
Fatherhood Summit. Christ Church College, Oxford, England, March 24-30, 2003.
Lamb, M. E. Promoting child well-being through mother- and father-child relationships. Berger
Institute Invited Lecture, Claremont-McKenna College, Pomona CA, March 31, 2003.
Chuang, S. S., Hwang, C., P., & Lamb, M. E. Paternal leave and paternal involvement in
Sweden. Paper presented to the biennial meeting of the Society for Research in Child
Development, Tampa FL, April 24-27, 2003.
Shannon, J. D., Tamis-LeMonda, C. S., Cabrera, N., & Lamb, M. E. Determinants of father
involvement: Presence/absence and quality of engagement. Paper presented to the
biennial meeting of the Society for Research in Child Development, Tampa FL, April 24-
27, 2003.

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Lamb, M. E. Developmentally appropriate parenting plans. Invited workshop for the Custody
and Visitation Symposium, National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges, San
Diego, May 5, 2003.
Lamb, M. E. Participant in workshop on The American Law Institutes Principles of Family
Dissolution, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Washington DC, May
20, 2003.
Lamb, M. E., Tamis-Lemonda, C. S., Shannon, J., & Cabrera, N. Low-income fathers in the
USA: A closer look at the children in the Early Head Start Evaluation Study.
Presentation to the European Social Research Council Research Seminar Series seminar
on Fathers and Fatherhood: New Directions for Research and Policy, London, England,
June 9, 2003.
Pipe, M. E., Cederborg, A-C., Orbach, Y., & Lamb, M. E. (Co-organizers). Conference on
resistance to disclosure by alleged victims of sexual abuse. Satra Bruk, Sweden, August
11-15, 2003.
Lamb, M. E. Developpement socio-emotionnel du jeune enfant et scolarisation precoce [Socio-
emotional development in the context of early childhood education]. Keynote address to
Colloque du Service de la Recherche en Education 2003: 2eme Colloque Constructivisme
et Education: Scolariser la petite enfance? [ Educational Research Unit Colloquium 2003:
Second Colloquium on Constructivism and Education: Educationalizing infancy?],
University of Geneva, Geneva (Switzerland), September 15-17, 2003.
Ahnert, L., Carter, S. C., Porges, S. W., & Lamb, M. E. (Co-organizers). Attachment and
bonding: A new synthesis. Dahlem Palace, Berlin, September 28 - October 3, 2003.
Lamb, M. E. Custody issues. North Carolina Association of District Court Judges, Boone NC,
October 9, 2003.
Lamb, M. E. Developmentally appropriate parenting plans. Annual conference, Harford County
Office of Family Court Services, Bel-Air MD, November 18, 2003.
Lamb, M. E., & Pipe, M. E. Repeated interviewing in forensic contexts: Is there a baby in the
bathwater? Paper presented to the biennial American Psychology-Law Society
Conference, Scottsdale AZ, March 5, 2004.
Orbach, Y., Hershkowitz, I., Pipe, M. E., Lamb, M. E., & Sternberg, K. J. Effects of repeated
interviews on the information retrieved by child-witnesses in forensic interviews. Paper
presented to the biennial American Psychology-Law Society Conference, Scottsdale AZ,
March 5, 2004.
Pipe, M. E., Sternberg, K. J., Lamb, M. E., Orbach, Y., & Stewart, H. Non-disclosures and
alleged abuse in forensic interviews. Paper presented to the biennial American
Psychology-Law Society Conference, Scottsdale AZ, March 4 7, 2004.

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Hershkowitz, I., Orbach, Y., Lamb, M. E., Sternberg, K. J., & Pipe, M. E. Dynamics of forensic
interviews with children who do not disclose abuse. Paper presented to the biennial
American Psychology-Law Society Conference, Scottsdale AZ, March 5, 2004.
Cederborg, A. C., & Lamb, M. E. Delay of disclosure, minimization, and denial of abuse in a
multi-victim case. Paper presented to the biennial American Psychology-Law Society
DeBoard, R., Orbach, Y., Mendoza, M., Jensen, S., & Lamb, M. E. An analysis of interviews in
which children did not make allegations of suspected sexual abuse. Poster presented to
the biennial American Psychology-Law Society Conference, Scottsdale AZ, March 5,
2004.
Chavez, V., Sullivan, K., Pipe, M. E., Orbach, Y., & Lamb, M. E. Spontaneous disclosure in
forensic interviews. Poster presented to the biennial American Psychology-Law Society
Fouts, H. N., Hewlett, B. S., & Lamb, M. E. Developmental and cultural differences in the
breastfeeding context among four small-scale societies in Central Africa. Paper
presented to the International Conference on Infant Studies, Chicago, May 6, 2004.
Brown, D., Lamb, M. E., Aldridge, J., Sternberg, K. J., & Orbach, Y. Improving the quality of
forensic interviews of children. Poster presented to the Forensic Psychology Research
Group conference on Eliciting information from eye witnesses and victims of crime:
Interviewing and identification, Open University, Milton Keynes, U.K., May 6, 2004.
Lamb, M. E. Children are competent witnesses when competently interviewed. Cattell Award
Address to the American Psychological Society Annual Convention, Chicago, May 28,
2004.
Sternberg, K. J., Abbott, C., Baradaran, L. P., Guterman, E., & Lamb, M. E. Effects of different
types and frequencies of family violence on childrens adjustment. Poster presented to
the American Psychological Society Annual Convention, Chicago, May 28, 2004.
Chuang, S. S., Lamb, M. E., & Hwang, C. P. Swedish adolescents relational and assertive self-
concepts across social contexts and relationships. Poster presented to the American
Psychological Society Annual Convention, Chicago, May 28, 2004.
Gernsbacher, M. A., Lamb, M. E., Levenson, R., Levitin, T., Schnur, P., Snyder, M., &
Steinberg, J. Show me the money: Grant-getting for graduate student and new faculty.
Workshop at the American Psychological Society Annual Convention, Chicago, May 27,
2004.
Lamb, M. E., LaRooy, D., Orbach, Y., & Pipe, M. E. Childrens recall of real world
experiences. Symposium presented at the American Psychological Society Annual
Convention, Chicago, May 28, 2004.
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Orbach, Y., Lamb, M. E., & Sternberg, K. J. Developmental differences in young childrens
reports of temporal sequencing information in the course of forensic interviews. Paper
presented to the American Psychological Society Annual Convention, Chicago, May 28,
2004.
Cederborg, A.C., & Lamb, M. E. Disabled children exposed to crime: How does the legal
system respond when they are victimized? Paper presented to the American
Psychological Society Annual Convention, Chicago, May 29, 2004.
Lamb, M. E. Structured assessment in child interviewing. Invited workshop, American Bar
Association-American Psychological Association National Conference on Children and
the Law, Washington, June 4, 2004.
Lamb, M. E. Suggestibility and childrens recollections. Invited workshop, American Bar
Association-American Psychological Association National Conference on Children and
the Law, Washington, June 4, 2004.
Lamb, M. E. (Discussant) Symposium on Fathers in context: Family structure, socio-economics,
and cultural prescriptions, Head Starts 7
th
National Research Conference, Washington,
June 28, 2004.
Pipe, M.-E., Sternberg, K. J., Orbach, Y., & Lamb, M. E. Characteristics associated with non-
disclosure of suspected abuse. Paper presented to the American Psychological
Association Convention, August 2004.
Hershkowitz, I., Orbach, Y., Lamb, M. E., Horowitz, D., & Sternberg, K. J. Dynamics of
forensic interviews with children who do not disclose abuse. Paper presented to the
American Psychological Association Convention, August 2004.
Pipe, M.-E., Orbach, Y., Lamb, M. E. Autobiographical memory and children's testimony: A
crosscultural perspective. Paper presented to the XXVIII International Congress of
Psychology, Beijing, August 2004.

Lamb, M. E. Helping children become informative conversationalists about their experiences of
abuse. Paper presented to Conversations and childhood: The impact of conversations on
early social, emotional and cognitive development, Cambridge UK, October 14, 2004.
Brown, D., Lamb, M. E., Pipe, M.-E., Orbach, Y., & Lewis, C. Childrens use of drawings to
report touch: Implications for forensic interviews. Paper presented to the 2nd
International Workshop for Young Psychologists on Evolution and Development of
Cognition, Kyoto, Japan, November 12, 2004.
Lamb, M. E. Is parental leave good for gender equality? Discussion session at the GeNet ESRC
Gender Equalities Network Introductory Conference, Cambridge, December 16, 2004.
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Brown, D., Lamb, M. E., Pipe, M. E., Orbach, Y., & Lewis, C. Show me on the drawing where
she touched you: Exploring childrens use of human figure drawings to report touch.
Paper presented to the Society for Applied Research on Memory and Cognition, Victoria,
New Zealand, January 7, 2005.
Darvish, T., Hershkowitz, I., Lamb, M. E., & Orbach, Y. The production of investigative leads in
child sexual abuse interviews using the NICHD protocol. Paper presented to the Society
for Applied Research on Memory and Cognition, Victoria, New Zealand, January 7,
2005.
Brown, D., Lamb, M. E., Pipe, M. E., Orbach, Y., & Lewis, C. Using drawings with children to
elicit reports of touch after short and long delays. Paper presented to the American
Psychology-Law Society conference, La Jolla CA, March 4, 2005.
Thierry, K. S., Lamb, M. E., Orbach, Y. & Pipe, M. E. Developmental differences in the use of
anatomical dolls during interviews of alleged sexual abuse victims. Paper presented to the
American Psychology-Law Society conference, La Jolla CA, March 4, 2005.
Pipe, M. E., Lamb, M. E., & Orbach, Y. Disclosures and nondisclosures of abuse in forensic
interviews. Paper presented to the American Psychology-Law Society conference, La
Jolla CA, March 4, 2005.
Orbach, Y., Lamb, M. E., & Sternberg, K. J. Enhancing childrens recall using contextual cues
in forensic interviews. Paper presented to the American Psychology-Law Society
conference, La Jolla CA, March 4, 2005.
Trinder, L., & Lamb, M. E. Measuring up? The relationship between correlates of childrens
adjustment and both family law and policy in England. Invited presentation to the
Louisiana Law Review Symposium on Divorce reform for the protection of children,
Baton Rouge, Louisiana, March 16-18, 2005.
Sternberg, K. J., Guterman, E., Abbott, C. B., Baradaran, L. P., & Lamb, M. E. Effects of
domestic violence on children's behavior problems and depression: A longitudinal, multi-
informant perspective. Poster presented to the Society for Research in Child
Development Biennial Convention, Atlanta GA, April 8, 2005.

Sternberg, K. J., Lamb, M. E., Baradaran, L. B., Abbott, C. B., & Guterman, E. Age, gender,
and type of abuse differences in the effects of family violence on children's behavior
problems: A mega-analysis. Poster presented to the Society for Research in Child
Development Biennial Convention, Atlanta GA, April 9, 2005.

Elischberger, H., Pipe, M. E., Orbach, Y., & Lamb, M. E. Do young children rely on scripts in
recounting multiple instances of abuse? Poster presentation to the American
Psychological Society Annual Convention, Los Angeles, May 26, 2005.

La Rooy, D., Pipe, M. E., & Lamb, M. E. Do repeated suggestive interviews with
young children increase suggestibility? Poster presentation to the American
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Sternberg, K. J., Guterman, E., Abbott, C. B., Lamb, M. E., & Baradaran, L. B. Contrasts
between children's and mothers' reports of abuse and of the childrens behavior
problems. Poster presentation to the American Psychological Society Annual
Convention, Los Angeles, May 27, 2005.

Mendoza, M. M., Jensen, S. A., Daniels, I. M., Orbach, Y., & Lamb, M. E., Exploring
childrens responses to yes/no and forced choice prompts in forensic interviews. Poster
presentation to the American Psychological Society Annual Convention, Los Angeles,
May 26, 2005.

Pipe, M. E., Lamb, M. E., & Orbach, Y. Factors affecting childrens disclosure: Developmental
differences in secrecy and concealment in a field study. Paper presented to the American

Pipe, M. E., Lamb, M. E., & Orbach, Y. Abuse severity, threats, fears, and childrens disclosure
of child sexual abuse. Paper presented to the American Psychological Society Annual
Convention, Los Angeles, May 27, 2005.

Lamb, M. E. Developmentally appropriate forensic interviewing techniques. Paper presented to
the Ninth International Interdisciplinary Colloquium on Law and Psychology, London,
July 11-12, 2005.

Lamb, M. E. Techniques for improving the quality of information elicited in forensic interviews.
Keynote address to a conference on Investigative Interviewing of Child Witnesses
Taking Stock and Moving Forward, Murrayfield Stadium, Edinburgh, September 6,
2005.

Lamb, M. E. Improving the quality of parent-child contact in separating families. International
Institute for the Sociology of Law Workshop on Contact Between Children and
Separated Parents, Onati (Spain), 15 September, 2005.

Lewis, C., & Lamb, M. E. Father-child relationships and childrens development: A key to
durable solutions? Presentation to the Family Justice Councils Conference on Durable
Solutions in Family Law, Dartington Hall, Devon, September 30 to October 2, 2005.

Lamb, M. E. The many faces of fatherhood: Some thoughts about fatherhood and immigration.
Paper presented to a conference entitled On new shores: Understanding immigrant
fathers in North America, Syracuse, New York October 27-28, 2005.

Fouts, H. N., Lamb, M. E., & Hewlett, B. S. Developmental, cultural, and ecological features of
breastfeeding among four cultures in Central Africa. Paper presented to a conference on
Self, Dyad, and Group: Autonomy and Relatedness over the Lifespan, Bochum
(Germany), January 5 7, 2006.

Lamb, M. E. The needs of children. Presentation to Ministerial conference on FatherhoodThe
childs perspective, London, January 24, 2006.

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Hershkowitz, I., & Lamb, M. E. Forensic investigations of alleged victims of abuse who have
learning and mental difficulties. Paper presented to the American Psychology-Law
Society conference, St. Petersburg FL, 4 March, 2006.

Cederborg, A. C., & Lamb, M. E. How does the legal system respond when children with
learning difficulties are victimized? Paper presented to the American Psychology-Law
Society conference, St. Petersburg FL, 4 March, 2006.

Cederborg, A. C., La Rooy, D., & Lamb, M. E. Repeated interviews about alleged abuse with
children who have intellectual disabilities. Paper presented to the American Psychology-
Law Society conference, St. Petersburg FL, 4 March, 2006.

Brown, D. A., Lewis, C., Lamb, M. E., Stephens, E., & Lunn, J. Facilitating eyewitness
testimony in children with learning disabilities. Paper presented to the American
Psychology-Law Society conference, St. Petersburg FL, 4 March, 2006.

Brown, D.A., Lewis, C., Stephens, E., Lunn, J., & Lamb, M.E. Facilitating eyewitness
testimony in children with learning disabilities. Invited presentation to the Psychology
Department Seminar Series, May 2006, University of Central Lancashire, Preston, UK.

Lamb, M. E. Fathers matter! Keynote address to Family Rights Group, London, June 29, 2006.

Orbach, Y., Lamb, M. E., Sternberg, K. J., Hershkowitz, , I., & Esplin, P. W. The NICHD
Investigative Interview Protocol: An introduction. Paper presented to the Second
International Investigative Interviewing Conference, Portsmouth UK, July 5-7, 2006.

Lamb, M. E., Sternberg, K. J., Orbach, Y., Aldridge, J., Bowler, L., Pearson, S., & Esplin, P. W.
Enhancing the quality of investigative interviews by British police officers. Paper
presented to the Second International Investigative Interviewing Conference, Portsmouth
UK, July 5-7, 2006.

Cyr, M., Lamb, M. E., Pelletier, J., Leduc, P., & Perron, A. Assessing the effectiveness of the
NICHD Investigative Interview Protocol in Francophone Quebec. Paper presented to the
Second International Investigative Interviewing Conference, Portsmouth UK, July 5-7,
2006.

Larsson, A., Teoh, Y. S., Lamb, M. E., Orbach, Y., & Hershkowitz, I. Effects of physical and
mental context reinstatement and cueing on childrens reports about extra-familial child
abuse. Paper presented to the Second International Investigative Interviewing
Conference, Portsmouth UK, July 5-7, 2006.

LaRooy, D., Lamb, M. E., & Pipe, M. E. Is skepticism about repeated interviewing justified?
What does the research say? Paper presented to the Second International Investigative
Interviewing Conference, Portsmouth UK, July 5-7, 2006.

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Orbach, Y., Lamb, M. E., LaRooy, D., Pipe, M. E., & Stewart, H. L. A witness to abduction: A
case study of repeated interviewing. Paper presented to the Second International
Investigative Interviewing Conference, Portsmouth UK, July 5-7, 2006.

Stephens, E., Brown, D. A., Lunn, J. F., Lewis, C., & Lamb, M. E. Repeated interviewing of
children with learning disabilities. Paper presented to the Second International
Investigative Interviewing Conference, Portsmouth UK, July 5-7, 2006.

Brown, D.A., Lewis, C., Stephens, E., Lunn, J., & Lamb, M.E. Interviewing children with
learning disabilities about their experiences. Poster presented at the 26th International
Congress of Applied Psychology, 16-21 July, 2006, Athens, Greece.

Lewis, C., Brown, D.A., Stephens, E., Lunn, J., & Lamb, M.E. Interviewing children with
learning disabilities about their experiences. Paper presented at the 4th International
Conference on Memory (ICOM-4), Sydney, 16 - 21 July, 2006.

Orbach, Y., Lamb, M. E., & Pipe, M. E. Input-free cueing techniques in forensic interviews with
children. Paper presented to the 4th International Conference on Memory (ICOM-4),
Sydney, July 16-21, 2006.

Kiernan, K., & Lamb, M. E. Separated parents and child well-being. Paper presented to the
International Conference on Children and Divorce, Norwich, July 24-27, 2006.

Lamb, M.E. Factors affecting childrens adjustment following parental separation. Keynote
address to the International Conference on Children and Divorce, Norwich, July
24-27, 2006.

Lamb, M. E. Can children be competent informants about their experiences of abuse? Invited
address to the 50
th
Anniversary Celebration for the Institute of Psychology, University of
Goteborg, September 2006.

Lamb, M. E. Fathers matter? Keynote speaker, Greater London Family Panel Conference,
Harrington Hall, London, November 18, 2006.

Brown, D. B., Lamb, M. E., Lewis, C., Pipe, M. E., & Orbach, Y. Promoting best practice in
forensic interviews with children: Lab-based validations of field-based techniques.
Presentation to a conference Memory on Trial: The Role of Memory in the Courtroom,
University of Otago, Dunedin, NZ, November 29 2006.

Lamb, M. E. Non-parental care and emotional development. Invited contribution to a
Conference on Early development, attachment, and social policy, University of
Cambridge, December 2006.

Lamb, M. E. The first three years: Building the basis for a better life. Keynote address, What
About the Children? Conference, London, March 6, 2007.

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Lamb, M. E. Can children be competent witnesses? Fifteenth Annual Warren Weiswasser
Lecture, Yale University Medical Center, New Haven CT, April 25, 2007.

Lamb, M. E., Guterman, E., Abbott, C. B., & Baradaran, L. Effects of supportive and risk factors
including family violence on childrens adjustment. Poster presentation to the 2007
Association for Psychological Science Annual Convention, Washington DC, May 26,
2007.

La Rooy, D., & Lamb, M. E. The effects of repeating questions in forensic interviews with
children. Presentation to the British Psychological Society Cognitive Section
Conference, Aberdeen, August 21, 2007.

Lamb, M. E. How does early out-of-home care affect child development? Keynote address,
Fachgruppe Entwicklungspsychologie (German Society for Developmental Psychology),
Heidelberg, 24 September 2007.

Brown, D. A., Lewis, C., Lamb, M. E., Pipe, M.-E., & Orbach, Y. Show me on the drawing
where she touched you: The impact of interview technique and delay on childrens
recall of bodily touch. Paper presented to the American Psychology-Law Society
Convention, Jacksonville FL, March 6-8, 2008.

Teoh, Y.-S., Yang, P.-J., Lamb, M. E., & Larsson, A. Do human figure drawings help alleged
victims of sexual abuse provide clearer accounts of physical contact with alleged
perpetrators? Paper presented to the American Psychology-Law Society Convention,
Jacksonville FL, March 6-8, 2008.

La Rooy, D. A., & Lamb, M. E. The effects of repeating questions in forensic interviews with
children. Paper presented to the American Psychology-Law Society Convention,

Hershkowitz, I., & Lamb, M. E. Abuse disclosure by children with mental and physical
disabilities. Paper presented to the American Psychology-Law Society Convention,

Hershkowitz, I., Lamb, M. E., & Orbach, Y. The effects of the NICHD Investigative Interview
Protocol on assessment of credibility in child sexual abuse investigations. Paper
presented to the American Psychology-Law Society Convention, Jacksonville FL,
March 6-8, 2008.

Pipe, M.-E., Orbach, Y., Lamb, M. E., Abbott, C. B., Stewart, H. L., & Schindler, S. Does the
introduction of an evidence-based investigative interview protocol affect case outcomes?
Paper presented to the American Psychology-Law Society Convention, Jacksonville FL,
March 6-8, 2008.

Lamb, M. E. Invited participant to the symposium Big Books: selection of personal favourites
from social scientists interested in policy-making for children and families. Roundtable
discussion at the British Psychological Society Annual Conference, Dublin, April 2, 2008.
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Lamb, M. E. How does early non-parental care affect child development? Invited address,
Jacobs Foundation Conference on Early child development and its implications for later
achievement, Marbach Castle (Germany), April 2-4, 2008.

Yang, P. J., Kloss, A.-K., Ahnert, L. & Lamb, M. E. (2008). Learning how to read, write and
calculate: Links between prerequisites and acquired skills. Paper presented to the
International Society for the Study of Behavioural Development Conference, Wurzburg,
July 2008.

Lamb, M. E. Helping children be competent witnesses in forensic contexts. Keynote address to
the Japanese Psychological Association Annual Convention, Hokkaido, September 19-
21, 2008.

Lamb, M. E. Fatherhood and father-child relationships. Keynote address to Mothers, Fathers,
and Caregivers: Addressing Issues of Attachment, Aggression, Foster Care and Trauma,
Philadelphia Compact, Philadelphia, November 7, 2008.

Lamb, M. E. The role of fathers in child development. Interdisciplinary symposium, Centre for
Psychosocial Medicine at the University of Heidelberg, Heidelberg, February 11, 2009.

Cederborg, A.-C., La Rooy, D., Danielsson, H., & Lamb, M. E. Repetition of contaminating
question types when children and youths with learning disabilities are interviewed. Paper
presented to the American Psychology-Law Society Convention, San Antonio TX,
March 6-8, 2009.

Lamb, M. E. Fathers, mothers, and child development. Parents Matter International Conference,
London March 26, 2009.

Lamb, M. E. Mothers, fathers, or parents at home and at work. Conference on Gender
Inequalities in the 21
st
Century, Queens College, Cambridge, March 27, 2009.

Lamb, M. E. Conducting developmentally appropriate interviews of young witnesses. Plenary
address, International Investigative Interviewing Research Group Annual Conference,
Teeside, April 15, 2009.

Yang, P. J., Teoh, Y. S., & Lamb, M. E. The usefulness of human figure diagrams in
clarifying childrens descriptive accounts of touches. Paper presented to the International
Investigative Interviewing Research Group Annual Conference, Teeside, April 15, 2009.

La Rooy, D., Katz, C., Malloy, L. C., & Lamb, M. E. The effectiveness of using multiple
interviews. Paper presented to the International Investigative Interviewing Research
Group Annual Conference, Teeside, April 15, 2009.

Katz, C., Hershkowitz, I., & Lamb, M. E. Draw me what happened: Integrating drawing while
interviewing alleged victims of child sexual abuse. Paper presented to the International
Investigative Interviewing Research Group Annual Conference, Teeside, April 15, 2009.
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Hershkowitz, I., & Lamb, M. E., Orbach, Y., Katz, C., & Horowitz, D. The effect of the
relationship to the suspect on childrens reports of abuse. Paper presented to the
International Investigative Interviewing Research Group Annual Conference, Teeside,
April 15, 2009.

Malloy, L. C., Katz, C., Quas, J. A., Lyon, T. D., & Lamb, M. E. When lack of motivation leads
to denial: Recantation in investigative interviews with children. Paper presented to the
International Investigative Interviewing Research Group Annual Conference,
Teeside, April 15, 2009.
Katz, C., Hershkowitz, I., Malloy, L. C., Atabaki, A., Spindler, S. A. K., & Lamb, M. E. The
body talks: Trying to understand reluctant children through their body language during
investigative interviews. Paper presented to the International Investigative Interviewing
Research Group Annual Conference, Teeside, April 15, 2009.

Lamb, M. E. Exploring the effects of attachment relationships on reactions to transitions. Paper
presented to the US National Institute of Aging workshop on Advancing integrative
Psychological Research on Adaptive and Healthy Aging, Berkeley CA, May 21, 2009.

Lamb, M. E. [Discussant and Chair]. Childrens memories and reports of touching events.
Symposium presented at the Association for Psychological Science Annual Convention,
San Francisco, May 23, 2009.

Pipe, M. E., Orbach, Y., Lamb, M. E., Abbott, C. B., & Stewart, H. L. Do best practice
interviews with child abuse victims influence case outcomes? Poster presentation to the
National Institute of Justice Research Conference, Washington DC, June 16, 2009.

Lamb, M. E. Mothers, fathers, and infants. Paper presented in honour of Rudolph Schaffer to
the British Psychological Society Developmental Section Conference, Nottingham,
September 9, 2009.

Yang, P. J., & Lamb, M. E. Factors affecting children's transition to school: An ecological
model. Paper presented to the British Psychological Society Developmental Section
Conference, Nottingham, September 9, 2009.

Lamb, M. E. Fathers, mothers, and child development. Colloquium on Strengthening Marriage
and Supporting Families, Valletta (Malta), October 6-7, 2009.

Yang, P. J., Kappler, G., Lamb, M. E. & Ahnert, L. Factors affecting children's transition to
school: An ecological model. Paper presented to the British Psychological Society
Education Section Conference, Lancaster, November 1, 2009.

Lamb, M. E. Questioning child victims. Presentation to the CURE Conference on Children as
Victims of Crime in the European Union, Stockholm, December 3-4, 2009.
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Lamb, M. E. Developmentally appropriate inter viewing: The NICHD Investigative Interview
Protocol. 24
th
Annual San Diego International Conference on Child and Family
Maltreatment, San Diego, January 26, 2010.
Lamb, M. E. The importance of parent-child relationships. Presentation to the Arizona
Association of Family and Conciliation Courts, Phoenix (AZ), January 27, 2010.
Lamb, M. E. Attachment issues in family law matters. Presentation to the Bay Area Association
of Family and Conciliation Courts, San Jose (CA), January 29, 2010.
Lamb, M. E. Confessions of a wondering wanderer (or wandering wonderer?). Keynote address
to the Society for Cross-Cultural Research, Albuquerque (NM), February 19, 2010.
Lamb, M. E. Childrens developmental needs in the context of family break-up. London Family
Justice Conference, London, March 8, 2010.
Malloy, L. C., Pipe, M. E., Lamb, M. E., Orbach, Y., & Rothenberg, D. Discussion of secrets,
threats, and fears in investigative interviews with children. Paper presented to the
American Psychology-Law Society Conference, Vancouver (BC), March 18-20, 2010.
Katz, C., Malloy, L. C., & Lamb, M. E. Different ways to communicate resistance: Exploring
verbal and non verbal cues within investigative interviews of abused children. Paper
presented to the American Psychology-Law Society Conference, Vancouver (BC), March
18-20, 2010.
Hershkowitz. I., Lamb, M. E., Orbach, Y., Katz, C., & Horowitz, D. The effect of motivational
factors on the richness of childrens testimonies. Paper presented to the American
Psychology-Law Society Conference, Vancouver (BC), March 18-20, 2010.
Katz, C., Lamb, M. E., & Hershkowitz, I. The Revised NICHD Protocol and its effect on the
way children disclose the allegation for the first time in investigative interviews. Paper
presented to the American Psychology-Law Society Conference, Vancouver (BC),
March 18-20, 2010.

Malloy, L. C., Lamb, M. E., Orbach, Y., & Walker, A. G. How do interviewers use and young
children respond to How/Why/How Come in investigative interviews with suspected
victims of child sexual abuse? Paper presented to the American Psychology-Law Society
Conference, Vancouver (BC), March 18-20, 2010.

Lamb, M. E. Forensic interview protocols. Canadian Society for the Investigation of Child
Abuse, Calgary, Canada, May 3-5, 2010.
Lamb, M. E. Developmentally appropriate forensic interviewing: The NICHD Investigative
Interview Protocol. Master Class to the International Investigative Interview Research
Group Annual Conference, Stavern (Norway), June 20-21, 2010.
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Hershkowitz, I., Lamb, M. E., & Katz, C. Enhancing abuse disclosure by reluctant children: A
test of the revised NICHD Protocol. Paper presented to the International Investigative
Interview Research Group Annual Conference, Stavern (Norway), June 22, 2010.
Malloy, L. C., Brubacher, S., & Lamb, M. E. Exploring the dynamics of
forensic interviews in which children mention difficulties and worries. Paper presented
to the International Investigative Interview Research Group Annual Conference, Stavern
(Norway), June 22, 2010.

Sim, M., Katz, C., Hershkowitz, I., & Lamb, M. E.

Credibility assessment in credible and
doubtful cases of child sexual abuse. Paper presented to the International Investigative
Interview Research Group Annual Conference, Stavern (Norway), June 22, 2010.

van Gijn, E., Berridge, Z., Katz, C., & Lamb, M. E. Characteristics of perpetrators as portrayed
by alleged victims of child sexual abuse. Paper presented to the International
Investigative Interview Research Group Annual Conference, Stavern (Norway), June 22,
2010.

LaRooy, D., Lamb, M. E., & Memon, A. Forensic interviews with children in Scotland: A
survey of interview practices among police. Paper presented to the International
Investigative Interview Research Group Annual Conference, Stavern (Norway), June 22,
2010.
Lamb, M. E. How much can young victims tell us about sexual abuse? Keynote address to the
International Academy of Sex Research, Prague, July 25, 2010.

Huang, C. Y. S., & Lamb, M. E. Acculturation and parenting styles in Chinese immigrants to the UK.
Poster presentation to the British Psychological Association (Developmental Section)
Annual meeting, London, September 2010.

Yang, P. J., & Lamb, M. E. Regulatory functions during the transition to new school
environments. Paper presented to the British Psychological Association
(Developmental Section) Annual meeting, London, September 2010.

Lamb, M. E. How much can young victims tell us about sexual abuse? Seminar on child victim
interviewing, Institute for Psychology and Law at Hallym University and Korean
Victimology Association, Seoul (Korea), September 8, 2010.

Lamb, M. E. Developmentally appropriate investigative interviews. Masterclass,
Institute for Psychology and Law at Hallym University, Seoul (Korea), September 9,
2010.
Lamb, M. E. How much information can young children provide in forensic interviews. Public
Family Law Seminars, Judicial Studies Board, Northampton, November 9, 2010 and
January 11, 2011.

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Lamb, M. E. Developmentally appropriate interviews of alleged child victims. Ministry of
Women and Family, Seoul (Korea), December 7-8, 2010.
Li, X., & Lamb, M. E. Bridging tradition and modernity: Father-child affection in Chinese
families. Paper presented to the Society for Cross-Cultural Research Conference,
Charleston (SC), February 2011.
Lamb, M. E., Hershkowitz, I., & Katz, C. The effects of enhanced support during investigative
interviews on the behaviour and informativeness of reluctant children. Paper presented to
the American Psychology-Law Society Conference, Miami, March 2011.

Malloy, L. C., Brubacher, S. P., & Lamb, M. E. Do expected consequences of disclosure provide
insight into delayed disclosure of child sexual abuse? Paper presented to the American
Psychology-Law Society Conference, Miami, March 2011.

Cederborg, A-C., Alm, C., da Silva Nises, D. L., & Lamb, M. E. Investigative interviewing of
allegedly abused children: An evaluation of a new training programme for police officers
in Sweden. Paper presented to the American Psychology-Law Society Conference,
Miami, March 2011.

Sim, M. P. Y., & Lamb, M. E. Childrens statements about alleged sexual abuse: A linguistic
profile. Paper presented to the American Psychology-Law Society Conference, Miami,
March 2011.

Wachi, T., Watanabi, K., Sano, ., Otsuka, Y., Kuraishi, ., & Lamb, M. E. Police interviewing
styles and confessions in Japan. Poster presentation to the American Psychology-Law
Society Conference, Miami, March 2011.

Yang, P. J. & Lamb, M. E. Is school stressful? Young childrens cortisol responses to their first
school environments. Poster presentation to the Society for Research in Child
Development Biennial Conference, Montreal, April 2, 2011.
Huang, C-Y. S. & Lamb, M. E. What do mothers say about their parenting style? A comparison
of the attitudes and behaviour of Chinese and English mothers. Poster presentation to the
Society for Research in Child Development Biennial Conference, Montreal, April 1,
2011.
Lamb, M. E. The need for developmentally appropriate interviewing. Paper presented to the
Second International Conference on Child Abuse and Neglect, Porto, 13 May, 2011.
Lamb, M. E. Angels, demons, dunces: Our inconsistent views of children in the legal system.
Hay Festival, May 28, 2011.
Van Gijn, E., & Lamb, M. E. The modus operandi of offenders of child sexual abuse as
described by police officers. Paper presented to the International Investigative Interview
Research Group Annual Conference, Dundee (Scotland), June 1, 2011.

00477
110
Sim, M., & Lamb, M. E. Police interviews with juvenile suspects: Self-reported practices and
beliefs. Paper presented to the International Investigative Interview Research Group
Annual Conference, Dundee (Scotland), June 2, 2011.

Wachi, T., Yokota, K., Otsuka, Y., Kuraishi, H., Watanabe, K., & Lamb, M. E. Japanese police
officers feelings and beliefs after interrogation. Paper presented to the International
Investigative Interview Research Group Annual Conference, Dundee (Scotland), June 2,
2011.

Cherson, M. J., & Lamb, M. E. Rapport-building: Understanding the first eight minutes. Paper
presented to the International Investigative Interview Research Group Annual
Conference, Dundee (Scotland), June 2, 2011.

Malloy, L. C., Brubacher, S., & Lamb, M. E. Children discuss disclosure recipients in forensic
interviews about suspected abuse. Paper presented to the International Investigative
Interview Research Group Annual Conference, Dundee (Scotland), June 2, 2011.

Brubacher, S., Malloy, L. C., Roberts, K., & Lamb, M. E. Talking about repeated events: How
interviewers and children organize memories of alleged multiple incidents of abuse.
Paper presented to the Society for Applied Research on Memory and Cognition, New
York City, June 2011.
Lamb, M. E. Advanced workshop on developmentally appropriate forensic interviewing.
National Center for Childrens Advocacy Centers, Huntsville (AL), August 30, 2011.
Lamb, M. E. Child forensic interviewing. Presentation to Salt Lake County Childrens Justice
Center Annual Multi-Disciplinary Team Conference, Sandy (UT), August 31, 2011.
Yang, P. J., & Lamb, M. E. Effects of temperament and attachment on young children's first
school experiences. 15
th
European Conference on Developmental Psychology, Bergen
(Norway), 24 August 2011.

Huang, C.-Y. S., & Lamb, M. E. Chinese Immigrant mothers acculturation, parenting beliefs
and parenting behaviours. Poster presented to the BPS Developmental Psychology
Section Conference, Newcastle, 7 September 2011.
Lamb, M. E. Developmentally appropriate forensic interviewing. Expert Lecture, 8
th

International Conference Helping children-victims of crime, Warsaw, October 25,
2011.
Lamb, M. E. Interviewing children who are reluctant to disclose abuse. 8
th
International
Conference Helping children-victims of crime, Warsaw, October 25, 2011.
Lamb, M. E. How much can young victims tell us about sexual abuse? Public
Family Law Seminars, Judicial College, Northampton, November 15, 2011, January 31,
2012, and February 28, 2012.
00478
111

Lamb, M. E. Conducting developmentally appropriate forensic interviews. Masterclass,
University of Abertay Dundee and Scotlands Child and Family Assessment Centre,
Dundee, January 11-12, 2012.
Spencer, J. R., Lamb, M. E., Rook, P., Pathak, M., & Monoghan, G. (Panel). Witnesses: Trials
and tribulations. Inner Temple Education and Training, Northampton, February 11,
2012.
Lamb, M. E. Can children be reliable witnesses? and Enhancing the informativeness of young
victim witnesses. Law, Psychology and Human Development Distinguished Speaker
Lectures, Cornell University, March 2, 2012.
Sim, P.-Y. M., & Lamb, M. E. Police perceptions of interviews with juvenile suspects. Poster
presented to the American Psychology-Law Society Conference, Puerto Rico, March
2012.
Malloy, L. C., & Lamb, M. E. Reluctance and rapport building in forensic interviews with
children. Poster presented to the American Psychology-Law Society Conference, Puerto
Rico, March 2012.
Malloy, L. C., Brubacher, S. P., Lamb, M. E., Benton, P. How many and how often: Childrens
use of number words and frequency estimations in forensic interviews. Paper presented to
the American Psychology-Law Society Conference, Puerto Rico, March 2012.
Wachi, T., & Lamb, M. E. Public opinion on Japanese interrogation techniques. Paper presented
to the International Investigative Interview Research Group Annual Conference,
Toronto, May 23, 2012.

van Gijn, E. L., & Lamb, M. E. Police officers experiences with alleged child sex offenders
modus operandi. Paper presented to a conference on Research in forensic psychiatry,
Regensburg, July 2012.

Malloy, L. C., Katz, C., & Lamb, M. E. Childrens requests for clarification in investigative
interviews about suspected child sexual abuse. Paper presented to the American
Psychological Association Annual Convention, Orlando FL, August 3, 2012.

Arseneau, C., Brubacher, S. P., Malloy, L. C., Lamb, M. E., & Roberts, K. P. Particularization of
multiple incidents in forensic interviews with alleged child sex abuse victims. Poster
presented at the 5e Colloque International sur les Entrevues dEnqute/5th International
Conference on Investigative Interviewing, Nicolet, QC, Canada, September 2012.

Yang, P. J., & Lamb, M. E. British children go to school. Paper presented to a symposium on
The effect of early experiences on child development, Osnabruck, January 2013.

Lamb, M. E. Discussant in Symposium on Research and policy on children in the courts,
American Psychology-Law Society Conference, Portland, March 2013.
00479
112

Villalba, D. K., Malloy, L. C., & Lamb, M. E. Rapport building in investigative interviews with
children. Paper presented to the American Psychology-Law Society Conference, Portland,
March 2013.

Lamb, M. E., Hershkowitz, I., Malloy, L. C., & Katz, C. Does enhanced focus on rapport-
building affect the cooperativeness of reluctant children in forensic interview contexts?
Paper presented to the American Psychology-Law Society Conference, Portland, March
2013.

Mugno, A. P., Malloy, L. C., Katz, C., & Lamb, M. E. How do interviewers respond when
children request clarification in investigative interviews? Paper presented to the American
Psychology-Law Society Conference, Portland, March 2013.

Sim, P. Y. M., & Lamb, M. E. Police interviews with juveniles in the UK: Suspect
demographics, interview failures, and interview outcomes. Paper presented to the American
Psychology-Law Society Conference, Portland, March 2013.

Lamb, M. E. Children and the law: Are our practices coherent? Invited plenary address to the
American Psychology-Law Society Conference, Portland, March 2013.

Lamb, M. E. Beyond mothering to family relationships: Promoting psychological adjustment.
Emanuel Miller Memorial Lecture and Annual Conference, London, March 15, 2013.

Huang, C.Y. S., & Lamb, M. E. Did children listen to their mums? Comparing parenting and
child compliance in Taiwanese, immigrant Chinese and British families. Poster
presented to the Society for Research in Child Development Biennial Conference,
Seattle, April 18, 2013.
Li, X., & Lamb, M. E. Do Chinese fathers say love? Expression of paternal affection in
contemporary Chinese families. Poster presented to the Society for Research in Child
Development Biennial Conference, Seattle, April 19, 2013.
Mugno, A. P., Malloy, L. C., Katz, C., & Lamb, M. E. Childrens requests for clarification in
investigative interviews. Paper presented to the Society for Research in Child
Development Biennial Conference, Seattle, April 20, 2013.
Sim, M. P., & Lamb, M. E. Police interviews with juveniles: Question types, interview factors
and interview outcomes. Paper presented to the International Investigative Interview
Research Group Annual Conference, Maastricht, July 2, 2013.

Yi, M. S., & Lamb, M. E. The effect of episodic memory training on childrens testimony. Paper
presented to the International Investigative Interview Research Group Annual
Conference, Maastricht, July 2, 2013.

00480
113
Wachi, T., & Lamb, M. E. Public opinions of Japanese interrogation techniques and their effect
on penalties. Paper presented to the International Investigative Interview Research Group
Annual Conference, Maastricht, July 2, 2013.

Lamb, M. E. Childrens adjustment in non-traditional family contexts. Paper presented to the
Second International Family Law and Practice Conference, London, July 3 2013.
Lamb, M. E. Questioning young alleged victims of maltreatment. European Committee for the
Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, Strasbourg,
July 4 2013.
Golombok, S. E., & Lamb, M. E. Gay and lesbian adoptive families. Keynote address to the
Fourth International Conference on Adoption Research, Bilbao, July 8 2013.
Lamb, M. E. Child sexual abuse: The disclosure wars. Keynote Address, Conference on the
Forensic Interviewing of Children and People with Intellectual Disabilities in Sexual
Abuse Cases, Modern Womens Foundation of Taiwan, Taipei, September 9, 2013.

Andrews, S. J. & Lamb, M. E. The effects of age and delay on responses to repeated questions in
forensic interviews with children alleging sexual abuse. Paper presented to the European
Association of Psychology and Law annual conference, Coventry, September 2013.
Lamb, M. E. Developmentally appropriate forensic interviews of alleged victims of sexual
abuse. Invited workshop, 43
rd
Annual Conference of the Brazilian Psychological
Association, Aracaju, 25 October 2013.
Lamb, M. E. How might early out-of-home care affect the development of infants and toddlers?
Keynote address, 43
rd
Annual Conference of the Brazilian Psychological Association,
Aracaju, 25 October 2013.
Earhart, R., La Rooy, D. J., Brubacher, S., Willemsen, K., & Lamb, M. E. The effect of the
'Don't Know' ground rule in forensic interviews with children. Paper presented at the
Annual Convention of the American Psychology-Law Society, New Orleans, March 2014.

Brown, D. A., Lamb, M. E., Lewis, C.N., Pipe, M.E., Orbach, Y., & Wolfman, M. Evaluating
the NICHD Investigative Interview Protocol: A laboratory study. Paper presented at the
Annual Convention of the American Psychology-Law Society, New Orleans, March 2014.

Ahern, E. C., Hershkowitz, I., Lamb, M. E., & Winstanley, A. V., & Blasbalg, U. Interviewer
behavior and its effects on the reluctance of alleged child abuse victims: Comparing the
Revised and Standard-NICHD Protocols. Paper presented at the Annual Convention of the
American Psychology-Law Society, New Orleans, March 2014.

Huang, C. Y. S., & Lamb, M. E. Cross-cultural differences in the use of disciplinary methods
among Chinese, immigrant Chinese and English mothers. Paper presented to the 22
nd

International Congress for Cross-Cultural Psychology, Reims, France, July 2014.

00481
114
Lamb, M. E. Children and the law: a developmental approach. G. Stanley Hall Award Lecture,
American Psychological Association Annual Convention, Washington, August 2014.

Lamb, M. E., Orbach, Y., & La Rooy, D. Developmentally appropriate investigative
interviewing of suspected child abuse victims. Continuing education workshop,
American Psychological Association Annual Convention, Washington, August 2014.

00482
115
Departmental Colloquia

Department of Psychology, University of Wisconsin-Madison, September 1975.
Department of Child & Family Studies, University of Wisconsin-Madison, October 1976.
Department of Educational Psychology, University of Wisconsin-Madison, March 1977.
Department of Psychology, Lawrence University, Appleton, WI, April 1977.
Department of Psychology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, June 1977.
Department of Educational Psychology, University of Wisconsin-Madison, October 1977.
Department of Psychology, University of Northern Iowa, Cedar Falls, IA, April 1978.
Department of Psychology, University of Denver, Denver, CO, November 1978.
Department of Psychology, University of Gteborg, Gteborg (Sweden), February 1979.
School of Education, University of California -Los Angeles, March 1979.
School of Behavioural Sciences, Macquarie University, Sydney (Australia), June 1979.
School of Psychology, University of New South Wales, Sydney (Australia), June 1979.
School of Education, University of Queensland, Brisbane (Australia), July 1979.
Department of Psychology, Australian National University, Canberra (Australia), July 1979.
Department of Psychology, Flinders University, Adelaide (Australia), July 1979.
School of Behavioural Sciences, LaTrobe University, Melbourne (Australia), July 1979.
Department of Psychology, Macquarie University, Sydney (Australia), July 1979.
Department of Psychology, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, February 1980.
Department of Pediatrics, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, March 1980.
Department of Psychology and Social Relations, Harvard University, April 1980.
Department of Psychology, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, October 1980.
Department of Psychology (Clinical), City University of New York, New York City, December
1980.
Department of Psychology, University of California at Riverside, April 1981.
Department of Psychiatry, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, November 1981.
00483
116
Oranim, Center for Research on Kibbutz Education, Elroi Tivon, Israel, January 1982.
School of Social Work, University of Haifa, Haifa, Israel, February 1982.
Department of Pediatrics, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, September1983.
Department of Psychology (Developmental Area), Stanford University, October 1983.
Department of Pediatrics, Childrens Hospital, Buffalo, NY, October 1984.
Department of Psychology, University of Gteborg, Gteborg (Sweden), February 1985.
Research and Clinical Center for Child Development, Hokkaido University, Sapporo (Japan),
June 1985.
Department of Child Development and Family Studies, University of North Carolina-
Greensboro, March 1986.
Department of Applied Behavior Sciences, University of California-Davis, April 1986.
Laboratory of Comparative Ethology, National Institute of Child Health and Human
Development, July 1986.
Department of Pediatrics, University of Utah, December 1986.
Department of Psychology, University of California-Berkeley, February 1987.
Institute of Education, University of London (England), September 1987.
Department of Psychology, University of Maryland, Baltimore County, October 1987.
Department of Pediatrics (Division of Adolescent Medicine), University of Maryland, February
1988
Department of Psychology, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, October 1988.
Institute of Psychology, University of Gteborg, Gteborg (Sweden), January 1989.
Department of Psychology, Stanford University, Stanford, February 1989.
Department of Applied Behavioral Sciences, University of California-Davis, February 1989.
Life Cycle Research Institute, Catholic University, Washington, February 1989.
Department of Theology, University of Notre Dame, South Bend, November 1989.
Institute of Education, University of London (England), January 1990.
Department of Psychology, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem (Israel), January 1990.
00484
117
Department of Human Development and Family Studies, Pennsylvania State University,
February 1990.
School of Social Work, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem (Israel), March 1990.
Department of Psychology, University of Padova, Padua (Italy), September 1990.
Frank Porter Graham Child Development Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill,
April 1991.
Department of Psychology, Laval University, Qubec City (Canada), March 1992.
Department of Applied Behavioral Sciences, University of California, Davis, July 1992.
Center for Family in Society, University of South Carolina, Columbia, November 1992.
Department of Psychology, University of Maryland at Baltimore County, February 1993.
Department of Psychology, University College of North Wales, Bangor (United Kingdom), April
1994.
Department of Psychology, Laval University, Qubec City (Canada), December 1994.
Department of Psychology, University of (Sweden), September 1995.
Laboratoire de recherche en cologie humaine et sociale, Universit de Qubec Montral,
Montral (Canada), October 1995.
Department of Psychology, University of Gteborg, Gteborg (Sweden), October 1995.
Fachgebiet Entwicklungspsychologie (Department of Developmental Psychology), Universitt
Osnabrck, Osnabrck (Germany), November 1995.
Department of Psychology and School of Social Work, University of Utah, February 1996.
Institute for Behavioral Research, University of Georgia, Athens, February 1996.
Institute of Psychology, Martin-Luther Universitt-Halle, Halle (Germany), October 1996.
Department of Pediatrics, Georgetown University Medical Center, Washington DC, February
1997.
Department of Psychology, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, April 1997.
Department of Human Development, University of Maryland at College Park, December 1997.
Baltimore County Child Advocacy Center, Towson MD, December 1998.
00485
118
Department of Developmental Psychology, Ruhr University of Bochum, Bochum (Germany),
December 1998.
Department of Psychology, University of Delaware, Newark, February 1999.
Department of Psychology, University of Lancaster, December 2003.
Department of Social and Developmental Psychology, University of Cambridge, March 2004.
First Annual Zangwill-Bartlett Lecture, Department of Experimental Psychology, University of
Cambridge, January 2006.
Centre for Family Research, University of Cambridge, January 31, 2006.
Institute of Psychiatry, Kings College London, June 15, 2006.
Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Oxford University, June 20, 2006.
Institute of Behavioural Sciences, University of Linkoping (Sweden), September 22, 2006.
Child Study Centre, Yale University, April 24, 2007.
Developmental Psychopathology Group, University of Manchester, February 20, 2008.
Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Oxford University, December 2, 2008.
Institute of Criminology, University of Cambridge, February 5, 2009.
Department of Psychology, University of California, Davis, May 20, 2009.
Department of Psychology, Arizona State University, Tempe, 28 January 2010.
National Association of Parenting Researchers, Kings College London, 26 April 2010.
Department of Developmental Psychiatry, Cambridge University, 26 January 2011.
Institute for Social and Economic Research, University of Essex, Colchester, 21 January 2011.
Institute for Applied Psychology, Lisbon, 18 February 2011.
Centre dexpertise Marie-Vincent, Montreal, 30 March 2011.

Department of Child and Youth Studies, University of Stockholm, 27 October 2011.

Department of Psychology, Florida International University, 25 March 2013.

00486

EXHIBIT B
00487
1

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Factors predicting childrens adjustment (general sources)
Bornstein, M., & Lamb, M.E. (Eds.) (2011). Developmental Science (6th ed.). New York
and Hove UK: Taylor and Francis.
Bradley, R. H., & Corwyn, R. F. (2002). Socioeconomic status and child development.
Annual Review of Psychology, 53, 371-399.
Damon, W., & Lerner, R. (Eds.) (2006). Handbook of Child Psychology (4 volumes;
Sixth edition). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.
Golombok, S. (2000). Parenting: What really counts. Hove UK: Psychology Press.
Lamb, M.E. (Ed.) (1999). Parenting and child development in non-traditional families.
Hillsdale, N. J.: Erlbaum.
Lamb, M.E. (Ed.) (2010). The role of the father in child development (5th ed.). Hoboken,
NJ: Wiley.
Lamb, M. E. (2012). Mothers, fathers, families, and circumstances: Factors affecting
childrens adjustment. Applied Developmental Science, 16, 98-111.
Lerner, R. M., Lamb, M. E., & Freund, A. (Eds.) (2010). Handbook of lifespan
development. Vol. 2. Social and emotional development. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.
Parke, R. D. (2013). Future families. Hoboken NJ: Wiley.
Smith, P. K., & Hart, C. H. (Eds.) (2010). Blackwell handbook of childhood social
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Weiner, I. (Ed.) (2013). Handbook of Psychology (12 volumes; Second edition).
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The sexual orientation of parents does not predict their childrens adjustment
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Averett, P., Nalavany, B., & Ryan, S. (2009). An evaluation of gay/lesbian and
heterosexual adoption. Adoption Quarterly, 12, 129-151.
Baetens, P., & Brewaeys, A. (2001). Lesbian couples requesting DI, an update of the
knowledge with regard to lesbian mother families. Human Reproduction Update,
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Bos, H. (2004). Parenting in planned lesbian families. Amsterdam: Vossiuspers UvA.
Bos, H., van Balen, F., & van den Boom, D. C. (2007). Child adjustment and parenting in
planned lesbian-parent families. American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, 77, 38-48.
Brewaeys, A., Ponjaert, I., Van Hall, E.V., & Golombok, S. (1997). Donor insemination:
Child development and family functioning in lesbian mother families. Human
Reproduction, 12, 1349-1359.
Brewaeys, A., & Van Hall, E. V. (1997). Lesbian motherhood: The impact on child
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among lesbian and heterosexual parents: Associations with children's adjustment.
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Golombok, S. & Badger, S. (2010). Children raised in mother-headed families from
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Golombok, S. E., Mellish, L., Jennings, S., Casey, P., Tasker,

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Golombok, S., Spencer, A. & Rutter, M. (1983). Children in lesbian and single parent
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Golombok, S., & Tasker, F. (1996). Do parents influence the sexual orientation of their
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Golombok, S., & Tasker, F. (2010). Gay fathers. In M. E. Lamb (Ed.), The role of the
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Golombok, S., Tasker, F., & Murray, C. (1997). Children raised in fatherless families
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Lamb, M. E. (2012). Mothers, fathers, families, and circumstances: Factors affecting
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MacCallum, F., & Golombok, S. (2004). Children raised in fatherless families from
infancy: A follow-up of children of lesbian and single heterosexual mothers at
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Oliva, A., Arranz, E., Parra, A., & Olabarrieta, F. (in press) Family structure and child
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Patterson, C. J. (1995). Sexual orientation and human development: An overview.
Patterson, C. J. (1995). Families of the lesbian baby boom: Parents' division of labor and
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Patterson, C. J. (1996). Lesbian mothers and their children: Findings from the Bay Area
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Patterson, C. J. (2006). Children of lesbian and gay parents. Current Directions in
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Patterson, C. J., and Chan, R. W. (1999). Families headed by lesbian and gay parents. In
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Patterson, C. J., Fulcher, M., & Wainright, J. (2002). Children of lesbian and gay parents:
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(Eds.), Children, social science and the law (pp. 176-199). New York:
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Patterson, C. J., Hurt, S., & Mason, C. D. (1998). Families of the lesbian baby boom:
Children's contacts with grandparents and other adults. American Journal of
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Patterson, C. J., & Redding, R. (1996). Lesbian and gay families with children: Public
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Potter, D. (2012).Same-sex parent families and childrens academic achievement.
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Vanfraussen, K., Ponjaert-Kristoffersen, I., & Brewaeys, A. (2002). What does it mean
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Wainright, J.L. & Patterson, C.J. (2006). Delinquency, victimization, and substance use
among adolescents with female same-sex parents. Journal of Family Psychology,
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analysis of factors affecting adolescent attachment in adoptive families with
homosexual and straight parents. Children and Youth Services Review, 31, 398-
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Goldberg, A.E., Smith, J. Z., & Perry-Jenkins, M. (2012). The division of labor in
lesbian, gay, and heterosexual new adoptive parents. Journal of Marriage and
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Graham, J. M., & Barnow, Z. B. (2013). Stress and social support in gay, lesbian, and
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Kurdek, L.A. (2004). Are gay and lesbian cohabiting families really different from
heterosexual married couples? Journal of Marriage and Family, 66, 880-900.
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Directions in Psychological Science, 14, 251-254.
Kurdek, L.A. (2006). Differences between partners from heterosexual, gay and lesbian
couples. Journal of Marriage and Family, 68, 1-20.
Kurdek, L. A. (2003). Differences between gay and lesbian cohabiting couples. Journal
of Social and Personal Relationships, 20, 411-436.
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Kurdek, L. A. (2007). The allocation of household labor by partners in gay and lesbian
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Kurdek, L. A. (2007). Avoidance motivation and relationship commitment in
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Kurdek, L. A. (2008). Change in relationship quality for partners from lesbian, gay male,
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Golombok, S., Jadva, V., Lycett, E., Muray, C., & MacCallum, F. (2004). Families
created by gamete donation: follow-up at age 2. Human Reproduction. 20, 286-
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Golombok, S., Lycett, E., MacCallum, F., Jadva, V., Murray, C., Rust, J. Abdalla, H.,
Jenkins, J., & Margara, R. (2004). Parenting infants conceived by gamete
donation. Journal of Family Psychology. 18, 443-452.
Golombok, S., MacCallum, Goodman, E., & Rutter, M. (2002). Families with children
conceived by donor insemination: A follow up at age twelve. Child Development,
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conceived by egg or sperm donation. Journal of Child Psychology and
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Golombok, S., Murray, C., Jadva, V., Lycett, E., MacCallum, F., & Rust, J. (2006). Non-
genetic and non-gestational parenthood: consequences for parent-child
relationships and the psychological well-being of mothers, fathers and children at
age 3. Human Reproduction, 21, 1918-1924.
Jadva, V., Freeman, T., Kramer, W. & Golombok, S. (2009). The experiences of
adolescents and adults conceived by sperm donation: Comparisons by age of
disclosure and family type. Human Reproduction, 24, 1909-1919.
Juffer, F., & van IJzendoorn, M. H. (2007). Adoptees do not lack self esteem: A meta-
analysis of studies of self-esteem of transracial, international, and domestic
adoptees. Psychological Bulletin, 133, 1067-1083.
Lansford, J. E., Ceballo, R., Abbey, A., & Stewart, A. J. (2001). Does family structure
matter? A comparison of adoptive, two-parent biological, single mother,
stepfather, and stepmother households. Journal of Marriage and the Family, 63,
840-851.
MacCullum, F., & Keeley, S. (2007). Embryo donation families: A follow-up in middle
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outcomes. International Journal of Behavioural Development, 34, 270-284.
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attachment, and temperament in early childhood predict adjustment to middle
childhood: The case of adopted children and their biologically unrelated parents.
Van IJzendoorn, M. H., & Juffer, F. (2006). Adoption as intervention: Meta-analytic
evidence for massive catch-up and plasticity in physical, socio-emotional, and
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cognitive development. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 47, 1228-
1245.
Van IJzendoorn, M.H., Juffer, F., & Klien Poelhuis, C.W. (2005). Adoption and
cognitive development: A meta-analytic comparison of adopted and non-adopted
childrens IQ and school performance. Psychological Bulletin, 131, 301-306.

Miscellaneous

Defendant Richs Motion to Dismiss, including the attached Census 2010 information.
00495
202 N. 9
th
Street, Suite 401 C
Boise, Idaho 83702
Tel.: (208) 484-2253

Boise, Idaho 83702
Tel.: (208) 345-5183

Shannon P. Minter
Tel.: (415) 392-6257





Plaintiffs,
v.

Defendants,
and
STATE OF IDAHO,



STATEMENT OF
MATERIAL FACTS IN
SUPPORT OF PLAINTIFFS
MOTION FOR SUMMARY
JUDGMENT

00496
2
Pursuant to Local Civil Rule 7.1 (b)(1), Plaintiffs submit the following separate
statement of material facts, in support of their motion for summary judgment. As set
forth herein, the Plaintiffs and their children are harmed on a daily basis by Idahos
discriminatory marriage ban.
Susan Latta and Traci Elhers
1. Susan Latta (Sue) is 47 years old and has lived in Idaho for 22 years.
Declaration of Susan Latta (Latta Dec.) at 2. In 1994, she graduated from Boise State
University with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in photography and in 2007, earned a Master of
Fine Arts also from Boise State. Id. at 3.
2. Sue is a professional artist. Id. at 4. She is also an adjunct faculty
member at Boise State University for the past seven years and has taught in the Art
Department, the Engineering Department and the Foundational Studies Program. Id. She
also owns an art related business, The Sculpture Studio. Id.
3. Sue has two grown children and two grandchildren. Id. at 7, 13. Her
daughter A. was born in June 1989, and a son, J., was born in Oct. 1993. Id. at 7. Sues
daughter A. has two children, M. and L. Latta Dec. 13.
4. Traci Ehlers (Traci) is 50 years old and had lived in Idaho for 38 years.
Declaration of Traci Ehlers (Ehlers Dec.) at 2. Traci co-owns a small local business,
Western Trophy & Engraving, Inc. Id. at 4.
5. Traci and Sue began dating in 2003. Id. at 6; Latta Dec. at 9.
6. On August 4, 2008, they married in California. Latta Dec. at 12, Ehlers
Dec. at 10.
00497
3
7. Traci and Sue have been harmed by Idahos failure to recognize their
marriage, which has created complications for them and is demeaning in many
meaningful respects. Latta Dec. at 14-17; Ehlers Dec. at 11-18.
8. For example, when Sue and Traci file their federal taxes this year as a
married couple, they must also file separate income tax returns in Idaho, under the fiction
that they arent married. Latta Dec. at 14; Ehlers Dec. at 15. Due to the added
complexities the State of Idaho has imposed on them as same-sex couple, they will need
professional tax assistance. Id. In addition to the extra and unnecessary complexity and
expense, it is demeaning to Sue and Traci to continue to be required by law to sign an
official government legal document that labels them each as single when that statement
is untrue. Id.
9. The property that Sue and Traci have acquired together since their
marriage in 2008 has not become community property as a result of their marriage, as it
would have if Idaho marriage recognized their marriage. Latta Dec. at 15; Ehlers Dec.
at 16. In January 2014, Sue and Traci filed a quitclaim deed with the Ada County
Recorder transferring the title to their home from joint property to marital community
property, with the right of survivorshipa form of property ownership that is limited to
legally married couples and that means that if one spouse were to die, the property would
pass directly to the surviving spouse, without need of probate. Id. Although the Ada
County Recorder accepted the deed for filing, under current Idaho law the form of
ownership specified in the deed transfer may not be enforceable because Sue and Traci
are a same-sex couple and Idaho refuses to recognize their marriage. Id.
00498
4
10. As Traci and Sue get older, they are more and more concerned with the
ramifications of their marriage not being legally recognized by Idaho. Latta Dec. at 16;
Ehlers Dec. at 17. Many issues are implicated, including taxes, inheritance, social
security benefits, hospital visitation rights, and medical decision-making. Id. In so many
ways, Idahos non-recognition of their marriage means they are not protected equally
under the law. Id.
11. Further, Traci feels it is painful knowing Idaho law does not recognize her
as the grandparent of her grandchildren, M. and L. and considers her to be a legal
stranger to them. Ehlers Dec. at 13. Traci does not want her grandchildren to grow up
experiencing pain from the fact that the law does not fully recognize or respect their
family. Id.
12. On a personal level, it is painful for both Traci and Sue that the state they
love, the place that they have made their home, where they vote and pay taxes, where
they have businesses, where they participate, and volunteer, and donate, treats them as
second-class citizens. Latta Dec. at 17; Ehlers Dec. at 18. Traci and Sue believe
Idaho sees their family as less important than other families and somehow undeserving of
equal protection under the law. Id.
Lori and Sharene Watsen
13. Lori Watsen (Lori) is 39 years old and lives in Boise, Idaho.
Declaration of Lori Watsen (Lori Watsen Dec.) at 1.
14. Lori is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker in the State of Idaho and
employed by Boise State University, where she is an Associate Field Director for the
Boise State University School of Social Work. Id. at 2. Lori graduated from Reed
00499
5
College with a B.A. in Psychology in 1996, and was awarded her Masters of Social Work
by Boise State University in May of 2002. Id. at 7.
15. Sharene Watsen (Sharene) is 34 years old and lives in Boise, Idaho.
Declaration of Sharene Watsen (Sharene Watsen Dec.) at 1.
16. Sharene is a Physician Assistant with St. Luke's in an outpatient
endocrinology clinic. Sharene Watsen Dec. at 2. Sharene graduated from Gustavus
Adolphus College in 2002 with a B.A. in Biology and Religion. Id. at 3, 5. In 2005,
she was awarded a Masters of Physician Assistant Studies from Oregon Health Science
University in Portland, Oregon. Id. at 5.
17. Lori and Sharene met through friends in November 2009, began dating,
and have been together ever since. Id. at 9; Lori Watsen Dec. at 13.
18. In October 2011 Sharene and Lori married in New York. Sharene Watsen
Dec. at 12; Lori Watsen Dec. at 15.
19. In 2013 Sharene gave birth to their child, a boy. Sharene Watsen Dec. at
14; Lori Watsen Dec. at 22.
20. During Sharenes pregnancy, Sharene and Lori decided to merge their last
names to create a new family name that they could share with their child. Sharene
Watsen Dec. at 15; Lori Watsen Dec. at 24. Sharene changed her name from
Elizabeth Gossen to Sharene Elizabeth Watsen. Id. Lori changed her name from Lori
Watts to Lori Watsen. Id.
21. Lori and Sharene have been harmed by Idahos failure to recognize their
marriage which has created complications for them and is demeaning in several respects.
Sharene Watsen Dec. at 14, 17-24; Lori Watsen Dec. at 20, 25-35.
00500
6
22. Filling out the birth certificate form at the hospital after the birth of their
son was frustrating as was no way to accurately represent their family, as the form
allowed only one line for mother and a second line for father. Sharene Watsen Dec.
at 14; Lori Watsen Dec. at 27. They wrote in the margins a special request that Lori
be listed as a second parent on this document, however, the birth certificate arrived in the
mail with only Sharene's name on it. Id. If Idaho had recognized their marriage, then
Lori would have been presumed to be the parent of her son at his birth, without the need
for an adoption. Id.
23. During the summer of 2013, Sharene and Lori incurred the expense of
hiring an attorney to assist them with an adoption petition in state court in Ada County,
so that Lori could legally adopt their son through a second-parent adoption. Sharene
Watsen Dec. at 17; Lori Watsen Dec. at 28. The adoption petition was supported by
both of their extended families, and included extensive documentation. Id. On August
29, 2013, a magistrate judge dismissed the petition summarily, without a hearing, holding
that under Idaho law Lori did not have legal standing to file a petition to adopt their child
because Sharene and Lori are not considered married under Idaho law. Id.
24. The denial of adoption by the Idaho court in August 2013 has been very
difficult for Lori and Sharene. Sharene Watsen Dec. at 19; Lori Watsen Dec. at 30.
They are an intentional, carefully planned, intact, and loving family. Id. It is demeaning
and degrading to them and to the dignity of their family for Lori not to be legally
recognized as a parent to their son. Id.
25. If Idaho were to recognize Lori and Sharenes marriage, Lori would be
able to and would file a petition to adopt as a step-parent, which would allow the judge to
00501
7
approve the adoption without the need for a costly home study that is required for other
adoptions. Sharene Watsen Dec. at 18; Lori Watsen Dec. at 29.
26. Because the state court has denied Loris petition to adopt their son, they
have the added expense and inconvenience of having to create a new Medical Power of
Attorney every six months, so that Lori can also consent to their sons medical treatment
and take him to doctor appointments. Sharene Watsen Dec. at 20; Lori Watsen Dec. at
31.
27. But this in no way creates the full legal parent-child relationship that
should be recognized and protected. Id. Idahos refusal to recognize their marriage has
prevented Lori from being recognized as a legal parent, which harms their son in many
direct and indirect ways, including depriving him of the irreplaceable legal, social and
emotional security of having two legal parents. Id.
28. Lori and Sharene do not want their son to grow up and think that there is
something wrong with his family or have difficulty understanding the integrity or
closeness of his family because Idaho does not recognize their marriage. Id. If Idaho
recognized their marriage at the time of their sons birth, then Lori would have
automatically been recognized her sons parent. Id.
29. Idahos refusal to recognize their marriage and to regard Lori as a legal
parent to their son also harms both Lori and Sharene. Sharene Watsen Dec. at 21; Lori
Watsen Dec. at 32. Lori cannot provide parental consent for their son in legal,
educational or medical settings. Id. This creates a burden upon their family as they do
not have the benefit of both parents sharing numerous and important parental
responsibilities. Id.
00502
8
30. Sharene and Lori intend to file a joint federal tax return this year. Sharene
Watsen Dec. at 22; Lori Watsen Dec. at 33. But because Idaho does not respect their
marriage, they must also file income tax returns separately in Idaho, under the fiction that
they arent married, when, in fact, they are. Id. While in the past they have prepared tax
returns without the assistance of a tax preparation professional, due to the added
complexities the State of Idaho has imposed on married, same-sex couples, they must
now obtain professional tax assistance. Id. In addition to the extra complexity and
expense, it is demeaning and morally offensive to sign an official government legal
document that labels them as single when they know that is a false statement. Id.
31. Sharene and Lori also have not historically been able to obtain spousal
coverage on each other's health insurance or other benefit plans at their places of
employment, although they hope to in the near future. Sharene Watsen Dec. 23; Lori
Watsen Dec. 34. They also have advance directives in place to cover end of life
decision-making for one another, although there is no guarantee that their wishes will be
honored since Idaho does not recognize their marriage. Id. They are in the process of
having new wills drafted, to ensure that they have as much protection as possible in place
for each another and for their son. Id.
32. Since their marriage in 2011, the property Lori and Sharene have acquired
since that time is separate property. Sharene Watsen Dec. at 24; Lori Watsen Dec. at
35. It is not considered community property as a result of their marriage, as it would be if
Idaho recognized their marriage. Id.
33. In January 2014, Lori filed a quitclaim deed with the Ada County
Recorder transferring the title to their home from her separate property to marital
00503
9
community property with the right of survivorship. Lori Watsen Dec. at 35.
Community property, with the right of survivorship is a form of property ownership
limited to legally married couples. Id. If one spouse dies, property held as community
property with the right of survivorship passes directly to the surviving spouse. Id.
Although the Ada County Recorder accepted the deed for filing, under current Idaho law
the form of ownership specified in the deed transfer may not be enforceable because
Sharene and Lori are a same-sex couple. Id.
34. Likewise, in January 2014, Sharene filed a quitclaim deed with the Ada
County Recorder transferring the title to a rental property she owns from her name to
marital community property, with the right of survivorship. Sharene Watsen Dec. at
24. Although the Ada County Recorder accepted the deed for filing, under current Idaho
law the form of ownership specified in the deed transfer may not be enforceable because
Sharene and Lori are a same-sex couple. Id.
Andrea Altmayer and Shelia Robertson
35. Andrea Altmayer (Andrea) is 44 years old and lives in Boise, Idaho.
Declaration of Andrea Altmayer (Altmayer Dec.) at 1.
36. In 2004 Andrea received a B.S. in Health Sciences from Boise State
University. Id. at 3. She is a certified massage therapist, having attended the Idaho
Institute of Wholistic Studies in 1996-1997. Id.
37. Shelia Robertson is 43 years old and lives in Boise, Idaho. Declaration of
Shelia Robertson (Shelia Robertson Dec.) at 1.
38. Shelia graduated from Utah State University with a B.S. in elementary
education in 1993, and was awarded her Masters degree in Communicative Disorders in
00504
10
1995. Id. at 3. In 2008, Shelia received her national certification as a sign language
interpreter. Id. She is the 62nd interpreter in the United States to be certified with a
National Interpreter Certification-Advanced Certification. Id. Shelia is a Teacher of the
Deaf in the public schools in Meridian, Idaho in Joint School District No. 2 and also
works part time at Sorenson Communications as a Video Relay Interpreter. Id. at 4.
39. Shelia and Andrea were introduced through a mutual friend over sixteen
years ago. Id. at 8; Altmayer Dec. at 6. They have known each other for over sixteen
years and have been in a committed, exclusive relationship since that time. Shelia
Robertson Dec. at 8-9; Altmayer Dec. at 6.
40. Shelia and Andrea are life partners. Shelia Robertson Dec. at 9, 15;
Altmayer Dec. at 6. They want to spend the rest of their lives together, and wish to
marry in Idaho. Id.
41. In 2009, Andrea gave birth to their child, a boy. Shelia Robertson Dec. at
10; Altmayer Dec. at 7.
42. Andrea and Shelia have been harmed by Idahos marriage ban in many
significant ways. Shelia Robertson Dec. at 11-12, 15-18; Altmayer Dec. at 8-12.
43. Because Idaho law excludes Shelia and Andrea from marriage, as a same-
sex couple, their son and they are denied the security, recognition and protection that
Idaho law provides to married opposite sex couples and their children. Shelia Robertson
Dec. at 12; Altmayer Dec. at 9. Had Shelia and Andrea been permitted to be married
at the time of their sons birth, Shelia would have been presumed one of their sons
parents, without need of any court proceedings. Id. Instead, Shelia is not recognized as
their sons parent. Id. This has sweeping ramifications in legal, educational and medical
00505
11
settings and is detrimental to him and them as a family. Id. For example, Shelia cannot
consent to medical treatment for him. Id.
44. It also creates a burden upon them as a family because Shelia cannot share
numerous important parental responsibilities with Andrea. Id. Andrea and Shelia do not
want their son to grow up thinking that there is something wrong with his family or to
have difficulty understanding the integrity or closeness of his family because they cannot
get married. Id.
45. Not having the right to marry one another negatively impacts their family
in many additional ways. Shelia Robertson Dec. at 18; Altmayer Dec. 11. For
example, neither their son nor Andrea can obtain health insurance coverage through
Shelias employer. Id. Shelia has no recognized legal relationship to their son, even
though she supported Andrea through her pregnancy and has raised him with Andrea
since his birth. Id. They do not have the right to visit one another, or direct one anothers
care, if either needs medical care and becomes incapacitated. Id. They cannot file their
taxes jointly, and the property they have acquired together is not considered community
property. Id. They also have to take additional and costly legal steps to protect one
another and their son in the event either one of them were to die. Id.
46. On November 6, 2013, Shelia and Andrea went to the Ada County
Recorder at the Ada County Clerks Office in Boise to apply for a marriage license.
Shelia Robertson Dec. at 17; Altmayer Dec. at 12. Other than the fact that Shelia and
Andrea are both women, they meet all the legal requirements for marriage in Idaho. Id.
The Recorders office did not issue them a license, and the experience of being denied a
00506
12
license was demeaning to Andrea and Shelia. Id. The Recorders office employee stated
that it would be contrary to Idaho Code, and they were turned away. Id.
Amber Beierle and Rachael Robertson
47. Amber Beierle (Amber) is 33 years old and has lived in Idaho since her
birth. Declaration of Amber Beierle (Beierle Dec.) at 1.
48. In 2004, Amber earned her B.A. in History, Secondary Education at Boise
State University. Id. at 4. She completed her graduate degree in Applied Historical
Research in 2007, and served as the first City Historian for the City of Boise. Id.
49. Since 2009, Amber has been the Education Specialist and Visitor Services
Coordinator at the Old Idaho Penitentiary, an Idaho historic site. Id. at 5.
50. Rachael Robertson (Rachael) is 31 years old, lives in Boise, Idaho, and
manages a plumbing wholesale warehouse. Declaration of Rachael Robertson (Rachael
Robertson Dec.) at 2. Except for her military service, she has lived in Idaho her entire
life. Id.
51. Rachael joined the Idaho Army National Guard as a fulltime soldier in
April 2003. Id. at 5. From June 2004 to November 2005, she served in Iraq in
Operation Iraqi Freedom III. Id. As a soldier of the 116th Cavalry Brigade Combat
Team, she drove a Humvee in a convoy in a platoon, which provided personal security
for a Brigadier General. Id. This convoy was attacked by enemy fire, after which she
received the Army Combat Metal. Id. During that tour of duty, she was also awarded a
Soldier Good Conduct Medal. Id. Rachael was honorably discharged from the military
in June 2008. Id.
00507
13
52. After her military service, Rachael returned home to Idaho and found
employment in the banking industry. Id. at 6. She was abruptly laid off in July 2010.
Id. She asked her supervisor why she had been terminated, and her manager said she
made some staff uncomfortable because of rumors about her, which Rachael understood
to be a reference to her sexual orientation. Id.
53. Amber and Rachael met through mutual friends in 2006, and began dating
in 2010. Beierle Dec. at 10-11; Rachael Robertson Dec. at 9-10. They have been
in a committed, exclusive relationship since Valentines Day 2011. Beierle Dec. at 11;
Rachael Robertson Dec. at 10.
54. Amber and Rachael want to spend the rest of their lives together, and wish
to marry in Idaho. Beierle Dec. at 13-15; Rachael Robertson Dec. at 12, 14.
55. Amber and Rachael have been harmed by Idahos marriage ban in many
significant ways. Rachael Robertson Dec. at 10-11, 13, 15-16; Beierle Dec. at 11-
18.
56. Amber and Rachael have started planning their family and look forward to
having children. Rachael Robertson Dec. at 10; Beierle Dec. at 11. They would like
to get married before they have children. Id. Neither Amber or Rachael want their
children growing up thinking that there is something wrong with their family or to have
difficulty understanding the integrity or closeness of their family because their parents
cannot get married. Id.
57. Both Amber and Rachael deeply wish to experience the unique bond that
marriage makes possible, as well as the safety net of benefits and responsibilities that
00508
14
allow legally married couples to take care of one another and function as legal family
unit. Rachael Robertson Dec. at 14-15; Beierle Dec. at 14.
58. Amber and Rachael bought a house together in December 2012. Rachael
Robertson Dec. at 13; Beierle Dec. at 16. They attempted to get a mortgage through
the Veterans Administration because of Rachaels status as a veteran, but the agency
indicated that it would not allow Amber to be on the mortgage with Rachael. Id. Instead,
they took out a traditional loan, in Ambers name. Id. Amber then filed a Quit Claim
deed transferring the property to both of them, to ensure Rachaels was also on the title to
their home. Id.
59. If Rachael and Amber were allowed to marry, Amber could provide health
insurance coverage for Rachael on her state employee plan. Rachael Robertson Dec. at
15; Beierle Dec. at 17. They would like the property they have acquired together to be
community property. Id. They would like to file joint tax returns, and to be considered
as one anothers spouse for visitation purposes at medical institutions and to be able to
make decisions for one another, in the event either were incapacitated. Id.
60. Should Rachael die, she wants Amber to receive spousal veteran benefits,
including both financial benefits and the right for them to be buried together at the Idaho
Veterans Cemetery. Rachael Robertson Dec. at 15. It is Rachaels understanding that
while the spouses of veterans can be buried together at that cemetery, the cemetery
currently refuses this right to same-sex couples. Id.
61. On November 6, 2013, Rachael and Amber went to the Ada County
Recorder at the Ada County Clerks Office in Boise to apply for a marriage license.
Rachael Robertson Dec. at 16; Beierle Dec. at 18. Other than the fact that Rachael
00509
15
and Amber are both women, they meet all the legal requirements for marriage in Idaho.
Id. The Recorders office did not issue them a license, and the experience of being
denied a license was demeaning to both Amber and Rachael. Id. The Recorders office
employee stated that it would be contrary to Idaho Code, and they were turned away. Id.

DATED: February 18, 2014


_______________/s/_______________________
Boise, Idaho 83702
Tel.: (208) 484-2253

Boise, Idaho 83702
Tel.: (208) 345-5183

Shannon P. Minter


00510
1
202 N. 9
th
Street, Suite 401 C
Boise, Idaho 83702
Tel.: (208) 484-2253

Boise, Idaho 83702
Tel.: (208) 345-5183

Christopher F. Stoll (pro hac vice)
Tel.: (415) 392-6257




Plaintiffs,
v.

Defendants,
and
STATE OF IDAHO,



PLAINTIFFS MOTION
FOR SUMMARY
JUDGMENT

00511
2
COME NOW Plaintiffs Susan Latta and Traci Ehlers, and Lori Watsen and Sharene
Watsen (the Married Plaintiffs), and Plaintiffs Shelia Robertson and Andrea Altmayer, and
Amber Beierle and Rachel Robertson (the Unmarried Plaintiffs), by and through the
undersigned counsel, and move the Court for an order granting summary judgment and for entry
of judgment in Plaintiffs favor and against all Defendants on all counts in Plaintiffs First
Amended Complaint for Declaratory and Injunctive Relief.
There is no genuine dispute as to any material fact, and Plaintiffs are entitled to judgment
as a matter of law on all claims raised in their First Amended Complaint. Plaintiffs accordingly
request that the Court enter judgment as follows:
A. Declaring that the provisions of and enforcement by Defendants of Idahos laws
excluding same-sex couples (including the Unmarried Plaintiffs) from marriage,
including article III, section 28 of Idahos Constitution, Idaho Code 32-201, and
any other sources of Idaho state law that exclude same-sex couples from marrying
violate the Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses of the Fourteenth
Amendment to the United States Constitution;
B. Declaring that the provisions of and enforcement by Defendants of Idahos laws
barring recognition of the valid out-of-state marriages of same-sex couples
(including the Married Plaintiffs), including article III, section 28 of Idahos
Constitution, Idaho Code 32-209, and any other sources of Idaho state law that
refuse recognition to the marriages of same-sex couples (including the Married
Plaintiffs) validly entered into in another jurisdiction violate the Due Process and
Equal Protection Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States
Constitution;
00512
3
C. Permanently enjoining enforcement by Defendants of article III, section 28 of
Idahos Constitution, Idaho Code 32-201 and 32-209, and any other sources of
state law to exclude same-sex couples (including the Unmarried Plaintiffs) from
marriage or to refuse recognition of the marriages of legally married same-sex
couples (including the Married Plaintiffs);
D. Requiring Defendants in their official capacities to permit issuance of marriage
licenses to same-sex couples (including the Unmarried Plaintiffs), pursuant to the
same restrictions and limitations applicable to different-sex couples, and to
recognize the marriages validly entered into by legally married same-sex couples
(including the Married Plaintiffs);
E. Awarding Plaintiffs their costs, expenses, and reasonable attorneys fees pursuant
to, inter alia, 42 U.S.C. 1988 and other applicable laws; and
F. Ordering the declaratory and injunctive relief stated above against each
Defendant; against each Defendants officers, employees, and agents; and against
all persons acting in active concert or participation with any Defendant, or under
any Defendants supervision, direction, or control.
This motion is brought pursuant to Rule 56 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. It is
supported by the record herein and the Memorandum in Support of Plaintiffs Motion for
Summary J udgment, the Expert Declaration of Dr. Michael E. Lamb, the Statement of Material
Facts in Support of Plaintiffs Motion for Summary J udgment, the Declarations of Plaintiffs
Susan Latta,
///
///
00513
4
Traci Ehlers, Lori Watsen, Sharene Watsen, Shelia Robertson, Andrea Altmayer, Amber Beierle,
and Rachel Robertson, Plaintiffs Request for J udicial Notice, and the Declaration of Shannon P.
Minter in Support of Plaintiffs Request for J udicial Notice.
DATED this 18
th
day of February 2014.
______________/s/____________


Christopher F. Stoll (pro hac vice)


00514
5

I HEREBY CERTIFY that on the 18
th
day of February 2014, I filed the foregoing:
PLAINTIFFS MOTION FOR SUMMARY J UDGMENT, MEMORANDUM IN SUPPORT OF
PLAINTIFFS MOTION FOR SUMMARY J UDGMENT AND IN OPPOSITION TO
MOTIONS TO DISMISS OF DEFENDANTS CHRISTOPHER RICH AND STATE OF
IDAHO, STATEMENT OF MATERIAL FACTS IN SUPPORT OF PLAINTIFFS MOTION
FOR SUMMARY J UDGMENT, EXPERT DECLARATION OF DR. MICHAEL E. LAMB,
DECLARATION OF SUSAN LATTA, DECLARATION OF TRACI EHLERS,
DECLARATION OF LORI WATSEN, DECLARATION OF SHARENE WATSEN,
DECLARATION OF SHELIA ROBERTSON, DECLARATION OF ANDREA ALTMAYER,
DECLARATION OF AMBER BEIERLE AND DECLARATION OF RACHAEL
ROBERTSON, electronically through the CM/ECF system, which caused the following parties
or counsel to be served by electronic means, as more fully reflected on the Notice of Electronic
Filing:


Steven Lamar Olsen

Clay R. Smith

W. Scott Zanzig


Thomas C. Perry

Cally Ann Younger

______/s/_________
Deborah A. Ferguson

00515
LAWRENCE G. WASDEN
ATTORNEY GENERAL

STEVEN L. OLSEN

nd
Floor
P. O. Box 83720
Boise, ID 83720-0010
Telephone: (208) 334-2400
Fax: (208) 854-8073




SUSAN LATTA et al.,

Plaintiffs,

vs.


Defendants,

and

STATE OF IDAHO,

)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)


DEFENDANT RICH AND
MOTION TO DISMISS FIRST
AMENDED COMPLAINT

DEFENDANT RICH AND DEFENDANT-INTERVENORS MOTION TO DISMISS FIRST AMENDED COMPLAINT - 1

00516
Defendant Christopher Rich and Defendant-Intervenor State of Idaho request
dismissal of the first amended complaint (Dkt. 42) pursuant to Fed. R. Civ. P. 12(b)(6),
AND AS GROUNDS THEREFOR state that the first amended complaint fails to
state a claim against them for which relief may be granted for the reasons set forth in
previously filed memorandums in support of their respective motions to dismiss the
complaint. See Dkt. 30 and 30-1; Dkt. 41 and 41-1. The first amended complaint does
not substantively alter the claims alleged in the complaint or their insufficiency under
Rule 12(b)(6).
DATED this 30th day of J anuary 2014.
STATE OF IDAHO

By: /s/
W. SCOTT ZANZIG
CLAY R. SMITH


00517

I HEREBY CERTIFY that on the 30
th
day of J anuary 2014, I electronically filed
of Electronic Filing to the following persons:

Deborah A. Ferguson


Shannon P. Minter


Thomas Perry

Cally Ann Younger

/s/
W. Scott Zanzig


00518
202 N. 9
th
Street, Suite 401 C
Boise, Idaho 83702
Tel.: (208) 484-2253

405 S. 8th Street, Ste. 372
Boise, ID 83702
Tel.: (208) 345-5183

Shannon P. Minter
Tel.: (415) 392-6257




LORI WATSEN and SHARENE WATSEN,
SHELIA ROBERTSON and ANDREA
ALTMAYER, AMBER BEIERLE and
RACHAEL ROBERTSON,

Plaintiffs,

v.

C.L. "BUTCH" OTTER, as Governor of the

Defendants,


FIRST AMENDED
COMPLAINT FOR
DECLARATORY AND
INJUNCTIVE RELIEF

00519
and

STATE OF IDAHO,

00520
2
Pursuant to Fed. R. Civ. P. 15(a)(1)(B), Plaintiffs hereby file this First Amended
Complaint as a matter of course and allege as follows:
I. INTRODUCTION

1. Plaintiffs bring this action to challenge the constitutionality of Idahos laws that
exclude same-sex couples from marriage and fail to recognize the marriages of same-sex couples
lawfully entered into in other jurisdictions. See Idaho Const. art. III, 28; I.C. 32-201, 32-209.
Idahos refusal to marry same-sex couples and recognize valid out-of-state marriages of same-sex
couples violates multiple guarantees of the Constitution of the United States. This Court should so
declare and issue an injunction requiring defendants to issue marriage licenses to the unmarried
plaintiffs and to recognize the existing marriages of the plaintiffs lawfully married in other states.
2. Plaintiffs Susan Latta and Traci Ehlers, and plaintiffs Lori and Sharene Watsen (the
Married Plaintiffs) are legally married same-sex couples, having wed in other states. However, in
their home state of Idaho, they are treated as legal strangers to their spouses.
3. Plaintiffs Shelia Robertson and Andrea Altmayer, and plaintiffs Amber Beierle and
Rachael Roberstson (the Unmarried Plaintiffs), are unmarried same-sex couples in committed
relationships who desire to marry. Each couple wishes to publicly declare their love and
commitment before their family, friends, and community; to join their lives together and enter into
a legally binding commitment to one another; and to share in the protections and security that
marriage provides.
4. Plaintiffs are productive members of society, with diverse backgrounds, educations
and professions. They are university instructors, a teacher of deaf children, a professional artist, a
physicians assistant, a small business owner, a historian, a clinical social worker, a warehouse
manager and a certified massage therapist. One of the plaintiffs served full time in the Idaho
00521
3
National Guard for five years, during which time she served overseas in Operation Iraqi Freedom
III and came under enemy attack. Three of the couples are raising children together, and one couple
also enjoys caring for their grandchildren. The situations faced by these couples are similar to those
faced by many other same-sex couples in Idaho who are denied the basic rights, privileges, and
protections of marriage for themselves and their children.
5. Like many other couples with a life-long commitment, the Unmarried Plaintiffs are
spouses in every sense, except that Idaho law will not allow them to marry. In fact, under Idaho
law, solemnization of their commitment without a marriage license is a crime. I.C. 32-406.
6. The Married Plaintiffs are lawfully married under the laws of sister states, but Idaho
refuses to honor or recognize their marriages. Unilaterally and by operation of law alone, Idaho has
effectively nullified their legal status and their rights and responsibilities as married people.
7. Under the Idaho Constitution, a marriage between a man and a woman is the only
domestic legal union that shall be valid or recognized in this state. Idaho Const. art. III, 28. This
provision bars same-sex couples from marrying and also precludes recognition of same-sex
couples existing marriages or any other form of a domestic relationship outside of marriage.
8. Idahos exclusion of same-sex couples from marriage and refusal to respect the
marriages of legally married same-sex couples adversely impact the plaintiffs and other Idaho
same-sex couples in real and significant ways.
9. Idahos exclusion of same-sex couples from marriage and refusal to respect existing
marriages undermines the plaintiff couples ability to achieve their life goals and dreams,
disadvantages them financially, and denies them dignity and status of immense import. United
States v. Windsor, 133 S. Ct. 2675, 2692 (2013). Further, they and their children are stigmatized
and relegated to a second-class status by being barred from marriage. Idahos exclusion of same-
00522
4
sex couples from marriage and refusal to recognize the marriages of legally married same-sex
couples tell[] those couples and all the world that their [relationships] are unworthy of
recognition. Id. at 2694. By singling out same-sex couples and their families and excluding them
from any type of marital protection, those laws also humiliate[] the . . . children now being raised
by same-sex couples and make[] it even more difficult for the children to understand the integrity
and closeness of their own family and its concord with other families in their community and in
their daily lives. Id.
10. In the not so distant past, the majority of states, including Idaho, had laws
prohibiting marriage between people of different races. Until 1959, Idaho law barred as illegal
marriages between Caucasians and other races namely, African Americans, Native Americans,
and Asians. See former I.C. 32-206 (repealed 1959). The Supreme Court held such exclusions
from marriage to be unconstitutional in Loving v. Virginia, 388 U.S. 1, 12 (1967), declaring: The
freedom to marry has long been recognized as one of the vital personal rights essential to the
orderly pursuit of happiness by free men.
11. Our courts and society have discarded, one by one, marriage laws that violated the
mandate of equality guaranteed by the Constitution, such as the anti-miscegenation laws and laws
that have denied married women legal independence. History has taught that the legitimacy and
vitality of marriage do not depend on upholding discriminatory marriage laws. On the contrary,
eliminating these remaining unconstitutional barriers to marriage further enhances the institution
and society. In seventeen states and the District of Columbia, same-sex couples are marrying or
will be able to do so in the coming months, and the institution of marriage continues to thrive.
12. Marriage contributes to the happiness, security, and peace of mind of countless
couples and their families, and to the stability and wellbeing of society. Idaho, like other states,
00523
5
encourages and regulates marriage through hundreds of laws that provide benefits to and impose
obligations on married couples. In exchange, Idaho receives the well-established benefits that
marriage brings: stable, supportive families that contribute to both the social and economic well-
being of Idaho. Marriage has long been favorably recognized in our society as one of the
fundamental institutions upon which our society is founded. Accordingly, the laws reflect a certain
favorability toward creating and maintaining stable and harmonious marriages. State v. Soura, 796
P.2d 109, 114 (Idaho 1990). When Idaho withholds a marriage license from a same-sex couple, or
refuses to recognize a same-sex couples valid marriage from another jurisdiction, Idaho
circumscribes an individuals basic life choices, classifies persons in a manner that denies them the
public recognition and myriad benefits of marriage, prevents couples from making a legally
binding commitment to one another and being treated by the government and by others as a family
rather than as unrelated individuals, and harms society by burdening and disrupting committed
families and preventing same-sex couples from being able to fully protect and assume
responsibility for one another and their children.
13. Idahos exclusion of same-sex couples from marriage, and its refusal to respect the
marriages of same-sex couples validly entered into in other states, violate the Due Process Clause
and the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.
With respect to the Unmarried Plaintiffs, Idahos exclusion deprives them of their fundamental
right to marry and infringes their constitutionally protected interests in liberty, dignity, privacy,
autonomy, family integrity, and intimate association. With respect to the Married Plaintiffs, Idahos
refusal to respect their marriages deprives them of their constitutionally protected liberty interest in
their marital status, burdens their exercise of fundamental rights including the right to marry, and
discriminates against the class of legally married persons. Idahos treatment of all the plaintiffs is
00524
6
subject to heightened scrutiny because it burdens fundamental constitutional rights and because it
discriminates based on sex and sexual orientation. The challenged Idaho statutes and constitutional
provision cannot survive any level of constitutional scrutiny, however, because they do not
rationally further any legitimate government interest, but serve only to injure and humiliate same-
sex couples and their families.
14. Plaintiffs bring this suit pursuant to 42 U.S.C. 1983 for declaratory and injunctive
relief against the defendants. Specifically, plaintiffs seek: (a) a declaration that Idahos prohibition
of marriage for same-sex couples and its refusal to recognize the marriages of same-sex couples
validly entered into outside Idaho violate the Due Process Clause and the Equal Protection Clause
of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution; and (b) a permanent injunction (i)
preventing defendants from denying the Unmarried Plaintiffs the right to marry, and (ii) directing
defendants to recognize the marriages of the Married Plaintiffs that were validly entered into in
states outside Idaho.
II. PARTIES
A. The Plaintiffs
15. Plaintiffs Susan Latta and Traci Ehlers were married in California on August 4,
2008 and reside in Boise, Idaho, where they own their home together. Susan Latta is a professional
artist and adjunct professor at Boise State University, and Traci Ehlers is an owner of a well-
established local small business. Together they have raised children, A. and J., into adults, and are
grandparents of two children, M. and L. They wish to have their marriage recognized in the State
of Idaho, and they and their children and grandchildren have been harmed by Idahos refusal to
recognize their lawful marriage.
00525
7
16. In January 2014, Plaintiffs Susan Latta and Traci Ehlers executed a quitclaim deed
re-deeding their home to themselves as community property with right of survivorship. Idaho
Code 15-6-401 permits a husband and wife to create an estate in community property with
right of survivorship by grant or transfer of jointly owned real property to themselves. On January
29, 2014, after consulting with counsel, Defendant Rich recorded the document, but, unlike other
married couples, Susan Latta and Traci Ehlers do not have the security of knowing that this deed
will be recognized as valid should one of them die. Being unable to hold title as community
property with right of survivorship has negative legal consequences that are not imposed on
opposite-sex married couples. On information and belief, defendants contend that under Idaho law,
married same-sex couples may not hold real property together as community property with right of
survivorship. Therefore, there is an actual controversy between plaintiffs and defendants, and
plaintiffs are entitled to a declaration that the State of Idaho may not constitutionally deny them the
right to jointly hold real property as community property with right of survivorship, just as any
other married couple may do.
17. Plaintiffs Lori and Sharene Watsen were married in New York on October 28, 2011
and reside in Boise, Idaho. Lori Watsen is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker and Associate Field
Director for Boise State Universitys School of Social Work. Sharene Watsen is a Physician
Assistant with a local medical specialty group. Both have been awarded their Masters degrees in
their respective professional studies. Sharene Watsen gave birth to their son in May 2013, after
conceiving through assisted reproduction. They are raising their child, C., together as his parents.
Lori Watsens petition to adopt C. was denied and dismissed on September 18, 2013 by the Ada
County Magistrate Court, in the Fourth Judicial District of Idaho. The court did not recognize their
lawful marriage as valid under Idaho law and held that the Idaho legislature did not intend to allow
00526
8
adoptions by cohabitating, committed partners. They wish to have their marriage recognized in
the State of Idaho, and they and their son have been harmed by Idahos refusal to recognize their
lawful marriage.
18. In January 2014, Plaintiffs Lori and Sharene Watsen executed quitclaim deeds re-
deeding certain real property separately owned by them prior to their marriage to themselves as
community property with right of survivorship. Idaho Code 15-6-401 permits a husband and
wife to create an estate in community property with right of survivorship by grant or transfer of
separately owned real property from one spouse to both spouses. On January 29, 2014, after
consulting with counsel, Defendant Rich recorded the document, but, unlike other married couples,
Lori and Sharene Watsen do not have the security of knowing that this deed will be recognized as
valid should one of them die. Being unable to hold title as community property with right of
survivorship has negative legal consequences that are not imposed on opposite-sex married
couples. On information and belief, defendants contend that under Idaho law, married same-sex
couples may not hold real property together as community property with right of survivorship.
Therefore, there is an actual controversy between plaintiffs and defendants, and plaintiffs are
entitled to a declaration that the State of Idaho may not constitutionally deny them the right to
jointly hold real property as community property with right of survivorship, just as any other
married couple may do.
19. Plaintiffs Shelia Robertson and Andrea Altmayer have been in a committed
relationship for sixteen years and reside in Boise, Idaho. Shelia Robertson is a teacher of deaf
children and a nationally certified sign language interpreter with a Masters degree in Education.
Andrea Altmayer is a certified massage therapist with a Bachelors degree in Health Sciences.
Andrea Altmayer gave birth to their son in November 2009, after conceiving through assisted
00527
9
reproduction. They are raising their child, B., together as his parents. On November 6, 2013,
Andrea Altmayer and Shelia Robertson appeared in person at the Ada County Recorders Office in
Boise, Idaho to apply for a marriage license. They meet all of Idahos qualifications for the issuance
of a marriage license, except that they are of the same sex. Defendant Rich, through his authorized
deputy, refused their marriage license application because they are a same-sex couple. They wish to
marry in the State of Idaho, and they and their child have been harmed by Idahos refusal to allow
them to do so.
20. Plaintiffs Amber Beierle and Rachael Robertson have been in a committed
relationship for three years and reside in Boise, Idaho, where they own their home together. Amber
Beierle is an education specialist and manager of a state historic site, with a Masters degree in
Public History. Rachael Robertson manages a commercial supply warehouse. She is also a veteran
of the Idaho Army National Guard, with five years of service. During that time, she served a tour of
duty in Iraq. Rachael Robertson was awarded a combat medal and combat action badge, as well as
a good solider conduct medal in connection with her honorable service to her country and the Idaho
Army National Guard. On November 6, 2013, Amber Beierle and Rachael Robertson appeared in
person at the Ada County Recorders Office in Boise, Idaho to apply for a marriage license. They
meet all of Idahos requirements for the issuance of a marriage license, except that they are of the
same sex. Defendant Rich, through his authorized deputy, refused their marriage license application
because they are a same-sex couple. They wish to marry in the State of Idaho and have been harmed
by Idahos refusal to allow them to do so.
B. The Defendants
21. Defendant C.L. "Butch Otter is Governor of the State of Idaho. Article IV, section
5 of the Idaho Constitution states: The supreme executive power of the state is vested in the
00528
10
governor, who shall see that the laws are faithfully executed. He is responsible for upholding and
ensuring compliance with the state constitution and statutes prescribed by the legislature, including
Idahos laws barring same-sex couples from marriage and refusing to recognize the valid out-of-
state marriages of same-sex couples. Governor Otter also bears the authority and responsibility for
the formulation and implementation of policies of the executive branch. Governor Otter is a person
within the meaning of 42 U.S.C. 1983 and was acting under color of state law at all times
relevant to this complaint. Governor Otters official residence is in Ada County, Idaho, within the
District of Idaho. He is sued in his official capacity.
22. Defendant Christopher Rich is the Recorder of Ada County, Idaho. Article X,
section 16 of the Idaho Constitution established the position of clerk of the district court. Article
XVIII, section 6 of the Idaho Constitution provides that the clerk of the district court shall also be
ex-officio auditor and recorder. See also I.C. 31-2001. Under Idaho law, as the Ada County
Recorder, Defendant Rich has the authority to issue marriage licenses to any party applying for
the same who may be entitled under the laws of this state to contract matrimony. I.C. 32-401,
I.C. 32-403. Christopher Rich is a person within the meaning of 42 U.S.C. 1983 and was acting
under color of state law at all times relevant to this complaint. Christopher Richs official residence
is in Ada County, Idaho, within the District of Idaho. He is sued in his official capacity.
23. Defendant-Intervenor State of Idaho is one of the United States of America. It is
named as a defendant herein pursuant to its express request to intervene in this action and subject
itself to the jurisdiction of this Court notwithstanding the provisions of the Eleventh Amendment to
the Constitution of the United States and the doctrine of sovereign immunity.
24. Defendants, through their respective duties and obligations, are responsible for
enforcing Idahos laws barring same-sex couples from marriage and refusing to recognize the valid
00529
11
out-of-state marriages of same-sex couples. Each defendant, and those subject to their supervision
and control, have caused the harms alleged, and will continue to injure plaintiffs if not enjoined.
Accordingly, the relief requested is sought against both defendants, as well as all persons under
their supervision and control, including their officers, employees and agents.
III. JURISDICTION AND VENUE
25. Plaintiffs bring this action under 42 U.S.C. 1983 and 28 U.S.C. 2201 and
2202 to redress the deprivation under color of state law of rights secured by the United States
Constitution.
26. This Court has jurisdiction of the subject matter of this action pursuant to 28
U.S.C. 1331 and 1343 because the matters in controversy arise under the Constitution and
laws of the United States. This Court has personal jurisdiction over plaintiffs and defendants.
27. Venue is proper in this Court under 28 U.S.C. 1391 (b)(1) and (2) because the
defendants reside and/or work in this District and both defendants reside in this State, and because a
substantial part of the acts and events giving rise to this Complaint occurred in this District.
28. This Court has authority to enter a declaratory judgment and to provide
preliminary and permanent injunctive relief pursuant to Rules 57 and 65 of the Federal Rules of Civil
Procedure and 28 U.S.C. 2201 and 2202.
IV. STATEMENT OF FACTS

Idahos Laws Barring Same-Sex Couples from Marriage and Refusing to Recognize
the Valid Out-of-State Marriages of Same-Sex Couples

29. Historically, Idaho has not questioned the legitimacy of marriages from other states
that are valid under the other states laws. From territorial days until 1996, Idaho recognized all
foreign marriages if they were lawful under the laws of the other jurisdiction. 1867, p. 71, 5;
R.S. 2428; I.C. 32-209.
00530
12
30. In 1996, however, in response to the mere possibility that some states might permit
same-sex couples to marry although none had yet done so, the Idaho legislature amended Idaho
Code section 32-209 to create an exception to the longstanding rule that Idaho generally respects
marriages that are validly entered into in other states only for the legal marriages of same-sex
couples. That statute now provides:
All marriages contracted without this state, which would be valid by the laws of the state or
country in which the same were contracted, are valid in this state, unless they violate the
public policy of this state. Marriages that violate the public policy of this state include, but
are not limited to, same-sex marriages, and marriages entered into under the laws of another
state or country with the intent to evade the prohibitions of the marriage laws of this state.

31. Likewise, I.C. 32-201 provides:
Marriage is a personal relation arising out of a civil contract between a man and a woman,
to which the consent of parties capable of making it is necessary. Consent alone will not
constitute marriage; it must be followed by the issuance of a license and a solemnization as
authorized and provided by law. Marriage created by a mutual assumption of marital rights,
duties or obligations shall not be recognized as a lawful marriage.

32. In 2006, although Idahos statutes already barred marriage by same-sex couples and
denied recognition to the marriages of same-sex couples who legally married out of state, Idaho
amended its Constitution to do so as well. Article III, section 28 provides:
A marriage between a man and a woman is the only domestic legal union that shall be valid
or recognized in this state.

Harms Caused by Idahos Laws Barring Same-Sex Couples from Marriage and
Refusing to Recognize Same-Sex Couples Valid Out-of-State Marriages

33. Plaintiffs are residents of Idaho who experience the same joys and challenges of
family life as their neighbors, co-workers, and other community members who may marry freely
and whose legal marriages are respected under Idaho law. Plaintiffs are productive, contributing
citizens who support their families and nurture their children, but must do so without the same legal
00531
13
shelter, dignity, and respect afforded by Idaho to other families through access to the universally
celebrated status of marriage. Idahos exclusion of plaintiffs from marriage, and defendants
enforcement of that exclusion, as well as Idahos refusal to respect the marriages of legally married
same-sex couples from other states, subject plaintiffs to an inferior second class status as
Idahoans relative to the rest of the community. These laws deprive them and their children of equal
dignity, security, and legal protections afforded to other Idaho families.
34. Plaintiffs Susan Latta and Traci Ehlers were married in California on August 4,
2008 and would be recognized as such under Idaho law but for the fact that they are a same-sex
couple. Instead, they are treated as legal strangers to one another under Idaho law.
35. Plaintiffs Lori and Sharene Watsen were married in New York on October 28, 2011
and would be recognized as such under Idaho law but for the fact that they are a same-sex couple.
Instead, they are treated as legal strangers to one another under Idaho law.
36. Plaintiff couples Shelia Robertson and Andrea Altmayer and Amber Beierle and
Rachael Robertson applied for marriage licenses in Ada County, Idaho on November 6, 2013.
Defendant Rich, through his authorized agent, refused their marriage license applications because
they are same-sex couples.
37. In addition to stigmatizing a portion of Idahos population as second-class citizens,
Idahos prohibition on marriage by same-sex couples, and its refusal to recognize valid marriages
from other jurisdictions, deprive same-sex couples of critically important rights and responsibilities
that married couples rely upon to secure their marriage commitment and safeguard their families.
By way of example, and without limitation, same-sex partners are denied:
a. The right to have a minister or other state-authorized official solemnize their commitment
to be married. I.C. 32-406 (attaching criminal penalties to knowingly solemnizing a
00532
14
marriage of a couple who do not have a marriage license or who are not legally competent
to be married in Idaho).
b. The right to acquire an interest in community property as a spouse and to hold real property
as community property with right of survivorship. I.C. 15-6-401, 32-906.
c. The right to be supported financially during marriage, enforced by criminal penalties for
non-support. I.C. 18-401(3).
d. The right to be a presumed parent to a child born to a spouse during marriage, or within 300
days of the end of a marriage. I.C. 16-2002(12) (a man married to a woman when a child
is born is the presumed father).
e. The right to be recognized as a spouse when petitioning to adopt a child born to a spouse.
I.C. 16-1503, 16-1506, 32-201, 32-202, 32-209.
f. The right to have access to an ill spouse at the hospital and to make medical decisions for
an ill or incapacitated spouse without requiring a written power of attorney. I.C. 39-4504.
g. The right to have priority to be appointed as a conservator in the event that a spouse
becomes incapacitated. I.C. 15-5-410(1)(c).
h. The right to file a joint state income tax return as a married couple. I.C. 60-3031. The
Idaho Tax Commission recently interpreted Idaho law as requiring same sex couples who
are lawfully married in another jurisdiction to file individual tax returns in Idaho after re-
calculating their joint federal return as if they were not married. Idaho Temporary Tax
Commission Rule 805T (Draft 9/10/13); see also http://tax.idaho.gov/n-feed.cfm?idd=424.
Additionally, on January 24, 2014, the Idaho House of Representatives approved a bill, HB
375, which would require married same-sex couples living in Idaho to file individual state
tax returns even if their federal filing status is married filing jointly. The Bill next moves
00533
15
to the Senate and if passed, to Defendant Otter for signature to become Idaho law. Because
the House has deemed the situation an emergency, if enacted, the law will be applied
retroactively to January 1, 2014, and would create a special exception to Idaho statutes that
otherwise require individuals to use the same filing status on their Idaho tax returns as they
use on their federal returns.
i. The right to spousal insurance coverage and benefits, when spousal benefits are otherwise
available.
j. A host of federal rights and responsibilities that pertain to married couples, including but
not limited to those related to Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, the Family Medical
Leave Act, and the Veterans Administration.
k. The right to a court-ordered equitable distribution of property upon the dissolution of the
marriage. I.C. 32-712.
l. The right to recognition as a legal parent, which allows access to court-ordered custody,
child support, and visitation upon the dissolution of the marriage. I.C. 32-717.
m. The right to have certain marital assets and property exempt from consideration when
determining eligibility for long-term care benefits for a spouse under the Medicaid program.
I.C. 56-209e.
n. The right to receive certain workers compensation benefits for a deceased spouse who has
died on the job. I.C. 72-1019(3)(b).
o. The right to inherit a share of the estate of a spouse who dies without a will. I.C. 15-2-
102.
p. The right to receive an elective share of the estate of a spouse who died with a will. I.C.
15-2-301.
00534
16
q. The right to a homestead allowance from a deceased spouses estate. I.C. 15-2-402.
r. The privilege not to have a spouse testify in a court proceeding about confidential
communications made during the marriage. Idaho Rule of Evidence 504; I.C. 9-203.
V. CLAIMS FOR RELIEF

First Claim For Relief: Idahos Ban on Marriage by Same-Sex Couples Deprives the
Unmarried Plaintiffs of Their Rights to Due Process of Law under the Fourteenth
Amendment to the United States Constitution

38. Plaintiffs incorporate by reference and re-allege all of the preceding paragraphs of
this complaint as though fully set forth herein.
39. Plaintiffs state this cause of action against defendants in their official capacities for
purposes of seeking declaratory and injunctive relief.
40. The Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, enforceable pursuant
to 42 U.S.C. 1983, provides that no state shall deprive any person of life, liberty, or property,
without due process of law. U.S. Const. amend. XIV, 1.
41. The Idaho Constitution, article III, section 28, Idaho Code section 32-201, and all
other sources of state law that preclude marriage for same-sex couples violate the due process
guarantee of the Fourteenth Amendment both facially and as applied to plaintiffs.
42. The right to marry the unique person of ones choice and to direct the course of
ones life without undue government restriction is one of the fundamental rights protected by the
Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Defendants actions to enforce the marriage
ban directly and impermissibly infringe upon plaintiffs choice of whom to marry, interfering with
a core, life-altering, and intimate personal choice.
43. The Due Process Clause also protects choices central to personal dignity, privacy,
and autonomy, including each individuals fundamental liberty interests in family integrity and
00535
17
intimate association. Defendants actions to enforce the marriage ban directly and impermissibly
infringe upon plaintiffs deeply intimate, personal, and private decisions regarding family life, and
preclude them from obtaining full liberty, dignity, privacy, and security for themselves, their
family, and their parent-child bonds.
44. As Idahos Governor and chief executive officer, defendant Otters duties and
actions to enforce Idahos exclusion of same-sex couples from marriage, including those actions
taken pursuant to his responsibility for the policies and actions of the executive branch relating to,
for example and without limitation, health insurance coverage, vital records, tax obligations, and
state employee benefits programs, violate plaintiffs fundamental right to marry and fundamental
interests in liberty, dignity, privacy, autonomy, family integrity, and intimate association under the
Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.
45. As the Ada County Registrar, defendant Rich ensures compliance with Idahos
exclusion of same-sex couples from marriage by, for example, refusing to issue marriage licenses
to same-sex couples. This violates the plaintiffs fundamental right to marry and fundamental
interests in liberty, dignity, privacy autonomy, family integrity, and intimate association under the
Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.
46. Defendants cannot satisfy the requirements of the Due Process Clause because
Idahos exclusion of same-sex couples from marriage is not rationally related to any legitimate
governmental interest and thus cannot survive even rational basis review, much less the heightened
level of scrutiny that applies to deprivation of the fundamental right to marry and interference with
fundamental interests in liberty, dignity, privacy, autonomy, family integrity, and intimate
association.
00536
18
Second Claim for Relief: Idahos Failure to Recognize the Marriages of the Plaintiffs
Who Are Lawfully Married in Other States Violates Their Rights to Due Process of
Law under the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution

48. Plaintiffs Susan Latta and Traci Ehlers are lawfully married under laws of the state
of California.
49. Plaintiffs Lori and Sharene Watsen are lawfully married under the laws of the state
of New York.
50. When a marriage is authorized by a state, numerous rights, responsibilities, benefits,
privileges, and protections attach to that status under state and federal law.
51. Once a couple enters into a valid marriage in a state, the couple has a liberty interest
in their marital status that is protected by the Due Process Clauses of the Fifth and Fourteenth
Amendment, regardless of where the married couple chooses to live within the United States.
52. The Married Plaintiffs in this case have a protected liberty interest in their lawful
marital status and in the comprehensive protections and obligations that marriage provides.
53. The Married Plaintiffs in this case also have a protected property interest in their
lawful marital status and in the comprehensive protections and obligations that marriage provides.
54. By operation of Idaho Code section 32-209, and article III, section 28 of the Idaho
Constitution, the lawful marriages of plaintiffs Susan Latta and Traci Ehlers and plaintiffs Lori and
Sharene Watsen are treated as non-existent and without any legal effect or status in Idaho. Idaho
law effectively strips these plaintiffs of a valuable and fundamental legal status that has been
conferred on them by a sister state and deems them legal strangers to each other.
00537
19
55. Accordingly, Idahos refusal to recognize the valid out-of-state marriages of these
plaintiffs impermissibly deprives them of their fundamental liberty and property interests in their
marriages and the comprehensive protections afforded by marriage in violation of the Fourteenth
Amendments Due Process Clause.
56. Moreover, Idahos refusal to recognize the valid out-of-state marriages of the
Unmarried Plaintiffs also impermissibly burdens and interferes with their exercise of the
fundamental right to marry in violation of the Fourteenth Amendments Due Process Clause.
57. Defendants' deprivation of these plaintiffs constitutional rights under color of state
law violates 42 U.S.C. 1983.
58. Plaintiffs have no adequate remedy at law to redress the wrongs alleged herein,
which are of a continuing nature and will cause them irreparable harm.
59. The Married Plaintiffs are entitled to declaratory and injunctive relief on this basis.
Third Claim For Relief: Idahos Ban on Marriage by Same-Sex Couples Deprives the
Unmarried Plaintiffs of Their Rights to Equal Protection of the Laws under the
Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution

61. Plaintiffs state this cause of action against defendants in their official capacities for
purposes of seeking declaratory and injunctive relief.
62. The Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, enforceable pursuant
to 42 U.S.C. 1983, provides that no state shall deny to any person within its jurisdiction the
equal protection of the laws. U.S. Const. amend. XIV, 1.
63. Idaho Constitution, article III, section 28 and Idaho Code sections 32-201 and 32-
209 and all other sources of state law that preclude marriage by same-sex couples violate the equal
00538
20
protection guarantee of the Fourteenth Amendment both facially and as applied to plaintiffs. The
conduct of defendants in enforcing these laws violates the right of plaintiffs to equal protection by
discriminating impermissibly on the basis of sexual orientation and sex.
64. As Idahos Governor, defendant Otter is charged as its chief executive officer with
duties and actions to enforce Idahos exclusion of same-sex couples from marriage, including
without limitation those actions taken pursuant to his responsibility for the policies and actions of
the executive branch relating to, for example, health insurance coverage, vital records, tax
obligations, and state employee benefits programs. Such enforcement of Idahos exclusion of
same-sex couples from marriage violates plaintiffs constitutional rights to equal treatment, without
regard to sexual orientation or sex, under the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States
Constitution.
65. As the Ada County Registrar, defendant Rich ensures compliance with Idahos laws
barring same-sex couples from marriage by, for example, denying same-sex couples marriage
licenses. This violates the constitutional rights to equal treatment of plaintiffs Andrea Altmayer and
Shelia Robertson and plaintiffs Amber Beierle and Rachael Robertson.
66. Idahos exclusion of same-sex couples from marriage, and defendants actions to
enforce that exclusion, deny same-sex couples equal dignity and respect, and deprive their families
of a critical safety net of rights and responsibilities. These laws brand same-sex couples and their
children as second-class citizens through government-imposed stigma and foster private bias and
discrimination, by instructing all persons with whom same-sex couples interact, including their
own children, that their relationships and families are less worthy than others. Idahos exclusion of
same-sex couples from marriage and defendants actions reflect moral disapproval and animus
toward same-sex couples.
00539
21
67. Same-sex couples such as the plaintiff couples are similar to opposite-sex couples in
all of the characteristics relevant to marriage. Committed same-sex couples make the same
commitment to one another as other couples. They build their lives together, plan their futures
together, and hope to grow old together, caring for one another physically, emotionally and
financially.
68. The Unmarried Plaintiffs seek to marry for the same types of reasons, and to provide
the same legal shelter to their families, as different-sex spouses.
69. Like many other couples, same-sex couples are often parents raising children
together. Three of the four named plaintiff couples are raising children together.
70. Plaintiffs and their children are equally worthy of the tangible rights and
responsibilities, as well as the respect, dignity, and legitimacy that access to marriage confers on
different-sex couples and their children. For the many children being raised by same-sex couples,
the tangible resources and societal esteem that marriage confers on families is no less precious than
for children of different-sex couples.
A. Discrimination Based on Sexual Orientation
71. Idahos laws barring same-sex couples from marriage target same-sex Idaho couples
as a class by excluding them from marriage or any other form of relationship recognition on the
basis of sexual orientation.
72. Laws that discriminate based on sexual orientation are subject to heightened equal
protection scrutiny. See SmithKline Beecham Corp. v. Abbott Laboratories, Nos. 1117357, 11
17373, 2014 WL 211807, *9 (9th Cir. Jan. 21, 2014).
73. Lesbians and gay men have suffered a long and painful history of discrimination in
Idaho and across the United States. Sexual orientation bears no relation to an individuals ability to
00540
22
perform in or contribute to society. Sexual orientation is a core, defining trait that is so fundamental
to ones identity and autonomy that a person may not legitimately be required to abandon or
change it (even if that were possible) as a condition of equal treatment under the law.
74. Lesbian, gay, and bisexual persons are a discrete and insular minority, and strong
ongoing prejudice against them continues to seriously curtail the political processes that might
ordinarily be relied upon to protect them. In Idaho, lesbian, gay, and bisexual persons lack any
statutory protection against discrimination and can be openly and legally discriminated against in
all arenas, including employment, public accommodations, and housing. Idahos constitutional
amendment excluding same-sex couples from marriage and banning any form of relationship
recognition other than marriage is discrimination based upon sexual orientation and is unlawful
under the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution as it denies same-sex couples
equal protection under the laws of Idaho.
75. The exclusion of same-sex couples from marriage based on sexual orientation
cannot survive heightened scrutiny under the Equal Protection Clause because the State of Idaho
cannot offer an exceedingly persuasive showing that the exclusion is substantially related to the
achievement of any important governmental objective. Moreover, because the exclusion of same-
sex couples from marriage does not serve any legitimate government interest, the exclusion
violates the Equal Protection Clause even under rational basis review.
B. Discrimination Based on Sex
76. Idahos exclusion of same-sex couples from marriage discriminates against
plaintiffs on the basis of sex, barring plaintiffs from marriage solely because each of the plaintiffs
wishes to marry a life partner of the same sex. The sex-based restriction is plain on the face of the
Idahos laws, which restrict marriage to a man and a woman. Idaho Const. art. III, 28.
00541
23
77. Because of these sex-based classifications, Andrea Altmayer is precluded from
marrying her devoted life partner because she is a woman and not a man; were Andrea Altmayer a
man, she could marry Shelia Robertson. Likewise, Amber Beierle is unable to marry Rachael
Robertson because Amber is a woman rather than a man.
78. Idahos exclusion of same-sex couples from marriage also serves the impermissible
purpose of enforcing and perpetuating sex stereotypes by excluding plaintiffs from marriage,
because plaintiffs have failed to conform to sex-based stereotypes that women should be attracted
to, form intimate relationships with, and marry men, not other women, and that men should be
attracted to, form intimate relationships with, and marry women, not other men.
79. Given that there are no longer legal distinctions between the duties of husbands and
wives under Idaho law, there is no basis for the sex-based eligibility requirements for marriage.
80. The exclusion of plaintiffs from marriage based on their sex and the enforcement of
gender-based stereotypes cannot survive the heightened scrutiny required for sex-based
discrimination, nor is it rationally related to any legitimate governmental purpose.
C. Discrimination With Respect to Fundamental Rights and Liberty Interests
Secured by the Due Process Clause

81. Idahos exclusion of same-sex couples from marriage discriminates against
plaintiffs with respect to the exercise of the fundamental right to marry the person of ones choice,
and with respect to their liberty interests in personal autonomy, and family integrity, association
and dignity. Such discrimination is subject to heightened scrutiny. Idahos exclusion of same-sex
couples cannot survive such scrutiny, and indeed cannot survive even rational basis review.

00542
24
Fourth Claim for Relief: Idahos Failure to Recognize the Marriages of the Plaintiffs
Who Are Lawfully Married in Other States Violates Their Rights to Equal Protection
of the Laws under the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution

83. Idaho has a long history of respecting marriages that were validly entered into in
other states, and affording those marriages all of the rights and privileges of an Idaho marriage.
But in 1996, and again in 2006, it singled out the legal marriages of same-sex couples in order to
exclude them from recognition and to deny the spouses in such marriages any of the rights,
protections, and responsibilities of marriage.
84. Idahos refusal to recognize the lawful marriages of the Married Plaintiffs
discriminates against the class of legally married persons and also discriminates against the
Married Plaintiffs based on sexual orientation, sex, and with respect to the exercise of the
fundamental right to marry the person of ones choice and fundamental liberty interests in personal
autonomy, dignity, privacy, family integrity, and intimate association.
85. Idahos laws singling out legally married same-sex couples in order to exclude their
marriages from recognition cannot survive heightened scrutiny under the Equal Protection Clause
because the State of Idaho cannot offer an exceedingly persuasive showing that those laws are
substantially related to the achievement of any important government objective. See SmithKline
Beecham Corp. v. Abbott Laboratories, Nos. 1117357, 1117373, 2014 WL 211807, *9 (9th Cir.
Jan. 21, 2014). Moreover, because excluding legally married same-sex couples from recognition
does not serve any legitimate government interest, those laws violate the Equal Protection Clause
even under rational basis review.
00543
25
86. While the states have traditionally had the authority to regulate marriage, that
authority must respect the constitutional rights of persons, see Windsor, 133 S. Ct. at 2691, and it
is subject to constitutional guarantees, see id.
87. The principal purpose and effect of Idahos non-recognition laws is to identify a
subset of state-sanctioned marriages and make them unequal. Windsor, 133 S. Ct. at 2694. These
laws impose a disadvantage, a separate status, and so a stigma upon all who enter into same-sex
marriages made lawful by the unquestioned authority of [other] States. Id. at 2693.
88. Idahos laws excluding legally married same-sex couples from recognition are
subject to heightened scrutiny. But even under rational basis review, a purpose to harm a minority
class of persons cannot justify disparate treatment of that group, as this is not a legitimate
governmental interest. Romer v. Evans, 517 U.S. 620, 635 (1996); Windsor, 133 S. Ct. at 2693.
89. Accordingly, the enforcement of Idaho laws that refuse to recognize the lawful
marriages of the Married Plaintiffs, relegating them to a second and unequal class of married
couples, violates the equal protection rights of those plaintiffs. They are entitled to declaratory and
injunctive relief on this basis.
Declaratory and Injunctive Relief

91. This case presents an actual controversy because defendants present and ongoing
violation of plaintiffs rights to due process and equal protection subject plaintiffs to serious and
immediate harms, warranting the issuance of a declaratory judgment pursuant to 28 U.S.C. 2201
and 2202 and the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure 57 and 65.
00544
26
92. Plaintiffs seek injunctive relief to protect their constitutional rights and avoid the
injuries described above. A favorable decision enjoining defendants would redress and prevent the
irreparable injuries to plaintiffs which have been identified, for which plaintiffs have no adequate
remedy at law or in equity.
VI. PRAYER FOR RELIEF

WHEREFORE, plaintiffs respectfully request that this Court enter judgment:
A. Declaring that the provisions of and enforcement by defendants of Idahos laws excluding
same-sex couples from marriage, including article III, section 28 of Idahos Constitution,
Idaho Code section 32-201, and any other sources of state law that exclude same-sex
couples from marrying violate the Unmarried Plaintiffs rights under the Due Process and
Equal Protection Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution;
B. Declaring that the provisions of and enforcement by defendants of Idahos laws barring
recognition of the valid out-of-state marriages of the Married Plaintiffs same-sex couples,
including article III, section 28 of Idahos Constitution, Idaho Code section 32-209, and any
other sources of state law that refuse recognition to the marriages of the plaintiffs who
validly married a same-sex spouse in another jurisdiction violate plaintiffs rights under the
Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United
States Constitution;
C. Permanently enjoining enforcement by defendants of article III, section 28 of Idahos
Constitution, Idaho Code sections 32-201 and 32-209, and any other sources of state law to
exclude the Unmarried Plaintiffs from marriage or to refuse recognition of the marriages of
the Married Plaintiffs;
00545
27
D. Requiring defendants in their official capacities to permit issuance of marriage licenses to
the Unmarried Plaintiffs, pursuant to the same restrictions and limitations applicable to
different-sex couples, and to recognize the marriages validly entered into by the Married
Plaintiffs;
E. Awarding plaintiffs their costs, expenses, and reasonable attorneys fees pursuant to, inter
alia, 42 U.S.C. 1988 and other applicable laws; and
F. Granting such other and further relief as the Court deems just and proper.
G. The declaratory and injunctive relief requested in this action is sought against each
defendant; against each defendants officers, employees, and agents; and against all persons
acting in active concert or participation with any defendant, or under any defendants
supervision, direction, or control.

DATED: January 29, 2014


_______________/s/_______________________
Boise, Idaho 83702
Tel.: (208) 484-2253

405 S. 8th Street, Ste. 372
Boise, ID 83702
Tel.: (208) 345-5183

Shannon P. Minter*
Christopher F. Stoll*
00546
28
Tel.: (415) 392-6257

* Admitted Pro Hac Vice

00547
29

I HEREBY CERTIFY that on the 29th day of January, 2014, I electronically filed the
PLAINTIFFS FIRST AMENDED COMPLAINT with the Clerk of the Court using the CM/ECF
system which sent a Notice of Electronic Filing to the following Persons:

Thomas Perry
Cally A. Younger
P.O. Box 83720
Boise, Idaho 83720

Steven L. Olsen
Clay R. Smith
W. Scott Zanzig
954 W. Jefferson Street, 2
nd
Floor
P.O. Box 83720
Boise, ID 83720

/s/
Deborah A. Ferguson

00548
LAWRENCE G. WASDEN
ATTORNEY GENERAL

STEVEN L. OLSEN

nd
Floor
P. O. Box 83720
Boise, ID 83720-0010
Telephone: (208) 334-2400
Fax: (208) 854-8073

Attorneys for Defendant-Intervenor



SUSAN LATTA et al.,

Plaintiffs,

vs.


Defendants,

and

STATE OF IDAHO,

)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)


MOTION TO DISMISS

DEFENDANT-INTERVENORS MOTION TO DISMISS - 1

00549
Defendant-Intervenor State of Idaho hereby requests dismissal of the complaint
pursuant to Fed. R. Civ. P. 12(b)(6),
AND AS GROUNDS THEREFOR states that the complaint fails to state a claim
against it for which relief may be granted for the reasons set forth in the accompanying
memorandum.
STATE OF IDAHO

By: /s/
W. SCOTT ZANZIG
CLAY R. SMITH


00550

I HEREBY CERTIFY that on the 28th day of J anuary 2014, I electronically filed
the foregoing Defendant-Intervenors Motion to Dismiss with the Clerk of the Court
using the CM/ECF system which sent a Notice of Electronic Filing to the following
Persons:

Deborah A. Ferguson


Shannon P. Minter


Thomas Perry

Cally Ann Younger

/s/
W. Scott Zanzig


00551
ORDER - 1


BEIERLE and RACHAEL
ROBERTSON,

Plaintiffs,

v.

C.L. BUTCH OTTER, as Governor of
the State of Idaho, in his official
capacity, and CHRISTOPHER RICH, as
Recorder of Ada County, Idaho, in his
official capacity,

Defendants.


ORDER

Before the Court is the State of Idahos Motion to Intervene (Dkt. 18). By and
through the Office of the Attorney General, the State of Idaho seeks the Courts
permission to intervene as a defendant in Plaintiffs constitutional challenge to several
Idaho marriage laws. For reasons more fully explained below, the Court will grant the
motion to intervene.
00552
ORDER - 2

BACKGROUND
Plaintiffs are four same-sex couplestwo unmarried and two legally married
outside of the State of Idaho. They claim that Idahos laws excluding same-sex couples
from marriage and withholding recognition of same-sex marriages lawfully entered into
in other jurisdictions deprive them of due process and equal protection guaranteed by the
Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States. On November 8, 2013,
Plaintiffs filed their Complaint for Declaratory and Injunctive Relief under 42 U.S.C.
1983 and 28 U.S.C. 2201 and 2202. (Dkt. 1.) The Complaint names as defendants
the Governor of the State of Idaho, C.L. Butch Otter, and the Ada County Recorder,
Christopher Rich, in their official capacities.
Defendant Rich, acting through his authorized deputy, is alleged to have denied
marriage license applications submitted by both unmarried couples. (Dkt. 1 17-18.)
Defendant Otter, Idahos Chief Executive, is responsible for enforcing the States
allegedly unconstitutional marriage laws. (Id. at 19.)
Idaho law permits the Governor to employ attorneys other than those under the
supervision of the attorney general. Idaho Code 67-1406(1). Defendant Otter to date
has been represented by counsel from the Office of the Governor rather than by counsel
from the Office of the Attorney General. (Dkt. 14.)
On December 11, 2013, the State of Idaho moved to intervene in this matter,
asserting a strong interest in defending Idahos marriage laws against Plaintiffs
constitutional attack. At the time the State filed its motion, the Civil Division of the Ada
County Prosecutors Office represented Defendant Rich. On December 13, 2013,
00553
ORDER - 3

Defendant Rich filed a Notice of Non-Objection to the States Motion to Intervene. (Dkt.
22.) Plaintiffs filed their response in opposition to the States motion on December 24,
2013. (Dkt. 24.) To date, Defendant Otter has taken no position on the motion.
1

On J anuary 2, 2014, the Ada County Prosecutors Office withdrew as counsel of
record for Defendant Rich and the Office of the Attorney General appeared in
substitution as his counsel. (Dkt. 26.) One week after this substitution, Defendant Rich
filed a Motion to Dismiss, arguing the Complaint fails to state a claim against him upon
which relief can be granted. (Dkt. 30.) Consequently, the State of Idahos Motion to
Intervene involves a scenario different than when it was filed, for the Office of the
Attorney General now represents both the proposed intervenor and a named defendant
seeking dismissal of the claims against him. The Court heard oral argument on the
Motion to Intervene on J anuary 16, 2014, and the matter is ripe for resolution.
DISCUSSION
The State of Idaho argues the Court should permit it to intervene as a defendant
under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 24(b). Plaintiffs do not dispute that the State meets
the threshold requirements for permissive intervention. However, Plaintiffs contend that
certain discretionary factors weigh against intervention, primarily because the State of
Idahos interests already are adequately represented by Defendants Otter and Rich.
Plaintiffs also contend that piling on filings from a third defendant inevitably will delay
these proceedings and prejudice Plaintiffs.

1
At the J anuary 16, 2014 hearing on the State of Idahos Motion to Intervene, counsel for
Defendant Otter represented that the Governor has no problem with the Attorney General
participating in the case.
00554
ORDER - 4

1. Permissive Intervention
As a preliminary matter, it is important to recognize that Rule 24 traditionally has
received liberal construction in favor of applicants for intervention. Wash. State Bldg.
and Const. Trades Council, AFL-CIO v. Spellman, 684 F.2d 627, 630 (9th Cir. 1982). To
qualify for permissive intervention, the proposed intervenor must file a timely motion and
have a claim or defense that shares with the main action a common question of law or
fact. Fed. R. Civ. P. 24(b)(1). In addition, the motion to intervene must state the
grounds for intervention and be accompanied by a pleading that sets out the claim or
defense for which intervention is sought. Id. at 24(c). If the proposed intervenor satisfies
these threshold requirements, the Court may, in its discretion, permit intervention.
In Spangler v. Pasadena Board of Education, 552 F.2d 1326, 1329 (9th Cir.
1977), the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit enunciated several factors
to guide the district courts exercise of their broad discretion over motions for permissive
intervention.
These relevant factors include the nature and extent of the intervenors'
interest, their standing to raise relevant legal issues, the legal position they
seek to advance, and its probable relation to the merits of the case. The
court may also consider whether changes have occurred in the litigation so
that intervention that was once denied should be reexamined, whether the
intervenors' interests are adequately represented by other parties, whether
intervention will prolong or unduly delay the litigation, and whether parties
seeking intervention will significantly contribute to full development of the
underlying factual issues in the suit and to the just and equitable
adjudication of the legal questions presented.

00555
ORDER - 5

Id. (footnotes omitted). Finally, as emphasized by Rule 24(b)(3), the Court must
consider whether the intervention will unduly delay or prejudice the adjudication of the
original parties rights.
Plaintiffs do not dispute that the State of Idaho timely filed its motion to intervene.
Nor do they dispute that the State seeks to assert defenses that share common questions
of law with those asserted by Defendants Rich and Otter. Indeed, the State of Idaho
moved to intervene well before the scheduling conference in this matter, and its motion
includes a proposed answer, (Dkt. 18-2), that asserts defenses identical to those stated in
Defendant Richs Motion to Dismiss, (Dkt. 30), and to many in Defendant Otters
Answer (Dkt. 33). Thus, the State of Idaho satisfies the threshold requirements for
permissive intervention.
2

The Court finds that the Spangler factors weigh in favor of intervention. The State
of Idaho has a strong interest in defending its laws against constitutional attack and its
legal position plainly pertains to the merits of this case. Although Plaintiffs argue, and the
Court agrees, that Defendants Otter and Rich share many of Idahos interests and will
adequately represent those interests, these factors are not dispositive in the permissive
intervention context. This case presents weighty and controversial issues of constitutional
dimension, necessitating that the Court be advised in the premises to the fullest extent

2
In some circumstances, a proposed intervenor must also satisfy an additional threshold
requirement independent grounds for jurisdiction. Nw. Forest Res. Council v. Glickman, 82
F.3d 825 (9th Cir. 1996). But, in federal question cases where the proposed intervenor does not
raise additional claims, this jurisdictional concern drops away. Freedom from Religion
Foundation v. Geithner, 644 F.3d 836, 843 (9th Cir. 2011). Here, the State brings no
counterclaims or cross-claims and thus need not demonstrate independent grounds for
jurisdiction. See id.
00556
ORDER - 6

possible. In this regard, the State of Idaho emphasizes that its interests cover all issues in
this case whereas the named defendants interests may be more limited.
3
Accordingly, the
Court finds that including the State of Idaho in this action likely will contribute to full
development of all the legal issues presented, thereby promoting a just and equitable
resolution to the controversy.
Plaintiffs fear that intervention by the State of Idaho will cause undue delay and
prejudice the adjudication of their claims is understandable and well taken. But, the State
of Idaho and the Defendants share an interest in expediently resolving this case, which
indicates that undue delay or prejudice is far from certain. In fact, counsel for the State
vowed in open court to join in Defendant Richs Motion to Dismiss and otherwise avoid
duplicative filings. Plaintiffs claim these assurances are cold comfort, but the Court
will take the State at its word unless and until its conduct lends credence to Plaintiffs as
yet speculative concerns. Therefore, the Court will grant permissive intervention.
4

2. Plaintiffs Request to Limit the States Participation
As an alternative to outright denial of intervention, Plaintiffs request that the Court
strictly limit the State of Idahos participation. Specifically, Plaintiffs contend the State
should be precluded from filing motions, oppositions, or discovery requests, and from

3
Although counsel for the State of Idaho did not specifically articulate how the States
inclusion in this litigation would add to, or be distinct from, the named defendants participation,
he did indicate that defenses may be available to the named defendants that are not available to
the State.
4
According to the Courts Case Management Order and consistent with the parties
litigation plans, this case will proceed on a legal track without formal discovery unless the Court
orders otherwise. (Dkt. 37.) The Case Management Order governs these proceedings and will
apply to the State of Idaho.
00557
ORDER - 7

offering additional witnesses or evidence, without consent of the parties or leave of
Court. (Dkt. 24 at 17.) In addition, Plaintiffs urge further limitations on the States
briefing or even that the State be confined to the role of amicus curiae. These requests
ignore the general rule [that] intervenors are permitted to litigate fully once admitted to a
suit. League of United Latin American Citizens v. Wilson, 131F.3d 1297, 1304 (9th Cir.
1997) (citing Wright, et al., 7C Federal Practice and Procedure: Civil 2d 1920 at 488-
91 (1986)). So long as the State of Idaho abides by its pledge to self-regulate, the Court
finds Plaintiffs proposed limitations unwarranted. However, the Court may reexamine
this conclusion at a later time if necessary.
ORDER
NOW THEREFORE IT IS HEREBY ORDERED that the State of Idahos
Motion to Intervene (Dkt. 18) is GRANTED.
IT IS FURTHER ORDERED that the State of Idaho shall file its answer or other
responsive pleading, including its planned joinder in Defendant Richs Motion to
Dismiss, on or before J anuary 28, 2014.

00558
January 21, 2014

ATTACHMENT H

Benjamin Scafide, Principal Investigator,
The Taxpayer Costs of Divorce and Unwed
Childbearing: First Ever Estimate for the
Nation and All Fifty States (2008)
00559
The Taxpayer Costs of
Divorce and Unwed Childbearing
First-Ever Estimates for the Nation
and All Fifty States
A Report to the Nation
Benjamin Scafidi, Principal Investigator
Institute for Marriage and Public Policy
Georgia Family Council
Families Northwest
00560
On the cover: Man and Woman Splitting Dollar by
Todd Davidson, Stock Illustration RF, Getty
Images.
2008, Georgia Family Council and Institute for
American Values. No reproduction of the materi-
als contained herein is permitted without the
written permission of the Institute for American
Values.
ISBN: 1-931764-14-X
New York, New York 10023
Tel: (212) 246-3942
Fax: (212) 541-6665
Website: www.americanvalues.org
M
OST OF THE PUBLIC DEBATE over marriage focuses on the role of marriage as
a social, moral, or religious institution. But marriage is also an economic
institution, a powerful creator of human and social capital. Increases in
divorce and unwed childbearing have broad economic implications, including
larger expenditures for the federal and state governments. This is the first-ever
report that attempts to measure the taxpayer costs of family fragmentation for
U.S. taxpayers in all fifty states. Among its findings: Even programs that result in
very small decreases in divorce and unwed childbearing could yield big savings
for taxpayers.
The reports principal investigator is Benjamin Scafidi, an economist in the
J. Whitney Bunting School of Business at Georgia College & State University. The
co-sponsoring organizations are the Institute for American Values, the Institute for
Marriage and Public Policy, Georgia Family Council, and Families Northwest.
The co-sponsoring organizations are grateful to Chuck Stetson and Mr. and Mrs.
John Fetz for their generous financial support of the project. The principal investi-
gator is grateful to Deanie Waddell for her expert research assistance.
00561
Page 3
Project Advisors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .4
Executive Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .5
I. Why Should Government Care about Marriage? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .7
II. How Might Marriage Affect Taxpayers? Empirical Literature Review . . . . . . .9
How Much Does Marriage Reduce Poverty? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .10
Does Family Fragmentation Increase Crime? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .11
III. Is the Methodology Used in This Estimate Reasonable? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .12
What Costs Are Associated with Means-Tested Government Programs? . . .13
What Costs Are Associated with the Justice System? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .16
How Are Foregone Tax Revenues Estimated? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .16
IV. What Is the Total Estimated Cost of Family Fragmentation? . . . . . . . . . . . . .17
V. What Are the Policy Implications? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .20
Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .20
Appendix A: Testing the Analysis: Is the Estimate of $112 Billion
Too High or Too Low? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .22
Appendix B: Explaining the Methodology for State-Specific Costs . . . . . . . . . . .31
Tables
Table 1: U.S. Children Residing in Two-Parent Families . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .7
Table 2: Percent of U.S. Children in a Single-Parent Household that Has... .7
Table 3: Persons and Children Lifted out of Poverty via Marriage . . . . . . .14
Table 4: Household Income and Usage of Food Stamps . . . . . . . . . . . . . .14
Table 5: Household Income and Usage of Cash Assistance . . . . . . . . . . . .15
Table 6: Household Income and Usage of Medicaid . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .15
Table 7: Estimated Costs of Family Fragmentation for U.S. Taxpayers . . . .18
Table A.1: Sub-Calculations of State and Federal Taxpayer Costs . . . . . . .32
Notes to Table A.1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .33
Table A.2: Sub-Calculations for EITC and Justice System Estimates . . . . . .35
Table A.3: Total Poverty and Family Structure by State . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .36
Table A.4: Child Poverty and Family Structure by State . . . . . . . . . . . . . .37
Table A.5: Estimates of State and Local Taxpayer Costs of
Family Fragmentation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .38
Endnotes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .39
Contents
The Taxpayer Costs of
Divorce and Unwed Childbearing
First-Ever Estimates for the Nation and All Fifty States
00562
Page 4
Project Advisors
Project advisors provided expert review but are not authors of the report. Affiliations
are listed for identification purposes only. Any errors or omissions in this report are
the responsibility of the principal investigator and not of the project advisors.
James Alm
Andrew Young School of Policy Studies at Georgia State University
Obie Clayton
Morehouse College
Ron Haskins
The Brookings Institution
Brett Katzman
Kennesaw State University
Robert Lerman
Urban Institute
Theodora Ooms
Center for Law and Social Policy
Roger Tutterow
Mercer University
Matt Weidinger
U.S. House Ways and Means Committee
W. Bradford Wilcox
University of Virginia
About Benjamin Scafidi
Ben Scafidi is an associate professor in the J. Whitney Bunting School of Business
at Georgia College & State University. His research has focused on education and
urban policy. Previously he served as the Education Policy Advisor for Georgia
Governor Sonny Perdue and served on the staff of both of Georgia Governor Roy
Barnes Education Reform Study Commissions. He received his Ph.D. in Economics
from the University of Virginia and his bachelors degree in Economics from the
University of Notre Dame. Ben was born and raised in Richmond, Virginia. Ben and
Lori Scafidi and their four children reside in Milledgeville, Georgia.
00563
Page 5
Executive Summary
T
HIS STUDY PROVIDES THE FIRST RIGOROUS ESTIMATE of the costs to U.S. taxpayers
of high rates of divorce and unmarried childbearing both at the national and
state levels.
Why should legislators and policymakers care about marriage? Public debate on
marriage in this country has focused on the social costs of family fragmentation
(that is, divorce and unwed childbearing), and research suggests that these are
indeed extensive. But marriage is more than a moral or social institution; it is also
an economic one, a generator of social and human capital, especially when it
comes to children.
Research on family structure suggests a variety of mechanisms, or processes,
through which marriage may reduce the need for costly social programs. In this
study, we adopt the simplifying and extremely cautious assumption that all of the
taxpayer costs of divorce and unmarried childbearing stem from the effects that
family fragmentation has on poverty, a causal mechanism that is well-accepted and
has been reasonably well-quantified in the literature.
Based on the methodology, we estimate that family fragmentation costs U.S. tax-
payers at least $112 billion each and every year, or more than $1 trillion each
decade. In appendix B, we also offer estimates for the costs of family fragmenta-
tion for each state.
These costs arise from increased taxpayer expenditures for antipoverty, criminal jus-
tice, and education programs, and through lower levels of taxes paid by individuals
who, as adults, earn less because of reduced opportunities as a result of having been
more likely to grow up in poverty.
The $112 billion figure represents a lower-bound or minimum estimate. Given the
cautious assumptions used throughout this analysis, we can be confident that cur-
rent high rates of family fragmentation cost taxpayers at least $112 billion per year.
The estimate of $112 billion per year is the total figure incurred at the federal, state,
and local levels. Of these taxpayer costs, $70.1 billion are at the federal level, $33.3
billion are at the state level, and $8.5 billion are at the local level. Taxpayers in
California incur the highest state and local costs at $4.8 billion, while taxpayers in
Wyoming have the lowest state and local costs at $61 million.
If, as research suggests is likely, marriage has additional benefits to children, adults,
and communities, and if those benefits are in areas other than increased income lev-
els, then the actual taxpayer costs of divorce and unwed childbearing are likely
much higher.
00564
Page 6
How should policymakers, state legislators, and others respond to the large taxpayer
costs of family fragmentation? We note that even very small increases in stable mar-
riage rates as a result of government programs or community efforts to strengthen
marriage would result in very large savings for taxpayers. If the federal marriage
initiative, for example, succeeds in reducing family fragmentation by just 1 percent,
U.S. taxpayers will save an estimated $1.1 billion each and every year.
Because of the modest price tags associated with most federal and state marriage-
strengthening programs, and the large taxpayer costs associated with divorce and
unwed childbearing, even modest success rates would be cost-effective. Texas, for
example, recently appropriated $15 million over two years for marriage education
and other programs to increase stable marriage rates. If this program succeeds in
increasing stably married families by just three-tenths of 1 percent, it will be cost-
effective in its returns to Texas taxpayers.
This report is organized as follows: Section I explains why policymakers may have
an interest in supporting marriage. Sections II and III explain the methods used to
estimate the taxpayer cost of family fragmentation by using evidence about the rela-
tionship between family breakdown and poverty. Section IV reveals the national
estimate of the taxpayer cost. Estimated costs for individual states are found in
appendix B.
Finally, a note to social scientists: Few structural estimates exist of the relationships
needed to estimate the taxpayer costs of family fragmentation. Therefore, we have
used indirect estimates based on the assumption that marriage has no independent
effects on adults or children other than the effect of marriage on poverty.
00565
Page 7
I. Why Should Government Care about Marriage?
O
VER THE LAST FORTY YEARS, marriage has become less common and more frag-
ile, and the proportion of children raised outside intact marriages has
increased dramatically. Between 1970 and 2005, the proportion of children
living with two married parents dropped from 85 percent to 68 percent, according
to Census data. About three-quarters of children living with a single parent live with
a single mother.
These important changes in family structure stem from two fundamental changes in
U.S. residents behavior regarding marriage: increases in unmarried childbearing
and high rates of divorce.
1
More than a third of all U.S. children are now born out-
side of wedlock, including 25 percent of non-Hispanic white babies, 46 percent of
Hispanic babies, and 69 percent of African American babies.
2
In 2004, almost 1.5
million babies were born to unmarried mothers.
3
Divorce rates, by contrast, after
increasing in the 1960s and 1970s, appear to have declined modestly in recent
years. The small decline in divorce after 1980, however, seems to have been offset
by increases in unwed childbearing, as the percentage of children living with one
parent increased steadily between 1970 and 1998 with only a small drop after 1998.
Overall, divorce rates remain high relative to the period before 1970. Todays young
adults in their prime childbearing years are less likely to get married, and many
more U.S. children each year are
born to unmarried mothers. Should
U.S. taxpayers be concerned about
these increases in family fragmen-
tation, and if so, why?
Public debate on marriage in this
country has focused on the social
costs of increases in divorce and
unmarried childbearing. Research
suggests that the social costs are
indeed extensive. When parents
part, or fail to marry, their children
seem to suffer from increased risks
of poverty, mental illness, infant
mortality, physical illness, juvenile
delinquency and adult criminality,
sexual abuse and other forms of
family violence, economic hard-
ship, substance abuse, and educa-
tional failure, such as increased
risk of dropping out of school.
4
Table 1. U.S. Children Residing in Two-Parent Families
2005
85.2%
68.1%
68.3%
1970
1998
(Source: U.S. Bureau of the Census)
One Female Parent
21.5%
78.5%
One Male Parent
(Source: 2005 American Community Survey)
Table 2. Percent of U.S. Children
in a Single-Parent Household that Has . . .
00566
Page 8
But marriage is more than a moral or even social institution; it is also an economic
one, a generator of social and human capital, especially when it comes to children.
Not much attention has been focused to date on the hard, economic costs of family
fragmentation, by which we mean not only the economic costs to affected individ-
uals and families but also to the public purse.
There are good reasons for suspecting that taxpayer costs associated with family
fragmentation are substantial: To the extent that the decline of marriage increases
the number of children and adults eligible for and in need of government services,
costs to taxpayers will grow. To the extent that increases in family fragmentation
also independently drive social problems faced by communitiessuch as crime,
domestic violence, substance abuse, and teen pregnancythe costs to taxpayers of
addressing these increasing social problems are also likely to be significant. Pointing
out these concerns is not to blame the victim, but rather to launch a serious effort
to determine what these costs are. If these costs are deemed substantial, then it is
worth thinking carefully about how these costs can be lowered so that resources
can be freed for other useful purposes.
In 2000, a group of more than one hundred family scholars and civic leaders noted
the range of public costs associated with family breakdown, concluding:
Divorce and unwed childbearing create substantial public costs, paid by tax-
payers. Higher rates of crime, drug abuse, education failure, chronic illness,
child abuse, domestic violence, and poverty among both adults and children
bring with them higher taxpayer costs in diverse forms: more welfare expen-
diture; increased remedial and special education expenses; higher day-care
subsidies; additional child-support collection costs; a range of increased direct
court administration costs incurred in regulating post-divorce or unwed fami-
lies; higher foster care and child protection services; increased Medicaid and
Medicare costs; increasingly expensive and harsh crime-control measures to
compensate for formerly private regulation of adolescent and young-adult
behaviors; and many other similar costs.
While no study has yet attempted precisely to measure these sweeping and
diverse taxpayer costs stemming from the decline of marriage, current research
suggests that these costs are likely to be quite extensive.
5
In response to public concerns about the negative consequences of divorce and
unmarried childbearing for child well-being, the federal government and many
states have modestly funded programs aimed at strengthening marriage.
Since the mid-1990s, at least nine states have publicly adopted a goal of strength-
ening marriage, and seven states have dedicated funding (often using a very small
00567
Page 9
portion of their federal TANF, or welfare, funds) to various programs designed to
strengthen marriage.
6
For example, Oklahoma offers marriage skills classes throughout the state, provid-
ing the courses at no charge to low-income participants. In 2007, Texas legislators
mandated that a minimum of 1 percent of the federal TANF block grant to the state
be spent on marriage promotion activities, providing an estimated $15 million per
year for two years.
7
In addition to the TANF block grants, the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005 provided an
additional $150 million annually for a Healthy Marriage and Responsible
Fatherhood Program, administered by the Administration for Children and Families
of the Department of Health and Human Services. These monies were specifically
allocated for programs designed to help couples form and sustain healthy marriage
relationships, with up to $50 million available for responsible fatherhood promo-
tion.
8
Overall, less than 1 percent of TANF dollars are spent annually on healthy
marriage programming.
Evaluation is under way to determine the effectiveness of these programs. In the
meantime, this study provides the first rigorous estimate of the costs to taxpayers of
the decline of marriage, both at the national level and the state level.
9
II. How Might Marriage Affect Taxpayers?
Empirical Literature Review
R
ESEARCH SUGGESTS THAT MANY of the social problems and disadvantages
addressed by federal and state government programs occur more frequently
among children born to and/or raised by single parents than among children
whose parents get and stay married.
10
The potential risks to children raised in
fragmented families that have been identified in the literature include poverty,
mental illness, physical illness, infant mortality, lower educational attainment
(including greater risk of dropping out of high school), juvenile delinquency, con-
duct disorders, adult criminality, and early unwed parenthood. In addition, family
fragmentation seems to have negative consequences for adults as well, including
lower labor supply, physical and mental illness, and a higher likelihood of commit-
ting or falling victim to crime.
11
To the extent that family fragmentation causes negative outcomes for children and
adults, it also leads to higher costs to taxpayers through higher spending on
antipoverty programs and throughout the justice and educational systems, as well
as losses to government coffers in foregone tax revenues.
00568
Page 10
A crucial issue for this study is to ascertain to what extent the associations between
family fragmentation and these negative outcomes are causal. There are of course
powerful selection effects into marriage, divorce, and unwed childbearing, and
some portion of the negative outcomes for children in nonmarital families are
caused by habits, traits, circumstances, and disadvantages among adults that may
also lead to divorce and nonmarital childbearing.
12
For example, a dating couple facing an unexpected pregnancy may choose not to
marry because the man is unemployed. Depending on how one looks at it, the
out-of-wedlock birth may be said to result from the fathers low-earnings or the
mother and childs poverty may be said to result from the out-of-wedlock birth.
Untangling what causes what is a challenge faced by many researchers who
study the family.
How Much Does Marriage Reduce Poverty?
Researchers respond to this challenge by using a variety of methods to control for
unobserved selection effects (that is, to account for other factors that could be
explaining the finding) and to tease out causal relationships (that is, to untangle
what causes what). In this case, the idea that family fragmentation contributes to
child poverty has been studied extensively and is widely accepted.
13
Marriage can
help to reduce poverty because there are two potential wage earners in the home,
because of economies of scale in the household, and possibly also because of
changes in habits, values, and mores that may occur when two people marry.
14
In addition, there is recent, intriguing research that uses naturally occurring evi-
dence to examine whether family fragmentation causes poverty. Elizabeth Ananat
and Guy Michaels, for example, use an unusual predictor of whether a married
couple will stay married (the predictor is whether their firstborn child is a male,
since research has shown that divorce is less likely when this is the case). With this
predictor they are able to study married couples who do and do not divorce and
conclude that divorce significantly increases the odds that a woman with children
is poor.
15
Their analysis suggests that almost all of the increase in poverty
observed among divorced mothers is caused by the divorce. Less than 1 percent
of these women and children live in poverty if their first marriage is intact, while
more than 24 percent of divorced women with children are living in poverty.
16
Another area of research uses national data to simulate changes in family structure.
For example, Robert Lerman used the Current Population Survey (CPS) and simu-
lated plausible marriages by matching single mothers to single males who were
the same race and were similar in age and education levels. He found that if these
theoretical marriages occurred they would reduce poverty by 80 percent among
these single-mother households.
17
Adam Thomas and Isabel Sawhill used a similar
00569
Page 11
approach and concluded that marriage would reduce poverty among single moth-
ers substantially, by about 65 percent.
18
Both Lermans and Thomas and Sawhills estimates assume that getting married has
no effect on mens labor supply (and therefore male earnings). Most research on
this topic, by contrast, finds that marriage leads to a modest increase in male labor
supply, which would further reduce poverty rates. David Ribar did a useful survey
of the literature on the impact of marriage on mens earnings.
19
Other research that seeks to analyze the impact of marriage on poverty consists of
studies that conduct a shift-share analysis, which show what poverty rates would
be if the proportion of households in different family structures remained constant
over a given time period. Examples of this research include work done by Hilary
Hoynes, Marianne Page, and Ann Stevens and by Rebecca Blank and David Card.
These studies find that over 80 percent of poverty is related to changes in family
structure, such as increases in households headed by single mothers.
20
One cautionary note, however, is that these studies could overstate the impact of
family structure on income because they do not account for the likelihood that, as
Thomas and Sawhill say, single-parent families possess characteristics that dispro-
portionately predispose them to poverty.
21
For example, persons struggling with
mental illness, substance abuse, or criminal records might find it difficult both to
hold a job and to get or stay married. Nevertheless, even studies that attempt to
control for these factors strongly suggest that family fragmentation negatively affects
the income available to single parents and their children.
Does Family Fragmentation Increase Crime?
In addition to poverty, family fragmentation also appears to have large effects on
rates of crime, according to three separate bodies of literature.
For example, research that considers entire communities has found a strong associ-
ation between the percent of single-parent households and crime rates. In one case,
Robert OBrien and Jean Stockard found that increases in the proportion of adoles-
cents born outside of marriage were linked to significant increases in homicide
arrest rates for fifteen to nineteen year olds.
22
A second large body of literatureinvestigations of individual families using vari-
ables, such as parent-child relationships or mothers education levelsfinds that a
child raised outside of an intact marriage is more likely to commit crimes as a teen
and young adult. In one study Cynthia Harper and Sara McLanahan control for a
large number of demographic and other characteristics and find that boys reared in
single-mother households and cohabitating (or living together) households are
00570
Page 12
typically more than twice as likely to commit a crime that leads to incarceration,
when compared to children who grow up with both their parents.
23
Finally, a body of literature that analyzes future crime rates of juvenile offenders
shows that stable marriages reduce the likelihood that adult males will commit addi-
tional crimes. With a unique data set of former juvenile offenders spanning several
decades, Robert Sampson and his colleagues find evidence that marriage leads
these former juvenile offenders to commit fewer crimes as adults, even when con-
trolling for unobserved selection effects.
24
Overall, research on family structure suggests a variety of ways marriage might
reduce the demand for costly public services. A stable marriage might reduce the
likelihood of domestic violence, alcohol abuse, and parental depression, and might
increase the human and social capital available to children in the home in ways that
(independent of income) improve childrens educational and other outcomes. Two
parents in the home might provide more effective supervision of adolescents,
reducing the risk of delinquent activities. At the same time, divorce may be some-
times desirable. For example, about one-third of marriages ending in divorce are
high conflict marriages, and children, on average, appear to be better off when
those marriages end.
25
In this analysis, however, we adopt the simplifying and extremely cautious
assumption that all of the taxpayer costs of divorce and unmarried childbearing
stem solely from the negative effects family fragmentation has on poverty in female-
headed households. We make this simplifying assumption because the effect of
marriage on poverty has been established, is widely accepted, and can be reason-
ably well-quantified based on existing data.
III. Is the Methodology Used in This Estimate Reasonable?
T
HIS STUDY USES SEVERAL CALCULATIONS to estimate the taxpayer costs of family
fragmentation. These estimates include calculations of foregone tax revenue
in income taxes, FICA (Social Security and Medicare) taxes, and state and
local taxes as a result of family fragmentation. They also include the direct costs to
taxpayers as a result of increased expenditures on local, state, and federal taxpayer-
financed programs in the following areas:
Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) cash assistance
Food Stamps
Housing Assistance
Medicaid
State Childrens Health Insurance Program (SCHIP)
Child Welfare programs
00571
Page 13
Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) assistance
Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP)
Head Start
School Lunch and Breakfast Programs
The Justice System
26
As noted previously, we assume taxpayer costs are driven exclusively by increases
in poverty; that is, we used the most widely accepted and best quantified conse-
quence of divorce and unmarried childbearing. It is important to recognize that if
family fragmentation has additional negative effects on child and adult well-being
that operate independently of incomeand if these effects increase the numbers of
children or adults who need and are served by taxpayer-funded social programs
then our methodology will significantly underestimate taxpayer costs. For example,
if family fragmentation increases the number of children who suffer from chronic
illnesses,
27
these additional costs to taxpayers would not be reflected in the esti-
mates provided by this study.
To put it another way, the methodology we use assumes that marriage would not
improve the habits, mores, or other behaviors of adults or children in ways that lead
to reduced social problems or increased productivity.
What Costs Are Associated with Means-Tested Government Programs?
To obtain an estimate of the taxpayer costs of family fragmentation, this study uses
the literature and information already described to make three key assumptions:
Assumption 1: Marriage lifts zero households headed by a single male out
of poverty.
Assumption 2: Marriage lifts 60 percent of households headed by a single
female out of poverty.
Assumption 3: The share of expenditures on government antipoverty
programs that is due to family fragmentation is equal to the percent of
poverty that results from family fragmentation.
28
Taken as a group, these assumptions err on the side of caution. They are more likely
to lead to an underestimate of the actual taxpayer costs of family fragmentation
rather than an overestimate. Assumption 1 leads us to understate taxpayer costs
because marriage might bring a second wage earner into single-father households
and/or allow men to focus more effort on labor market activities that would
increase household earnings. Assumption 2 is based on the discussion on pages
1011 of this report, specifically the empirical results provided by Ananat and
Michaels and Thomas and Sawhill.
29
00572
Page 14
Assumption 3 implies that the proportion of poverty that can be attributed to fam-
ily fragmentation is equal to the proportion of expenditures on a variety of govern-
ment programs that are caused by family fragmentation. As shown in table 3, if mar-
riage would lift 60 percent of single-mother households out of poverty, then the
total number of persons in poverty would decline by 31.7 percent and the total
number of children in poverty would decline by 36.1 percent.
30
By virtue of
assumption 3, marriage would reduce the costs of some government programs by
31.7 percent and the costs of government programs that are exclusively for children
by 36.1 percent. Put another way, this assumption suggests that family fragmenta-
tion is responsible for 31.7 percent of the costs of government antipoverty programs
and is responsible for 36.1 percent of the costs of government programs that are
exclusively for children.
31
This crucial assumption seems cautious not only because single-parent households
have higher rates of poverty and other negative outcomes but also because at the
same income level single-parent households are much more likely than married
households to make use of government benefits.
In the cautious assumptions used in this analysis, we assume no behavioral effects
from marriage on the likelihood of choosing to use government programs, even
though (as shown in tables 4, 5, and 6) single-mother households use the Food
Stamp, cash assistance, and Medicaid programs at much higher rates than married
households with similar incomes.
Percent Receiving
Percent Receiving Food Stamps
Food Stamps Families Earning < 200%
Family Type All Income Levels of Poverty Level
Married 3.9% 16.2%
Male head no spouse present 8.6% 21.2%
Female head no spouse present 26.1% 42.5%
(Source: 2006 CPS)
Table 4. Household Income and Usage of Food Stamps
Number Lifted Out of
Poverty via Marriage
(thousands)
Total U.S. @60% of female-headed
Poverty 2006 households in poverty Percent Lifted Out of
(thousands) are lifted out of poverty Poverty via Marriage
Total Persons 36,460 11,554 31.7%
Children 12,827 4,629 36.1%
(Source: 2006 CPS)
Table 3. Persons and Children Lifted out of Poverty via Marriage
00573
Page 15
Assumption 1 means that our analysis focuses on female-headed households only;
that is, taxpayer costs associated with single-father households are excluded.
Assumptions 2 and 3 allow us to make cautious and straightforward estimates of
increased government expenditures on TANF, Food Stamps, housing assistance,
Medicaid, SCHIP, child welfare programs, WIC, LIHEAP, Head Start, and school
breakfast and lunch programs that result from family fragmentation. (See more
details in Notes to Table A.1 on page 33.) For government programs that serve
both adults and children (TANF, Food Stamps, housing assistance, Medicaid, WIC,
and LIHEAP), we assume that 31.7 percent of these costs are due to family fragmen-
tation. We make this assumption because existing data (as shown in table 3) sug-
gests that family fragmentation is responsible for 31.7 percent of overall poverty,
and assumption 3 suggests that family fragmentation is responsible for 31.7 percent
of taxpayer costs on these programs.
For government programs that serve only or predominantly children (such as SCHIP,
child welfare programs, Head Start, and school breakfast and lunch programs), we
assume that 36.1 percent of these costs are due to family fragmentation.
32
We offer one cautionary note: The taxpayer costs associated with family fragmen-
tation may be real, but this link does not mean that taxpayers would necessarily
choose to realize all the tax savings from reductions in family fragmentation.
Percent Receiving
Percent Receiving Medicaid
Medicaid Families Earning < 200%
Married 15.4% 40.3%
(Source: 2006 CPS)
Table 6. Household Income and Usage of Medicaid
Percent Receiving
Percent Receiving Cash Assistance
Cash Assistance Families Earning < 200%
Married 3.6% 8.5%
(Source: 2006 CPS)
Table 5. Household Income and Usage of Cash Assistance
00574
Many transfer programs, such as Head Start, Section 8 housing vouchers, and
LIHEAP are not entitlements. That means not all individuals or households poten-
tially eligible to receive funding or services under these programs receive them.
For non-entitlement programs, savings realized from increases in marriage and
marital stability could be reaped by taxpayers or the savings might be passed on
to other poor people.
33
But if such savings were to occur, legislators and voters
could either choose to change the rules and use the money for other government
purposes or return it to taxpayers.
The next steps in our study were finding ways to estimate any increased costs to
the justice system caused by family fragmentation and any foregone tax payments
that would result from eliminating family fragmentation. These two sets of calcula-
tions require some discussion.
What Costs Are Associated with the Justice System?
Evidence suggests that boys raised in single-parent households are likely to commit
crimes at much higher rates than boys raised in married households.
34
Further, mar-
riage reduces the likelihood that adult men will commit crimes.
35
For the purposes of calculating the impact of family fragmentation on increased
costs to the justice system, however, we use the following cautious and simplifying
assumption: All of the effects of family fragmentation on crime operate through their
impact on childhood poverty rates. In this analysis, we are following Harry Holzer
and his colleagues. They created a methodology to estimate the impact of eradicat-
ing childhood poverty on costs to the U.S. economy. One cost they consider is the
cost to the justice systemwhich includes courts, police, prisons, and jails.
Essentially, based on several assumptions taken from the empirical literature on
crime, they report that 24 percent of crime is caused by childhood poverty.
36
Using
this result, we estimate that if marriage were to reduce childhood poverty rates by
36.1 percent, then costs for the justice system would be reduced by approximately
$19 billion. (See details of this calculation in table A.1.)
How Are Foregone Tax Revenues Estimated?
To estimate the impact of family fragmentation on foregone tax revenues, we must
estimate the increase in taxable income that would result from marriage. We again
make the simplifying assumption that marriage has no behavioral effect; in other
words, marriage would not increase the labor supply of men and would therefore
have no impact on the taxable earnings of single parents who marry. Again, given
the rich literature on how marriage impacts male labor supply,
37
this is a cautious
assumption, which increases our confidence that our analysis does not overestimate
the actual taxpayer costs of the decline of marriage.
Page 16
00575
Similarly, we assume that all of the effects of family fragmentation on childrens
future earnings capacity operate only through their impact on rates of childhood
poverty. Given the rich but difficult-to-quantify body of evidence that married par-
ents contribute to increasing the human and social capital of their children in other
ways (in addition to income),
38
this decision represents another simplifying but cau-
tious assumption, which increases our confidence that our results will not overesti-
mate the taxpayer costs.
There is good evidence on the impact of childhood poverty on future productivity.
Holzer and his colleagues estimate that childhood poverty reduces income nation-
ally by $170 billion per year. That is, they find that if children in poverty had instead
grown up in households that were not in poverty, then these children would as
adults earn $170 billion more each year.
39
Using Holzers estimate of total costs of
childhood poverty on adult annual earnings and the estimate that marriage would
reduce childhood poverty by 36.1 percent, we estimate that marriage would
increase taxable earnings by over $61 billion per year.
To translate this data into an estimate of tax losses from losses in future productiv-
ity, we must make simplifying assumptions about tax rates. For this analysis, we
assume that all of the increase in earnings is taxed at the 10 percent rate for U.S.
income taxes and that all of this increase in earnings is taxed at 15.3 percent for
FICA (as tax economists generally find that employees bear the burden of FICA tax-
ation through lower wages). To estimate losses in state and local taxation, we use
the national average percentage of income that is paid in state and local taxes11
percentas reported by the Tax Foundation on April 4, 2007.
40
(The details of this
calculation are shown in table A.1.)
IV. What Is the Total Estimated Cost of Family
Fragmentation?
H
OW MUCH DO HIGH RATES of divorce and unmarried childbearing cost U.S. tax-
payers? Here is our estimate:
Family fragmentation costs U.S. taxpayers at least $112 billion each year, or
over $1 trillion dollars per decade.
41
This $112 billion annual estimate includes the costs of federal, state, and local gov-
ernment programs and foregone tax revenues at all levels of government. Table 7
shows an itemized estimate.
To find the cost of family fragmentation in your state, turn to page 38.
Page 17
00576
Table A.5 (page 38) reveals state-by-state estimates for the costs of family fragmen-
tation, and appendix B (page 31) describes the methods used to estimate the costs
of family fragmentation for state and local taxpayers. These state-by-state estimates
are a subset of the $112 billion total taxpayer cost.
We are confident this is a minimum figure because of the uniformly cautious
assumptions built into our methodology. For those who would like to dig deeper,
appendix A (page 22) provides a detailed response to possible arguments that we
have overestimated or underestimated taxpayer costs. For example, here are four
potential underestimates:
First, our estimate focuses exclusively on female-headed households; that is, we
assume the taxpayer costs of single-father families are zero. This assumption almost
certainly leads to an underestimate.
Second, we have excluded from analysis several expensive government programs
(because existing data does not allow us to quantify them with confidence), which
nonetheless very likely include significant marriage-related taxpayer costs. The tax-
payer-funded programs excluded from analysis include the Earned Income Tax
Credit (EITC), public education,
42
and Medicare and Medicaid benefits for older
adults. The EITC alone is a $40 billion taxpayer-funded program. Estimating the
effect of marriage on the EITC involves making complex judgments about who mar-
ries whom, and how their income shifts as a result. Since we lack hard data to make
Page 18
in billions
Justice System $19.3
TANF Cash Assistance $5.1
Food Stamps $9.6
Housing Assistance $7.3
Medicaid $27.9
SCHIP $2.8
Child Welfare $9.2
WIC $1.6
LIHEAP $0.7
Head Start $2.7
School Lunch and Breakfast Program $3.5
Additional U.S. Income Taxes Paid $6.1
Additional FICATaxes Paid $9.4
Additional State & Local Taxes Paid $6.8
Total U.S. Taxpayer Cost of Family Fragmentation $112.0
* These costs include federal, state, and local costs.
Table 7. Estimated Costs of Family Fragmentation for U.S. Taxpayers*
00577
these judgments with the precision necessary to quantify them, we left this program
out of the analysis. While some fraction of currently cohabiting taxpayers might pay
a marriage penalty if they were to marry, the overall poverty-reducing effects of
marriage are likely to move many more families off the EITC rolls. (See appendix
A for more detail.)
Similarly, some fraction of public school budgets is likely spent in dealing with social
problems created by divorce and unmarried childbearing. Children whose parents
stay married are less likely to repeat a grade, exhibit conduct disorders requiring
special education outlays, or require expensive special education services generally.
Again, none of these costs are reflected in our analysis.
We have also excluded one of the largest taxpayer costs on the book: Medicaid for
the elderly and Medicare for unmarried adults. They are excluded partly because
most people do not think of older single adults when they think of fragmented
families. But high rates of divorce and failure to marry mean that many more
Americans enter late middle-age (and beyond) without a spouse to help them man-
age chronic illnesses, or to help care for them if they become disabled.
43
Through
the Medicare and Medicaid system taxpayers are picking up a large, but difficult to
quantify, part of the costs as a result.
Third, we have ignored for the purposes of this analysis any behavioral effects of
marriage. We have assumed that all the benefits of marriage come solely from
reduced rates of poverty for children, ignoring the evidence that stably married par-
ents provide human and social capital to their children other than income in ways
that increase childrens well-being and reduce the likelihood they will need or incur
expensive government services, from repeating grades at school to ending up in the
child protective system or the juvenile justice system.
Similarly, we have assumed no behavioral effects of marriage on fathers earning
capacity. If stable marriage increases mens earnings, as the literature suggests, and/or
decreases the likelihood that they will commit crimes as adults, our methodology
most likely underestimates the taxpayer costs associated with unmarried parenthood.
Fourth, there is one other major reason we believe $112 billion each year repre-
sents a cautious, minimum estimate: For the purposes of this analysis, we assume
that households that marry will take up or use government benefits for which they
are eligible at the same rate as single-mother households. In reality, existing data
shows that lower-income married couples are far less likely to choose to use gov-
ernment benefits for which they are eligible than single-mother households.
Overall, single mothers are roughly twice as likely to take advantage of government
benefits for which they are eligible than are low-income married couples.
44
Page 19
00578
Many more details, including a discussion of the empirical literature on which our
conclusions are based, are found in appendix A.
V. What Are the Policy Implications?
H
OW SHOULD POLICYMAKERS, state legislators, and others respond to these new,
rigorous estimates of the large taxpayer costs of family fragmentation?
First, public concern about the decline of marriage need not be based only on the
important negative consequences for child well-being or on moral concerns, as impor-
tant as these concerns may be. High rates of family fragmentation impose extraordi-
nary costs on taxpayers. Reducing these costs is a legitimate concern of government,
policymakers, and legislators, as well as civic leaders and faith communities.
Second, even very small increases in stable marriage rates would result in very large
returns to taxpayers. For example, a mere 1 percent reduction in rates of family
fragmentation would save taxpayers $1.12 billion annually.
Given the modest cost of government and civic marriage-strengthening programs,
even more modest success rates in strengthening marriages would be cost-effective.
Texas, for example, recently appropriated $15 million over two years for marriage
education and other programs to increase stable marriage rates. If such a program
succeeded in increasing stably married families by just three-tenths of 1 percent, it
would still save Texas taxpayers almost $9 million per year. Efforts are currently
underway to evaluate the impact of these programs.
Conclusion
E
ACH YEAR, FAMILY FRAGMENTATION costs American taxpayers at least $112 billion
dollars. These costs are recurringthat is, they are incurred each and every
yearmeaning that the decline of marriage costs American taxpayers more
than $1 trillion dollars over a decade.
These costs are due to increased taxpayer expenditures for antipoverty, criminal jus-
tice and school nutrition programs, and through lower levels of taxes paid by indi-
viduals whose adult productivity has been negatively influenced by growing up in
poverty caused by family fragmentation.
This figure represents a minimum or lower-bound estimate. If, as research sug-
gests is likely, marriage has additional economic and social benefits to children,
adults, and communitiesbenefits that reduce the need for government services
and that operate through mechanisms other than increased incomethen the actu-
al taxpayer costs of the retreat from marriage are likely much higher.
Page 20
00579
Given the cautious assumptions used throughout this analysis, we can be confident
that current high rates of family fragmentation cost taxpayers at least $112 billion a
year, or more than $1 trillion over a decade. Finding new ways to strengthen mar-
riage and reduce unnecessary divorce and unmarried childbearing is a legitimate
and pressing public concern.
Because of the very large taxpayer costs associated with high rates of divorce and
unmarried childbearing, and the modest price tags associated with most marriage-
strengthening initiatives, state and federal marriage-strengthening programs with
even very modest success rates will be cost-effective for taxpayers.
Page 21
00580
Appendix A: Testing the Analysis:
Is the Estimate of $112 Billion Too High or Too Low?
In this appendix, we consider in detail four arguments that suggest the estimate that
the total taxpayer cost of family fragmentation of $112 billion is too high and four
arguments that it is too low.
Is $112 Billion Too High?
In this section, we consider four arguments that suggest the $112 billion estimate is
too high:
1. If cohabitating households were to marry, most of them receiving transfer
payments would receive a marriage bonus from the federal tax and trans-
fer system.
2. The use of Holzers research in this study exaggerates the actual impact of
low income on childhood poverty.
3. The use of Thomas and Sawhills research in this study overestimates the
impact of marriage on reducing poverty.
4. The main assumption of this studythat the percentage of government
program costs due to family fragmentation is proportional to the amount
of poverty due to family fragmentationoverestimates the taxpayer costs.
1. If cohabitating couples were to marry, they would receive a marriage bonus from
the federal tax and transfer system.
The earned income tax credit (EITC) is an approximately $40 billion antipoverty
program that provides cash subsidies to low-income working adults, and Temporary
Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) is a $16 billion cash assistance program for
low-income families. Gregory Acs and Elaine Maag report that of the 1.1 million
people living in cohabitating households earning less than 200 percent of the
poverty level and receiving the EITC and/or TANF, about three-fourths of these
households would receive an average marriage bonus of approximately $2,423,
while about 10.5 percent of these households would receive a marriage penalty of
$1,742 in 2008. Thus, if the cohabitating adults in these households were to marry,
taxpayers would face increased expenditures for these two social programs. Taken
together, these estimates from Acs and Maag suggest that taxpayer expenditures for
the EITC, TANF, and the child tax credit would increase by about $0.5 billion if all
cohabitating couples were to marry.
45
Given the results in Acs and Maag, is our estimate of the taxpayer cost of family
fragmentation too high by $0.5 billion? In table 7, we ignore any costs of family frag-
mentation on the EITC. We do so because of complications such as the one pointed
out by Acs and Maag that some households would get higher EITC payments if they
became married households and nothing else about them (e.g., labor supply)
changed. Nevertheless, it appears likely that the net taxpayer costs of family
Page 22
00581
fragmentation on the EITC would be positive because marriage would render mil-
lions of EITC recipients ineligible for any EITC benefits by adding a second wage
earner to the household and/or possible positive effects on male labor supply. If
marriage, as discussed in the next subsection, would decrease net expenditures on
the EITC, then the approach used in this study would underestimate the taxpayer
costs of family fragmentation by ignoring the EITC.
2. The use of Holzers results in this study overestimates the impact of low income
in childhood on adult outcomes.
We rely on results from Harry Holzers research to make two calculationscosts to
the justice system and increased tax payments. Holzer and his colleagues make a
case that the assumptions that underlie their estimates are cautious, and we find
their case persuasive. However, they make a broad interpretation of the relationship
between childhood poverty and life outcomes as follows:
[W]e interpret the causal effects of childhood poverty quite broadly. They
include not only the effects of low parental incomes, but also of the entire range
of environmental factors associated with poverty in the U.S., and all of the per-
sonal characteristics imparted by parents, schools, and neighborhoods to chil-
dren who grow up with or in them. We define poverty broadly in this way in
part because researchers have been unable to clearly separate low income from
other factors that affect the life chances of the poor, and also because the set
of potential policy levers that might reduce the disadvantages experienced by
poor children go beyond just increasing family incomes. Of course, in defining
poverty this way, we also assume that the entire range of negative influences
associated with low family incomes would ultimately be eliminated if all poor
children were instead raised in non-poor households.
46
(Holzers emphasis)
Childhood poverty may be a proxy for environmental factors that may or may
not be improved by the income gains from marriage. Thus, reliance on Holzers
estimates of the costs of childhood poverty could potentially overstate any bene-
fits of marriage that come from marriage reducing childhood poverty. One way to
think about this issue carefully is to list the broad pathways (i.e., the environ-
mental factors) through which growing up in poverty is associated with child-
hood disadvantage:
a. Low income may mean lower quality food, shelter, transportation, and
medical care for children.
b. Low income may necessitate living in worse neighborhoods (fewer parks,
more crime, less social trust), and poor neighborhood quality may
adversely affect child well-being.
c. Low income may mean attending worse schools.
d. Low income may negatively affect parenting processes (warmth, monitor-
ing, discipline) because of the stress economic hardship places on other-
wise competent parents.
Page 23
00582
e. Conversely, parents may have low incomes because they are less
motivated and skilled and this lesser competence may be exhibited in
parenting as well.
f. Low income may hurt children because low-income families are more
likely to have only one parent present, and therefore only half the social
and human capital available to the child.
If absence of money itself is the root cause of the negative effects of childhood
poverty, then any strategy that increases income will increase child well-being.
With more money, parents can provide better nutrition, education, housing, and
medical care. They can move to better neighborhoods and enjoy better schools. It
may be the case, however, that not all the potential pathways through which child-
hood poverty negatively affects child well-being can be treated with more
money. More money may lower the income stress but not the emotional stress of
single parenting, for example. In addition, there may be less human and social cap-
ital that results when one parentonly half the potential talent pool for parent-
ingis available.
If marriage increases household income, then marriage would ameliorate the neg-
ative effects of childhood poverty that operate through pathways labeled a, b, c,
and d above. Marriage may also address at least some of the other pathways
through which childhood poverty is associated with relative deprivation (f). But
marriage does not address all of the pathways: What if low-income parents are sim-
ply less competent generally in parenting as in other domains of life (e)? What if
they are less motivated to help their children succeed or have fewer of the skills
needed to help their children manage school or work?
To the extent that childhood poverty is caused by living with adults who have per-
sistent personality traits or skill deficits that lessen child well-being, neither income
supports nor increased marriage alone will treat these problems.
Holzer and his colleagues make an adjustment for genetic factors that may be pres-
ent in the ability to generate labor market earnings that they believe errs on the side
of caution. But not all the selection effects may be understood to be genetic in
nature. What if single moms or dads simply are people who have lower average
parenting skills and less motivation to begin with? If this is the case, then the use
of Holzers results for two calculations leads to an overestimate of the taxpayer cost
of family fragmentation.
Like Holzer, this analysis is constrained by the availability and quality of relevant
empirical evidence. We believe, however, that the way we use Holzers results does
not lead to an overestimate for at least three reasons:
If the assumptions Holzer and his colleagues used are cautious, then that
offsets at least some of the environmental effects of having a mother or
father with less motivation, whether married or not.
Page 24
00583
Our analysis assumes no effect of marriage on the labor supply of parents.
The best evidence, as reported in Ribars extensive literature review in
2004, indicates that marriage increases male labor supply and seems not to
depress the average female labor supply in the more recent groups of
women studied.
47
Our analysis assumes no behavioral effect of marriage on parenting skills. If
marriage reduces stress on parents, which leads to better parenting, then this
approach underestimates the true taxpayer costs of family fragmentation.
Given the limits of the available empirical evidence, we implicitly assume that these
three reasons exactly offset any of the effects of childhood poverty that are due to
unobserved lower motivation and/or skills present among single parents. To the
extent this assumption is wrong and it leads to overstating taxpayer costs because
of the use of Holzers research, the magnitude of the overestimate would have to
be viewed in light of the magnitude of our underestimates as described in the next
subsection. As suggested below, these underestimates are likely quite substantial.
3. The use of Thomas and Sawhills research overestimates the impact of marriage
on reducing poverty.
Thomas and Sawhill estimate that marriage would lift 65.4 percent of single-
mother households out of poverty.
48
In their microsimulation they place individu-
als in the March 1999 CPS in plausible marriages until they obtain a marriage rate
similar to 1970. Attempting to marry all single-mother households would likely fall
short because of a lack of marriageable menprisoners are disproportionately men,
as are the unemployed, and men have lower life expectancies than women. The
dearth of marriageable men is one reason that we use a 60 percent figure instead
of the 65.4 percent estimate from Thomas and Sawhill. In addition, Thomas and
Sawhill assume no behavioral effects of marriage on male labor supply, which sug-
gests they underestimate the effect of marriage on poverty reduction. For these two
reasons, our use of Thomas and Sawhills research should not lead to an overesti-
mate of the taxpayer cost of family fragmentation.
4. The main assumption of this studythe percentage of the costs of government
programs due to family fragmentation is proportional to the percent of poverty
due to family fragmentationoverestimates the taxpayer costs.
To the contrary, the following thought experiment suggests that this assumption
likely leads to an underestimate of the taxpayer cost of family fragmentation.
Suppose there was an antipoverty program that cost taxpayers a total of $100 bil-
lion. Also suppose this program provided $5,000 per year to 10 million married
households and $5,000 per year to 10 million single-mother households. In addi-
tion, suppose that 20 million married households were eligible for the program but
only 10 million used it, while all 10 million single-mother households eligible for
the program used it.
Page 25
00584
If each of the 10 million single-mother households in this thought experiment were
instead married households, consider two questions:
How would the methodology used in this study estimate the taxpayer cost
of family fragmentation?
What would be the true taxpayer cost of family fragmentation?
Using the methodology of this study, 6 million of the single-mother households (at
60 percent) using this program would no longer use it, which means the cost of
family fragmentation would be 6 million multiplied by $5,000, which equals $30 bil-
lion. Also, the analysis would assume that the remaining 4 million single-mother
households that are now married households would still use the program.
Would $30 billion likely be the true costs? We suspect not, because married
couples use benefits for which they are income-eligible at a much lower rate
than single-parent households: Only 50 percent of initially married households
eligible for the program use it. As shown in tables 46, single-mother house-
holds are far more likely at any given income level to choose to use govern-
ment benefits:
Single-mother households with incomes less than 200 percent of the
poverty line are 2.6 times more likely to receive Food Stamps than married
households earning less than 200 percent of the poverty line.
poverty line are 2.9 times more likely to receive cash assistance than mar-
ried households earning less than 200 percent of the poverty line.
poverty line are 1.56 times more likely to receive Medicaid than married
households earning less than 200 percent of the poverty line.
If we assume that currently single mothers had instead married and that they
would use government benefits for which they are eligible at the same rate as
other married households (50 percent), then the true taxpayer costs of family
fragmentation would be $40 billion ($30 billion + 0.5 x 4 million x $5,000). Thus,
using the methodology of this study would understate the true costs by 33 per-
cent using the assumption that married households and single-mother households
receive the same average benefit ($5,000 per household in this example), and that
single-mother households take up the antipoverty program at a rate twice as large
as married households.
The main assumption of this study seems to be a reasonable simplifying assump-
tion, because of the much higher take-up rate of antipoverty programs of single-
parent households relative to similarly situated married households; this assumption
perhaps leads to an underestimate of the taxpayer cost of family fragmentation.
Page 26
00585
To sum up, any differences in unobserved levels of average motivation between
single and married mothers complicate using much of the existing empirical litera-
ture to estimate the taxpayer cost of family fragmentation. The assumptions that
underlie this analysis, however, are extremely cautious in an attempt not to over-
state the taxpayer costs. Specifically, by assuming no beneficial behavioral effects
of marriage on adults or children, we are likely underestimating taxpayer costs.
Is $112 Billion Too Low?
In this section, we consider four arguments that suggest that the $112 billion esti-
mate is too low:
1. Ignoring the EITC, public education, and other government programs
underestimates the true taxpayer costs of family fragmentation.
2. Ignoring the direct impact of family fragmentation on crime (independent
of poverty) underestimates the taxpayer costs.
3. Ignoring any impact of marriage on single fathers understates the tax-
payer cost of family fragmentation.
4. Ignoring the fact that, given income-eligibility, single-mother households
are much more likely than married households to take up subsidies from
transfer programs underestimates the likely taxpayer costs of family frag-
mentation.
1. Ignoring the EITC, public education, and other government programs underesti-
mates the true taxpayer costs of family fragmentation.
We ignore EITC expenditures largely because of the lack of empirical information
needed to make reasonable assumptions about how marriage will affect usage of
the EITC and related programs in our complex tax code. But ignoring potential tax-
payer savings produced by marriage on EITC expenditures means ignoring a very
expensive government program that is almost certainly affected by marriage rates.
Taxpayers spend approximately $40 billion on cash assistance to the working poor
under the EITC. As shown in table A.2, using the assumptions in this study, family
fragmentation would lead to about $12.68 billion in higher taxpayer costs on the
EITC. Adjusting this estimate based on the results of Acs and Maag, as discussed
under the first argument in the previous subsection, would reduce that amount by
about $0.5 billion, leaving a net taxpayer cost of about $12.18 billion.
We have chosen to ignore the EITC expenditures (including potential savings of an
additional $12.18 billion each year) because the consequences of marriage for the
EITC are complex and would involve multiple assumptions of how marriage would
affect mens and womens earnings.
In addition to the EITC, this analysis does not assume any costs of family fragmen-
tation to the public school system, which is almost certainly not true. Considerable
research suggests that children raised outside of intact marriages are more likely to
Page 27
00586
be held back a grade, to be in special education, and to qualify for remedial serv-
ices, although we do not have hard data on how much of these effects are due to
unobserved selection bias and how much are caused by lack of marriage.
If marriage were to reduce the percentage of children receiving special or remedial
services, then family fragmentation would create significant taxpayer costs for
public education, as federal and state funding formulas tend to provide large
amounts of extra funding for children receiving these services. (These costs may
be offset, however, by more teens dropping out of school as a result of family
fragmentation, which reduces the direct taxpayer costs of public education.
49
)
The lack of evidence of exogenous changes in family structure on the likelihood of
receiving special education or remedial services or staying in school, and the lack of
comparable cost data on remedial and special education services across states,
makes it impossible to estimate these costs with confidence. But the lack of data
does not mean that family fragmentation has no impact on educational expenditures.
Finally, we exclude the approximately 71 percent of Medicaid expenditures devoted
to the disabled and the elderly from the analysis, thereby making the cautious
assumption that family fragmentation has no impact on these expenditures. Most
people do not think of elderly unmarried adults or middle-aged disabled singles as
belonging to fragmented families. Nonetheless, there is considerable evidence that
older adults who are unmarried are more likely to become disabled, to manage
chronic diseases less successfully, and to need nursing home care as they age.
50
Excluding these large public costs thus likely significantly underestimates the
actual costs to taxpayers from the decline in marriage.
2. Ignoring the direct impact of family fragmentation on crime (independent of
poverty) underestimates the taxpayer costs.
Estimates of the potential impact of family structure on crime, even those that do
not control for selection bias, are large and arguably should not be ignored. As dis-
cussed in the section on methodology on page 12, it appears that family fragmen-
tation has large effects on crime, both in terms of increasing the likelihood that a
child raised outside of marriage will commit crimes
51
and the likelihood that adult
men will leave criminal activity after they are married.
52
While Harper and
McLanahan use a large number of control variables to help isolate the effect of fam-
ily structure on youth crime, they do not control for unobserved selection effects.
Nonetheless, their estimated effects of family structure on crime are extremely
largetypically children reared in single-mother households are more than twice as
likely to engage in criminal activities as children reared in a married household. For
example, they report that children living with a single mother are 2.168 times more
likely to be incarcerated than children living with both parents, all else being
equal.
53
Suppose we had assumed that over half their result was due to selection
biasthat the single mothers in their sample possessed such poor parenting skills
that even if they got married most of the estimated effect Harper and McLanahan
reported was due to selection bias. Specifically, suppose that children reared with
Page 28
00587
a single mother are only 50 percent more likely to engage in criminal activity than
children raised with both parents, all else being equal. As shown in table A.2, using
this more aggressive approach yields an estimate that family fragmentation is
responsible for about $29 billion in costs to the justice system as opposed to the
$19.3 billion estimate used to generate the main result of this study.
The $29 billion estimated cost of family fragmentation to the justice system is
either too high or too low depending on the true magnitude of any exogenous
effects of marriage on criminal activity. The $19.3 billion figure represents about
8.7 percent of all costs to the justice system ($19.3 billion / $222.8 billion = 0.087),
while the $29 billion figure represents 13 percent of all costs to the justice system
($29 billion / $222.8 billion = 0.13).
To put these two estimates in context, note that, according to the Bureau of Justice
Statistics, in 2002 only 43.6 percent of inmates report that they lived with both par-
ents most of the time while growing up.
54
While the majority of inmates did not
live with both parents most of the time while growing up, the figure used to gen-
erate the main estimate of this study suggests that only 8.7 percent of the costs of
the justice system can be attributed to family fragmentation. As stated previously,
Sampson and his colleagues endeavor to control for selection effects and find that
former juvenile offenders commit fewer crimes as adults when married. Because
our estimates here ignore these potential taxpayer savings from marriage, our
method is more likely to underestimate than overestimate the taxpayer costs of fam-
ily fragmentation to the justice system.
3. Ignoring any impact of marriage on single fathers understates the taxpayer cost
of family fragmentation.
Research suggests that married men become more committed workers at least in part
as a result of marriage. Therefore, if single fathers were to marry, it is likely that their
labor supply would increase leading to increased tax payments. Further, tables 46
show that single-father households have higher take-up rates of antipoverty pro-
grams than married households with similar incomes.
Adding a second wage earner would render single-father households less likely to
receive government assistance via increased income and economies of scale.
Economies of scale via marriageessentially savings from sizeimply that by liv-
ing together, two adults are better able to share expenses and escape poverty. Ribar
provides an example of how marriage leads to economies of scale:
Consider the outcomes for a couple with a 9th11th grade education and one
child in 2001. The median annual income for a woman with this level of edu-
cation was $10,330, while the median annual income for a similarly educated
man was $19,434. If the mother and child lived apart from the father, their
income would have been below the two-person poverty threshold of $12,207;
however, if the family lived together, their combined income would have
Page 29
00588
exceeded the three-person threshold of $14,255. The mother and child would
have also met the gross income requirement for food stamps if they lived apart
from the father but would [sic] been ineligible if they lived with him. Even if
the mother had no income and the family just depended on the fathers
resources, they would have been above the poverty line and ineligible for food
stamps if they all lived together.
55
4. Ignoring the fact that, given income-eligibility, single-mother households are
much more likely than married households to take up subsidies from transfer
programs underestimates the taxpayer costs.
As shown in tables 46, single-mother households have higher take-up rates of gov-
ernment antipoverty programs than married households with similar incomes. Thus,
even if single-mother households that were instead married households were to
remain eligible for transfer programs, it appears they would be less likely to use
them. The methods used to estimate the taxpayer cost of family fragmentation at
$112 billion ignore this likelihood, and suggest this estimate is too low.
To sum up, this study is likely underestimating the taxpayer cost of family fragmen-
tation because (1) there likely would be net savings of EITC expenditures due to
any increase in marriage rates of non-cohabitating single parents and savings from
other programs not considered here; (2) the estimated costs to the justice system
are too low if there is a direct effect of marriage on reducing crimewhich seems
likely given the research done to date; (3) there are taxpayer costs of single-father
households that are ignored here; and (4) the take-up rate of antipoverty programs
would likely decline if single-parent households were instead married households
that remained eligible for these programs.
Page 30
00589
Appendix B:
Explaining the Methodology for State-Specific Costs
This appendix describes the methodology used to estimate state-specific tax-
payer costs of family fragmentation. These estimates include costs to state and
local taxpayers.
The methods used to create the state-specific estimates are similar to the methods
employed to create the national estimate described in the body of this report. For
the state-specific estimates, we used the 2006 Current Population Survey to estimate
the state-specific reductions in total poverty and child poverty that would result
from marriage. These estimates are shown in the last columns of tables A.3 and A.4
and are based on assumptions 13 described on page 13. These tables include the
underlying data used as well as other information that reveal how total and child
poverty fall disproportionately on unmarried households, and on households
headed by single females in particular.
Table A.5 shows the components and the total state and local taxpayer costs of fam-
ily fragmentation for each state. These taxpayer costs include foregone state and
local tax revenue and costs to the justice system, TANF, Medicaid, SCHIP, and child
welfare programs. State-specific data for the overall costs of these programs come
from the sources listed in the Notes to Table A.1 on page 33.
State-specific cost estimates, however, were not available for costs to the justice
system, and foregone earnings are not estimated at the state level. To make state-
specific estimates for these two line items, we assume that the proportion of tax-
payer costs that accrues to a given state is equal to the proportion of poverty
caused by family fragmentation in the state. For example, using the information
in table A.3, we calculate that 10.2 percent of all childhood poverty in the U.S.
that is due to family fragmentation occurs in the state of California. Thus, 10.2 per-
cent of the increase in national income that comes from reducing childhood
poverty via marriage is assigned to California. Correspondingly, 10.2 percent of
the reduction in state and local justice costs that results from marriage are also
assigned to California.
56
Page 31
00590
Page 32
Calculation

1 Justice System(federal, state, & local)
Expenditures on Corrections, Police, and Courts $222,802,421,001
Amount of Crime Attributed to Childhood Poverty 0.24
Reduction in Childhood Poverty via Marriage 0.361
Cost of Family Fragmentation $19,303,601,755 = $22,802,422,001*.24*.361
2 TANF (federal & state)
Expenditures on TANF $16,100,000,000
Cost of Family Fragmentation $5,103,700,000 = $16,100,000,000*.317
3 Food Stamps
Persons Receiving Food Stamps 26,672,000
Reduction in Food Stamp Receipt via Marriage @31.7% 8,455,024 = 26,672,000*.317
Mean Food Stamp Benet per person per year $1,131.24
Cost of Family Fragmentation $9,564,661,350 = $1,131.24*8,445,024

4 Housing Assistance
HUD Expenditures on Housing Assistance $23,019,000,000
5 Medicaid (federal & state)
Expenditures on Medicaid $303,222,842,723
6 SCHIP (federal & state)
Expenditures on SCHIP $7,884,328,870
7 Child Welfare Services (federal, state, & local)
Expenditures on Child Welfare Services $25,465,943,844
8 WIC
Expenditures on WIC $4,997,309,299
9 LIHEAP
Expenditures on LIHEAP $2,181,384,985
Cost of Family Fragmentation $691,499,040 = $691,499,040*.317
10 Head Start
Expenditures on Head Start $7,470,990,545
11 School Breakfast and Lunch
Expenditures on Subsidized School Breakfast and Lunch Programs $9,638,590,455
12 Forgone Tax Receipts
Loss in National Income from Childhood Poverty (Holzer, et al., 2007) $170,000,000,000
Reduction in Childhood Poverty via Marriage 36.1%
Loss in National Income from Family Fragmentation $61,370,000,000 = $170,000,000,000*.361
Forgone Federal Taxes @10%Tax Rate $6,137,000,000 = $61,370,000,000*.10
Forgone FICA @15.3%Tax Rate $9,389,610,000 = $61,370,000,000*.153
Forgone State & Local Taxes @11%Average Tax Rate $6,750,700,000 = $61,370,000,000*.11
Table A.1: Sub-Calculations for Estimates in Table 7
00591
Page 33
Notes to Table A.1
The numbers at the beginning of each paragraph correspond to the sub-calculations
listed in table A.1.
1. This calculation is adapted from a similar calculation by Harry Holzer and his colleagues (see
endnote 37). Jens Ludwig estimates that federal, state, and local taxpayers spent $200 billion on the
justice systemprisons, police, courts, etc.in 2003 (see The Costs of Crime testimony to the U.S.
Senate Committee on the Judiciary on September 19, 2006, http://judiciary.senate.gov/
testimony.cfm?id-2068&wit_id-5749). If taxpayer expenditures on the justice system increased at the
rate of inflation indicated by the CPI-U, then taxpayers spent $222.8 billion on the justice system in
2007. Holzer and his colleagues use what they believe to be a conservative estimate that 24 percent
of crime is due to childhood poverty. Combined with the estimate that 36.1 percent of childhood
poverty is caused by family fragmentation, then the taxpayer cost of family fragmentation to the jus-
tice system is $222.8 billion times 0.24 times 0.361, which equals approximately $19 billion. (In the
tables, an asterisk denotes the multiplication function.)
2. We use FY 2005 data on TANF cash assistance expenditures that comes from the National
Association of State Budget Officers FY 2005 State Expenditure Report (Washington, DC: NASBO,
2006). We did not inflate the expenditure data for inflation because TANF expenditures seem to be
leveling off in recent years.
3. The expenditure on Food Stamps was retrieved from http://www.fns.usda.gov/pd
/fssummar.htm and excludes $2.7 billion in administrative costs. Thus, we assume that administrative
costs would not decrease due to a caseload decline.
4. The FY 2006 expenditure on federal housing assistance was retrieved from
http://www.gpoaccess.gov/usbudget/fy06/pdf/budget/hud.pdf. In FY 2006, HUD spent about $23 bil-
lion on homeless programs, rental assistance, and public housing. Thus, the calculation excludes
expenditures on other housing programs such as the Low Income Housing Tax Credit. We did not
inflate FY 2006 expenditure data for inflation because expenditures on housing programs have oscil-
lated in the past few years.
5. FY 2005 Medicaid expenditure data comes from NASBO FY 2005 State Expenditure Report and
includes federal and state expenditures. The FY 2005 expenditure for Medicaid was inflated using the
CPI-U to make an estimate of FY 2007 expenditures. Since Medicaid expenditures tend to grow faster
than the rate of inflation, this FY 2007 estimate is cautious. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation
in 2008 (see http://www.statehealthfacts.org/medicaid.jsp), 40 percent of Medicaid expenditures are for
the disabled, while another 26 percent are for the elderly. Non-elderly adults and children receive 29
percent of Medicaid expenditures. (The uses of the remaining Medicaid expenditures are reportedly
unknown.) For this analysis, we use the cautious assumption that family fragmentation leads to no
Medicaid costs for the elderly or the disabled. Thus, only 29 percent of total Medicaid expenditures are
potentially impacted by family fragmentation under this assumption.
6. FY 2006 federal and state expenditures on SCHIP were retrieved from the Kaiser Family
Foundation website (see http://www.statehealthfacts.org/comparetable.jsp?ind-235&cat-4). Given the
uncertainty surrounding SCHIP reauthorization, we did not inflate expenditures to 2007 dollars.
7. An estimate of FY 2004 federal and state expenditures on the child welfare system came from
C. A. Scarcella et al., The Cost of Protecting Vulnerable Children (Washington, DC: Urban Institute,
2006). We inflated their FY 2004 estimate for 2007 dollars using the CPI-U. Scarcella and colleagues
label the following government programs as child welfare programs: services for children and fam-
ilies to prevent abuse and neglect, family preservation services, child protective services, in-home serv-
ices, out-of-home placements such as foster care, and adoption services.
8. Information on FY 2003 federal WIC expenditures came from the U.S. House Committee on
Ways & Means Green Book (see http://www.gpoaccess.gov/wmprints/green/index.html) and was esti-
mated for FY 2007 using the CPI-U.
9. Information on FY 2003 federal LIHEAP expenditures came from the U.S. House Committee on
Ways & Means Green Book (http://www.gpoaccess.gov/wmprints/green/index.html) and was estimated
for FY 2007 using the CPI-U.
10. Information on FY 2003 federal Head Start expenditures came from the U.S. House Committee
on Ways & Means Green Book (http://www.gpoaccess.gov/wmprints/green/index.html) and was esti-
mated for FY 2007 using the CPI-U.
00592
Page 34
11. Information on FY 2003 federal School Breakfast and Lunch expenditures came from the U.S.
House Committee on Ways & Means Green Book (http://www.gpoaccess.gov/wmprints
/green/index.html) and was estimated for FY 2007 using the CPI-U.
12. Holzer and his colleagues estimate that U.S. national income is $170 billion lower because of
childhood poverty. Using the estimate that 36.1 percent of childhood poverty is due to family frag-
mentation, then the decrease in national income from family fragmentation is approximately $61 bil-
lion. To make these calculations we assume that this extra national income would be taxed at a 10
percent federal marginal income tax rate, a 15.3 percent FICA tax rate, and an 11 percent state plus
local tax rate. The latter figure is the average percent of income spent on state plus local taxation (see
the Tax Foundation website at http://www.taxfoundation.org/taxdata/show/335.html). We use a 15.3
percent FICA tax rate because tax economists generally believe that employees bear the full burden
of the employer share of these payroll taxes via lower wages (see Daniel Hamermesh and Albert Rees,
The Economics of Work and Pay, 5th ed. (New York: HarperCollins College Pub., 1993).
00593
Page 35
EITC
Expenditures on EITC $40,000,000,000
Cost of Family Fragmentation @31.7%cost reduction via marriage $12,680,000,000 =$40,000,000,000*.317
Savings fromFamily Fragmentation Using Estimates from Acs and Maag (2005) $500,000,000
Net Cost of Family Fragmentation $12,180,000,000 = $12,680,000,000 - $500,000,000

Justice System(federal, state, & local)
Expenditures on Corrections, Police Protection, and Courts in U.S. $222,802,421,001
Amount of Crime Attributed to Childhood Poverty 0.24
Amount of Crime Attributed to Childhood Poverty and Family
Fragmentation @assumed 50%higher likelihood of children reared
by single mothers to engage in crime 0.36 =.24*1.5
Reduction in Childhood Poverty via Marriage 0.361
Table A.2: Sub-Calculations for EITC and Justice SystemEstimates
00594
Page 36
(Source: 2006 CPS)
Table A.3: Total Poverty and Family Structure by State
Percent Reduction
Number in Poverty Number in Poverty in Total Poverty
in Unmarried in Unmarried Percent of Total Poverty if Marriage
Number in Poverty Households with Households with Percent of Total Living in Unmarried Reduced Poverty
Total Number in in Husband-Wife Male Householder Female Householder Poverty Living in Households with of Female-headed
Poverty (thousands) Family (thousands) (thousands) (thousands) Unmarried Household Female Householder Households by 60%
AL 650 196 88 366 69.8% 56.3% 33.8%
AK 58 10 13 35 82.8% 60.3% 36.2%
AZ 902 361 188 353 60.0% 39.1% 23.5%
AR 487 140 67 280 71.3% 57.5% 34.5%
CA 4,427 1,732 760 1,935 60.9% 43.7% 26.2%
CO 466 159 88 220 65.9% 47.2% 28.3%
CT 275 54 49 172 80.4% 62.5% 37.5%
DE 80 27 14 38 66.3% 47.5% 28.5%
DC 104 11 29 64 89.4% 61.5% 36.9%
FL 2,068 580 383 1,106 72.0% 53.5% 32.1%
GA 1,172 300 156 716 74.4% 61.1% 36.7%
HI 116 27 35 53 76.7% 45.7% 27.4%
ID 141 41 30 70 70.9% 49.6% 29.8%
IL 1,338 274 241 823 79.5% 61.5% 36.9%
IN 674 134 129 411 80.1% 61.0% 36.6%
IA 301 79 67 156 73.8% 51.8% 31.1%
KS 349 91 77 182 73.9% 52.1% 31.3%
KY 690 234 117 339 66.1% 49.1% 29.5%
LA 713 200 96 417 71.9% 58.5% 35.1%
ME 134 29 28 77 78.4% 57.5% 34.5%
MD 469 79 110 279 83.2% 59.5% 35.7%
MA 758 183 166 409 75.9% 54.0% 32.4%
MI 1,323 315 259 749 76.2% 56.6% 34.0%
MN 422 125 111 186 70.4% 44.1% 26.4%
MS 596 150 67 379 74.8% 63.6% 38.2%
MO 659 228 113 318 65.4% 48.3% 29.0%
MT 125 28 23 75 77.6% 60.0% 36.0%
NE 180 71 40 69 60.6% 38.3% 23.0%
NV 241 66 56 120 72.6% 49.8% 29.9%
NH 71 16 20 35 77.5% 49.3% 29.6%
NJ 762 241 121 400 68.4% 52.5% 31.5%
NM 328 116 64 148 64.6% 45.1% 27.1%
NY 2,668 666 468 1,534 75.0% 57.5% 34.5%
NC 1,225 348 188 689 71.6% 56.2% 33.7%
ND 70 14 17 39 80.0% 55.7% 33.4%
OH 1,371 316 204 851 77.0% 62.1% 37.2%
OK 531 165 103 263 68.9% 49.5% 29.7%
OR 439 158 54 227 64.0% 51.7% 31.0%
PA 1,397 294 295 808 79.0% 57.8% 34.7%
RI 110 27 17 66 75.5% 60.0% 36.0%
SC 474 127 51 296 73.2% 62.4% 37.5%
SD 82 18 16 48 78.0% 58.5% 35.1%
TN 879 310 129 441 64.7% 50.2% 30.1%
TX 3,816 1,446 625 1,745 62.1% 45.7% 27.4%
UT 235 65 35 135 72.3% 57.4% 34.5%
VT 48 12 10 26 75.0% 54.2% 32.5%
VA 651 184 112 355 71.7% 54.5% 32.7%
WA 502 132 118 253 73.7% 50.4% 30.2%
WV 277 96 46 136 65.3% 49.1% 29.5%
WI 555 117 97 341 78.9% 61.4% 36.9%
WY 51 14 10 27 72.5% 52.9% 31.8%
00595
Page 37
(Source: 2006 CPS)
Table A.4: Child Poverty and Family Structure by State
Number of Children Number of Children Percent Reduction
in Poverty in Poverty Percent of Total in Total Child
Number of Children in Unmarried in Unmarried Percent of Total Child Poverty Poverty if Marriage
Total Number of in Poverty in Households with Households with Child Poverty Living in Unmarried Reduced Poverty
Children in Poverty Husband-Wife Family Male Householder Female Householder Living in Households with of Female-headed
(thousands) (thousands) (thousands) (thousands) Unmarried Household Female Householder Households by 60%
AL 209 64 12 133 63.6% 69.4% 38.2%
AK 21 3 3 15 71.4% 85.7% 42.9%
AZ 329 142 29 159 48.3% 56.8% 29.0%
AR 183 56 6 121 66.1% 69.4% 39.7%
CA 1,724 788 149 787 45.6% 54.3% 27.4%
CO 161 69 11 81 50.3% 57.1% 30.2%
CT 84 18 7 59 70.2% 78.6% 42.1%
DE 25 10 2 13 52.0% 60.0% 31.2%
DC 37 4 4 29 78.4% 89.2% 47.0%
FL 590 177 18 395 66.9% 70.0% 40.2%
GA 499 142 13 344 68.9% 71.5% 41.4%
HI 31 10 5 16 51.6% 67.7% 31.0%
ID 53 19 4 29 54.7% 64.2% 32.8%
IL 472 130 23 319 67.6% 72.5% 40.6%
IN 226 33 18 175 77.4% 85.4% 46.5%
IA 101 34 9 58 57.4% 66.3% 34.5%
KS 137 38 14 85 62.0% 72.3% 37.2%
KY 236 64 31 141 59.7% 72.9% 35.8%
LA 252 60 20 173 68.7% 76.2% 41.2%
ME 37 9 4 25 67.6% 75.7% 40.5%
MD 151 29 21 100 66.2% 80.8% 39.7%
MA 199 51 15 133 66.8% 74.4% 40.1%
MI 469 104 48 316 67.4% 77.8% 40.4%
MN 139 56 9 74 53.2% 59.7% 31.9%
MS 221 40 8 173 78.3% 81.9% 47.0%
MO 247 100 20 127 51.4% 59.5% 30.9%
MT 36 9 1 26 72.2% 75.0% 43.3%
NE 58 30 4 23 39.7% 48.3% 23.8%
NV 81 29 6 46 56.8% 64.2% 34.1%
NH 17 5 2 9 52.9% 70.6% 31.8%
NJ 260 111 13 136 52.3% 57.3% 31.4%
NM 120 52 12 55 45.8% 56.7% 27.5%
NY 858 205 57 597 69.6% 76.1% 41.7%
NC 449 131 33 285 63.5% 70.8% 38.1%
ND 23 6 2 15 65.2% 73.9% 39.1%
OH 515 109 32 373 72.4% 78.8% 43.5%
OK 188 63 25 101 53.7% 66.5% 32.2%
OR 143 67 8 68 47.6% 53.1% 28.5%
PA 469 111 46 312 66.5% 76.3% 39.9%
RI 37 12 3 23 62.2% 67.6% 37.3%
SC 163 44 8 110 67.5% 73.0% 40.5%
SD 26 7 2 16 61.5% 73.1% 36.9%
TN 306 125 21 159 52.0% 59.2% 31.2%
TX 1,436 593 86 756 52.6% 58.7% 31.6%
UT 101 29 7 65 64.4% 71.3% 38.6%
VT 12 3 1 7 58.3% 75.0% 35.0%
VA 241 72 12 157 65.1% 70.1% 39.1%
WA 159 48 10 101 63.5% 69.8% 38.1%
WV 83 26 9 48 57.8% 68.7% 34.7%
WI 199 56 5 138 69.3% 71.9% 41.6%
WY 17 5 2 10 58.8% 70.6% 35.3%
00596
Page 38
Table A.5: Estimates of State and Local Taxpayer Costs of Family Fragmentation (in millions)
State & Local Foregone
State Tax Burden Tax Revenue Justice System TANF Medicaid SCHIP Child Welfare Total
California 11.5% $717 $1,621 $515 $1,083 $153 $739 $4,829
NewYork 13.8% $657 $1,230 $202 $1,184 $73 $322 $3,668
Texas 9.3% $559 $1,557 $64 $635 $46 $96 $2,957
Ohio 12.4% $368 $768 $48 $1,271 $32 $251 $2,739
Pennsylvania 10.8% $267 $643 $109 $839 $36 $421 $2,315
Florida 10.0% $313 $814 $57 $546 $43 $181 $1,953
Illinois 10.8% $275 $657 $19 $650 $98 $250 $1,949
Michigan 11.2% $281 $651 $90 $374 $30 $135 $1,562
Georgia 10.3% $281 $709 $59 $290 $49 $72 $1,460
North Carolina 11.0% $250 $587 $59 $339 $21 $73 $1,329
NewJersey 11.6% $126 $280 $16 $419 $47 $115 $1,003
Massachusetts 10.6% $112 $274 $3 $335 $46 $175 $945
Indiana 10.7% $150 $361 $5 $158 $15 $150 $839
Virginia 10.2% $127 $323 $17 $234 $23 $51 $776
Tennessee 8.5% $107 $328 $12 $220 $0 $89 $757
Wisconsin 12.3% $135 $284 $11 $198 $15 $95 $737
Maryland 10.8% $86 $206 $9 $266 $30 $127 $724
Connecticut 12.2% $57 $122 $45 $438 $3 $48 $712
Washington 11.1% $89 $208 $52 $266 $1 $95 $711
Louisiana 11.0% $152 $356 $2 $109 $13 $37 $670
Missouri 10.1% $102 $262 $5 $211 $9 $75 $664
Arizona 10.3% $131 $328 $13 $134 $10 $38 $654
Kentucky 10.9% $122 $290 $21 $119 $8 $92 $654
Mississippi 10.5% $144 $356 $0 $84 $10 $10 $605
Minnesota 11.5% $68 $152 $9 $213 $11 $121 $574
Alabama 8.8% $93 $274 $3 $124 $10 $44 $548
Arkansas 11.3% $109 $249 $4 $86 $6 $16 $471
South Carolina 10.7% $94 $227 $4 $132 $3 $8 $469
Colorado 10.4% $67 $167 $0 $111 $11 $99 $454
Oklahoma 9.0% $72 $208 $23 $92 $9 $26 $430
Kansas 11.2% $76 $175 $9 $78 $6 $45 $389
Oregon 10.0% $54 $140 $16 $111 $7 $33 $361
Iowa 11.0% $51 $119 $17 $104 $6 $61 $359
Utah 10.7% $55 $134 $8 $50 $4 $25 $276
West Virginia 10.9% $42 $99 $8 $50 $3 $29 $231
NewMexico 9.8% $43 $113 $3 $57 $1 $12 $230
Maine 14.0% $28 $52 $37 $87 $4 $7 $214
Rhode Island 12.7% $23 $47 $6 $78 $9 $43 $206
Nevada 10.1% $37 $95 $6 $44 $5 $13 $199
District of Columbia 12.5% $29 $60 NA NA $1 $72 $162
Nebraska 11.9% $22 $47 $6 $41 $3 $23 $142
Idaho 10.1% $23 $60 $0 $34 $2 $8 $127
Alaska 6.6% $8 $31 $7 $42 $3 $22 $114
Montana 9.7% $20 $54 $5 $22 $2 $10 $113
Hawaii 12.4% $16 $33 $10 $32 $2 $18 $112
NewHampshire 8.0% $6 $19 $8 $48 $1 $18 $99
Delaware 8.8% $9 $27 $1 $39 $1 $11 $88
South Dakota 9.0% $11 $33 $3 $22 $1 $7 $77
Vermont 14.1% $8 $14 $5 $35 $0 $12 $74
North Dakota 9.9% $12 $31 $3 $17 $1 $5 $69
Wyoming 9.5% $8 $21 $12 $13 $1 $7 $61
00597
Page 39
Endnotes
1. Of course, the death of ones spouse is another reason why an adult may not be married.
2. U.S. Census Bureau, 2005 American Community Survey.
3. Joyce A. Martin et al., Births: Final Data for 2004, National Vital Statistics Reports 55, no. 1
(September 29, 2006): 3.
4. W. Bradford Wilcox et al., Why Marriage Matters: 26 Conclusions from the Social Sciences (New
York: Institute for American Values, 2005), 1011, and Institute for American Values, The Marriage
Movement: A Statement of Principles (New York: Institute for American Values, 2000),
http://center.americanvalues.org/?p=19.
5. Institute for American Values, The Marriage Movement, 11.
6. T. Ooms, S. Bouchet, and M. Parke, Beyond Marriage Licenses: Efforts in States to Strengthen
Marriage and Two-Parent Families (Washington, DC: Center for Law and Social Policy, 2004). The wel-
fare reform act of 1996 converted federal welfare funding (now known as TANF or Temporary
Assistance for Needy Families) into block grants to the states, becoming the first federal law explic-
itly to promote marriage. Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996
(PRWORA), 42 U.S.C. 1305 (P.L. 104193, Aug. 22, 1996). Three of the four purposes of the welfare
reform law relate to marriage, giving the states broad latitude in the use of the welfare funds: (1) to
provide assistance to needy families so that children may be cared for in their own homes or in the
homes of relatives; (2) to end the dependence of needy parents on government benefits by promot-
ing job preparation, work and marriage; (3) to prevent and reduce the incidence of out-of-wedlock
pregnancies; and (4) to encourage the formation and maintenance of two-parent families.
7. 2007 Texas H.B. 2683, fiscal note, http://www.capitol.state.tx.us/. Data on Texas program also
from personal communication with Bill Coffin, Special Assistant for Marriage Education at Administration
for Children and Families, Department of Health and Human Services.
8. Deficit Reduction Act of 2005, 7103, P.L. 109171 (codified at 42 U.S.C. 603(a)(2)). Allowable
marriage activities under the marriage initiative include the following: (1) public advertising campaigns
on the value of marriage and the skills needed to increase marital stability and health; (2) education
in high schools on the value of marriage, relationship skills, and budgeting; (3) marriage education,
marriage skills, and relationship skills programs, that may include parenting skills, financial manage-
ment, conflict resolution, and job and career advancement, for non-married pregnant women and non-
married expectant fathers; (4) premarital education and marriage skills training for engaged couples
and for couples or individuals interested in marriage; (5) marriage enhancement and marriage skills
training programs for married couples; (6) divorce reduction programs that teach relationship skills;
(7) marriage mentoring programs which use married couples as role models and mentors in at-risk
communities; and (8) programs to reduce the disincentives to marriage in means-tested aid programs,
if offered in conjunction with any activity above.
9. To address this issue, we propose the following thought experiment: If all currently unmarried
adult women were instead married (which would also mean all children now living with a single
mother were instead living with two married parents), how much would taxpayers save? The amount
that taxpayers would save if all single women (including mothers) married is the taxpayer cost of fam-
ily fragmentation. (Again, we are not saying that all women should be married, rather that posing such
a scenario helps us to capture the costs of family fragmentation.) Throughout the analysis, individu-
als who are not married or who have experienced a divorce or a nonmarital birth are considered to
be living in a fragmented family. As discussed below, we exclude all adults and children living with
a male householder with no spouse present from the analysis only in the interest of creating a very
cautious estimate of the taxpayer cost of family fragmentation. Further, as shown in table 2, single
motherhood occurs much more frequently than single fatherhood. As discussed below, it is likely not
theoretically possible (nor necessarily desirable) for all women to be married, and the analysis in this
study takes this concern into account.
10. Lack of fulltime work seems to be the biggest cause of poverty in America with family frag-
mentation being the second largest cause; see Ron Haskins and Isabel Sawhill, Work and Marriage:
The Way to End Poverty and Welfare, Policy Brief, Welfare Reform & Beyond #28 (Washington, DC:
Brookings Institution, 2003). See also Paul Amato, The Impact of Family Formation Change on the
Cognitive, Social and Emotional Well-Being of the Next Generation, The Future of Children 15, no. 2
(Fall 2005): 7596; Wilcox et al., Why Marriage Matters; K. A. Moore et al, Marriage from a Childs
Perspective: How Does Family Structure Affect Children and What Can We Do about It? Child Trends
Research Brief, June 2002; Sara McLanahan and Gary Sandefur, Growing Up with a Single Parent: What
Helps, What Hurts (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994).
00598
Page 40
11. Wilcox et al., Why Marriage Matters; David Ribar, What Do Social Scientists Know about the
Benefits of Marriage? A Review of Quantitative Methodologies, IZA Discussion Paper # 998 (Bonn,
Germany: Institute for the Study of Labor, January 2004), http://ftp.iza.org/dp998.pdf.
12. Examples of habits, traits, and disadvantages that may lead to negative life outcomes (which
are costly to taxpayers) and to a lack of marriage, to divorce, and to nonmarital childbearing include
not considering the impact of present actions and choices on the future, proclivity to violence, and a
lack of employment skills.
13. See, for example, P. R. Amato and R. A. Maynard, Decreasing Nonmarital Births and
Strengthening Marriage to Reduce Poverty, The Future of Children 17, no. 2 (Fall 2007): 7596.
14. G. S. Becker, A Treatise on the Family (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1981) pro-
vides the seminal economic explanation: specialization and exchange and economies of scale. Ribar,
What Do Social Scientists Know? provides an extensive review of the empirical literature on these
effects. For example, Ginther and Zavodny suggest that marriage leads to a causal increase in male
labor supply; see D. Ginther and M. Zavodny, Is the Male Marriage Premium Due to Selection? The
Effect of Shotgun Weddings on the Return to Marriage, Journal of Population Economics 14 (2001):
313328.
15. In a forthcoming article in the Journal of Human Resources titled The Effect of Marital
Breakup on the Income Distribution of Women with Children, Elizabeth O. Ananat and Guy Michaels
use exogenous variation in the sex of the firstborn child to estimate the impact of divorce on income.
Prior studies have shown that marriages in which the firstborn child is male are less likely to end in
divorce (see, e.g., K. Bedard and O. Deschenes, Sex Preferences, Marital Dissolution, and the
Economic Status of Women, Journal of Human Resources 40, no. 2 [Spring 2005]: 411434).
16. Ananat and Michaels, The Effects of Marital Breakup, table 3.
17. Robert Lerman, The Impact of the Changing U.S. Family Structure on Child Poverty and
Income Inequality Economica 63 (1996): S119S139.
18. In For Richer or for Poorer: Marriage as an Antipoverty Strategy, Journal of Policy Analysis
and Management 21, no. 4 (2002): 587599, Adam Thomas and Isabel Sawhill (like Lerman) did not
match all single mothers with husbands. They report that there were more than enough single white
males to marry all single white mothers in the CPS, but there was a shortage of single black males to
marry all single black mothers. In many low-income communities, women probably outnumber mar-
riageable men, because of higher death and incarceration rates of males, meaning it would not be the-
oretically possible to marry all single mothers. They suggest that the lack of marriageable black males
or the reported undercount of minorities in the CPS could be responsible for the dearth of black males
available in the CPS. In addition to black males, there is likely also a shortage of elderly males of all
races eligible to marry elderly females because of higher death rates at younger ages among males.
19. Ribar, What Do Social Scientists Know? 3846.
20. See Hilary Hoynes, Marianne Page, and Ann Stevens, Poverty in America: Trends and
Explanation, Journal of Economic Perspectives 20, no. 1 (Winter 2006): 4768, published by the
American Economic Association; and R. Blank and D. Card, Poverty, Income Distribution and
Growth: Are They Still Related? Brookings Papers on Economic Activity 48, no.2 (1993): 285340, pub-
lished by The Brookings Institution.
21. Thomas and Sawhill, For Richer or for Poorer.
22. Robert M. OBrien and Jean Stockard, The Cohort-size Same-size Conundrum: An Empirical
Analysis and Assessment Using Homicide Arrest Data from 1960 to 1999, Journal of Quantitative
Criminology 19 (2003): 132.
23. Cynthia Harper and Sara McLanahan, Father Absence and Youth Incarceration, Journal of
Research on Adolescence 14, no. 3 (2004): 369397. Harper and McLanahan do not attempt to control
for unobserved selection effects, which limits our confidence that all of the large differences in risk of
incarceration they found due to family structure are causally related to parents marital status.
However, the large number of control variables in their empirical model and the large magnitudes of
their results make it hard to believe that the impact of family fragmentation of boys and young mens
criminal conduct is zero.
24. Robert Sampson, J. Laub, and C. Wimer, Does Marriage Reduce Crime? A Counterfactual
Approach to Within-Individual Causal Effects, Criminology 44, no. 3 (2006): 465504.
25. Paul R. Amato and Alan Booth, A Generation at Risk: Growing Up in an Era of Family
Upheaval (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997), 220. While the theoretical and empirical case
for marriage having a beneficial impact on men, women, and children may be strong, surely in some
cases spouses and children are better off without one parent in the home. For example, a woman and
children may be better off without the father when the father is violent or when the marriage is high-
conflict. In Until Death Do You Part: The Effects of Unilateral Divorce on Spousal Homicides,
00599
Page 41
Economic Inquiry 41 (2003): 163183, T. S. Dee finds that unilateral divorce laws, which were found
to lead to increases in divorce (see L. Friedberg, Did Unilateral Divorce Raise Divorce Rates?
Evidence from Panel Data, American Economic Review 88 [1998]: 608627), have a negligible effect
on the incidence of husbands murdering wives, but unilateral divorce coupled with laws that
favored husbands in the division of marital property led to a 21 percent increase of lethal spousal
violence against husbands. Contrary to Dees results, B. Stevenson and J. Wolfers (see Bargaining
in the Shadow of the Law: Divorce Laws and Family Distress Quarterly Journal of Economics 121,
no. 1 [2006]: 267288) find that no-fault divorce led to a large decline in spousal homicide against
wives and no change in spousal homicide against husbands. Dee replicates the results of a 2000
version of Stevenson and Wolfers work and finds that their results are sensitive to a variety of
assumptions and specification (see Dee, pp. 177178). It is unclear whether any changes in their
analysis that were present in Stevenson and Wolfers published version in 2006 render Dees con-
cerns in 2003 moot, as Stevenson and Wolfers do not directly address these concerns in 2006.
Therefore, there does not seem to be definitive evidence that unilateral divorce laws decrease
spousal homicide against wives. Nevertheless, Wilcox et al., Why Marriage Matters, 31, summarize
evidence that married women are subject to less violence inside and outside the home relative to
single and cohabitating women. In addition, Ananat and Michaels find that divorce benefits some
women with children financially, as they moved in with relatives with significant incomes and/or
the former husband was not contributing anything or very much to family income (see their forth-
coming article The Effects of Marital Breakup). Nevertheless, as discussed in the text, Ananat and
Michaels also find that divorce greatly increases the odds that women with children are in the low-
est income quartile. In some individual cases women and children may be better off without the
childrens father because they avoid violence or poverty, but empirical evidence suggests that mar-
riage tends to have the opposite effect by keeping women and children away from violence and
increasing material resources.
26. There are other taxpayer-funded programs that likely experience larger expenditures due to
family fragmentation such the Earned Income Tax Credit, remedial school programs, and special edu-
cation programs. These programs were excluded because we did not feel comfortable making reason-
able cost estimates given the available empirical literature. The likelihood that these programs would
experience reduced costs if more single-adult households became married families suggests that this
estimate of the taxpayer cost of family fragmentation is an underestimate of the true costs. Some state
funds for TANF programs that benefit children are included in the child welfare calculation below,
but other non-cash assistance TANF funds are excluded from this analysis.
27. Some evidence suggests that more children in single-parent families are hospitalized for asthma
or childhood diabetes because single parents can be less able to manage the complex stresses of
chronic illness for themselves and their children, and because they have less access to adequate health
care. See Linda Waite and Maggie Gallagher, The Case for Marriage: Why Married People Are Happier,
Healthier, and Better-Off Financially (New York: Doubleday, 2000).
28. Assumption 3 does not imply that only households in poverty are eligible for means-tested
programs. Most federal means-tested programs serve significant numbers of households with incomes
above poverty thresholds. As marriage would reduce poverty by increasing household incomes, mar-
riage would also increase the income of households that already had incomes above poverty thresh-
olds but were receiving means-tested transfers. At least some of these households would be rendered
ineligible for these means-tested transfers due to marriage.
29. Ananat and Michaels, The Effects of Marital Breakup and Thomas and Sawhill, For Richer
or for Poorer.
30. In table 3, female-headed households refers to all households with a female householder and
no spouse present, including households with and without children. In 2006 there were 12,827,000
children in poverty. Among those, 7,715,000 lived with a single mother. If marriage were to lift 60 per-
cent of these 7,715,000 children out of poverty, then 4,629,000 children would escape poverty. Thus,
marriage would lift 4,629,000/12,827,000 or 36.1 percent of these children out of poverty. In 2006 there
were 36,460,000 total persons in poverty. Among those, 19,257,000 lived with a female householder
with no spouse present or were themselves the female householder with no spouse. If marriage were
to lift 60 percent of these 19,257,000 individuals out of poverty, then 11,554,000 people would escape
poverty. Thus, marriage would lift 11,554,000/36,460,000 or 31.7 percent of these individuals out of
poverty.
31. Based on their estimate of the impact of marriage on the poverty status of female-headed
households, Thomas and Sawhill find that the overall 1998 poverty rate would have been 24 percent
lower if the proportion of children living in female-headed households in 1998 was the same as had
existed in 1970 (see Thomas and Sawhill, For Richer or for Poorer).
00600
Page 42
32. Based on table 3, assumption 2 suggests that family fragmentation is responsible for 36.1 per-
cent of childhood poverty, and assumption 3 suggests that family fragmentation is responsible for 36.1
percent of taxpayer costs on these programs.
33. For example, under current rules, if increases in marriage moved some children off the Head
Start rolls (because they are no longer poor), then other children who are eligible but do not currently
receive Head Start services would be admitted into newly freed-up Head Start spaces.
34. Harper and McLanahan, Father Absence and Youth Incarceration.
35. Sampson, Laub, and Wimer, Does Marriage Reduce Crime?
36. Harry Holzer et al., The Economic Costs of Poverty in the United States: Subsequent Effects of
Children on Growing Up Poor (Washington, DC: Center for American Progress, January 24, 2007),
http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2007/01/pdf/poverty_report.pdf.
37. See, for example, Ribar, What Do Social Scientists Know?
38. See, for example, McLanahan and Sandefur, Growing Up with a Single Parent.
39. Holzer et al., The Economic Costs of Poverty.
40. In the estimates for individual states, we use state-specific average tax rates from
TaxFoundation.org, Tax Data: State and Local Tax Burdens Compared to Other U.S. States,
19702007, April 4, 2007, http://www.taxfoundation.org/taxdata/show/335.html.
41. The specific calculations for each line item and the data sources used are contained in table
A.1 and its notes. These taxpayer costs can be considered as annual recurring costs under the assump-
tion that current rates of single motherhood remain constant into the future.
42. For example, the U.S. spends almost $500 billion per year on public education. See Thomas
D. Snyder, Mini-Digest of Education Statistics, 2007, NCES 2008-023. (Washington, DC: National Center
for Education Statistics, Institute of Educational Sciences, U.S. Department of Education, 2008).
43. See, for example, Waite and Gallagher, The Case for Marriage; and Elizabeth Marquardt, The
New Alone, Washington Post, January 27, 2008, B01.
44. As shown in tables 46 based on the 2006 Current Population Survey, single-mother house-
holds with income less than 200 percent of the poverty line are 2.6 times as likely to receive Food
Stamps, 2.9 times as likely to receive cash assistance, and 1.56 times as likely to receive Medicaid than
married couples also earning less than 200 percent of the poverty threshold.
45. Using estimates and calculations from Gregory Acs and Elaine Maag, Irreconcilable
Differences? The Conflict between Marriage Promotion Initiatives for Cohabiting Couples with Children
and Marriage Penalties in Tax and Transfer Programs (Washington, DC: Urban Institute, 2005), we
estimate the $0.5 billion amount.
46. Holzer et al., The Economic Costs of Poverty, 6.
47. Ribar, What Do Social Scientists Know?
48. Thomas and Sawhill, For Richer or for Poorer.
49. Of course, higher dropout rates would lower future earnings, and government spends con-
siderable resources on attempting to prevent high school students from dropping out and providing
services to help dropouts earn a high school diploma or GED.
50. See Waite and Gallagher, The Case for Marriage.
51. Harper and McLanahan, Father Absence and Youth Incarceration.
52. Sampson, Laub, and Wimer, Does Marriage Reduce Crime?
53. Harper and McLanahan, Father Absence and Youth Incarceration, table 2.
54. Doris J. James, The Profile of Jail Inmates, 2002, Special Report NCJ 201932 (Washington, DC: U.S.
Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, July 2004), http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/abstract/pji02.htm.
55. Ribar, What Do Social Scientists Know? 38.
56. Based on data used by Jens Ludwig in The Costs of Crime testimony to the U.S. Senate
Committee on the Judiciary on September 19, 2006, in the entire U.S., state and local taxpayers spent
about $183 billion on the justice system in FY 2007, while the remaining $49 billion was spent by the
federal government (see http://judiciary.senate.gov/testimony.cfm?id=2068&wit_id=5749).
00601
00602
The Institute for American Values is a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization devoted to
contributing intellectually to the renewal of family life and the sources of competence,
character, and citizenship. For more information, go to www.americanvalues.org or
(212) 246-3942.
About the Institute for Marriage and Public Policy
The Institute for Marriage and Public Policy is a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization
dedicated to high quality research and public education on ways that law and public
policy can strengthen marriage as a social institution. For more information, go to
www.imapp.org or (202) 216-9430.
About Georgia Family Council
Georgia Family Council is a non-profit organization that works to strengthen and
defend the family in Georgia by equipping marriage advocates, shaping laws, prepar-
ing the next generation and influencing culture. For more information, go to
www.georgiafamily.org or (770) 242-0001.
About Families Northwest
Families Northwest builds strong marriages, families, and communities by advocating
cultural change, offering trusted resources, and training Relationship Champions to help
others. For more information, go to www.familiesnorthwest.org or (425) 679-5671.
For additional copies, please contact:
New York, NY 10023
Tel: (212) 246-3942
Fax: (212) 541-6665
Web: www.americanvalues.org
00603

ATTACHMENT G

Elizabeth Wildsmith et al., Childbearing
Outside of Marriage: Estimates and Trends in
the United States
00604
Publication #2011-29 4301 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 350, Washington, DC 20008
Phone 202-572-6000 Fax 202-362-8420 www.childtrends.org
RESEARCH BRIEF
Childbearing Outside of Marriage:
Estimates and Trends in the United States
By Elizabeth Wildsmith, Ph.D., Nicole R. Steward-Streng, M.A., and Jennifer Manlove, Ph.D. November 2011
O
verview. Having children outside of marriagenonmarital childbearinghas been on the rise across
several decades in the United States. In 2009, 41 percent of all births (about 1.7 million) occurred out-
side of marriage, compared with 28 percent of all births in 1990 and just 11 percent of all births in
1970.
12,20
Preliminary data suggest that this percentage has remained stable in 2010.
6
There are several
reasons to be concerned about the high level of nonmarital childbearing. Couples who have children out-
side of marriage are younger, less healthy, and less educated than are married couples who have chil-
dren.
14
Children born outside of marriage tend to grow up with limited financial resources; to have less
stability in their lives because their parents are more likely to split up and form new unions; and to have
cognitive and behavioral problems, such as aggression and depression.
13
Indeed, concerns about the conse-
quences of nonmarital childbearing helped motivate the major reform of welfare that occurred in 1996,
17
and continue to motivate the development of federally funded pregnancy prevention programs among
teenagers and marriage promotion programs among adults.
17,19
This Research Brief draws from multiple published reports using data through 2009, as well as from
Child Trends original analyses of data from a nationally representative survey of children born in 2001, to
provide up-to-date information about nonmarital childbearing; to describe the women who have children
outside of marriage; and to examine how these patterns have changed over time. As nonmarital childbear-
ing has become more commonplace, the makeup of women having children outside of marriage has
changed, often in ways that challenge public perceptions. For example, an increasing percentage of women
who have a birth outside of marriage live with the father of the baby in a cohabiting union and are over the
age of twenty.
7,21
Moreover, the percentage of women having a birth outside of marriage has increased
faster among white and Hispanic women than among black women.
7,20
2011 Child Trends
1
TRENDS IN NONMARITAL
CHILDBEARING
The percentage of births outside of mar-
riage rose steeply from 1970 to 2009 for all
age groups. Between 1970 and 2009, the per-
centage of all births that took place outside of
marriage (the nonmarital birth ratio) increased
from 11 to 41 percent (see Figure 1). This
increase occurred within every age category (see
Figure 2).
12,21
n Nonmarital births to teens rose from
30 percent in 1970 to 67 percent in 1990, to
87 percent in 2009.
n Nonmarital births to women ages 20-24 rose
from 9 percent in 1970 to 37 percent in 1990,
to 62 percent in 2009.
0%
5%
10%
15%
20%
25%
30%
35%
40%
45%
50%

1970 1980 1990 2000 2009
11%
41%
Figure 1
Percent of Births to Unmarried Women,
1970-2009
Source: 1970-1999, Ventura SJ, Bachrach CA. Nonmarital childbearing in the United States, 1940-
1999. National vital statistics reports; vol 48 no 16. Hyattsville, Maryland: National Center for Health
Statistics. 2000.
Martin JA, Hamilton BE, Ventura SJ, Osterman MJK, Kirmeyer S, Mathews TJ, Wilson EC. Births: Final
data for 2009. National vital statistics reports; vol 60 no 1. Hyattsville, MD: National Center for Health
Statistics. 2011.
00605
from 4 percent in 1970 to 18 percent in 1990, to
34 percent in 2009.
from 4 percent in 1970 to 13 percent in 1990, to
21 percent in 2009.
from 5 percent in 1970 to 14 percent in 1990,
to 19 percent in 2009.
The percentage of births outside of marriage
also increased for all major racial and ethnic
groups. Since 1990, the percentage of all births
occurring outside of marriage increased for all
major racial and ethnic groups. Although the per-
centage of nonmarital births is still highest among
black women, the greatest increases were seen
among white and Hispanic women (see Figure 3).
12
n In 1990, 17 percent of births to white women,
67 percent of births to black women, and
37 percent of births to Hispanic women were
nonmarital.
n In 2009, 29 percent of births to white women,
73 percent of births to black women, and
53 percent of births to Hispanic women were
nonmarital.
Women in their twenties have the highest
rate of births outside of marriage. A common
misperception is that teen women have the highest
nonmarital birth rate. However, the number of
births among unmarried women in their twenties
and thirties increased substantially over the past
20 years, while births to teens have declined overall
(in spite of an increase in the mid-2000s). In 2009:
n Women aged 20-24 had a nonmarital birth rate
of 74.6 births per 1,000 unmarried women.
n Women aged 25-29 had 72.7 births per 1,000
unmarried women.
n In comparison, teen women aged 15-17 had 19.3
births per 1,000 unmarried women and teen
2
2011 Child Trends
1990
1970
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
70%
80%
90%
100%
2009
Age Categories
15-19 20-24 25-29 30-34 35-39
30%
67%
87%
9%
37%
62%
4%
18%
34%
4%
13%
21%
5%
14%
19%

Figure 2
Percent of Births to Unmarried Women,
1970, 1990, & 2009
Sources:Ventura SJ and Bachrach, CA. Nonmarital Childbearing in the United States, 1940-99.
National vital statistics reports; vol 48 no 16. Hyattsville, MD: National Center for Health Statistics. 2000.
Statistics. 2011.
ABOUT THE DATA SOURCE FOR THIS BRIEF
Statistics used for this brief came from two primary sources: birth data (through 2009) that were
collected and reported by the National Center for Health Statistics as part of the National Vital
Statistics Reports,
12,21
and data Child Trends analyzed from the Early Childhood Longitudinal
Study-Birth Cohort (ECLS-B) that were collected by the National Center for Education Statistics
within the U.S. Department of Education. The ECLS-B is a nationally representative sample of
approximately 10,700 children born in 2001. The study was designed to gather information on chil-
drens early life experiences from birth through kindergarten entry. The analyses presented in this
brief used data from the first phase of data collection, a sample of about 10,500 children who lived
with their biological or adoptive mothers, who answered the nine-month parent survey. All analy-
ses of the ECLS-B were weighted and accounted for survey design effects. Statistically significant
differences presented in this brief are significant at p<.05.
Two of the most common measures of nonmarital childbearing are the nonmarital birth ratio, i.e.,
the percentage of all births that occur to unmarried women; and the nonmarital birth rate i.e., the
number of births for every 1,000 unmarried women between the ages of 15 and 44 (or within spe-
cific age categories) in any given year. Although different from one another, these two measures are
closely related.
00606
women aged 18-19 had 58.2 births per 1,000
unmarried women.
n Although nonmarital birth rates for women 30
and older are increasing, these rates remain
lower than rates for women in their twenties:
57.5 among women aged 30-34, 30.2 among
women aged 35-39, and 7.9 among women aged
40-44 (see Figure 4).
Teen women account for a diminishing share
of all births outside of marriage. Although teen
women accounted for almost one-half (49 percent)
of all nonmarital births in 1970, by 2009 they were
responsible for less than one-quarter of nonmarital
births (21 percent). By contrast, in 2009, women
in their twenties accounted for the majority (62
percent) of nonmarital births
12,21
(see Figure 5).
n Women aged 20-24 accounted for 33 percent of
nonmarital births in 1970 and 38 percent
in 2009.
n In 1970, slightly less than one-fifth (18 percent)
of all nonmarital births were to women aged 25
and older; however, by 2009 women in this age
group accounted for 41 percent of all nonmarital
births.
Less than one-half of all nonmarital births
are first births. Despite the common perception
that firstborns account for most nonmarital births,
more than one-half of all births in 2009 that
occurred outside of marriage (59 percent) were sec-
ond- or higher-order births (results not shown).
16
n Fifty-seven percent of births to unmarried
women aged 20-24, three-quarters (75 percent)
of births to unmarried women aged 25-29, and
3
2011 Child Trends
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
70%
80%

2009
1990
White Black Hispanic
17%
29%
67%
37%
53%
73%

Figure 3
Percent of Births to Unmarried Women by
Race and Ethnicity, 1990 & 2009
Source: Martin JA, Hamilton BE, Ventura SJ, Osterman MJK, Kirmeyer S, Mathews TJ, Wilson EC.
Births: Final data for 2009. National vital statistics reports; vol 60 no 1. Hyattsville, MD: National Cen-
ter for Health Statistics. 2011.
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80

74.6
72.7
7.9
57.5
30.2
19.3
58.2
Rate of Birth Per 1,000 Unmarried Women
15-19
20-24
25-29
30-34
35-39
40-44
18-19
A
g
e

o
f

M
o
t
h
e
r

(
I
n

Y
e
a
r
s
)

Figure 4
Nonmarital Birth Rate (per 1,000 women)
by Age, 2009
Source: Martin JA, Hamilton BE, Ventura SJ, Osterman MJK, Kirmeyer S, Mathews TJ, Wilson EC.
Births: Final data for 2009. National vital statistics reports; vol 60 no 1. Hyattsville, MD: National Cen-
ter for Health Statistics. 2011.
Figure 5
Percent of Nonmarital Births to Women in
Each Age Category, 1970 and 2009
Sources: Ventura SJ and Bachrach, CA. Nonmarital Childbearing in the United States, 1940-99.
National vital statistics reports; vol 48 no 16. Hyattsville, MD: National Center for Health Statistics. 2000.
Statistics. 2011.

1970
Ages 20-24
33%
Ages
25-29
11%
Teen (15-19)
49%
Ages 30-34
5%
Ages 35-39
2%

2009

Ages 20-24
38%
Ages
25-29
24%
Teen (15-19)
21%
Ages
30-34
12%
Ages 35-39
5%
00607
82 percent of births to unmarried women aged
30-39 were higher-order births.
n Even among teen women aged 15-19, almost
one-quarter (24 percent) of nonmarital births
were second- or higher-order.
More than one-half of nonmarital births
occur within cohabiting relationships. A
majority of children born outside of marriage are
born into families headed by two unmarried par-
ents. In 2001, 52 percent of all nonmarital births
took place within a cohabiting union, compared
with 38 percent in the early 1990s.
7,15
However, the
likelihood that a woman will have a baby within a
cohabiting relationship varies substantially by race
and ethnicity. Results from Child Trends analyses
of data from the ECLS-B show that almost two-
thirds of nonmarital births in 2001 to white (61 per-
cent) and Hispanic (65 percent) women took place
within cohabiting unions, compared with less than
one-third (30 percent) of nonmarital births to black
women (see Figure 6).
The majority of nonmarital births are unin-
tended. Unintended births are those that, at the
time of conception, were either mistimed (the moth-
er wanted the pregnancy to occur earlier or later
than it did) or unwanted (the mother did not want
it to occur at that time or any time in the future).
Child Trends analyses of ECLS-B data indicate that
65 percent of births to women who were not living
with or married to the father of their baby and 50
percent of births to women who were living with
their babys father were unintended, compared with
just 20 percent of births to married women (see Fig-
ure 7). Additional research suggests that men may
be more likely than are women to report that births
outside of marriage are unintended. For example, 62
percent of unmarried fathers aged 15-24 identified
their most recent birth as unintended.
11
SUMMARY AND DISCUSSION
This Research Brief has highlighted several impor-
tant trends that have implications for the well-being
of children and the parents who bring them into
this world.
Nonmarital childbearing has increased sub-
stantially, particularly among women in their
twenties. Preliminary data from 2010 suggest
small declines in the nonmarital birth rate since
2008, as well as no continued increase in the per-
centage of births that occur outside of marriage.
6
However, the overall increase over the past several
decades in both the nonmarital birth rate and the
percent of births that occur outside of marriage
indicate striking changes in the context of child-
bearing in the United States. The most profound
change in the prevalence of nonmarital childbearing
has been among women over the age of 19. In 2009,
women in their twenties were responsible for the
largest share of nonmarital births (62 percent) and
had the highest nonmarital birth rates.
12
The per-
4
2011 Child Trends
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
70%
80%

30%
61%
52%
Total White Black
65%
Hispanic
2

Figure 6
Percent of Unmarried Mothers Cohabiting
at Birth of Child, by Race and Ethnicity
Source: Child Trends analyses of Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Birth Cohort (ECLS-B) , 2001-02
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
70%
80%

65%
50%
20%
Married at Birth Cohabiting at Birth Not Married or
Cohabiting at Birth
3

Figure 7
Percent of Women who Report that
Their Pregnancy was Unintended by
Relationship Status at Birth
Source: Child Trends analyses of Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Birth Cohort (ECLS-B) , 2001-02
00608
centage of nonmarital births among teen women,
however, has declined substantially, as have teen
birth rates. The decline in birth rates among teen
women has been attributed to a combination of
delays in sexual initiation and increased use of con-
traception.
18
Increases in nonmarital births have been
more dramatic among white and Hispanic
women than among black women. Although
the proportion of nonmarital births remains high-
est among black women, the proportion of births
occurring outside of marriage has increased the
most for white and Hispanic women. This trend
may be explained partly by greater economic
strains, growing acceptance of nontraditional fami-
ly forms, and increased barriers to marriage, partic-
ularly among people of lower socioeconomic sta-
tus.
3,5,14
In fact, some researchers suggest that
disadvantaged white and Hispanic women are
merely following the pattern of nonmarital child-
bearing set by disadvantaged black women in
earlier decades.
5
The rise in the number of children being
born outside of marriageamong all
groupsis linked to broader changes in fami-
ly structure, most notably cohabitation. More
than one-half of all nonmarital births occur to cou-
ples who live together in one household, but are not
legally married. In fact, much of the increase in
nonmarital childbearing since the 1980s reflects a
shift from births to married couples to births to
cohabiting couples, rather than an increase in
births to women who are either in dating relation-
ships or are single.
7,8
However, although cohabiting
couples with children have very high expectations
of marriage, the likelihood that these couples will
marry remains low.
13
Additionally, cohabiting
unions generally fail to provide the same level of
economic security that marriages do and tend to be
of shorter duration than marriages.
13
Thus, chil-
dren born to cohabiting parents are more likely
than are those born to married parents to be poor
and to see their parents union end.
Births that occur outside of marriage are
often second- or higher-order births. More
than one-half of all babies born to unmarried cou-
ples are not firstborns. Some of these babies repre-
sent repeat births to the same unmarried
couple. However, many children born outside of
marriage do not share the same father as their
siblings. In fact, research finds that two-thirds (66
percent) of new unmarried mothers with more than
one child had at least one child who was fathered by
someone other than the father of the new baby.
13
This type of family complexity can introduce addi-
tional stresses and strains into family life.
14
Births that occur outside of marriage also
are often unintended. Child Trends findings
indicate that many nonmarital births are unintend-
ed, that is, the woman did not intend the baby at
that time and maybe did not want to have a baby.
Such circumstances, in turn, are associated with
negative outcomes for children. For example, chil-
dren born to women who did not intend to get preg-
nant have been found to have lower birthweight,
poorer mental and physical health, lower educa-
tional attainment, and more behavioral problems
than do children whose births were intended.
9
CONCLUSION
Reducing nonmarital childbearing and promoting
marriage among unmarried parents remain impor-
tant goals of federal and state policies and pro-
grams designed to improve the well-being of women
and children and to reduce their reliance on public
assistance.
14,17
In general, research suggests that
marriage would bring some economic advantages to
unmarried women (and their children), particularly
for those from the most disadvantaged back-
grounds.
8,14
However, research also finds that when
unmarried mothers do marry, their marriages are
relatively unstable, with particularly negative
economic outcomes for women and children if they
do dissolve.
8
Some existing government programs, such as The
Healthy Marriage Initiative, aim to promote
healthy marriages among currently married cou-
ples and couples contemplating marriage by foster-
ing effective communication, respect, and conflict
management skills.
4
For those couples who do not
marry, programs focused on promoting healthy
relationships may still enhance childrens well-
being. For example, research finds that the better
the quality of the biological parents relationship at
birth, the better the parenting skills they demon-
strate one year after the birth; and this pattern
holds across all relationship types, even among par-
ents who do not live together.
1
Similarly, positive
co-parenting behaviora component of healthy
relationshipsis associated with increased involve-
ment of nonresident fathers in childrens lives.
2
It is likely that many children will continue to be
born outside of marriage into a variety of living
5
2011 Child Trends
00609
situations. Given this likelihood, it is in everyones
best interest to encourage the promotion of healthy
relationships among all family members, including
those living outside the household, and for the
research community to continue to explore factors
associated with the positive development of children
born to unmarried parents. In addition, efforts to
help couples prevent unintended pregnancies con-
tinue to be critical; and these efforts need to recog-
nize that many of these couples are not teensbut
young adults.
Child Trends thanks the William and Flora Hewlett
Foundation for its support of the research on which
this Research Brief was based, as well as the
writing, editing, production and dissemination of
this publication. The authors also thank Carol
Emig, Kristin Moore, and Marci McCoy-Roth for
their careful review of and helpful comments on
this brief.
Editor: Harriet J. Scarupa
REFERENCES
1
Carlson, M., & McLanahan, S. (2006). Strengthening unmarried families:
Could enhancing couple relationships also improve parenting? Social Service
Review, 80(2), 297-321.
2
Carlson, M., McLanahan, S., & Brooks-Gunn, J. (2008). Coparenting and
nonresident fathers' involvement with young children after a nonmarital
birth. Demography, 45(2), 461-488.
3
Cherlin, A. J. (2004). The deinstitutionalization of American marriage. Jour-
nal of Marriage and Family, 66, 848-861.
4
Dion, M. R., Hershey, A. M., Zaveri, H. H., Avellar, S. A., Strong, D. A., Sil-
man, T., et al. (2008). Implementation of the building strong families program:
Executive summary: 8935-134.
5
Furstenberg, F. F. (2009). If Moynihan had only known: Race, class, and
family change in the late twentieth century. The ANNALS of the American
Academy of Political and Social Science, 621, 94-110.
6
Hamilton BE, Martin JA, Ventura SJ. (2011). Births: Preliminary data for
2010. National vital statistics reports web release 60(2). Hyattsville, MD:
National Center for Health Statistics.
7
Kennedy, S., & Bumpass, L. (2008). Cohabitation and children's living
arrangements: New estimates from the United States. Demographic Research,
19(47), 1663-1692.
8
Lichter, D. T., Graefe, D. R., & Brown, J. B. (2003). Is marriage a panacea?
Union formation among economically disadvantaged unwed mothers. Social
Problems, 50(1), 60-86.
9
Logan, C., Holcombe, E., Manlove, J., & Ryan, S. (2007). The consequences of
unintended childbearing: A white paper. Washington, DC: Child Trends and
The National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy.
10
Manlove, J., Ryan, S., Wildsmith, E., & Franzetta, K. (2010). The
relationship context of nonmarital childbearing in the U.S. Demographic
Research, 23(22), 615-654.
11
Manlove, J., Terry-Humen, E., Ikramullah, E., & Holcombe, E. (2008).
Sexual and reproductive health behaviors among teen and young adult men:
A descriptive portrait. (Research Brief). Washington, DC: Child Trends.
12
Martin, J. A., Hamilton, B. E., Ventura, S. J., Osterman, M. J. K., Kirmey-
er, S., Mathews, T. J., et al. (2011). Births: Final data for 2009. National Vital
Statistics Reports 60(1). Hyattsville, MD: National Center for Health
Statistics.
13
McLanahan, S. (2011). Family instability and complexity after a nonmarital
birth: Outcomes for children in fragile families. In M. J. Carlson, & P.
England (Eds.), Social class and changing families in an unequal America.
Stanford: Stanford University Press.
14
McLanahan, S., Garfinkel, I., Mincy, R., & Donahue, E. (2010). Introducing
the Issue The Future of Children, 20(2), 3-16.
15
Mincieli, L., Manlove, J., McGarrett, M., Moore, K. A., & Ryan, S. (2007).
The relationship context of births outside of marriage: The rise of cohabitation.
Washington, DC: Child Trends.
16
National Center for Health Statistics. (2011). Vital statistics system birth
data files for 2009. Retrieved November 4, 2011, from
http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data_access/Vitalstatsonline.htm
17
Nock, S. L. (2005). Marriage as a public issue. The Future of Children,
15(2), 13-32.
18
Santelli, J., & Melnikas, A. (2010). Teen fertility in transition: Recent and
historic trends in the United States. Annual Review of Public Health, 31, 371-
383.
19
Soloman-Fears, C. (2008). CRS Report for Congress: Nonmarital childbear-
ing: Trends, reasons and public policy interventions. Washington, DC:
Congressional Research Service.
20
Ventura, S. J. (2009). Changing patterns of nonmarital childbearing in the
United States. National Center for Health Statistics (data brief no. 18).
Hyattsville, MD: National Center for Health Statistics.
21
Ventura, S. J., & Bachrach, C. A. (2000). Nonmarital childbearing in the
United States, 1940-1999. National Vital Statistics Reports (vol 48, no. 16).
Hyattsville, MD: National Center for Health Statistics.
6
2011 Child Trends
Child Trends is a nonprofit, nonpartisan research center that studies children at every stage of development. Its mission is to
improve outcomes for children by providing research, data, and analysis to the people and institutions whose decisions and
actions affect children. For additional information on Child Trends, including a complete set of available Research Briefs, visit our
Web site at www.childtrends.org. For the latest information on more than 100 key indicators of child and youth well-being,
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00610

ATTACHMENT F

Paul R. Amato, The Impact of Family
Formation Change on the Cognitive, Social,
and Emotional Well-Being of the Next
Generation
15 Future of Children No. 2 (Fall 2005)
00611
The Impact of Family Formation Change
on the Cognitive, Social, and Emotional
Well-Being of the Next Generation
Paul R. Amato
Summary
How have recent changes in U.S. family structure affected the cognitive, social, and emotional
well-being of the nations children? Paul Amato examines the effects of family formation on
children and evaluates whether current marriage-promotion programs are likely to meet chil-
drens needs.
Amato begins by investigating how children in households with both biological parents differ
from children in households with only one biological parent. He shows that children growing
up with two continuously married parents are less likely to experience a wide range of cogni-
tive, emotional, and social problems, not only during childhood but also in adulthood. Although
it is not possible to demonstrate that family structure causes these differences, studies using a
variety of sophisticated statistical methods suggest that this is the case.
Amato then asks what accounts for the differences between these two groups of children. He
shows that compared with other children, those who grow up in stable, two-parent families
have a higher standard of living, receive more effective parenting, experience more cooperative
co-parenting, are emotionally closer to both parents, and are subjected to fewer stressful events
and circumstances.
Finally, Amato assesses how current marriage-promotion policies will affect the well-being of
children. He finds that interventions that increase the share of children who grow up with both
parents would improve the overall well-being of U.S. children only modestly, because chil-
drens social or emotional problems have many causes, of which family structure is but one. But
interventions that lower only modestly the overall share of U.S. children experiencing various
problems could nevertheless lower substantially the number of children experiencing them.
Even a small decline in percentages, when multiplied by the many children in the population,
is a substantial social benefit.
VOL . 15 / NO. 2 / FAL L 2005 75
www.futureofchildren.org
Paul R. Amato is professor of sociology at Pennsylvania State University.
05 FOC 15-2 fall05 Amato.qxp 8/4/2005 12:03 PM Page 75
00612
P
erhaps the most profound
change in the American family
over the past four decades has
been the decline in the share of
children growing up in house-
holds with both biological parents. Because
many social scientists, policymakers, and
members of the general public believe that a
two-parent household is the optimal setting
for childrens development, the decline in
such households has generated widespread
concern about the well-being of American
children. This concern has generated inter-
est among policymakers in programs and in-
terventions to increase the share of children
growing up in stable, two-parent families.
Not everyone, however, agrees with these
policies; many observers believe that it is
either inappropriate, or futile, for govern-
ment to attempt to affect childrens family
structures.
My goal in this article is to inform this debate
by addressing three questions. First, how do
children in households with only one biologi-
cal parent differ in terms of their cognitive,
social, and emotional well-being from chil-
dren in households with both biological par-
ents? Second, what accounts for the observed
differences between these two groups of chil-
dren? And finally, how might current policies
to strengthen marriage, decrease divorce,
and lower nonmarital fertility affect the well-
being of children in the United States?
Research on the Effects of
Family Structure on Children
The rise in the divorce rate during the 1960s
and 1970s prompted social scientists to inves-
tigate how differing family structures affect
children. Their research focus initially was on
children of divorced parents, but it expanded
to include out-of-wedlock children and those
in other nontraditional family structures.
Parental Divorce
Early studies generally supported the as-
sumption that children who experience
parental divorce are prone to a variety of aca-
demic, behavioral, and emotional problems.
1
In 1971, psychologists Judith Wallerstein and
Joan Kelly began an influential long-term
study of 60 divorced families and 131 chil-
dren. According to the authors, five years
after divorce, one-third of the children were
adjusting well and had good relationships
with both parents. Another group of children
(more than one-third of the sample) were
clinically depressed, were doing poorly in
school, had difficulty maintaining friend-
ships, experienced chronic problems such as
sleep disturbances, and continued to hope
that their parents would reconcile.
2
Despite these early findings, other studies in
the 1970s challenged the dominant view that
divorce is uniformly bad for children. For ex-
ample, Mavis Hetherington and her col-
leagues studied 144 preschool children, half
from recently divorced maternal-custody
families and half from continuously married
two-parent families. During the first year of
the study, the children with divorced parents
exhibited more behavioral and emotional
problems than did the children with continu-
ously married parents. Two years after di-
vorce, however, children with divorced par-
ents no longer exhibited an elevated number
of problems (although a few difficulties lin-
gered for boys). Despite this temporary im-
provement, a later wave of data collection re-
vealed that the remarriage of the custodial
mother was followed by additional problems
among the children, especially daughters.
3
Trying to make sense of this research litera-
ture can be frustrating, because the results of
individual studies vary considerably: some
suggest serious negative effects of divorce,
Pa ul R. Ama t o
76 T HE FUT URE OF CHI L DREN
00613
others suggest modest effects, and yet others
suggest no effects. Much of this inconsistency
is due to variations across studies in the types
of samples, the ages of the children, the out-
comes examined, and the methods of analy-
sis. To summarize general trends across such
a large and varied body of research, social
scientists use a technique known as meta-
analysis. By calculating an effect size for each
study (which reflects the difference between
two groups expressed in a common metric),
meta-analysis makes it possible to pool re-
sults across many studies and adjust for varia-
tions such as those noted.
4
In 1991, Bruce Keith and I published the
first meta-analysis dealing with the effects of
divorce on children.
5
Our analysis summa-
rized the results of ninety-three studies pub-
lished in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s and
confirmed that children with divorced par-
ents are worse off than those with continu-
ously married parents on measures of aca-
demic success (school grades, scores on
standardized achievement tests), conduct
(behavior problems, aggression), psychologi-
cal well-being (depression, distress symp-
toms), self-esteem (positive feelings about
oneself, perceptions of self-efficacy), and
peer relations (number of close friends, social
support from peers), on average. Moreover,
children in divorced families tend to have
weaker emotional bonds with mothers and
fathers than do their peers in two-parent
families. These results supported the conclu-
sion that the rise in divorce had lowered the
average level of child well-being.
Our meta-analysis also indicated, however,
that the estimated effects of parental divorce
on childrens well-being are modest rather
than strong. We concluded that these modest
differences reflect widely varying experiences
within both groups of children. Some children
growing up with continuously married parents
are exposed to stressful circumstances, such as
poverty, serious conflict between parents, vio-
lence, inept parenting, and mental illness or
substance abuse, that increase the risk of child
maladjustment. Correspondingly, some chil-
dren with divorced parents cope well, perhaps
because their parents are able to separate am-
icably and engage in cooperative co-parenting
following marital dissolution.
In a more recent meta-analysis, based on
sixty-seven studies conducted during the
1990s, I again found that children with di-
vorced parents, on average, scored signifi-
cantly lower on various measures of well-
being than did children with continuously
married parents.
6
As before, the differences
between the two groups were modest rather
than large. Nevertheless, the more recent
meta-analyses revealed that children with di-
vorced parents continued to have lower aver-
age levels of cognitive, social, and emotional
well-being, even in a decade in which divorce
had become common and widely accepted.
Other studies have shown that the differ-
ences in well-being between children with di-
vorced and children with continuously mar-
ried parents persist well into adulthood. For
example, adults who experience parental di-
vorce as a child have lower socioeconomic at-
The I mpa c t o f Fa mi l y Fo r ma t i o n Cha ng e o n t he We l l - Be i ng o f t he Ne x t Ge ne r a t i o n
VOL . 15 / NO. 2 / FAL L 2005 77
Children in divorced
families tend to have
weaker emotional bonds
with mothers and fathers
than do their peers in
two-parent families.
00614
tainment, an increased risk of having a non-
marital birth, weaker bonds with parents,
lower psychological well-being, poorer mari-
tal quality, and an elevated risk of seeing their
own marriage end in divorce.
7
Overall, the
evidence is consistent that parental divorce
during childhood is linked with a wide range
of problems in adulthood.
Children Born outside Marriage
Children born outside marriage have been
studied less frequently than have children of
divorce. Nevertheless, like children with di-
vorced parents, children who grow up with a
single parent because they were born out of
wedlock are more likely than children living
with continuously married parents to experi-
ence a variety of cognitive, emotional, and
behavioral problems. Specifically, compared
with children who grow up in stable, two-
parent families, children born outside mar-
riage reach adulthood with less education,
earn less income, have lower occupational
status, are more likely to be idle (that is, not
employed and not in school), are more likely
to have a nonmarital birth (among daugh-
ters), have more troubled marriages, experi-
ence higher rates of divorce, and report more
symptoms of depression.
8
A few studies have compared children of un-
married single parents and divorced single
parents. Despite some variation across studies,
this research generally shows that the long-
term risks for most problems are comparable
in these two groups. For example, Sara
McLanahan and Gary Sandefur, using the Na-
tional Survey of Families and Households,
found that 31 percent of youth with divorced
parents dropped out of high school, compared
with 37 percent of youth born outside mar-
riage (the corresponding figure for youth with
continuously married parents was 13 percent).
Similarly, 33 percent of daughters with di-
vorced parents had a teen birth, compared
with 37 percent of daughters born outside
marriage (the corresponding figure for daugh-
ters with continuously married parents was 11
percent).
9
Other studies that have compared
offspring in these two groups yield similar re-
sults with respect to occupational attainment,
earned income, depression, and the risk of
seeing ones own marriage end in divorce.
10
Although it is sometimes assumed that chil-
dren born to unwed mothers have little con-
tact with their fathers, about 40 percent of
unmarried mothers are living with the childs
father at the time of birth.
11
If one-third of all
children are born to unmarried parents, and
if 40 percent of these parents are cohabiting,
then about one out of every eight infants lives
with two biological but unmarried parents.
Structurally, these households are similar to
households with two married parents. And
young children are unlikely to be aware of
their parents marital status. Nevertheless,
cohabiting parents tend to be more disadvan-
taged than married parents. They have less
education, earn less income, report poorer
relationship quality, and experience more
mental health problems.
12
These considera-
tions suggest that children living with cohab-
iting biological parents may be worse off, in
some respects, than children living with two
married biological parents.
Consistent with this assumption, Susan L.
Brown found that children living with cohab-
iting biological parents, compared with chil-
dren living with continuously married par-
ents, had more behavioral problems, more
emotional problems, and lower levels of
school engagement (that is, caring about
school and doing homework).
13
Parents edu-
cation, income, psychological well-being, and
parenting stress explained mostbut not
allof these differences. In other words, un-
Pa ul R. Ama t o
00615
married cohabiting parents, compared with
married parents, had fewer years of educa-
tion, earned less income, had lower levels of
psychological well-being, and reported more
stress in parenting. These factors, in turn,
partly accounted for the elevated number of
problems among their children.
The risk of relationship dissolution also is
substantially higher for cohabiting couples
with children than for married couples with
children.
14
For example, the Fragile Families
Study indicates that about one-fourth of co-
habiting biological parents are no longer liv-
ing together one year after the childs birth.
15
Another study of first births found that 31
percent of cohabiting couples had broken up
after five years, as against 16 percent of mar-
ried couples.
16
Growing up with two continu-
ously cohabiting biological parents is rare.
Using the 1999 National Survey of American
Families, Brown found that only 1.5 percent
of all children lived with two cohabiting par-
ents at the time of the survey.
17
Similarly, an
analysis of the 1995 Adolescent Health Study
(Add Health) revealed that less than one-half
of 1 percent of adolescents aged sixteen to
eighteen had spent their entire childhoods
living with two continuously cohabiting bio-
logical parents.
18
Unresolved questions remain about children
born to cohabiting parents who later marry. If
cohabiting parents marry after the birth of a
child, is the child at any greater risk than if
the parents marry before having the child?
Correspondingly, do children benefit when
their cohabiting parents get married? To the
extent that marriage increases union stability
and binds fathers more strongly to their chil-
dren, marriage among cohabiting parents
may improve childrens long-term well-being.
Few studies, however, have addressed this
issue.
Death of a Parent
Some children live with a single parent not
because of divorce or because they were born
outside marriage but because their other par-
ent has died. Studies that compare children
who experienced the death of a parent with
children separated from a parent for other
reasons yield mixed results. The Amato and
Keith meta-analysis found that children who
experienced a parents death scored lower on
several forms of well-being than did children
living with continuously married parents.
Children who experienced a parents death,
however, scored significantly higher on sev-
eral measures of well-being than did children
with divorced parents.
19
McLanahan and
Sandefur found that children with a deceased
parent were no more likely than children
with continuously married parents to drop
out of high school. Daughters with a de-
ceased parent, however, were more likely
than teenagers living with both parents to
have a nonmarital birth.
20
Another study
found that although adults whose parents di-
vorced or never married during their child-
hood had lower levels of socioeconomic at-
tainment than did adults who grew up with
continuously married parents, adults who ex-
perienced the death of a parent as a child did
not differ from those with two continuously
married parents.
21
In contrast, Amato found
VOL . 15 / NO. 2 / FAL L 2005 79
The risk of relationship
dissolution also is
substantially higher for
cohabiting couples with
children than for married
couples with children.
00616
that all causes of separation from a parent
during childhood, including parental death,
were linked with increased symptoms of de-
pression in adulthood.
22
Although the re-
search findings are mixed, these studies sug-
gest that experiencing the death of a parent
during childhood puts children at risk for a
number of problems, but not as much as does
divorce or out-of-wedlock birth.
Discordant Two-Parent Families
Most studies in this literature have compared
children living with a single parent with a
broad group of children living with continu-
ously married parents. Some two-parent fam-
ilies, however, function better than others.
Marriages marked by chronic, overt conflict
and hostility are intact structurally but are
not necessarily good environments in which
to raise children. Some early studies com-
pared children living with divorced parents
and children living with two married but dis-
cordant parents. In general, these studies
found that children in high-conflict house-
holds experience many of the same problems
as do children with divorced parents. In fact,
some studies show that children with discor-
dant married parents are worse off than chil-
dren with divorced parents.
23
A more recent generation of long-term stud-
ies has shown that the effects of divorce vary
with the degree of marital discord that pre-
cedes divorce. When parents exhibit chronic
and overt conflict, children appear to be bet-
ter off, in the long run, if their parents split
up rather than stay together. But when par-
ents exhibit relatively little overt conflict,
children appear to be better off if their par-
ents stay together. In other words, children
are particularly at risk when low-conflict mar-
riages end in divorce.
24
In a twenty-year
study, Alan Booth and I found that the major-
ity of marriages that ended in divorce fell into
the low-conflict group. Spouses in these mar-
riages did not fight frequently or express hos-
tility toward their partners. Instead, they felt
emotionally estranged from their spouses,
and many ended their marriages to seek
greater happiness with new partners. Al-
though many parents saw this transition as
positive, their children often viewed it as un-
expected, inexplicable, and unwelcome. Chil-
dren and parents, it is clear, often have differ-
ent interpretations of family transitions.
25
Stepfamilies
Although rates of remarriage have declined in
recent years, most divorced parents eventu-
ally remarry. Similarly, many women who
have had a nonmarital birth eventually marry
men who are not the fathers of their children.
Adding a stepfather to the household usually
improves childrens standard of living. More-
over, in a stepfamily, two adults are available
to monitor childrens behavior, provide super-
vision, and assist children with everyday prob-
lems. For these reasons, one might assume
that children generally are better off in step-
families than in single-parent households.
Studies consistently indicate, however, that
children in stepfamilies exhibit more prob-
lems than do children with continuously mar-
ried parents and about the same number of
problems as do children with single parents.
26
In other words, the marriage of a single par-
ent (to someone other than the childs biolog-
ical parent) does not appear to improve the
functioning of most children.
Although the great majority of parents view
the formation of a stepfamily positively, chil-
dren tend to be less enthusiastic. Stepfamily
formation is stressful for many children be-
cause it often involves moving (generally to a
different neighborhood or town), adapting to
new people in the household, and learning
new rules and routines. Moreover, early rela-
Pa ul R. Ama t o
00617
tionships between stepparents and stepchil-
dren are often tense. Children, especially
adolescents, become accustomed to a sub-
stantial degree of autonomy in single-parent
households. They may resent the monitoring
and supervision by stepparents and react with
hostility when stepparents attempt to exert
authority. Some children experience loyalty
conflicts and fear that becoming emotionally
close to a stepparent implies betraying the
nonresident biological parent. Some become
jealous because they must share parental
time and attention with the stepparent. And
for some children, remarriage ends any lin-
gering hopes that the two biological parents
will one day reconcile.
27
Finally, stepchildren
are overrepresented in official reports of
child abuse.
28
Of course, the great majority of
stepparents are not abusive. Moreover, sur-
vey data have not supported the notion that
children in stepfamilies are more likely to be
abused than are children in two-parent fami-
lies.
29
Nevertheless, even a slight trend in
this direction would represent an additional
risk for children in stepfamilies.
Although relationships in many stepfamilies
are tense, stepparents are still able to make
positive contributions to their stepchildrens
lives. If stepfamilies survive the early crisis
stage, then close and supportive relationships
between stepparents and stepchildren often
develop. Research suggests that these rela-
tionships can serve as important resources for
childrens development and emotional well-
being.
30
The increase in nonmarital cohabitation has
focused attention on the distinction between
married-couple stepfamilies and cohabiting-
couple stepfamilies. Christine Buchanan,
Eleanor Maccoby, and Sanford Dornbusch
found that adolescents had fewer emotional
and behavior problems following divorce if
their mothers remarried than if they cohab-
ited with a partner.
31
Similarly, two studies of
African American families found that children
were better off in certain respects if they lived
with stepfathers than with their mothers co-
habiting partners.
32
In contrast, Susan Brown
found no significant differences between chil-
dren in married and cohabiting stepfamilies.
33
Although these data suggest that children may
be better off if single mothers marry their
partners rather than cohabit, the small num-
ber of studies on this topic makes it difficult
to draw firm conclusions.
Variations by Gender of Child
Several early influential studies found that
boys in divorced families had more adjust-
ment problems than did girls.
34
Given that
boys usually live with their mothers following
family disruption, the loss of contact with the
same-gender parent could account for such a
difference. In addition boys, compared with
girls, may be exposed to more conflict, re-
ceive less support from parents and others
(because they are believed to be tougher),
and be picked on more by custodial mothers
(because sons may resemble their fathers).
Subsequent studies, however, have failed to
find consistent gender differences in chil-
drens reactions to divorce.
The meta-analyses on children of divorce pro-
vide the most reliable evidence on this topic.
The Amato and Keith meta-analysis of studies
conducted before the 1990s revealed one sig-
nificant gender difference: the estimated neg-
ative effect of divorce on social adjustment
was stronger for boys than girls. In other
areas, however, such as academic achieve-
ment, conduct, and psychological adjustment,
no differences between boys and girls were
apparent.
35
In my meta-analysis of studies
conducted in the 1990s, the estimated effect
of divorce on childrens conduct problems was
VOL . 15 / NO. 2 / FAL L 2005 81
00618
stronger for boys than for girls, although no
other gender differences were apparent.
36
Why the earlier studies suggest a gender dif-
ference in social adjustment and the more re-
cent studies suggest a gender difference in
conduct problems is unclear. Nevertheless,
taken together, these meta-analyses provide
some limited support for the notion that boys
are more susceptible than girls to the detri-
mental consequences of divorce.
Variations by Race of Child
Compared with whites, African Americans
have a higher rate of marital disruption and a
substantially higher rate of nonmarital births.
Because relatively little research has focused
on this topic, however, it is difficult to reach
firm conclusions about racial differences in
childrens well-being in single-parent house-
holds. Some research suggests that the aca-
demic deficits associated with living with a
single mother are less pronounced for black
than for white children.
37
One study found
that growing up in a single-parent family pre-
dicted lower socioeconomic attainment
among white women, white men, and black
women, but not among black men.
38
McLana-
han and Sandefur found that white offspring
from single-parent families were more likely
to drop out of high school than were African
American offspring from single-parent fami-
lies.
39
African American children may thus
adjust better than white children to life in sin-
gle-parent families, although the explanation
for this difference is not clear. Other studies,
however, have found few racial differences in
the estimated effects of growing up with a sin-
gle parent on long-term outcomes.
40
Some studies suggest that stepfathers play a
particularly beneficial role in African Ameri-
can families. One study found that in African
American families (but not European Ameri-
can families), children who lived with stepfa-
thers were less likely to drop out of high
school or (among daughters) have a nonmari-
tal birth.
41
Similarly, a study of African Amer-
icans living in high-poverty neighborhoods
found that girls living with their mothers and
stepfathers were less likely than girls living
with single mothers to become sexually active
or pregnant. Interestingly, the protective ef-
fect of a stepfather held only when mothers
were married and not when they were cohab-
iting.
42
Another study yielded comparable re-
sults: among African Americans, adolescents
living with stepfathers were better off in
many respects than were adolescents living
with single mothers, but adolescents living
with cohabiting parents were worse off than
those living with single mothers.
43
The rea-
sons for these racial differences are not clear,
and future research is required to understand
how interpersonal dynamics differ in white
and African American stepfamilies.
Why Do Single-Parent Families
Put Children at Risk?
Researchers have several theories to explain
why children growing up with single parents
have an elevated risk of experiencing cogni-
tive, social, and emotional problems. Most
refer either to the economic and parental re-
sources available to children or to the stress-
ful events and circumstances to which these
children must adapt.
Economic Hardship
For a variety of reasons documented else-
where in this volume, most children living
with single parents are economically disad-
vantaged. It is difficult for poor single parents
to afford the books, home computers, and pri-
vate lessons that make it easier for their chil-
dren to succeed in school. Similarly, they can-
not afford clothes, shoes, cell phones, and
other consumer goods that give their children
status among their peers. Moreover, many live
Pa ul R. Ama t o
00619
in rundown neighborhoods with high crime
rates, low-quality schools, and few community
services. Consistent with these observations,
many studies have shown that economic re-
sources explain some of the differences in
well-being between children with single par-
ents and those with continuously married par-
ents.
44
Research showing that children do
better at school and exhibit fewer behavioral
problems when nonresident fathers pay child
support likewise suggests the importance of
income in facilitating childrens well-being in
single-parent households.
45
Quality of Parenting
Regardless of family structure, the quality of
parenting is one of the best predictors of chil-
drens emotional and social well-being. Many
single parents, however, find it difficult to
function effectively as parents. Compared
with continuously married parents, they are
less emotionally supportive of their children,
have fewer rules, dispense harsher discipline,
are more inconsistent in dispensing disci-
pline, provide less supervision, and engage in
more conflict with their children.
46
Many of
these deficits in parenting presumably result
from struggling to make ends meet with lim-
ited financial resources and trying to raise
children without the help of the other biolog-
ical parent. Many studies link inept parenting
by resident single parents with a variety of
negative outcomes among children, including
poor academic achievement, emotional prob-
lems, conduct problems, low self-esteem, and
problems forming and maintaining social re-
lationships. Other studies show that depres-
sion among custodial mothers, which usually
detracts from effective parenting, is related
to poor adjustment among offspring.
47
Although the role of the resident parent (usu-
ally the mother) in promoting childrens well-
being is clear, the nonresident parent (usually
the father) can also play an important role. In
a meta-analysis of sixty-three studies of non-
resident fathers and their children, Joan
Gilbreth and I found that children had
higher academic achievement and fewer
emotional and conduct problems when non-
resident fathers were closely involved in their
lives.
48
We also found that studies of nonresi-
dent fathers in the 1990s were more likely
than earlier studies to report positive effects
of father involvement. Nonresident fathers
may thus be enacting the parent role more
successfully now than in the past, with bene-
ficial consequences for children. Neverthe-
less, analysts consistently find that many non-
resident fathers are minimally engaged with
their children. Between one-fourth and one-
third of nonresident fathers maintain fre-
quent contact with their children, and a
roughly equal share of fathers maintains little
or no contact.
49
Interviews with children re-
veal that losing contact with fathers is one of
the most painful outcomes of divorce.
50
Children also thrive when their parents have a
cooperative co-parental relationship. When
parents agree on the rules and support one
anothers decisions, children learn that
parental authority is not arbitrary. Parental
agreement also means that children are not
subjected to inconsistent discipline when they
VOL . 15 / NO. 2 / FAL L 2005 83
Regardless of family
structure, the quality of
parenting is one of the
best predictors of childrens
emotional and social
well-being.
00620
misbehave. Consistency between parents
helps children to learn and internalize social
norms and moral values. Another benefit of a
positive co-parental relationship is the model-
ing of interpersonal skills, such as showing re-
spect, communicating clearly, and resolving
disputes through negotiation and compro-
mise. Children who learn these skills by ob-
serving their parents have positive relation-
ships with peers and, later, with intimate
partners. When childrens parents live in sep-
arate households, however, cooperative co-
parenting is not the norm. Although some
parents remain locked in conflict for many
years, especially if a divorce is involved, most
gradually disengage and communicate little
with one another. At best, most children living
with single parents experience parallel par-
enting rather than cooperative co-parenting.
51
Exposure to Stress
Children living with single parents are ex-
posed to more stressful experiences and cir-
cumstances than are children living with con-
tinuously married parents. Although scholars
define stress in somewhat different ways,
most assume that it occurs when external de-
mands exceed peoples coping resources.
This results in feelings of emotional distress,
a reduced capacity to function in school,
work, and family roles, and an increase in
physiological indicators of arousal.
52
Eco-
nomic hardship, inept parenting, and loss of
contact with a parent (as noted earlier) can
be stressful for children. Observing conflict
and hostility between resident and nonresi-
dent parents also is stressful.
53
Conflict be-
tween nonresident parents appears to be par-
ticularly harmful when children feel that they
are caught in the middle, as when one parent
denigrates the other parent in front of the
child, when children are asked to transmit
critical or emotionally negative messages
from one parent to the other, and when one
parent attempts to recruit the child as an ally
against the other.
54
Interparental conflict is a
direct stressor for children, and it can also in-
terfere with their attachments to parents, re-
sulting in feelings of emotional insecurity.
55
Moving is a difficult experience for many
children, especially when it involves losing
contact with neighborhood friends. More-
over, moves that require changing schools
can put children out of step with their class-
mates in terms of the curriculum. Children
with single parents move more frequently
than other children do, partly because of eco-
nomic hardship (which forces parents to seek
less expensive accommodation in other areas)
and partly because single parents form new
romantic attachments (as when a single
mother marries and moves in with her new
husband). Studies show that frequent moving
increases the risk of academic, behavioral,
and emotional problems for children with
single parents.
56
For many children, as noted,
the addition of a stepparent to the household
is a stressful change. And when remarriages
end in divorce, children are exposed to yet
more stressful transitions. Indeed, some
studies indicate that the number of transi-
tions that children experience while growing
up (including multiple parental divorces, co-
habitations, and remarriages) is a good pre-
dictor of their behavioral and emotional
problems as adolescents and young adults.
57
Pa ul R. Ama t o
Conflict between nonresident
parents appears to be
particularly harmful when
children feel that they are
caught in the middle.
00621
The Selection Perspective
Explanations that focus on economic hard-
ship, the quality of parenting, and exposure
to stress all assume that the circumstances as-
sociated with living in a single-parent house-
hold negatively affect childrens well-being. A
quite different explanationand the main al-
ternative to these viewsis that many poorly
adjusted individuals either never marry in the
first place or see their marriages end in di-
vorce. In other words, these people carry
traits that select them into single parent-
hood. Parents can transmit these problematic
traits to their children either through genetic
inheritance or inept parenting. For example,
a mother with an antisocial personality may
pass this genetic predisposition to her chil-
dren. Her personality also may contribute to
her marriages ending in divorce. Her chil-
dren will thus be at risk of exhibiting antiso-
cial behavior, but the risk has little to do with
the divorce. The discovery that concordance
(similarity between siblings) for divorce
among adults is higher among identical than
fraternal twins suggests that genes may pre-
dispose some people to engage in behaviors
that increase the risk of divorce.
58
If parents
personality traits and other genetically trans-
mitted predispositions are causes of single
parenthood as well as childhood problems,
then the apparent effects on children of
growing up with a single parent are spurious.
Because researchers cannot conduct a true
experiment and randomly allocate children
to live with single or married parents, it is
difficult to rule out the selection perspec-
tive. Nevertheless, many studies cast doubt
on it. For example, some have found signifi-
cant differences between children with di-
vorced and continuously married parents
even after controlling for personality traits
such as depression and antisocial behavior
in parents.
59
Others have found higher rates
of problems among children with single par-
ents, using statistical methods that adjust for
unmeasured variables that, in principle,
should include parents personality traits as
well as many genetic influences.
60
And a few
studies have found that the link between
parental divorce and childrens problems is
similar for adopted and biological chil-
drena finding that cannot be explained by
genetic transmission.
61
Another study, based
on a large sample of twins, found that grow-
ing up in a single-parent family predicted
depression in adulthood even with genetic
resemblance controlled statistically.
62
Al-
though some degree of selection still may be
operating, the weight of the evidence
strongly suggests that growing up without
two biological parents in the home increases
childrens risk of a variety of cognitive, emo-
tional, and social problems.
Implications of Policies to
Increase the Share of Children
in Two-Parent Families
Since social science research shows so clearly
the advantages enjoyed by children raised by
continuously married parents, it is no wonder
that policymakers and practitioners are inter-
ested in programs to strengthen marriage and
increase the proportion of children who grow
up in such families. Realistically speaking,
what could such programs accomplish? In
what follows, I present estimates of how they
could affect the share of children in the
United States who experience various types
of problems during adolescence.
Adolescent Family Structure and
Well-Being in the Add Health Study
To make these estimates, I used the Adoles-
cent Health Studya national long-term
sample of children in junior high and high
schoolsrelying on data from Wave I, con-
ducted in 1995. Table 1 is based on adoles-
VOL . 15 / NO. 2 / FAL L 2005 85
00622
cents responses to questions about behav-
ioral, emotional, and academic problems
specifically, whether they had repeated a
grade, been suspended from school, engaged
in delinquent behavior, engaged in a violent
altercation, received counseling or therapy
for an emotional problem, smoked cigarettes
regularly during the last month, thought
about suicide, or attempted suicide. Delin-
quency involved damaging property, shoplift-
ing, breaking into a house or building to steal
something, stealing something worth more
than $50, or taking a car without the owners
permission. Violence was defined as engaging
in a physical fight as a result of which the op-
ponent had received medical attention (in-
cluding bandaging a cut) or a fight involving
multiple people or using a weapon to
threaten someone. The results are based on
responses from more than 17,000 children
between the ages of twelve and eighteen, and
the data have been weighted to make them
nationally representative.
63
Responses are shown separately for adoles-
cents living with continuously married par-
ents and for those living with one parent only.
The results are striking. Adolescents living
with single parents consistently report en-
countering more problems than those living
with continuously married parents. Thirty
percent of the former reported that they had
repeated a grade, as against 19 percent of the
latter. Similarly, 40 percent of children living
with single parents reported having been sus-
pended from school, compared with 21 per-
cent of children living with continuously mar-
ried parents. Children in stable, two-parent
families also were less likely to have engaged
in delinquency or violence, seen a therapist
for an emotional problem, smoked during the
previous month, or thought about or at-
tempted suicide. These findings are consis-
tent with research demonstrating that chil-
dren living with continuously married
parents report fewer problems than do other
children. The increase in risk associated with
living without both parents ranged from
about 23 percent (for being involved in a vio-
lent altercation) to 127 percent (for receiving
emotional therapy).
To estimate the frequency of these problems
in the larger population, I relied on the Add
Pa ul R. Ama t o
Table 1. Family Structure and Adolescent Well-Being: Share of Adolescents Reporting
Problems in Various Scenarios
Percent
Family structure, 1995 Estimated share if family structure were the same as in
Problem Two parents One parent Combined 1980 1970 1960
Repeated grade 18.8 30.3 24.0 22.9 21.8 21.4
Suspended from school 21.2 39.8 29.6 27.9 26.0 25.4
Delinquency 36.4 44.7 40.1 39.4 38.5 38.3
Violence 36.0 44.1 39.6 38.9 38.1 37.8
Therapy 7.5 17.0 11.8 10.9 9.9 9.6
Smoked in last month 13.4 22.6 17.5 16.7 15.8 15.5
Thought of suicide 11.3 14.5 12.7 12.5 12.1 12.0
Attempted suicide 1.7 2.8 2.2 2.1 2.0 1.9
Source: National Study of Adolescent Health, 1995. See text for details.
00623
Health finding that 55 percent of adolescents
between the ages of twelve to eighteen lived
with both biological parents at the time of the
survey. Given that rates of divorce and non-
marital births have not changed much since
the mid-1990s, this figure is probably close to
the current figure, and it is nearly identical to
the estimate provided by Susan Brown from
the 1999 National Survey of American Fami-
lies. (Because most children in the sample
were younger than eighteen and could still
experience a parental divorce or death before
reaching adulthood, these results are consis-
tent with the projection that about half of all
children will live continuously with both bio-
logical parents until adulthood.) The third
column in table 1 shows the estimated share
of adolescents in the U.S. population who ex-
perience each problem, based on the data in
the first two columns.
64
How would increasing the share of children
growing up in stable, two-parent families af-
fect the overall levels of these problems in
the population? To provide estimates, I con-
sidered three levels of social change. The
fourth column in table 1 provides estimates
of adolescent outcomes if the share of adoles-
cents living with two biological parents were
the same as it was in 1980, the year in which
the share of marriages ending in divorce
reached its peak but before the large increase
in nonmarital births during the 1980s and
early 1990s. The fifth column provides esti-
mates of adolescent outcomes if the share of
adolescents living with continuously married
parents were the same as it was in 1970, the
year just before the massive increase in di-
vorce rates during the 1970s. The final col-
umn provides estimates of adolescent out-
comes if the share of adolescents living with
continuously married parents were the same
as it was in 1960, a period of relative family
stability in the United States.
65
Column four shows that if the share of ado-
lescents living with two biological parents
were the same today as it was in 1980, the
share of adolescents repeating a grade would
fall from 24 percent to about 23 percent.
Similarly, if the share of adolescents living
with two biological parents returned to its
1970 level, the share of adolescents repeating
a grade would fall to about 22 percent. Fi-
nally, if the share of adolescents living with
two biological parents increased to its 1960
level, the share of adolescents repeating a
grade would fall to 21 percent.
How is it that increasing the share of children
growing up with continuously married par-
ents has such a relatively small effect on the
share of children experiencing these prob-
lems? The explanation is that many children
living with continuously married parents also
experience these problems. In general, these
findings, which are likely to disappoint some
readers, are consistent with a broad, sociolog-
ical understanding of human behavior. Most
behaviors are determined by numerous so-
cial, cultural, individual, and biological fac-
tors. No single variable, such as family struc-
ture, has a monolithic effect on childrens
development and behavior. Although increas-
ing the share of children growing up in sta-
ble, two-parent families would lower the inci-
dence of all the problems shown in table 1,
clearly it is not a panacea for the problems
confronting our nations youth.
Individual versus Public Health
Perspectives
Whether one views the estimated changes in
table 1 as small or big depends in large part
on whether one adopts an individual perspec-
tive or a public health perspective. Attempts
during the past twenty years by public health
authorities to address cholesterol-related
health problems help to illustrate this distinc-
VOL . 15 / NO. 2 / FAL L 2005 87
00624
tion. Many epidemiological and clinical stud-
ies have shown that a high level of blood cho-
lesterol is a risk factor for cardiovascular dis-
ease. How large is the estimated effect of
cholesterol on cardiovascular disease? Con-
sider a group of male nonsmokers age fifty
with normal blood pressure. Men in this
group with high total cholesterol (defined as
250 mg/dL) have a 7 percent chance of suf-
fering a heart attack during the next decade.
In comparison, men in this group with low
total cholesterol (defined as 190 mg/dL) have
only a 4 percent chance. In other words, de-
creasing total cholesterol from a dangerous
level to a safe level would lower the risk of
having a heart attack for men in this group by
3 percentage points. Based on projections
like these, public health authorities have en-
couraged people with high cholesterol to
lower their cholesterol by eating fewer foods
high in saturated fat and cholesterol, losing
weight, and exercising more often. Physicians
often recommend supplementing these
lifestyle changes with cholesterol-lowering
medications, such as statin drugs.
66
Seen from a different perspective, however,
93 percent of men age fifty with high total
cholesterol will not suffer a heart attack in
the next decade. There are only 7 chances in
100 that a particular man will have a heart at-
tack, and even if he lowers his cholesterol, he
still has 4 chances in 100 of suffering a heart
attack. In other words, all the required
changes in lifestyle, plus the use of medica-
tions, will lower his chances of a heart attack
by only 3 chances out of 100. An individual
man with high cholesterol, therefore, may
well wonder if is worth the effort to change
his lifestyle and take medication. At the pop-
ulation level, however, with more than 9 mil-
lion men in the United States in their early
fifties, a 3 percentage point reduction in
heart attacks would be seen as a major public
health achievement, because it would mean a
quarter of a million fewer heart attacks in this
group over a decade.
67
The cholesterol example is relevant to under-
standing the effects of growing up without
both parents in the household. The increase
in the risk of cardiovascular disease associ-
ated with high blood cholesterol is compara-
ble in many respects to the increase in the
risk of behavioral, emotional, and academic
problems associated with growing up in a sin-
gle-parent household. For example, the in-
crease in heart attacks associated with high
blood cholesterol represents a 75 percent in-
crease in risk([7 4]/4) x 100a figure
comparable to the increased risk associated
with single parenthood and repeating a
grade, being suspended from school, receiv-
ing therapy, or attempting suicide. Adopting
a public health view and considering the
number rather than the percentage of adoles-
cents who might be affected helps put these
findings in perspective.
In 2002 there were about 29 million children
in the United States between the ages of
twelve and eighteenthe age range covered
in table 1.
68
Table 2 indicates that nearly 7
million children in this age group will have
repeated a grade. Increasing the share of
adolescents living with two biological parents
to the 1980 level, as illustrated in the second
column of the table, suggests that some
300,000 fewer children would repeat a grade.
Correspondingly, increasing the share of ado-
lescents living with two biological parents to
the 1970 level, as illustrated in the third col-
umn, would mean that 643,264 fewer chil-
dren would repeat a grade. Finally, increasing
the share of adolescents in two-parent fami-
lies to the 1960 level suggests that nearly
three-quarters of a million fewer children
would repeat a grade. Similarly, increasing
Pa ul R. Ama t o
00625
marital stability to its 1980 level would result
in nearly half a million fewer children sus-
pended from school, about 200,000 fewer
children engaging in delinquency or violence,
a quarter of a million fewer children receiv-
ing therapy, about a quarter of a million
fewer smokers, about 80,000 fewer children
thinking about suicide, and about 28,000
fewer children attempting suicide. Seen from
this perspective, restoring family stability to
levels of a few decades ago could dramati-
cally affect the lives of many children. More-
over, although the estimated decline in the
share of children encountering these prob-
lems in table 1 is modest, increasing the
number of children growing up with both
parents would simultaneously improve all
these outcomes, as well as many other out-
comes not considered in these tables.
General Conclusion
My goal in this paper has been to inform the
marriage debate by addressing three funda-
mental questions. First, how do children in
households with only one biological parent
differ from children in households with both
biological parents, in terms of their cognitive,
social, and emotional well-being? Research
clearly demonstrates that children growing
up with two continuously married parents are
less likely than other children to experience a
wide range of cognitive, emotional, and social
problems, not only during childhood, but also
in adulthood. Although it is not possible to
demonstrate that family structure is the
cause of these differences, studies that have
used a variety of sophisticated statistical
methods, including controls for genetic fac-
tors, suggest that this is the case. This distinc-
tion is even stronger if we focus on children
growing up with two happily married biolog-
ical parents.
Second, what accounts for the observed dif-
ferences between these two groups of chil-
dren? Compared with other children, those
who grow up in stable, two-parent families
have a higher standard of living, receive more
effective parenting, experience more cooper-
ative co-parenting, are emotionally closer to
both parents (especially fathers), and are sub-
jected to fewer stressful events and circum-
stances.
And third, how might current policies to
strengthen marriage, decrease the rate of di-
vorce, and lower nonmarital fertility affect
the overall well-being of American children?
VOL . 15 / NO. 2 / FAL L 2005 89
Table 2. Well-Being of Adolescents Aged Twelve to Eighteen, 2002 Estimates
Estimated change based on two-parent families in
Problem 2002 estimate 1980 1970 1960
Repeated grade 6,948,530 299,968 643,264 746,587
Suspended from school 8,570,096 485,165 1,040,410 1,207,523
Delinquency 11,632,086 216,498 464,269 538,841
Violence 11,490,072 211,282 453,082 525,857
Therapy 3,412,678 247,799 531,392 616,745
Smoked in last month 5,083,513 239,974 514,611 597,269
Thought of suicide 3,692,358 83,469 178,995 207,746
Attempted suicide 636,164 28,693 61,530 71,413
Source: Authors estimates based on data from the National Study of Adolescent Health, 1995. See text for details.
00626
The projections in tables 1 and 2 suggest that
increasing the share of children who grow up
with continuously married parents would
improve the overall well-being of U.S. chil-
dren only modestly. The improvements are
relatively small because problems such as
being suspended from school, engaging in
delinquent behavior, and attempting suicide
have many causes, with family structure
being but one.
What are the policy implications of these
findings? First, interventions that increase
the share of children growing up with two
continuously married biological parents will
have modest effects on the percentage of
U.S. children experiencing various problems,
but could have substantial effects on the
number of children experiencing them. From
a public health perspective, even a modest
decline in percentages, when multiplied by
the large number of children in the popula-
tion, represents a substantial social benefit.
That children living in stepfamilies do not
tend to have better outcomes, on average,
than children growing up in single-parent
families suggests that interventions to
strengthen marital quality and stability would
be most profitable if focused on parents in
first marriages. Similarly, interventions to
strengthen relationships and encourage mar-
riage among cohabiting couples with children
would be most profitable if focused on cou-
ples with a first child, rather than couples
with children from prior relationships.
U.S. policymakers also should acknowledge
that returning to substantially lower rates of
divorce and nonmarital childbearing, al-
though a worthwhile goal, is not realistic, at
least in the short term. Although policy inter-
ventions may lower the rate of divorce and
nonmarital childbearing, many children will
continue to grow up with a single parent.
This stubborn fact means that policies for im-
proving childrens well-being cannot focus
exclusively on promoting marriage and
strengthening marital stability. These policies
must be supplemented by others that im-
prove economic well-being, strengthen par-
ent-child bonds, and ease the stress experi-
enced by children in single-parent and
stepparent households. Such programs would
provide parent education classes for divorc-
ing parents, increase the minimum wage and
the earned income tax credit for poor work-
ing parents, establish paternity and increase
the payment of child support, and improve
the quantity and quality of time that nonresi-
dent parents, especially fathers, spend with
their children.
The importance of increasing the number of
children growing up with two happily and
continuously married parents and of improv-
ing the well-being of children now living in
other family structures is self-evident. Chil-
dren are the innocent victims of their par-
ents inability to maintain harmonious and
stable homes. The importance of effective
policies will become even clearer in the near
future, as the baby boom generation reaches
retirement age. As this happens, our society
will become increasingly dependent on the
emotional functioning, economic productiv-
ity, and leadership of a declining number of
young adults. Although it is a clich to say
that children are the future, it has never been
as true as it is today.
Pa ul R. Ama t o
00627
Endnotes
1. For examples, see Sheldon Glueck and Eleanor Glueck, Family Environment and Delinquency (Boston:
Houghton Mifflin, 1962); J. F. McDermott, Divorce and Its Psychiatric Sequelae in Children, Archives of
General Psychiatry 23 (1970): 42127.
2. Judith S. Wallerstein and Joan B. Kelly, Surviving the Breakup: How Children and Parents Cope with Di-
vorce (New York: Basic Books, 1980).
3. E. Mavis Hetherington, Divorce: A Childs Perspective, American Psychologist 34 (1979): 85158; E.
Mavis Hetherington, Martha Cox, and R. Cox, Effects of Divorce on Parents and Children, in Nontradi-
tional Families, edited by Michael Lamb (Hillsdale, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum, 1982), pp. 23388.
4. The effect size for a study is defined as the standardized mean difference on some outcome between two
groups of interest, that is, (
x
1
x
2
)/S
pooled
. For information on meta-analysis, see Harris M. Cooper and
Larry V. Hedges, eds., The Handbook of Research Synthesis (New York: Russell Sage, 1994).
5. Paul R. Amato and Bruce Keith, Consequences of Parental Divorce for Childrens Well-Being: A Meta-
Analysis, Psychological Bulletin 10 (1991): 2646.
6. Paul R. Amato, Children of Divorce in the 1990s: An Update of the Amato and Keith (1991) Meta-
Analysis, Journal of Family Psychology 15 (2001): 35570.
7. Paul R. Amato and Alan Booth, A Generation at Risk: Growing Up in an Era of Family Upheaval (Harvard
University Press, 1997); Paul R. Amato and Juliana M. Sobolewski, The Effects of Divorce and Marital
Discord on Adult Childrens Psychological Well-Being, American Sociological Review 66 (2001): 90021;
William S. Aquilino, Impact of Childhood Family Disruption on Young Adults Relationships with Par-
ents, Journal of Marriage and the Family 56 (1994): 295313; Alan Booth and Paul R. Amato, Parental
Predivorce Relations and Offspring Postdivorce Well-Being, Journal of Marriage and the Family 63
(2001): 197212; Larry L. Bumpass, Theresa C. Martin, and James A. Sweet, The Impact of Family Back-
ground and Early Marital Factors on Marital Disruption, Journal of Family Issues 12 (1991): 2242; An-
drew J. Cherlin, P. Lindsay Chase-Lansdale, and Christine McRae, Effects of Divorce on Mental Health
throughout the Life Course, American Sociological Review 63 (1998): 23949; Sara McLanahan and Gary
Sandefur, Growing Up with a Single Parent: What Hurts, What Helps (Harvard University Press, 1994);
Lawrence L. Wu and B. C. Martinson, Family Structure and the Risk of a Premarital Birth, American So-
ciological Review 58 (1993): 21032.
8. McLanahan and Sandefur, Growing Up with a Single Parent (see note 7); Paul R. Amato, Parental Ab-
sence during Childhood and Adult Depression, Sociological Quarterly 32 (1991): 54356; Paul R. Amato
and Bruce Keith, Separation from a Parent during Childhood and Adult Socioeconomic Attainment, So-
cial Forces 70 (1991): 187206; William Aquilino, The Life Course of Children Born to Unmarried Moth-
ers: Childhood Living Arrangements and Young Adult Outcomes, Journal of Marriage and the Family 58
(1996): 293310; Robert Haveman, Barbara Wolf, and Karen Pence, Intergenerational Effects of Non-
marital and Early Childbearing, in Out of Wedlock: Causes and Consequences of Nonmarital Fertility, ed-
ited by Lawrence L. Wu and Barbara Wolfe (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2001), pp. 287316; Jay
D. Teachman, Childhood Living Arrangements and the Intergenerational Transmission of Divorce, Jour-
nal of Marriage and Family 64 (2002): 71729; Jay D. Teachman, The Childhood Living Arrangements of
Children and the Characteristics of Their Marriages, Journal of Family Issues 25 (2004): 8696.
VOL . 15 / NO. 2 / FAL L 2005 91
00628
9. McLanahan and Sandefur, Growing Up with a Single Parent (see note 7).
10. Amato, Parental Absence during Childhood and Adult Depression (see note 8); Amato and Keith Sepa-
ration from a Parent (see note 8); Teachman, Childhood Living Arrangements (see note 8).
11. Larry L. Bumpass and Hsien-Hen Lu, Trends in Cohabitation and Implications for Childrens Family
Contexts in the United States, Population Studies 54 (2000): 2941; Sara McLanahan and others, Unwed
Parents or Fragile Families? Implications for Welfare and Child Support Policy, in Out of Wedlock:
Causes and Consequences of Nonmarital Fertility, edited by Lawrence L. Wu and Barbara Wolfe (New
York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2001), pp. 20228.
12. Susan Brown, The Effect of Union Type on Psychological Well-Being: Depression among Cohabitors ver-
sus Marrieds, Journal of Health and Social Behavior 41 (2000): 24155; Susan Brown and Alan Booth,
Cohabitation versus Marriage: A Comparison of Relationship Quality, Journal of Marriage and the Fam-
ily 58 (1996): 66878; Judith Seltzer, Families Formed outside of Marriage, Journal of Marriage and the
Family 62 (2000): 124768.
13. Susan Brown, Family Structure and Child Well-Being: The Significance of Parental Cohabitation, Jour-
nal of Marriage and the Family 66 (2004): 35167. For a general review of this literature, see Wendy Man-
ning, The Implications of Cohabitation for Childrens Well-Being, in Just Living Together: Implications of
Cohabitation for Families, Children, and Social Policy, edited by Alan Booth and Ann Crouter (Mahwah,
N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2002), pp. 21152.
14. Nancy S. Landale and Susan M. Hauan, The Family Life Course of Puerto Rican Children, Journal of
Marriage and the Family 54 (1992): 91224; Wendy Manning, Pamela Smock, and Debarun Majumdar,
The Relative Stability of Marital and Cohabiting Unions for Children, Population Research and Policy
Review 23 (2004): 13559.
15. M. Carlson, Sara McLanahan, and Paula England, Union Formation and Dissolution in Fragile Families,
Fragile Families Research Brief, no. 4 (Bendheim-Thoman Center for Research on Child Wellbeing,
Princeton University, January 2003); see also Sara McLanahan, Diverging Destinies: How Children Are
Faring under the Second Demographic Transition, Demography 41 (2004): 60627.
16. Lawrence L. Wu, Larry L. Bumpass, and Kelly Musick, Historical and Life Course Trajectories of Non-
marital Childbearing, in Out of Wedlock: Causes and Consequences of Nonmarital Fertility, edited by
Lawrence L. Wu and Barbara Wolfe (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2001), pp. 348.
17. Brown, Family Structure and Child Well-Being (see note 13).
18. The Add Health study was designed by J. Richard Udry, Peter S. Bearman, and Kathleen Mullan Harris
and funded by grant R01-HD31921 from the NICHD, with cooperative funding from seventeen other
agencies. Ronald R. Rindfuss and Barbara Entwisle provided assistance in the original study design. The
analysis was conducted for this paper.
19. Amato and Keith, Consequences of Parental Divorce (see note 5).
21. Amato and Keith, Separation from a Parent (see note 8).
Pa ul R. Ama t o
00629
22. Amato, Parental Absence (see note 8).
23. David Mechanic and Stephen Hansell, Divorce, Family Conflict, and Adolescents Well-Being, Journal
of Health and Social Behavior 30 (1989): 10516; James L. Peterson and Nichola Zill, Marital Disruption,
Parent-Child Relationships, and Behavior Problems in Children, Journal of Marriage and the Family 49
(1986): 295307.
24. Amato and Booth, A Generation at Risk (see note 7); Booth and Amato, Parental Predivorce Relations
(see note 7); Susan M. Jekielek, Parental Conflict, Marital Disruption and Childrens Emotional Well-
Being, Social Forces 76 (1998): 90535; Thomas L. Hanson, Does Parental Conflict Explain Why Di-
vorce Is Negatively Associated with Child Welfare? Social Forces 77 (1999):1283316.
25. Amato and Booth, A Generation at Risk (see note 7); Booth and Amato, Parental Predivorce Relations
(see note 7); Paul R. Amato, Good Enough Marriages: Parental Discord, Divorce, and Childrens Well-
Being, Virginia Journal of Social Policy and the Law 9 (2002): 7194.
26. Paul R. Amato, The Implications of Research on Children in Stepfamilies, in Stepfamilies: Who Benefits?
Who Does Not? edited by Alan Booth and Judy Dunn (Hillsdale, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum, 1994); E. Mavis
Hetherington and W. Glenn Clingempeel, Coping with Marital Transitions, Monographs of the Society for
Research in Child Development, vol. 57, nos. 23 (University of Chicago Press, 1992); E. Mavis Hethering-
ton and K. M. Jodl, Stepfamilies as Settings for Child Development, in Stepfamilies: Who Benefits? Who
Does Not? edited by Alan Booth and Judy Dunn (Hillsdale, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum, 1994), pp. 5579.
27. For a discussion of how stepchildren view stepparents, see E. Mavis Hetherington and John Kelly, For Bet-
ter or for Worse: Divorce Reconsidered (New York: Norton, 2002).
28. Martin Daly and Margo Wilson, Child Abuse and Other Risks of Not Living with Both Biological Parents,
Ethology and Sociobiology 6 (1985): 197220; Leslie Margolin and John L. Craft, Child Sexual Abuse by
Caretakers, 38 (1989): 45055.
29. Richard Gelles and John W. Harrop, The Risk of Abusive Violence among Children with Nongenetic
Caretakers, Family Relations 40 (1991): 7883.
30. Phyllis Bronstein and others, Fathering after Separation or Divorce: Factors Predicting Childrens Adjust-
ment, Family Relations 43 (1994): 46979; Margaret Crosbie-Burnett and Jean Giles-Sims, Adolescent
Adjustment and Stepparenting Styles, Family Relations 43 (1994): 39499; Lynn White and Joan G.
Gilbreth, When Children Have Two Fathers: Effects of Relationships with Stepfathers and Noncustodial
Fathers on Adolescent Outcomes, Journal of Marriage and Family 63 (2001): 15567.
31. Christine M. Buchanan, Eleanor E. Maccoby, and Sanford M. Dornbusch, Adolescents after Divorce (Har-
vard University Press, 1996).
32. Mignon R. Moore and P. L. Chase-Lansdale, Sexual Intercourse and Pregnancy among African-American
Girls in High-Poverty Neighborhoods: The Role of Family and Perceived Community Environment, Jour-
nal of Marriage and the Family 63 (2001): 114657; Sandi Nelson, Rebecca L. Clark, and Gregory Acs, Be-
yond the Two-Parent Family: How Teenagers Fare in Cohabiting Couple and Blended Families, series B,
no. B-31 (Washington: Urban Institute, 2001).
33. Brown, The Effect of Union Type (see note 12).
VOL . 15 / NO. 2 / FAL L 2005 93
00630
34. Hetherington, Cox, and Cox, Effects of Divorce (see note 3).
35. Amato and Keith, Consequences of Parental Divorce (see note 5).
36. Amato, Children of Divorce (see note 6).
37. E. Mavis Hetherington, K. A. Camara, and David L. Featherman, Achievement and Intellectual Func-
tioning of Children in One-Parent Households, in Achievement and Achievement Motives, edited by J. T.
Spence (San Francisco: W. H. Freeman, 1983).
38. Amato and Keith, Separation from a Parent (see note 8).
40. Amato, Parental Absence (see note 8).
42. Moore and Chase-Lansdale, Sexual Intercourse and Pregnancy (see note 32).
43. Nelson, Clark, and Acs, Beyond the Two-Parent Family (see note 32).
44. McLanahan and Sandefur, Growing Up with a Single Parent (see note 7); Robert H. Aseltine, Pathways
Linking Parental Divorce with Adolescent Depression, Journal of Health and Social Behavior 37 (1996):
13348; Donna R. Morrison and Andrew J. Cherlin, The Divorce Process and Young Childrens Well-
Being: A Prospective Analysis, Journal of Marriage and the Family 57 (1995): 80012; Ronald L. Simons
and Associates, Understanding Differences between Divorced and Intact Families (Thousand Oaks, Calif.:
Sage, 1996).
45. Valarie King, Nonresident Father Involvement and Child Well-Being: Can Dads Make a Difference?
Journal of Family Issues 15 (1994): 7896; Sara McLanahan and others, Child Support Enforcement and
Child Well-Being: Greater Security or Greater Conflict? in Child Support and Child Well-Being, edited
by Irwin Garfinkel, Sara McLanahan, and Philip K. Robins (Washington: Urban Institute Press, 1996), pp.
23956.
46. Hetherington and Clingempeel, Coping with Marital Transitions (see note 26); Simons and Associates,
Understanding Differences (see note 44); Nan Astone and Sara S. McLanahan, Family Structure, Parental
Practices, and High School Completion, American Sociological Review 56 (1991): 30920; Elizabeth
Thomson and others, Family Structure, Gender, and Parental Socialization, Journal of Marriage and the
Family 54 (1992): 36878.
47. McLanahan and Sandefur, Growing Up with a Single Parent (see note 7); Hetherington and Clingempeel,
Coping with Marital Transition (see note 26); Buchanan, Maccoby, and Dornbusch, Adolescents after Di-
vorce (see note 31); Simons and Associates, Understanding Differences (see note 44).
48. Paul R. Amato and Joan Gilbreth, Nonresident Fathers and Childrens Well-Being: A Meta-Analysis,
Journal of Marriage and the Family 61 (1999): 55773.
49. Paul R. Amato and Juliana Sobolewski, The Effects of Divorce on Fathers and Children: Nonresidential
Fathers and Stepfathers, in The Role of the Father in Child Development, edited by Michael Lamb, 4th
ed. (Hillsdale, N.J.: Erlbaum, 2003), pp. 34167.
Pa ul R. Ama t o
00631
50. W. V. Fabricius, Listening to Children of Divorce: New Findings that Diverge from Wallerstein, Lewis,
and Blakeslee, Family Relations 52 (2003): 38594.
51. Frank F. Furstenberg and Andrew Cherlin, Divided Families: What Happens to Children When Parents
Part (Harvard University Press, 1991).
52. L. I. Pearlin and others, The Stress Process, Journal of Health and Social Behavior 22 (1981): 33756;
Peggy A. Thoits, Stress, Coping, and Social Support Processes: Where Are We? What Next? Journal of
Health and Social Behavior, extra issue (1995): 5379.
53. Buchanan, Maccoby, and Dornbusch, Adolescents after Divorce (see note 31); Jeanne M. Tschann and oth-
ers, Conflict, Loss, Change and Parent-Child Relationships: Predicting Childrens Adjustment during Di-
vorce, Journal of Divorce and Remarriage 13 (1999): 122; Elizabeth A. Vandewater and Jennifer E. Lans-
ford, Influences of Family Structure and Parental Conflict on Childrens Well-Being, Family Relations 47
(1998): 32330.
54. Buchanan, Maccoby, and Dornbusch, Adolescents after Divorce (see note 31).
55. Patrick T. Davies and E. Mark Cummings, Marital Conflict and Child Adjustment: An Emotional Security
Hypothesis, Psychological Bulletin 116 (1994): 387411.
56. McLanahan and Sandefur, Growing Up with a Single Parent (see note 7); Aseltine, Pathways (see note
44); Simons and Associates, Understanding Differences (see note 44); Buchanan, Maccoby, and Dorn-
busch, Adolescents after Divorce (see note 31); Michael S. Ellwood and Arnold L. Stolberg, The Effects of
Family Composition, Family Health, Parenting Behavior and Environmental Stress on Childrens Divorce
Adjustment, Journal of Child and Family Studies 2 (1993): 2336; Irwin Sandler and others, Stability and
Quality of Life Events and Psychological Symptomatology in Children of Divorce, American Journal of
Community Psychology 19 (1991): 50120; Jay D. Teachman, Kathleen Paasch, and Karen Carver, Social
Capital and Dropping Out of School Early, Journal of Marriage and the Family 58 (1996): 77383.
57. Wu and Martinson, Family Structure (see note 7); Paul R. Amato, Reconciling Divergent Perspectives:
Judith Wallerstein, Quantitative Family Research, and Children of Divorce, Family Relations 52 (2003):
33239; Bryan Rodgers and Jan Pryor, Divorce and Separation: The Outcomes for Children (York, Eng-
land: Joseph Rowntree Foundation, 1998).
58. M. McGue and D. T. Lykken, Genetic Influence on Risk of Divorce, Psychological Science 3 (1992):
36873; V. Jockin, M. McGue, and D. T. Lykken, Personality and Divorce: A Genetic Analysis, Journal of
Personality and Social Psychology 71 (1996): 28899. For a strong statement of this position, see Judith
Harris, The Nurture Assumption: Why Children Turn Out the Way They Do (New York: Touchstone,
1999).
59. Simons and Associates, Understanding Differences (see note 44); Amato, Reconciling Divergent Perspec-
tives (see note 57).
60. See note 7. Cherlin and others used a fixed-effects model, which eliminates all unmeasured variables that
do not change over time. McLanahan and Sandefur relied on biprobit analysis, a method that makes it pos-
sible to correlate error terms across equations, which is equivalent to adjusting for unmeasured variables
that could affect family structure as well as childrens outcomes.
VOL . 15 / NO. 2 / FAL L 2005 95
00632
61. David Brodzinsky, Jennifer C. Hitt, and Daniel Smith, Impact of Parental Separation and Divorce on
Adopted and Nonadopted Children, American Journal of Orthopsychiatry 63 (1993): 45161; Thomas G.
OConnor and others, Are Associations between Parental Divorce and Childrens Adjustment Genetically
Mediated? An Adoption Study, Developmental Psychology 36 (2000): 42937.
62. K. S. Kendler and others, Childhood Parental Loss and Adult Psychopathology in Women, Archives of
General Psychiatry 49 (1992): 10916.
63. In this analysis, I considered adoptive parents to be the same as biological parents. The one parent cate-
gory includes adolescents living with one biological parent and a stepparent (or a cohabiting partner of the
parent). This category also includes a small percentage of children living with neither parent at the time of
the interview. I used logistic regression analysis to adjust the percentages in table 1 for variables that could
be associated with family structure as well as child outcomes: mothers education, fathers education, childs
race (white, black, Latino, or other), childs age, childs gender, and whether the child was born in the
United States. All of the differences reported in table 1 were statistically significant at p < .01.
64. The margin of error for these estimates, based on a 95 percent confidence interval, is about 1 percent.
65. To estimate the percentage of adolescents between the ages of thirteen and eighteen living with two bio-
logical parents in 1980, 1970, and 1960, I relied on retrospective data from the 1988 wave of the National
Survey of Families and Households. The resulting figures are 64 percent, 74 percent, and 77 percent, re-
spectively. The margin of error for these estimates, based on a 95 percent confidence interval, is about 2
percent. For details on the National Survey of Families and Households, see James Sweet, Larry Bumpass,
and Vaughn Call, The Design and Content of the National Survey of Families and Households, NSFH
Working Paper 1 (Center for Demography and Ecology, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1988). These
estimates should not be equated with levels of program effectiveness, because it is naive to assume that
specific, short-term interventions could reverse family trends so strongly. It is possible, however, that a
range of interventions, combined with a shift in the larger culture, could result in substantial changes in
family structure over a decade or longer. Moreover, the figures used in table 1 are not completely unrealis-
tic, because they correspond to levels of family stability that actually existed in recent U.S. history. Note
also that these estimates are based only on changes in family structure and assume no changes in marital
quality in two-parent families. If future policies also are capable of improving the quality of existing mar-
riages, then the figures in tables 1 and 2 are underestimates of the total benefit to children.
66. The National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, High Blood Cholesterol: What You Need to Know, NIH
Publication 01-3290 (May 2001). See also F. B. Hu, J. E. Manson, and W. C. Willett, Types of Dietary Fat
and Risk of Coronary Heart Disease: A Critical Review, Journal of the American College of Nutrition 20
(2001): 519; S. Lewington and S. MacMahon, Blood Pressure, Cholesterol, and Common Causes of
Death: A Review, American Journal of Hypertension 12 (1999): 96S98S.
67. The estimates for ten-year risk of a heart attack vary with age and gender. The link between cholesterol and
cardiovascular disease is stronger for men than for women, and stronger for older individuals than for
younger individuals. The margin of error for these estimates, based on a 95 percent confidence interval, is
about 1 percent.
68. U.S. Bureau of the Census, Statistical Abstract of the United States (Government Printing Office, 2003),
table 11.
Pa ul R. Ama t o
00633


/s/W. Scott Zanzig
W. SCOTT ZANZIG

Case Nos. 14-35420 & 14-35421


vs.
and
STATE OF IDAHO,

D.C. No. 1:13-cv-00482-CWD

APPELLANTS EXCERPTS OF RECORD, VOL. IV

LAWRENCE G. WASDEN
ATTORNEY GENERAL
STEVEN L. OLSEN
Telephone: (208) 334-2400
Fax: (208) 854-8073
J une 19, 2014
TABLE OF CONTENTS
VOLUME I

DOCUMENTS
DOCKET
NUMBER
EXCERPT
PAGE
VOLUME II

DOCUMENTS
DOCKET
NUMBER
EXCERPT
PAGE
104 00061-00063
J udgment 101 00067-00068
81-2 00069-00072
81-1 00073-00207
Lamb
76-2 00208-00218
Summary J udgment
76-1 00219-00222
74 00223-00225

J udgment (Dkt. 45)
73-1 00226-00228
60 00229-00335
Material Facts
57-1 00336-00343
J udgment
57 00344-00345
VOLUME III

DOCUMENTS
DOCKET
NUMBER
EXCERPT
PAGE
46 00496-00510
43 00516-00518
Injunctive Relief
42 00519-00548
(2008)
30-10 00559-00603
No. 2 (Fall 2005)
30-8 00611-00633
VOLUME IV

DOCUMENTS
DOCKET
NUMBER
EXCERPT
PAGE
30-7 00634-00643
30-6 00644-00692
Statistics Reports
30-5 00693-00713
30-4 00714-00715
2010 Census Briefs
30-2 & 30-
3
00716-00738


ATTACHMENT E

W. Kristen Anderson Moore et al., Marriage
from a Childs Perspective: How Does Family
Structure Affect Children, and What Can We
Do About It?
Child Research Brief (June 2002)
00634

Note: This Child Trends brief summarizes research conducted
in 2002, when neither same-sex parents nor adoptive parents
were identified in large national surveys. Therefore, no
conclusions can be drawn from this research about the well-
being of children raised by same-sex parents or adoptive
parents.

Carol Emig Kristin A. Moore, Ph.D.
President Senior Scholar
Child Trends Child Trends

00635
Marriage from a Childs Perspective: How Does Family Structure
Affect Children, and What Can We Do about It?
By Kristin Anderson Moore, Ph.D., Susan M. Jekielek, M.A., and Carol Emig, M.P.P. June 2002
O
verview Policies and proposals to promote marriage have been in the public eye for several years,
driven by concern over the large percentages of American children growing up with just one parent.
The Bush Administration has proposed improving childrens well-being as the overarching purpose of
welfare reform, and its marriage initiative is one of its chief strategies for doing so. In this context,
what does research tell us about the effects of family structure and especially of growing up with two
married parents on children?
This brief reviews the research evidence on the effects of family structure on children, as well as key
trends in family structure over the last few decades. An extensive body of research tells us that children
do best when they grow up with both biological parents in a low-conflict marriage. At the same time,
research on how to promote strong, low-conflict marriages is thin at best. This brief also discusses
promising strategies for reducing births outside of marriage and promoting strong, stable marriages.
This brief is one of a series prepared by
researchers at Child Trends to help inform
the public debate surrounding this years
reauthorization of the Temporary Assistance
for Needy Families (TANF) block grant, the
centerpiece of the 1996 welfare law.
Family Structure and
Child Well-Being
Research findings linking family structure and
parents marital status with childrens well-being
are very consistent. The majority of children who
are not raised by both biological parents manage to
grow up without serious problems, especially after
a period of adjustment for children whose parents
divorce.
1
Yet, on average, children in single-parent
families are more likely to have problems than are
children who live in intact families headed by two
biological parents.
Children born to unmarried mothers are more
likely to be poor, to grow up in a single-parent
family, and to experience multiple living
arrangements during childhood. These factors,
in turn, are associated with lower educational
attainment and a higher risk of teen and
nonmarital childbearing.
2
Divorce is linked to academic and behavior
problems among children, including depression,
antisocial behavior, impulsive/hyperactive
behavior, and school behavior problems.
3
Men-
tal health problems linked to marital disruption
have also been identified among young adults.
4
Children growing up with stepparents also have
lower levels of well-being than children growing
up with biological parents.
5
Thus, it is
not simply the presence of two parents, as
some have assumed, but the presence of
4301 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 100, Washington, DC 20008
Phone 202-362-5580 Fax 202-362-5533 www.childtrends.org
RESEARCH BRIEF
00636
two biological parents that seems to support
childrens development.
Of course, the quality of a marriage also affects
children. Specifically, children benefit from a
low-conflict marriage. Children who grow up in
an intact but high-conflict marriage have worse
emotional well-being than children whose par-
ents are in a low-conflict marriage.
6
Indeed,
domestic violence can be very destructive to
childrens development.
7
Although research is limited, when researchers
have compared marriage to cohabitation, they
have found that marriage is associated with bet-
ter outcomes for children. One reason is that
cohabiting unions are generally more fragile
than marriage. This fragility means that chil-
dren born to unmarried, cohabiting parents are
likely to experience instability in their living
arrangements, and research shows that multiple
changes in family structure or living arrange-
ments
8
can undermine childrens development.
9
Thus research clearly finds that different family
structures can increase or decrease childrens
risk of poor outcomes, for a variety of reasons.
For example, families are more likely to be poor
or low-income if they are headed by a single par-
ent. Beyond this heightened risk of economic
deprivation, the children in these families have
poorer relationships with their parents, particu-
larly with their biological father, and receive
lower levels of parental supervision and monitor-
ing.
10
In addition, the conflict surrounding the
demise and breakup of a marriage or relationship
can be harmful to children.
Trends in Family Structure
and Childrens Living
Arrangements
Given these consequences for children, it is a
source of concern that an increasing percentage
of children have been growing up with just one
parent over recent decades. This circumstance
has occurred for a variety of reasons, including
rising rates of divorce, nonmarital childbearing,
and cohabitation.
Rising divorce rates accounted for the
initial increase in single parenthood dur-
ing the latter half of the twentieth century.
Single-parent families formed by widowhood
were the initial impetus for providing welfare
and Social Security benefits for children in the
1930s. In the 1970s, however, divorce began to
supplant widowhood as the primary cause of sin-
gle-parent families.
11
Divorce rates continued
to increase into the 1970s and early 1980s, before
stabilizing and then declining in the late 1980s
and 1990s.
12
Births to unmarried women increased
steadily during the post-war decades,
accelerating in the 1980s. This trend also
contributed to an increase in single parenthood.
Over the last 40 years, an historic shift occurred
in the percentage of children living with a parent
who has never married. In the early 1960s, less
than 1 percent of children lived with a parent
who had never married. By 2000, nearly one in
ten children lived with a never-married parent.
13
In addition, today nearly one-third of all births
occur to unmarried women (including never-
married, divorced, and widowed women),
accounting for more than a million births
annually.
14
Contrary to popular perceptions, teenagers
account for less than three in ten nonmarital
births, with women in their twenties accounting
for more than half.
15
Moreover, nonmarital
births are not all first births. Only about half of
all nonmarital births in 1998 were first births,
16
and more than one-third of unmarried mothers
already have children by an earlier partner.
17
Recent data indicate that the nonmarital birth
rate stabilized during the late 1990s. While this
development has been hailed as good news, a
closer examination of the data reveals a more
complex picture. The overall decline in the non-
marital birth rate has been driven by declining
2
00637
birth rates among teens. Among women in their
twenties, the nonmarital birth rate continued to
increase in the late 1990s
18
(see Figure 1).
Cohabitation has increased markedly over
the last several decades. An unmarried par-
ent is not necessarily a parent without a partner.
The increase in families headed by a never-married
parent has been driven by a dramatic increase in
cohabiting couples men and women who, while
not legally married, nevertheless live together in a
marriage-like relationship. And many of these
couples have children. The percentage of adults
who have ever cohabited jumped from 33 percent
in 1987 to 45 percent in 1995, for example.
19
The proportion of children living with two
parents declined for several decades but
has recently increased slightly. The per-
centage of children in the United States living
with two parents decreased from about 88
percent in 1960 to 68 percent in 1996
20
(see Figure 2). There is some indication that
this trend might be reversing, as the percentage
of children living with two parents increased
slightly to 69.1 percent by the year 2000, and the
percentage of children living with just one par-
ent decreased from 27.9 percent in 1996 to 26.7
percent in the year 2000.
21
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
c
b
a
1990 1992 1994 1996 1998 2000
Age in Years
15-19 20-24 25-29
B
i
r
t
h
s

p
e
r

1
,
0
0
0

u
n
m
a
r
r
i
e
d

w
o
m
e
n
74.5
62.2
39.6
FI GUR E 1
0
20
40
60
80
100
Living with two parents Living with one parent
1955 1960 1965 1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005
10
30
50
70
90
87.7%(1960)
9.1%(1960)
26.7%(2000)
27.9%(1996)
69.1%(2000)
68.0%(1996)
FI GUR E 2
3
Birth Rates for Unmarried Women by Age of Mother,
Women 15-29 Years Old
Percent of Children under 18 Years Old Living in Two-Parent
and One-Parent Families
Source: Martin, J.A., Hamilton, B.E, Ventura, S.J., Menacker F., & Park M.M. Births: Final Data for 2000, Table18.
National Vital Statistics Reports; Vol. 50, no. 5. Hyattsville, Maryland: National Center for Health Statistics. 2000.
Source: Living Arrangements of Children Under 18 Years Old: 1960 to Present. U.S. Bureau of the Census, online.
Available: http://www.census.gov/population/socdemo/hh-fam/tabCH-1.xls; accessed 01/28/02.
00638
Trend data are less available on whether or not
children in two-parent families are living with
both biological parents or in a stepfamily.
Recent data indicate that slightly less than two-
thirds of all children live with both biological
parents (63.6 percent in 1999, according to data
from the National Survey of Americas Families).
22
Welfare reform is only one factor
that might explain the slight decrease in
the percent of children living with only
one parent. The teen birth rate has been
declining since 1991, when it was at its peak, and
the nonmarital birth rate has been relatively sta-
ble since 1994. Also, low levels of unemployment
and the generally strong economy that charac-
terized much of the late 1990s probably made
many men more attractive marriage partners.
These same factors may have increased womens
economic independence, however, lessening their
financial need to marry. Also, changes in the
Earned Income Tax Credit have increased family
incomes, but the marriage penalty may discour-
age marriage. Rising male incarceration rates
have also been cited as contributing to a dimin-
ished pool of marriageable men.
23
Thus welfare reform is one of many factors that
may be contributing to changes in family struc-
ture, but it is not the only or even the most
important factor. Also, researchers will need to
follow this trend over time to determine whether
this recent, slight decline of children living in
single-parent families will continue.
Promoting Healthy Marriages
and Reducing Nonmarital
Childbearing
While research clearly indicates that children
benefit from growing up with both biological par-
ents in a low-conflict marriage, there has been
very little rigorous research on how to promote
and sustain healthy marriages. This is particu-
larly the case for disadvantaged populations,
such as parents likely to be affected by
welfare reform.
Approximately eight in ten pregnancies to teens
and never-married adults are unintended at the
time of conception,
24
and 63 percent of pregnan-
cies to formerly-married adults are unintend-
ed.
25
Helping couples avoid unintended pregnan-
cies is therefore one logical strategy for
increasing the likelihood that children are born
to two married parents who are ready to assume
the responsibilities of parenthood. However,
while there is a growing knowledge base about
how to discourage teen childbearing, there is
not yet an equivalent body of research about
how to reduce births outside of marriage by
adult partners.
Preventing Teen Pregnancy. Several preg-
nancy prevention programs targeted at teens
have been shown to be effective.
26
While purely
informational sex education does not seem to
change sexual behavior, education about preg-
nancy, contraception, and sexually transmitted
diseases is more effective when it meets certain
criteria: it is focused on specific behaviors; it is
based on theory; it gives a clear message; it pro-
vides basic, accurate information; it includes activ-
ities, participant involvement models, and prac-
tice; it uses a variety of teaching methods; it helps
teens develop communication skills; it uses trained
staff; and it uses approaches appropriate for the
age, culture, and experience of its students.
27
In addition, programs that combine youth devel-
opment and sexuality education, and service
learning approaches that provide a sense of con-
nectedness and positive alternatives such as
the Childrens Aid Society program in New York
City have reduced adolescent sexual activity or
childbearing in a number of sites. A similar
result is associated with two high-quality early
childhood intervention programs, notably the
Abecedarian program, which operated in North
Carolina, and the High/Scope Perry Preschool
Project of Ypsilanti, Michigan.
28
In light of this
evidence and strong public consensus for reduc-
ing teen childbearing, policy attention to such
approaches for preventing teen pregnancy are
likely to be fruitful.
29
4
00639
Preventing Nonmarital Childbearing
among Adults. The majority of births outside
of marriage are to adults ages 20 and over, not
teens. At this point, though, other than provid-
ing contraceptive services, little is known about
how to reduce nonmarital pregnancy among
adults. Accordingly, it seems prudent to conduct
studies of varied approaches to reduce sexual
risk-taking, build relationships, and increase
contraceptive use among couples older than
twenty, as well as among teens.
Helping Unmarried Parents to Marry.
Nearly half of all the births that take place out-
side of marriage occur to cohabiting couples,
30
making them a likely target of opportunity for
marriage promotion efforts. Although many
cohabiting couples have one or more children,
the families they form are often fragile, with less
than half of these relationships lasting five years
or more.
31
Another kind of fragile family struc-
ture is what social scientists call a visiting rela-
tionship.
32
This refers to an unmarried mother
and father who, while not living together, are
romantically involved and have frequent contact.
Analyses of data from the Fragile Families and
Child Wellbeing Study provide insights into both
types of unions.
33
The study follows a group of
approximately 5,000 children born to mostly
unwed parents in urban areas at the turn of the
21st century. Of these children, half were born
to unmarried mothers who were living with the
father at the time of the birth, while another
third were in visiting relationships. In both situ-
ations, most fathers were highly involved during
the pregnancy and around the time of the birth,
and a majority of the couples were optimistic
about a future together.
34
Moreover, the study
found that many unmarried mothers and fathers
hold pro-marriage attitudes and want to marry
the other parent of their newborn children.
35
These insights suggest that unmarried parents
may be most receptive to marriage promotion
efforts immediately around the time of birth.
Successful efforts to increase employment and
education among disadvantaged adults may also
indirectly promote marriage. Non-experimental
analyses of data from the Fragile Families and
Child Wellbeing Study suggest that the ability of
either the mother or the father to get and keep a
job (as indicated by levels of education and
recent work experience) increases the likelihood
that an unmarried couple with a child will
marry. These same analyses also suggest that
the likelihood that a couple will marry decreases
if the mother has a child by a previous partner
36
another reason to discourage teen childbearing.
Eliminating or reversing the tax penalty for
married couples on the Earned Income Tax
Credit and in the income tax code may also
remove a disincentive to marriage.
37
Strengthening Existing Marriages and
Relationships. The research consensus is that
a healthy marriage and not just any
marriage is optimal for child well-being. Mar-
riages that are violent or high conflict are cer-
tainly unhealthy, for both children and
adults.
38
Research provides some guidance on
marital practices that are highly predictive of
divorce, including negative communication pat-
terns such as criticism, defensiveness, contempt,
stonewalling, and rejection of a wifes
influence.
39
At this point, though, researchers are only begin-
ning to understand how to promote strong, sta-
ble marriages. The knowledge gap is particular-
ly acute for highly disadvantaged couples, many
of whom have economic and social as well as
relationship problems. The Becoming a Family
Project is a rare instance of a marriage promo-
tion effort that has been rigorously evaluated
(though not for disadvantaged couples). Couples
were recruited for this project from the San
Francisco Bay Area. Results suggest that a pre-
ventive intervention can both enhance marital
stability and promote child well-being.
40
The
program was designed to support communication
5
00640
between partners as they make the transition to
becoming parents (a period during which marital
satisfaction often declines).
Results of an experimental investigation revealed
that couples who took part in the program reported
less decline in marital satisfaction in the first two
years of parenthood than couples with no interven-
tion. There were no separations or divorces among
the parents participating in the couples groups until
the children were three, whereas 15 percent of the
couples without the intervention had already sepa-
rated or divorced.
41
The longer-term evaluation was
mixed. By the time the children completed kinder-
garten, there was no difference in divorce rate
between the experimental and control groups, but
the intervention participants who had stayed
together maintained their marital satisfaction over
the whole period, while satisfaction of couples in the
control group continued to decline. These results
suggest that the potential positive effects of an early
intervention for partners becoming parents might
be maintained longer with periodic booster
shots.
42
The Prevention and Relationship Enhancement Pro-
gram (PREP) has received considerable attention in
policy circles, in part because it is at the heart of
Oklahomas much-publicized marriage promotion
efforts. PREP is an educational approach available
both to married and unmarried couples that empha-
sizes strategies that help marriages succeed. Non-
experimental studies of PREP suggest that couples
who plan to marry can be recruited to participate in
the program
43
and that such couples who complete
the program can improve their relationship
skills.
44
The National Institute of Mental Health is
currently funding a rigorous, large-scale evaluation
to test the programs effectiveness.
Providing Premarital Counseling. Unmarried
couples with plans to marry may be stronger targets
for strengthening relationships than those without
plans to marry. Compared to unmarried parents
with low expectations of marrying, unmarried par-
ents with a greater likelihood of marrying have
higher levels of agreement in their relationships,
regardless of their living arrangements. Both
groups, however, rate lower on agreement than
married couples. However, couples with plans to
marry are similar to married couples when it comes
to incidents of abuse and levels of supportiveness.
45
Relationship counseling might help couples decide
whether to marry and also help them to strengthen
their relationship. Finally, evidence that unmarried
couples who marry have higher levels of acquired
skills and education suggests that efforts to provide
job training and education for fathers, as well as
mothers, may enhance their marriage prospects.
Implications for Public Policy
Marriage, divorce, and childbearing (particularly
childbearing by teens and unmarried women) are
highly controversial social issues in the nation
today. They are also intensely personal and
profound individual decisions, with the potential to
alter for better or worse the life trajectories of
adults and children. Not surprisingly, then, there is
relatively little societal consensus on the role of
public policy the role of government in
this arena.
At least three conclusions drawn from research may
help shape a productive public dialogue on
these issues.
First, research clearly demonstrates that family
structure matters for children, and the family struc-
ture that helps children the most is a family headed
by two biological parents in a low-conflict marriage.
Children in single-parent families, children born to
unmarried mothers, and children in stepfamilies or
cohabiting relationships face higher risks of poor
outcomes than do children in intact families headed
by two biological parents. Parental divorce is also
linked to a range of poorer academic and behavioral
outcomes among children. There is thus value for
children in promoting strong, stable marriages
between biological parents.
Second, while there may not be societal consensus
on nonmarital childbearing, there is consensus that
childbearing by teens is undesirable for the teen,
for her baby, and for the larger society. There is
also mounting evidence that a variety of programs
and interventions are effective at discouraging teen
6
00641
pregnancy. While specific interventions (such
as sex education, abstinence education, and
the provision of contraceptives) may be con-
troversial, the knowledge that a variety of
effective approaches exist to prevent teen
childbearing should help parents, communi-
ties, and government make progress on this
front. In particular, programs that combine
youth development and sexuality education,
and community service approaches are effec-
tive.
46
Further, evidence indicates that high-
quality early childhood programs can prevent
adolescent childbearing a decade or more
later.
Finally, there is not yet a proven approach for
building strong marriages, particularly for dis-
advantaged unmarried couples only promis-
ing insights from research studies and exist-
ing programs. This is an area in which
carefully designed and rigorously evaluated
demonstration programs could inform both
private decisions and public policies.
Child Trends, founded in 1979, is an independ-
ent, nonpartisan research center dedicated to
improving the lives of children and families by
conducting research and providing science-
based i nf ormat i on t o t he publ i c and
decision-makers.
Child Trends gratefully acknowledges the John
D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation for
support of our Research Brief series, and the
William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and the
David and Lucile Packard Foundation for support
of this brief. Additional support for Child Trends
communications efforts is generously provided
by Annie E. Casey Foundation.
Editor: Harriet J. Scarupa
Research Assistant: Kristy Webber
Endnotes
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Amato, Paul P.R. (2000).
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Terry-Humen, E., Manlove, J., & Moore, K. A. (2001, April).
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Ibid. See also Dupree, A. & Primus, W. (2001). Declining share
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7
00642
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Vandivere, S., Moore, K.A., & Zaslow, M. (2000). Childrens family envi-
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U.S. Census Bureau (2000). Statistical Abstract of the United States.
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Henshaw, S. (1998).
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Kirby, D. (2001a).
28
Kirby, D. (2001b). Understanding what works and what doesnt in
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Sawhill, I. (2002). Testimony before the Subcommittee on Human
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30
Bumpass & Lu (2000).
31
Bumpass & Lu (2000).
32
McLanahan, S., Garfinkel, I., & Mincy, R.B. (2001). Fragile families,
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33
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McLanahan, S., Garfinkel, I., & Mincy, R.B. (2001).
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Osborne, C. (2002).
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Child Trends (2002, May). Preventing teenage pregnancy, childbearing,
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2002 Child Trends
4 3 0 1 C o n n e c t i c u t A v e n u e , N W , S u i t e 1 0 0
W a s h i n g t o n , D C 2 0 0 0 8
R E T U R N P O S T A G E G U A R A N T E E D
N O N P R O F I T
U . S . P O S T A G E
P A I D
P e r m i t N o . 1 8 9 7
W a s h i n g t o n , D . C .
00643

ATTACHMENT D

W. Bradford Wilson et al., Why Marriage
Matters: Thirty Conclusions from Social
Sciences (3d ed. 2011)
00644
Why Marriage Matters, Third Edition
Thirty Conclusions from the Social Sciences
National Marriage Project
A Report from Family Scholars
00645
T
HIS STATEMENT comes from a team of family scholars chaired by
W. Bradford Wilcox of the University of Virginia. The state-
ment is sponsored by the Center for Marriage and Families at
the Institute for American Values and the National Marriage Project at
the University of Virginia. The sponsors are grateful to The Lynde and
Harry Bradley Foundation, The William H. Donner Foundation, and
Fieldstead and Company for their generous support.
On the cover: Woman Writing List That
Binds Two Hearts by Bonnie Timmons.
Bonnie Timmons/The Image Bank/
Getty Images.
2011, Institute for American Values.
No reproduction of the materials con-
tained herein is permitted without the
written permission of the Institute for
American Values.
First edition published 2002. Second edi-
tion 2005. Third edition published 2011.
ISBN #978-1-931764-24-7
New York, NY 10023
Tel: (212) 246-3942
Fax: (212) 541-6665
Website: www.americanvalues.org
00646
Table of Contents
The Authors.............................................................................................
Introduction.............................................................................................
Five New Themes.............................................................................
A Word about Selection Effects........................................................
Our Fundamental Conclusions........................................................
The Thirty Conclusions: A Snapshot......................................................
The Thirty Conclusions...........................................................................
Family................................................................................................
Economics.........................................................................................
Physical Health and Longevity.........................................................
Mental Health and Emotional Well-Being........................................
Crime and Domestic Violence..........................................................
Conclusion...............................................................................................
Appendix: Figures...................................................................................
Endnotes..................................................................................................
4
6
7
9
11
12
14
14
23
28
33
37
42
44
47
00647
Page 4
The Authors
W. BRADFORD WILCOX is associate professor of sociology and director of
the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia.
JARED R. ANDERSON is assistant professor of marriage and family therapy
at Kansas State University.
WILLIAM DOHERTY is professor of family social science and director of
the Citizen Professional Center at the University of Minnesota.
DAVID EGGEBEEN is associate professor of human development and soci-
ology at Pennsylvania State University.
CHRISTOPHER G. ELLISON is the Deans Distinguished Professor of Social
Science at the University of Texas at San Antonio.
WILLIAM GALSTON is Ezra K. Zilkha Chair and Senior Fellow in
Governance Studies at the Brookings Institution.
NEIL GILBERT is Chernin Professor of Social Welfare and co-director of
the Center for Child and Youth Policy at the University of California at
Berkeley.
JOHN GOTTMAN is professor emeritus of psychology at the University of
Washington.
RON HASKINS is a senior fellow in the Economic Studies Program and co-
director of the Center on Children and Families at the Brookings
Institution, and a senior consultant at the Annie E. Casey Foundation.
00648
Page 5
ROBERT I. LERMAN is an institute fellow at the Urban Institute and pro-
fessor of economics at American University.
LINDA MALONE-COLN is chair of the Department of Psychology and
executive director of the National Center on African American Marriages
and Parenting at Hampton University.
LOREN MARKS holds the Kathryn Norwood and Claude Fussell Alumni
Professorship and is associate professor of family studies at Louisiana
State University.
ROB PALKOVITZ is professor of human development and family studies
at the University of Delaware.
DAVID POPENOE is professor emeritus of sociology at Rutgers
University.
MARK D. REGNERUS is associate professor of sociology at the University
of Texas at Austin.
SCOTT STANLEY is a research professor and co-director of the Center for
Marital and Family Studies at the University of Denver.
LINDA WAITE is the Lucy Flower Professor of Sociology at the University
of Chicago.
JUDITH WALLERSTEIN is senior lecturer emerita at the School of Social
Welfare at the University of California at Berkeley.
00649
Page 6
I
N THE LATTER HALF OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY, divorce posed the
biggest threat to marriage in the United States. Clinical, academic,
and popular accounts addressing recent family changefrom Judith
Wallersteins landmark book, The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce, to Sara
McLanahan and Gary Sandefurs award-winning book, Growing Up with
a Single Parent, to Barbara Dafoe Whiteheads attention-getting Atlantic
article, Dan Quayle Was Rightfocused largely on the impact that
divorce had upon children, and rightly so. In the wake of the divorce
revolution of the 1970s, divorce was the event most likely to undercut
the quality and stability of childrens family lives in the second half of
the twentieth century.
No more. In fact, as divorce rates have come down since peaking in the
early 1980s, children who are now born to married couples are actually
more likely to grow up with both of their parents than were children
born at the height of the divorce revolution (see figure 1). In fact, the
divorce rate for married couples with children has fallen almost to pre-
divorce revolution levels, with 23 percent of couples who married in the
early 1960s divorcing before their first child turned ten, compared to
slightly more than 23 percent for couples who married in the mid 1990s.
Today, the rise of cohabiting households with children is the largest
unrecognized threat to the quality and stability of childrens family lives.
In fact, because of the growing prevalence of cohabitation, which has
risen fourteen-fold since 1970, todays children are much more likely to
spend time in a cohabiting household than they are to see their parents
divorce (see figure 2).
1
Now, approximately 24 percent of the nations children are born to
cohabiting couples, which means that more children are currently born
to cohabiting couples than to single mothers.
2
Another 20 percent or so
of children spend time in a cohabiting household with an unrelated
adult at some point later in their childhood, often after their parents
marriage breaks down.
3
This means that more than four in ten children
are exposed to a cohabiting relationship. Thus, one reason that the insti-
tution of marriage has less of a hold over Americans than it has had for
Why Marriage Matters, Third Edition
Thirty Conclusions from the Social Sciences
Introduction
00650
Page 7
most our history is that cohabitation has emerged as a powerful alter-
native to and competitor with marriage.
For this reason, the third edition of Why Marriage Matters focuses new
attention on recent scholarship assessing the impact that contemporary
cohabitation is having on marriage, family life, and the welfare of chil-
dren. This edition also picks up on topics that surfaced in the first two
editions of the report, summarizing a large body of research on the
impact of divorce, stepfamilies, and single parenthood on children,
adults, and the larger commonweal. The report seeks to summarize
existing family-related research into a succinct form useful to policy
makers, scholars, civic, business, and religious leaders, professionals,
and others interested in understanding marriage in todays society.
Five New Themes
Children are less likely to thrive in cohabiting households,
compared to intact, married families. On many social, educa-
tional, and psychological outcomes, children in cohabiting house-
holds do significantly worse than children in intact, married families,
and about as poorly as children living in single-parent families. And
when it comes to abuse, recent federal data indicate that children in
cohabiting households are markedly more likely to be physically,
sexually, and emotionally abused than children in both intact, mar-
ried families and single-parent families (see figure 3). Only in the
economic domain do children in cohabiting households fare consis-
tently better than children in single-parent families.
Family instability is generally bad for children. In recent years,
family scholars have turned their attention to the impact that tran-
sitions into and out of marriage, cohabitation, and single parent-
hood have upon children. This report shows that such transitions,
especially multiple transitions, are linked to higher reports of
school failure, behavioral problems, drug use, and loneliness,
among other outcomes. So, it is not just family structure and family
process that matter for children; family stability matters as well. And
the research indicates that children who are born to married par-
ents are the least likely to be exposed to family instability, and to
the risks instability poses to the emotional, social, and educational
welfare of children.
1.
2.
00651
Page 8
American family life is becoming increasingly unstable for
children (see figure 4).
4
Sociologist Andrew Cherlin has observed
that Americans are stepping on and off the carousel of intimate rela-
tionships with increasing rapidity.
5
This relational carousel spins par-
ticularly quickly for couples who are cohabiting, even cohabiting
couples with children. For instance, cohabiting couples who have a
child together are more than twice as likely to break up before their
child turns twelve, compared to couples who are married to one
another (see figure 5). Thus, one of the major reasons that childrens
lives are increasingly turbulent is that more and more children are
being born into or raised in cohabiting households that are much
more fragile than married families.
The growing instability of American family life also means
that contemporary adults and children are more likely to live
in what scholars call complex households, where children and
adults are living with people who are half-siblings, stepsiblings, step-
parents, stepchildren, or unrelated to them by birth or marriage.
Research on these complex households is still embryonic, but the ini-
tial findings are not encouraging. For instance, one indicator of this
growing complexity is multiple-partner fertility, where parents have
children with more than one romantic partner. Children who come
from these relationships are more likely to report poor relationships
with their parents, to have behavioral and health problems, and to
fail in school, even after controlling for factors such as education,
income, and race. Thus, for both adults and children, life typically
becomes not only more complex, but also more difficult, when parents
fail to get or stay married.
The nations retreat from marriage has hit poor and working-
class communities with particular force. Recent increases in
cohabitation, nonmarital childbearing, family instability, and family
complexity have not been equally distributed in the United States;
these trends, which first rose in poor communities in the 1970s and
1980s, are now moving rapidly into working-class and lower-middle-
class communities. But marriage appears to be strengthening in more
educated and affluent communities. As a consequence, since the
early 1980s, children from college-educated homes have seen their
family lives stabilize, whereas children from less-educated homes
have seen their family lives become increasingly unstable (see figure
6). More generally, the stratified character of family trends means that
3.
4.
5.
00652
Page 9
the United States is devolving into a separate-and-unequal family
regime, where the highly educated and the affluent enjoy strong and
stable [families] and everyone else is consigned to increasingly unstable,
unhappy, and unworkable ones.
6
We acknowledge that social science is better equipped to document
whether certain facts are true than to say why they are true. We can
assert more definitively that marriage is associated with powerful social
goods than that marriage is the sole or main cause of these goods.
A Word about Selection Effects
Good research seeks to tease out selection effects, or the preexisting
differences between individuals who marry, cohabit, or divorce. Does
divorce cause poverty, for example, or is it simply that poor people
are more likely to divorce? Scholars attempt to distinguish between
causal relationships and mere correlations in a variety of ways. The
studies cited here are for the most part based on large, nationally
representative samples that control for race, education, income, and
other confounding factors. In many, but not all cases, social scientists
used longitudinal data to track individuals as they marry, divorce, or
stay single, increasing our confidence that marriage itself matters.
Where the evidence appears overwhelming that marriage causes
increases in well-being, we say so. Where marriage probably does so
but the causal pathways are not as well understood, we are more
cautious.
We recognize that, absent random assignment to marriage, divorce, or
single parenting, social scientists must always acknowledge the possi-
bility that other factors are influencing outcomes. Reasonable scholars
may and do disagree on the existence and extent of such selection
effects and the extent to which marriage is causally related to the better
social outcomes reported here.
Yet, scholarship is getting better in addressing selection effects. For
instance, in this report we summarize three divorce studies that follow
identical and nonidentical adult twins in Australia and Virginia to see
how much of the effects of divorce on children are genetic and how
much seem to be a consequence of divorce itself. Methodological inno-
vations like these, as well as analyses using econometric models, afford
us greater confidence that family structure exercises a causal influence
for some outcomes.
00653
Page 10
Departures from the norm of intact marriage do not necessarily harm
most of those who are exposed to them.
7
While cohabitation is associ-
ated with increased risks of psychological and social problems for chil-
dren, this does not mean that every child who is exposed to cohabita-
tion is damaged. For example, one nationally representative study of
six- to eleven-year-olds found that only 16 percent of children in cohab-
iting families experienced serious emotional problems. Still, this rate
was much higher than the rate for children in families headed by mar-
ried biological or adoptive parents, which was 4 percent.
8
While marriage is a social good, not all marriages are equal. Research
does not generally support the idea that remarriage is better for children
than living with a single mother.
9
Marriages that are unhappy do not
have the same benefits as the average marriage.
10
Divorce or separation
provides an important escape hatch for children and adults in violent or
high-conflict marriages. Families, communities, and policy makers inter-
ested in distributing the benefits of marriage more equally must do
more than merely discourage legal divorce.
But we believe good social science, despite its limitations, is a better
guide to social policy than uninformed opinion or prejudice. This report
represents our best judgment of what current social science evidence
reveals about marriage in our social system.
00654
Page 11
The intact, biological, married family remains the gold stan-
dard for family life in the United States, insofar as children are
most likely to thriveeconomically, socially, and psychologically
in this family form.
Marriage is an important public good, associated with a range of
economic, health, educational, and safety benefits that help local,
state, and federal governments serve the common good.
The benefits of marriage extend to poor, working-class, and
minority communities, despite the fact that marriage has weakened
in these communities in the last four decades.
F
AMILY STRUCTURE AND PROCESSES are only one factor contributing to
child and social well-being. Our discussion here is not meant to
minimize the importance of other factors, such as poverty, child
support, unemployment, teenage childbearing, neighborhood safety, or
the quality of education for both parents and children. Marriage is not
a panacea for all social ills. For instance, when it comes to child well-
being, research suggests that family structure is a better predictor of
childrens psychological and social welfare, whereas poverty is a better
predictor of educational attainment.
11
But whether we succeed or fail in building a healthy marriage culture
is clearly a matter of legitimate public concern and an issue of para-
mount importance if we wish to reverse the marginalization of the most
vulnerable members of our society: the working class, the poor, minori-
ties, and children.
1.
2.
3.
Our Fundamental Conclusions
00655
Page 12
The Thirty Conclusions: A Snapshot
Marriage increases the likelihood that fathers and mothers have
good relationships with their children.
Children are most likely to enjoy family stability when they are
born into a married family.
Children are less likely to thrive in complex households.
Cohabitation is not the functional equivalent of marriage.
Growing up outside an intact marriage increases the likelihood
that children will themselves divorce or become unwed parents.
Marriage is a virtually universal human institution.
Marriage, and a normative commitment to marriage, foster high-
quality relationships between adults, as well as between parents
and children.
Marriage has important biosocial consequences for adults and
children.
Family
Divorce and unmarried childbearing increase poverty for both
children and mothers, and cohabitation is less likely to alleviate
poverty than is marriage.
Married couples seem to build more wealth on average than
singles or cohabiting couples.
Marriage reduces poverty and material hardship for disadvan-
taged women and their children.
Minorities benefit economically from marriage also.
Married men earn more money than do single men with similar
education and job histories.
Parental divorce (or failure to marry) appears to increase childrens
risk of school failure.
Parental divorce reduces the likelihood that children will graduate
from college and achieve high-status jobs.
Economics
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
00656
Page 13
Children who live with their own two married parents enjoy
better physical health, on average, than do children in other
family forms.
Parental marriage is associated with a sharply lower risk of
infant mortality.
Marriage is associated with reduced rates of alcohol and sub-
stance abuse for both adults and teens.
Married people, especially married men, have longer life
expectancies than do otherwise similar singles.
Marriage is associated with better health and lower rates of
injury, illness, and disability for both men and women.
Marriage seems to be associated with better health among
minorities and the poor.
Physical Health and Longevity
Children whose parents divorce have higher rates of psycho-
logical distress and mental illness.
Cohabitation is associated with higher levels of psychological
problems among children.
Family breakdown appears to increase significantly the risk of
suicide.
Married mothers have lower rates of depression than do single
or cohabiting mothers.
Mental Health and Emotional Well-Being
16.
17.
18.
19.
20.
21.
22.
23.
24.
25.
Boys raised in non-intact families are more likely to engage in
delinquent and criminal behavior.
Marriage appears to reduce the risk that adults will be either
perpetrators or victims of crime.
Married women appear to have a lower risk of experiencing
domestic violence than do cohabiting or dating women.
A child who is not living with his or her own two married parents
is at greater risk of child abuse.
There is a growing marriage gap between college-educated
Americans and less-educated Americans.
Crime and Domestic Violence
26.
27.
28.
29.
30.
00657
Page 14
Family
Marriage increases the likelihood that fathers and
mothers have good relationships with their children.
Mothers as well as fathers are affected by the absence of marriage. Single
mothers on average report more conflict with and less monitoring of their
children than do married mothers.
12
As adults, children from intact mar-
riages report being closer to their mothers on average than do children of
divorce.
13
In one nationally representative study, 30 percent of young adults
whose parents divorced reported poor relationships with their mothers,
compared to 16 percent of children whose parents stayed married.
14
But childrens relationships with their father depend even more on mar-
riage than do childrens relationships with their mother. Sixty-five per-
cent of young adults whose parents divorced had poor relationships
with their fathers (compared to 29 percent from non-divorced fami-
lies).
15
On average, children whose parents divorce or never marry see
their fathers less frequently
16
and have less affectionate relationships
with their fathers
17
than do children whose parents got and stayed mar-
ried. Studies of children of divorce suggest that losing contact with their
father in the wake of a divorce is one of the most painful consequences
of divorce.
18
Divorce appears to have an even greater negative effect on
relationships between fathers and their children than remaining in an
unhappy marriage.
19
These detrimental relationship effects may be long-
term; unpartnered disabled elderly individuals who divorced receive
less in the way of social support and practical assistance from their chil-
dren than those who were widowed. Those who remarried were less
likely to receive cash transfers from their children.
20
Some evidence suggests even cohabiting, biological fathers who live
with their children are not as involved and affectionate with their chil-
dren as are married, biological fathers who reside with their children,
21
although others have found no difference between these types of
fathers or even a positive effect of cohabitation.
22
Even so, the effect of
marriage on higher-quality parenting practices is even stronger for
social fathers (i.e., stepfathers) than for biological fathers.
23
And fathers
who are married to the mother of their children prior to birth are much
more likely to maintain a long-term relationship with their children than
fathers who are not married at birth.
24
The Thirty Conclusions
1.
00658
Page 15
Children are most likely to enjoy family stability when
they are born into a married family.
There is an emerging scholarly consensus that family stability in and of
itself is linked to positive child outcomes.
25
By contrast, children who
are exposed to family transitionsfrom a divorce to the breakup of a
mothers romantic relationship with a live-in boyfriendare more likely
to experience behavioral problems, drug use, problems in school, early
sex, and loneliness. The evidence also suggests that multiple transitions
(where children are exposed to more than one breakup or new rela-
tionship) are especially harmful for children.
26
Family transitions are thought to harm a mothers ability to interact pos-
itively with her child(ren) by affecting her economic, social, and psy-
chological resources. They also necessitate the establishment of new
routines and relationships that may be difficult for children to navigate.
27
Selection may also be at work; that is, pre-existing maternal attributes
made lead both to multiple union transitions and poor child outcomes,
though selection does not appear to tell the whole story.
28
Children born to married parents are the most likely to enjoy family
stability over their childhood. According to data from the Fragile
Families and Child Wellbeing Study, which follows children in twenty
cities around the U.S., only 13 percent of children born to married par-
ents experience a maternal partnership transition (i.e., the end or start
of a relationship) by age 3, compared to 50 percent of those born to
cohabiting parents, 69 percent of those born to visiting (i.e., dating
but not cohabiting) parents, and 74 percent of those born to a single
mother (i.e., a mother no longer in a romantic relationship with the
father).
29
Indeed, a number of studies suggest that cohabitation in a range of
cultural and national contexts is less stable than marriage.
30
Latino
and African American children born into cohabiting unions were
more likely to see their parents break up than their peers who were
born to married parents.
31
Cohabitations are unstable not just in the
United States. In one study of seventeen Western countries, parental
cohabitation was associated with higher risk of parental separation,
even in Sweden where parental cohabitation is very common
(although the difference between parental cohabitation and marriage
in Sweden is less pronounced than in other countries).
32
In fact, one
new study of family instability in Sweden found that children born to
cohabiting couples are more than 70 percent more likely to see their
2.
00659
Page 16
parents separate by age fifteen, compared to children born to married
couples.
33
Unfortunately, in part because childbearing and childrearing in a
cohabiting household is becoming more common in the United States,
family stability has declined for children in the United States over the
course of the last three decades even though the divorce rate has
declined.
34
This overall decline in family stability for children is partic-
ularly striking because children born to married couples now enjoy
more stability than they did thirty years ago. This decline is also strik-
ing because the deinstitutionalization of marriage has largely been lim-
ited to working-class and poor communities in the United States. For
both economic and cultural reasons, more educated and affluent
Americans are now markedly more likely to succeed in marriage than
their less privileged fellow citizens.
35
This means that children in poor
and working-class communities are triply disadvantaged: they have
fewer economic resources, their parents are less likely to be married,
and they are more likely to be exposed to numerous family transitions
over the course of their lives.
Children are less likely to thrive in complex households.
Over the last four decades, increases in divorce, cohabitation, and
nonmarital childbearing have increased the prevalence of complex
householdswhere children share a household with stepsiblings,
half-siblings, stepparents, or with adults with whom they are unrelated
by marriage, adoption, or blood. Children are more likely to suffer
economically, psychologically, and socially when they live in complex
households, in part because such households often do not have clear
norms, boundaries, and a clear family identity to provide stability,
direction, and purpose to their members, and to the relationships
within these households.
Research indicates that children in stepfamilies are more likely to expe-
rience school failure, delinquency, teenage pregnancy, and incarcera-
tion than children growing up in intact, married families.
36
This is in
part, as Andrew Cherlin has pointed out, because stepfamilies are
incomplete institutions that have fewer commonly understood norms,
roles, and rituals than intact, married families.
37
As a consequence, step-
parents often have more difficulty relating to their stepchildren than do
biological parents, which is one reason that stepchildren are less likely
to thrive than children from intact, married families.
3.
00660
Page 17
Children whose parents have engaged in multiple-partner fertility
(MPF), where adults have children with two or more partners, have
similar problems. Because MPF can be associated with baby mama
drama (i.e., conflict between former romantic partners or spouses
who had a child together, or between one of them and a new romantic
partner of the other partner or spouse), and because it is practically
difficult for mothers and fathers to invest financially, emotionally, and
temporally in children across different households, children from such
MPF families are more likely to suffer health problems, externalizing
behaviors such as fighting, lower academic achievement, and lower
quality relationships with their parents, compared to children in intact,
married families.
38
Interestingly, even children living in a family with their own biolog-
ical, married parents appear to be more likely to suffer if they are
exposed to complexity, in the form of step- or half-siblings located
in their own household. New research suggests that children living
with their married biological parents were more likely to fail in
school, to suffer from depression, and to engage in delinquent
behavior if they live with stepsiblings from a parents prior union.
39
This is probably because the stresses of stepfamily living and the
challenges of supporting a former spouse can undercut the parenting
of mothers and fathers who head up a blended family. This new
research provides more evidence that children are more likely to
thrive when their parents succeed in channeling their reproductive
lives into one marriage.
Cohabitation is not the functional equivalent of marriage.
As a group, cohabitors in the United States more closely resemble sin-
gles than married people, though cohabitation is an exceptionally het-
erogenous status, with some partners treating it as a prelude to mar-
riage, others as an alternative to marriage, others as an opportunity to
test for marriage, and still others as a convenient dating relationship.
40
Adults who live together are more similar to singles than to married
couples in terms of physical health
41
and emotional well-being and
mental health,
42
as well as in assets and earnings.
43
Children with cohabiting parents have outcomes more similar to
the children living with single (or remarried) parents than chil-
dren from intact marriages.
44
In other words, children living in
cohabiting unions do not fare as well as children living in intact,
4.
00661
Page 18
married families. For instance, one recent study found that
teenagers living in cohabiting unions were significantly more
likely to experience behavioral and emotional difficulties than
were teenagers in intact, married families, even after controlling
for a range of socioeconomic and parenting factors.
45
Another
problem is that cohabiting parents are less likely to devote their
financial resources to childrearing. One study found that cohab-
iting parents devoted a larger share of their income to alcohol
and tobacco, and a smaller share of their income to childrens
education, compared to married parents.
46
Selection effects account for a portion of the difference between
married people and cohabitors. As a group, cohabitors (who are not
engaged) have lower incomes and less education.
47
Couples who
live together also, on average, report relationships of lower quality
than do married coupleswith cohabitors reporting more conflict,
more violence, and lower levels of satisfaction and commitment.
48
This lower relationship quality among cohabitors explains their
higher levels of depression compared to married individuals.
49
Even
biological parents who cohabit have poorer quality relationships
and are more likely to part than parents who marry.
50
Cohabitation differs from marriage in part because Americans
who choose solely to live together are less committed to each
other as partners and their future together.
51
Partly as a conse-
quence, cohabiting couples are less likely than married couples
to pool their income.
52
Another challenge confronting cohabiting
couples is that partners often disagree about the nature and
future of their relationshipfor instance, one partner may antic-
ipate marriage and the other partner may view the relationship
as a covenient form of dating.
53
New research also suggests that
the instability and lower levels of commitment associated with
cohabitation can be deleterious for the elderly, who appear to
be more likely to be institutionalized or abandoned if they are
cohabiting rather than married.
54
In a society that still largely reveres marriageeven if marriages
are less and less likely to happennonmarriage often means
something relative to marriage. Marriage is a clear, mutual, non-
ambiguous signal of commitment; in contrast, cohabitation is
widely recognized as ambiguous when it comes to signaling
commitment in the absence of some other strong signal of mar-
ital intention such as engagement.
55
00662
Page 19
Growing up outside an intact marriage increases the likeli-
hood that children will themselves divorce or become
unwed parents.
Children whose parents divorce or fail to marry are more likely to
become young unwed parents, to enter their marriages with lower
commitment, to experience divorce themselves someday, to marry as
teenagers, and to have unhappy marriages and/or relationships.
56
Daughters raised outside of intact marriages are approximately three
times more likely to end up young, unwed mothers than are children
whose parents married and stayed married.
57
Parental divorce increas-
es the odds that adult children will also divorce by at least 50 percent,
partly because children of divorce are more likely to marry prematurely
and partly because children of divorce often marry other children of
divorce, thereby making their marriage even more precarious.
58
Divorce is apparently most likely to be transmitted across the genera-
tions when parents in relatively low-conflict marriages divorced.
59
There is ongoing debate about whether the link between parental and
offspring divorce has weakened over time (as divorce rates increased
up through the early 1980s and then fell slightly), but there is consensus
that this association remains significant.
60
Moreover, remarriage does
not appear to help children. For instance, girls in stepfamilies are
slightly more likely to have a teenage pregnancy compared to girls in
a single-parent family, and much more likely to have a teenage preg-
nancy than girls in an intact, married family.
61
Children who grow up
in stepfamilies are also more likely to marry as teenagers, compared to
children who grow up in single-parent or intact, married families.
62
Finally, research also indicates that the effects of divorce cross three
generations: that is, grandchildren of couples who divorced are signif-
icantly more likely to experience marital discord, negative relationships
with their parents, and low levels of educational attainment, compared
to grandchildren whose grandparents did not divorce.
63
Marriage is a virtually universal human institution.
Marriage exists in virtually every known human society.
64
The shape of
marriage varies considerably in different cultural contexts, but at least
since the beginning of recorded historyin all the flourishing varieties
of human cultures documented by anthropologistsmarriage has been
a universal human institution. As a virtually universal human idea, mar-
riage involves regulating the reproduction of children, families, and
society. While marriage systems differ (and not every person or class
6.
5.
00663
Page 20
within a society marries), marriage across societies is a publicly
acknowledged and supported sexual union that creates kinship obliga-
tions and resource pooling between men, women, and the children that
their sexual union may produce.
Marriage, and a normative commitment to marriage,
foster high-quality relationships between adults, as well
as between parents and children.
Some say that love, not marriage, makes a family. They argue that family
structure per se does not matter; rather, what matters is the quality of
family relationships.
65
Others argue that the marital ethic of lifelong
commitment needs to be diluted if we seek to promote high-quality
relationships; instead, the new marital ethic should be conditional, such
that spouses should remain together only so long as they continue to
love one another.
66
However, these arguments overlook what we know about the
effect of marriage, and a normative commitment to the institution
of marriage, on intimate relationships. By offering legal and nor-
mative support and direction to a relationship, by providing an
expectation of sexual fidelity and lifelong commitment, and by fur-
nishing adults a unique social status as spouses, marriage typical-
ly fosters better romantic and parental relationships than alterna-
tives to marriage.
67
For all these reasons, in part, adults who are
married enjoy happier, healthier, and less violent relationships,
compared to adults who are in dating or cohabiting relationships.
68
Even among older adults who were previously married, remarriage
seems to lead to happier relationships than cohabitation, though
differences on several other aspects of relationship quality are not
evident.
69
Parents who are married enjoy more supportive and less
conflictual relationships with one another, compared to parents
who are cohabiting or otherwise romantically involved with one
another.
70
In turn, as we have seen, married parents generally have
better relationships with their children than do cohabiting,
divorced, unmarried, or remarried parents.
71
Some of the associa-
tions between family structure and family process are products of
selectionthat is, couples with better relationships are more likely
to get and stay married. But, as this report makes clear, the
research also suggests that social, legal, and normative supports
provided by marriage foster better intimate relationships and parent-
child relationships.
7.
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Page 21
But so does the idea of marriage. Individuals who value the institution
of marriage for its own sakethat is, who oppose easy divorce, who
believe that children ought to be born into marriage, and who think
marriage is better than cohabitationare more likely to invest them-
selves in their marriages and to experience high-quality marital rela-
tionships. Ironically, individuals who embrace a conditional ethic to
marriagethat is, one that suggests marriages ought to continue only
so long as both spouses are happyare less happy in their marriages.
One longitudinal study found that individuals who oppose divorce are
more likely to devote themselves to their spouse, even after controlling
for the initial quality of the marriage.
72
Two studies show that spouses,
particularly husbands, are more likely to sacrifice for their spouse if they
are strongly committed to the future of their marriages.
73
A recent study
finds that womens marital happiness, and their reports of happiness
with their husbands affection and understanding, are strongly and pos-
itively linked to high levels of shared spousal commitment to pro-mar-
riage norms.
74
Another study found that fathers who are normatively
commited to marriage are significantly more likely to praise and hug
their children than fathers who are not committed to marriage.
75
Scholars speculate that a strong normative commitment to marriage
makes married adults less likely to look for alternative partners and
more conscious of the long-term character of their relationship, both of
which encourage them to invest more in their current relationship.
76
Thus, adults who hold a strong normative commitment to marriage
appear to enjoy higher-quality relationships with family members, com-
pared to adults who are not strongly committed to the institution of
marriage.
Marriage has important biosocial consequences for
adults and children.
Marriage has biological consequences for adults and children. We are
just beginning to discover the myriad ways that marriage seems to pro-
mote good outcomes in what social scientists call the biosocial area of
lifethe connection between our social relationships and how our bod-
ies function. In the last decade, two marriage-related biosocial outcomes
have emerged as particularly important.
First, marriage appears to reduce mens testosterone levels. More than
five studies analyzing different populations find that married men (espe-
cially married fathers) have lower testerone levels than similar men who
are never-married or divorced.
77
For this outcome, however, cohabiting
8.
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Page 22
men appear to be affected just as much as are married men. What seems
to matter for mens testorone levels are intimate, ongoing, and everyday
relationships with one woman.
78
Given that testosterone is associated
with aggression, sensation-seeking, and a range of other antisocial
behaviors, one of the ways that marriage may influence men is by reduc-
ing their levels of testosterone.
79
Of course, there may be selection effects
at work: that is, it may be that men with lower levels of testosterone are
less likely to engage in antisocial behavior and more likely to marry. The
two longitudinal studies done so far have obtained mixed results. One
strongly suggests that, for men, marriage plays a causal role in driving
down testosterone (as well as cortisol).
80
The other has found no effect
of becoming partnered (defined as a long-term monogamous relation-
ship) on mens testosterone level.
81
Future research will have to further
unpack the relationships between marriage, testosterone, fatherhood,
and antisocial behavior among men.
Second, girls appear to benefit in their sexual development from grow-
ing up in an intact, married family. Extensive research by psychologist
Bruce Ellis and others indicates that adolescent girls who grow up apart
from an intact, married household are significantly more likely to have
early menstruation, premature sexual activity, and a teenage pregnancy.
82
He finds that girls who have close, engaged relationships with their
fathers have menstruation at a later age and that girls who lose their bio-
logical father as young children have menstruation at an earlier age.
Moreover, girls who live with an unrelated male (e.g., stepfather, moth-
ers boyfriend) have menstruation even earlier than girls living in a sin-
gle-mother household. Ellis speculates that girls sexual development is
influenced by the male pheromonesbiological chemicals that individ-
uals emit to one another, which have been associated with accelerated
sexual development in mammalsthey encounter in their social envi-
ronment. The pheromones of their father appear to inhibit premature
sexual development, while the pheromones of an unrelated male appear
to accelerate such development. In Elliss words: These findingsare
broadly consistent with the hypothesis that pheromonal exposure to the
biological father inhibits pubertal development in daughters.
83
Early sexual development, in turn, is associated with significantly high-
er levels of premature sexual activity and teenage pregnancy on the part
of girls, even after controlling for economic and psychological factors in
the household that might otherwise confound the relationship between
family structure and girls sexual activity.
84
So this line of research
strongly suggests that an intact, married household protects girls from
premature sexual development and, consequently, teen pregnancy. One
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Page 23
genetically-informed study, however, suggests that much of this associa-
tion may be due to selection into family structure by genetic predisposi-
tion (i.e., both mother and daughter have an underlying biological make-
up that makes them more likely to have early menstruation). In a study
of children of sisters, including twin sisters, there was no difference in
age at first sex for the offspring of twin sister dyads where one child had
a father in the home and the other did not, but there was for the children
of non-twin sisters.
85
Future research will have to determine if genes,
environment, or some combination thereof account for the association
between father absence and early menstruation among adolescent girls.
Economics
Divorce and unmarried childbearing increase poverty for
both children and mothers, and cohabitation is less likely
to alleviate poverty than is marriage.
Research has consistently shown that both divorce
86
and unmarried
childbearing
87
increase the economic vulnerability of both children and
mothers. The effects of family structure on poverty remain powerful,
even after controlling for race and family background. Changes in family
structure are an important cause of new entries into poverty (although
a decline in the earnings of the household head is the single most
important cause). Child poverty rates are high in part because of the
growth of single-parent families.
88
In fact, some studies indicate that all
of the increase in child poverty since the 1970s can be attributed to
increases in single parenthood due to divorce and nonmarital child-
bearing.
89
When parents fail to marry and stay married, children are
more likely to experience deep and persistent poverty, even after con-
trolling for race and family background. The majority of children who
grow up outside of intact, married families experience at least one year
of dire poverty (family incomes less than half the official poverty thresh-
old).
90
Divorce as well as unmarried childbearing plays a role: between
one-fifth and one-third of divorcing women end up in poverty follow-
ing the divorce.
91
Cohabitation does not alleviate poverty as well as mar-
riage does. The ratio of income to needs for children in cohabiting fam-
ilies is .43 points lower than that of those in married families.
92
The effect of divorce on womens incomes persists in contemporary
America, but it appears to have lessened since 1980 as womens labor
market position has improved.
93
Single mothers income gains have
been only marginal across the same time period.
94
9.
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Page 24
Married couples seem to build more wealth on average
than singles or cohabiting couples.
Marriage seems to be a wealth-creating institution. Married couples
build more wealth on average than do otherwise similar singles or
cohabiting couples, even after controlling for income.
95
Analysis of the
National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (1979 cohort), which tracked
respondents from adolescence to their early forties, reveals that the per
person net worth of married individuals is 93 percent higher than it is
for single individuals, and divorced individuals have a per person net
worth 77 percent lower than single respondents.
96
The economic advan-
tages of marriage stem from more than just access to two incomes.
Marriage partners appear to build more wealth for some of the same
reasons that partnerships in general are economically efficient, includ-
ing economies of scale and specialization and exchange. Marital social
norms that encourage healthy, productive behavior and wealth accu-
mulation (such as buying a home) also appear to play a role. Married
parents also more often receive wealth transfers from both sets of
grandparents than do cohabiting couples; single mothers almost never
receive financial help from the childs fathers kin.
97
Interestingly, the
effect of fatherhood on asset accumulation varies by marital status: mar-
ried fathers increased their rate of asset accumulation after becoming
fathers while unmarried fathers saw their rate of asset accumulation
decline.
98
Marriage reduces poverty and material hardship for dis-
advantaged women and their children.
A growing body of research by economist Robert I. Lerman and others
indicates that the economic benefits of marriage extend even to women
who come from disadvantaged backgrounds. Focusing on low-income
families, Lerman found that married couples with children generally had
lower levels of material hardshipthat is, they were less likely to miss
a meal or fail to pay their utilities, rent, or mortgagecompared to
other families, especially single-mothers living alone.
99
In another study,
he found that mothers with low academic abilities who married saw
their living standards end up about 65 percent higher than similar single
mothers living with no other adult, over 50 percent higher than single
mothers living with another adult, and 20 percent higher than mothers
who were cohabiting.
100
Other research has found that disadvantaged
mothers are significantly less likely to be in poverty if they had their first
child in marriage, compared to similar mothers who had their first child
10.
11.
00668
Page 25
out-of-wedlock. This research found that 35 percent of disadvantaged
African American mothers who had a nonmarital first birth are below
the poverty line, compared to 17 percent of African American mothers
who had a marital first birth. The protective effect of marriage is even
stronger among women at high risk of poverty versus those at low
risk.
101
Why is marriage more likely to help poor women and children than
cohabitation? Married couples appear to share more of their income and
other property, they get more support from extended families and
friends, and they get more help from civic institutions (churches, food
pantries, etc.).
102
There are two caveats to this work. First, marriage does
not produce as many benefits for women who have a premarital birth.
103
Second, marriage also does not produce much of an economic boost for
women who go on to divorce, and divorce is more common among
women with comparatively low levels of income and education.
104
So
women, particularly poor women, do not much benefit economically
from marriage unless their marriages are stable.
Minorities benefit economically from marriage also.
The economic benefits associated with marriage are not limited to
whites. Research also suggests that African Americans and Latinos ben-
efit materially from marriage. Studies find marriage effects at the com-
munity and individual levels. At the societal level, black child poverty
rates would be almost 20 percent lower than they currently are had the
proportion of black children living in married families not fallen below
1970 levels.
105
At the individual level, one study found that black single mothers who
marry see their income rise by 81 percent (compared to an income
increase of 45 percent for white single mothers). This same study found
that the income of black children fell by 53 percent two years after a
divorce.
106
Another study of older women indicates that married African
American women enjoy significantly more income than their widowed,
divorced, and never married peers.
107
Both black and Hispanic older
women experience declines in household income and assets following
marital disruption, be it divorce or widowhood.
108
Black men who marry
also see a significant increase in their income, about $4000 according to
one estimate.
109
Black men see bigger increases in their household
incomes than do white men (increases of 31 percent and 23 percent,
respectively) because black women are more likely to work than white
12.
00669
Page 26
women.
110
Finally, African Americans and Latinos who are married also
enjoy significantly higher levels of household equity, compared to their
peers who are not married.
111
Married men earn more money than do single men with
similar education and job histories.
A large body of research, both in the United States and other developed
countries, finds that married men earn between 10 and 40 percent more
than do single men with similar education and job histories.
112
While
selection effects may account for part of the marriage premium (insofar
as men with more stable and better-paying jobs are more likely to
marry),
113
the most sophisticated, recent research appears to confirm that
marriage itself increases the earning power of men on the order of 21
to 24 percent.
114
A study of identical twin pairs, which was able to
account more rigorously for selection effects, similarly found an earn-
ings increase of 26 percent.
115
Why do married men earn more? The causes are not entirely under-
stood, but married men appear to have greater work commitment, more
strategic approaches to job searches, and healthier and more stable per-
sonal routines (including sleep, diet, and alcohol consumption). One
study found that married men were more likely to quit with a new job
in hand, less likely to quit without a new job in hand, and less likely to
be fired, compared to unmarried men.
116
Husbands also benefit from
both the work effort and emotional support that they receive from
wives.
117
A study of German men finds that married men may also be
less content with their earnings, which may spur them to work harder
and earn higher wages.
118
All of the findings along these lines are consistent with the larger propo-
sition advanced by sociologist Steven Nock that men undergo an impor-
tant average transformation in their sense of themselves and their
responsibilities in the transition from nonmarriage to marriage.
119
Parental divorce (or failure to marry) appears to increase
childrens risk of school failure.
Parental divorce or nonmarriage has a significant, long-term negative
impact on childrens educational attainment. Children of divorced or
unwed parents have lower grades and other measures of academic
13.
14.
00670
Page 27
achievement, are more likely to be held back, and are more likely to
drop out of high school. The effects of parental divorce or nonmarriage
on childrens educational attainment remain significant even after con-
trolling for race, family background, and genetic factors.
120
Another
nationally-representative study of more than 1,000 adolescents that con-
trolled for differences in parental education and income found that
teenagers were 60 percent less likely to graduate from high school if
they came from cohabiting families, compared to their peers who came
from intact, married families.
121
Likewise, kindergarteners living with
cohabiting parents have lower reading, math, and general knowledge
scoreswhether they are living with their biological cohabiting parents
or one parent and a cohabiting partner. The differences in math and
general knowledge are explained by differences in parenting practices
and maternal depression, but differences in reading ability remain even
after having accounted for these factors.
122
Adolescents who live in
stable cohabiting families become less engaged in school than those in
stable biological married families, single-mother families, or married
stepfamilies. Those in single-mother families have decreased engage-
ment compared to those in stable biological married families.
Transitioning into a cohabiting family lowers school engagement as
well, as does transitioning from a cohabiting family to a married step-
family.
123
Indeed, family transitions in general have been linked to poor-
er academic achievement,
124
and both family structure and transitions
appear to matter for educational outcomes.
125
Children whose parents
divorce end up with significantly lower levels of education than do chil-
dren in single-mother families created by the death of the father.
126
Children whose parents remarry do no better, on average, than do chil-
dren who live with single mothers.
127
It is not yet clear if the effects of
family structure vary by race. Some studies indicate that African
American educational performance is affected more than white per-
formance by father absence, whereas other studies come to the oppo-
site conclusion.
128
Parental divorce reduces the likelihood that children will
graduate from college and achieve high-status jobs.
Parental divorce appears to have long-term consequences on chil-
drens socioeconomic attainment. While most children of divorce do
not drop out of high school or become unemployed, as adults, chil-
dren of divorced parents have lower occupational status and earnings
and have increased rates of unemployment and economic hardship.
129
They are less likely to attend and graduate from college and also less
15.
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Page 28
likely to attend and graduate from four-year and highly selective col-
leges, even after controlling for family background and academic and
extracurricular achievements.
130
One reason for this may be that
divorced parents contribute significantly less money to their childrens
college education. While married parents contribute a median of
$1,804 per year to college costs, divorced (and not remarried) parents
contribute just $502, and remarried parents just $500differences that
persist after controlling income and other relevant factors. Divorced
parents may have underreported their ex-spouses contribution, but
even so their contribution is not likely to rise anywhere near the level
of married parents.
131
Physical Health and Longevity
Children who live with their own two married parents
enjoy better physical health, on average, than do children
in other family forms.
Divorce and unmarried childbearing appear to have negative effects
on childrens physical health and life expectancy.
132
Longitudinal
research suggests that parental divorce and cohabitation increase the
incidence of health problems in children.
133
For example, in one
recent longitudinal study the probability that a five-year-old child
with stably-married parents was in excellent health was .69, com-
pared to probabiliies of .65 for those whose parents divorced, .62 for
those whose parents stably cohabited, and .59 for those whose par-
ents dissolved their cohabitation.
134
The health advantages of married
homes remain, even after taking socioeconomic status into account.
Even in Sweden, a country with an extensive social welfare system
and a nationalized health care system, children who grow up outside
an intact family are much more likely to suffer serious disadvantages.
One recent study of the entire Swedish population of children found
that boys who were reared in single-parent homes were more than
50 percent more likely to die from a range of causese.g., suicide,
accidents, or addictionthan boys who were reared in two-parent
homes. Moreover, even after controlling for the socioeconomic status
and psychological health of parents, Swedish boys and girls in single-
parent families were more than twice as likely as children in two-
parent families to suffer from psychiatric diseases, suicide attempts,
alcoholism, and drug abuse; they were also more likely to experience
traffic injuries, falls, and poisonings than their peers in two-parent
families.
135
16.
00672
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The health effects of family structure extend into adulthood. One study
that followed a sample of academically gifted, middle-class children for
seventy years found that parental divorce reduced a childs life
expectancy by four years, even after controlling for childhood health
status and family background, as well as personality characteristics such
as impulsiveness and emotional instability.
136
Another analysis found
that forty-year-old men whose parents had divorced were three times
more likely to die in the next forty years than were forty-year-old men
whose parents stayed married. [I]t does appear, the researchers con-
clude, that parental divorce sets off a negative chain of events, which
contribute to a higher mortality risk among individuals from divorced
homes.
137
Parental marriage is associated with a sharply lower risk
of infant mortality.
Babies born to married parents have lower rates of infant mortality. On
average, having an unmarried mother is associated with an approxi-
mately 50 percent increase in the risk of infant mortality.
138
While
parental marital status predicts infant mortality in both blacks and
whites, the increased risk due to the mothers marital status is greatest
among the most advantaged: white mothers over the age of twenty.
139
The cause of this relationship between marital status and infant mortal-
ity is not well known. There are many selection effects involved:
Unmarried mothers are more likely to be young, black, less educated,
and poor than are married mothers. But even after controlling for age,
race, and education, children born to unwed mothers generally have
higher rates of infant mortality.
140
While unmarried mothers are also less
likely to get early prenatal care,
141
infant mortality rates in these
instances are higher not only in the neonatal period, but through infancy
142
and even early childhood.
143
Children born to unmarried mothers have
an increased incidence of both intentional and unintentional fatal
injuries.
144
The sharp differences in infant mortality between married
women who list a fathers name on the birth certificate and both mar-
ried and unmarried women who dont, compared to the smaller (but
still signficant) difference between married and unmarried women who
list a fathers name on the birth certificate, suggests paternal involve-
ment may be a key factor in avoiding infant mortality and explaining
the marital advantage.
145
Marital status remains a powerful predictor of
infant mortality, even in countries with nationalized health care systems
and strong supports for single mothers.
146
17.
00673
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Marriage is associated with reduced rates of alcohol and
substance abuse for both adults and teens.
Married men and women have lower rates of alcohol consumption and
abuse than do singles (including cohabitors). Longitudinal research con-
firms that young adults, particularly men, who marry tend to reduce
their rates of alcohol consumption and illegal drug use.
147
Children
whose parents marry and stay married also have lower rates of sub-
stance abuse, even after controlling for family background and the
genetic traits of the parents.
148
Twice as many young teens in single-
mother families and stepfamilies have tried marijuana (and young teens
living with single fathers were three times as likely). Young teens whose
parents stay married are also the least likely to experiment with tobacco
or alcohol.
149
Data from the National Household Survey on Drug Abuse
show that, even after controlling for age, race, gender, and family
income, teens living with both biological parents are significantly less
likely to use illicit drugs, alcohol, and tobacco.
150
How does family fragmentation relate to teen drug use? Many pathways
are probably involved, including increased family stress, reduced
parental monitoring, and weakened attachment to parents, especially
fathers.
151
Married people, especially married men, have longer life
expectancies than do otherwise similar singles.
Married people live longer than do otherwise similar people who are
single or divorced.
152
Husbands as well as wives live longer on average,
even after controlling for race, income, and family background.
153
In
most developed countries, middle-aged single, divorced, or widowed
men are about twice as likely to die as married men, and nonmarried
women face risks about one-and-a-half times as great as those faced by
married women.
154
These differences by marital status have persisted
over time, and the differences between married and widowed individ-
uals may even have intensified in recent years.
155
One recent study argues that rather than crude measures of marital sta-
tus, marital historiesthe nexus of marital status, timing, transitions, and
durationare predictive of mortality. Indeed, marital status was the
least robust indicator of longer life, and accumulation of marriage dura-
tion the most robust. Nevertheless, each of these marital factors was
important in predicting survival. The effect of marriage on life expectancy
18.
19.
00674
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begins in young adulthood and accrues across the life course as indi-
viduals remain in, exit, and reenter marital relationships.
156
Thus, even
for adults, the stability of married life across the life course plays an
important role in fostering adult health.
Marriage is associated with better health and lower rates
of injury, illness, and disability for both men and women.
Both married men and women enjoy better health on average than do
single, cohabiting, or divorced individuals.
157
Selection effects regarding
divorce or remarriage may account for part of this differential, although
research has found no consistent pattern of such selection.
158
Married
people appear to manage illness better, monitor each others health,
have higher incomes and wealth, and adopt healthier lifestyles than do
otherwise similar singles.
159
For example, one recent study finds married
men have higher serum carotenoid levels than never-married, divorced,
or widowed men, and married women have higher levels of the same
than do widowed women, suggesting marriage promotes diets higher
in fruit and vegetable intake.
160
A recent study of the health effects of marriage drawn from 9,333
respondents to the Health and Retirement Survey of Americans between
the ages of fifty-one and sixty-one compared the incidence of major dis-
eases, as well as functional disability, in married, cohabiting, divorced,
widowed, and never-married individuals. Without exception, the
authors report, married persons have the lowest rates of morbidity for
each of the diseases, impairments, functioning problems and disabili-
ties. Marital status differences in disability remained dramatic even
after controlling for age, sex, and race/ethnicity.
161
Another study from
the federally-funded Centers for Disease Control found that married
adults were less likely to be in poor health, to have activity limitations,
to have headaches, to suffer serious pyschological distress, to smoke,
and to have a drinking problem, compared to widowed, divorced, and
cohabiting adults.
162
However, studies also suggest that the health effects of marriage vary by
marital quality, especially for women. Research by psychologist Janice
Kiecolt-Glaser and her colleagues indicates that womens health is par-
ticularly likely to suffer when they are in poor-quality relationships and
thrive when they are in high-quality relationships. For instance, negative
marital behaviors (e.g., criticisms, put-downs, sarcasm) are associated
with increased levels of stress hormones (epinepherine, ACTH, and
20.
00675
Page 32
norepinephrine), with higher blood pressure, and with declines in
immune functioning.
163
So, particularly for women, marital quality, not
simply marital status, is strongly correlated to better health outcomes.
Moreover, there is a negative effect of poor marital quality on self-rated
health that appears to grow with age,
164
and remaining in a long-term,
low-quality marriage may actually be worse for ones overall health than
getting divorced.
165
Low marital quality has been implicated as one
reason why single mothers who marry do not reap the marital benefits
that childless women who marry do.
166
Marital conflict also appears to be
tied to functional impairment among midlife and older adults.
167
As with studies of marriage and mortality, marital status may not ade-
quately gauge the effect of marital history on physical health. For both
men and women, marriage duration is associated with lower rates of
disease. For women, early marriage (at or before age eighteen) and
number of divorce transitions predict poorer health outcomes; for men,
divorce duration and widowhood transitions are important.
168
But here,
again, the research suggests that a stable, lifelong marriage typically
benefits women and mens health.
Despite the overall health advantages for married individuals, the tran-
sition to marriage is associated with at least one disadvantage: weight
gain.
169
In one recent study, researchers found that those who married
had BMI scores 1.129 units higher, on average, than those who
remained unmarried three years laterthe equivalent of gaining eight
pounds for a person 510 tall and weighing 170 pounds.
170
Both men
and women who marry are more than two times more likely to become
obese than those who are in a non-cohabiting, dating relationship.
171
Here, adults who marry probably feel less pressure to stay fit to attract
or keep a partner, compared to their unmarried peers.
Marriage seems to be associated with better health
among minorities and the poor.
A recent report from the Centers for Disease Control indicates that
African American, Latino, and low-income adults also enjoy health ben-
efits from marriage. African American and Latino adults who are married
are less likely to be in poor health, to have activity limitations, to smoke,
to have a drinking problem, and to suffer serious pyschological distress,
compared to cohabiting, never-married, divorced, and widowed adults
who were African American or Latino. Poor married adults were less
likely to be in poor health, to have activity limitations, to smoke, to have
21.
00676
Page 33
a drinking problem, or to suffer serious psychological distress, compared
to cohabiting, divorced, and widowed adults. (However, they did not do
consistently better than never-married adults).
172
Nevertheless, marriage
may also increase the risk of obesity for African American women.
173
Marriage also has implications for child health. Studies indicate that
Latino and African American infants are significantly more likely to die
at or around birth, suffer from low birth weight, or be born premature
if they are born outside of marriage.
174
More research needs to be done
on the health consequences of marriage for low-income and minority
populations to confirm and extend these findings.
Mental Health and Emotional Well-Being
Children whose parents divorce have higher rates of psy-
chological distress and mental illness.
In the last four decades, a large body of research on divorce has accu-
mulated that generally indicates that divorce often causes children con-
siderable emotional distress and doubles the risk that they will experi-
ence serious pyschological problems later in life.
175
Children of divorce
are at higher risk for depression and other mental illness over the
course of their lives, in part because of reduced educational attainment,
increased risk of divorce, marital problems, and economic hardship.
176
A twenty-five-year study by psychologist Judith Wallerstein and her col-
leagues found that that the effects of divorce on children crescendoed
as they enter adulthood. Their relationships with the opposite sex were
often impaired by acute fears of betrayal and abandonment, and many
also complained that they had never witnessed a man and a woman in
a happy relationship and doubted that achieving such a relationship
was possible.
177
Indeed, the recent growth of cohabitation flows in part
from the loss of confidence that many children of divorce have in mar-
riage.
178
Having witnessed divorce up close, many young adults are
afraid that they will not achieve lifelong love and they feel handicapped
in their search for love and marriage by their lack of models of a happy
relationship between a man and a woman, their lack of knowledge
about how to resolve differences, and their expectation of betrayal and
abandonment by their lover, wife, or husband.
179
So they cohabit, date,
or hookup instead of marrying.
Since Wallerstein published her pioneering book, Second Chances:
Men, Women, and Children a Decade After Divorce, which suggested
22.
00677
Page 34
that divorce was associated with a fear of abandonment, sleeplessness,
a rise in aggression, and chronic anxiety among the children of divorce,
a large body of research on divorce has accumulated, which generally
indicates that divorce often causes children considerable emotional dis-
tress and doubles the risk that they will experience serious pyscholog-
ical problems later in life. Children of divorce are at higher risk for
depression and other mental illness over the course of their lives, in part
because of reduced educational attainment, increased risk of divorce,
marital problems, and economic hardship.
The timing of the breakup may matter as well. Family instability prior
to the end of kindergarten (be it divorce or another type of parental
breakup) but not from first through fourth grades heightens externaliz-
ing behavior problems and lowers peer compentency among fifth
graders.
180
There is mixed evidence as to whether these higher rates of psycho-
logical distress are causally related to parental divorce or instead to
some genetic factor(s). Studies from two sitesAustralia and Virginia
conducted by the same research team report very different results. Two
of these studies followed identical and nonidentical twins in Australia
who married and had children. Some of these twins went on to
divorce. By comparing the children of divorce with children from intact
families in this sample, the researchers were able to determine the role
that genetic factors played in fostering psychological problems among
the children of divorce. Specifically, these studies found that children
of divorce were significantly more likely to suffer from depression,
alcohol and drug abuse, delinquency, and thoughts of suicide.
181
In the
researchers own words: The results of the modeling indicated that
parental divorce was associated with young-adult offspring psychopathol-
ogy even when controlling for genetic and common environmental
factors related to the twin parent.
182
However, in a similarly-designed
study of Virginians, the researchers found that the apparent effect of
parental divorce on emotional problems could be attributed to genetic
differences among parents who divorced, even as genetics did not
explain the association between parental divorce and alcohol problems.
183
The researchers note that cross-cultural differences, measurement dif-
ferences, or sampling differences may account for the discrepancy.
There is some additional evidence that the psychological effects of
divorce differ depending on the level of conflict between parents prior
to divorce. When marital conflict is high and sustained, children benefit
psychologically from divorce. When marital conflict is low, children
00678
Page 35
suffer psychologically from divorce. Unfortunately, about two-thirds of
divorces appear to be taking place among low-conflict spouses.
184
Cohabitation is associated with higher levels of psycho-
logical problems among children.
Studies find that children in cohabiting families are significantly more
likely to experience depression, difficulty sleeping, feelings of worth-
lessness, nervousness, and tension, compared to children in intact, mar-
ried households.
185
For example, one nationally-representative study of
six- to eleven-year-olds found that 15.7 percent of children in cohabit-
ing families experienced serious emotional problems (e.g., depression,
feelings of inferiority, etc.), compared to just 3.5 percent of children in
families headed by married biological or adoptive parents.
186
Kindergartners in cohabiting stepfamilies report more sadness and lone-
liness than those who live with their married biological parents. Those
who cohabit with their biological parents do not differ from those who
live with their married parents. Both types of cohabiting families, how-
ever, are associated with lower levels of self-control among kindergart-
ners.
187
Adolescents in stably cohabiting stepfamilies experience more
increases in depression than their counterparts in stable biological par-
ent families, and transitioning from a cohabiting stepfamily to a married
stepfamily also appears to increase depression among adolescents.
188
The effect of cohabitation may be contingent on its social institutional-
ization. For example, children born born to Latina mothers in countries
where cohabitation is more prevalent and accepted exhibit less exter-
nalizing behavioral problems than those born in countries where it is
less institutionalized.
189
But, in the United States at least, cohabitation is
a risk factor for childrens mental health.
Family breakdown appears significantly to increase the
risk of suicide.
High rates of family fragmentation are associated with an increased risk
of suicide among both adults and adolescents.
190
Divorced men and
women are more than twice as likely as their married counterparts to
attempt suicide.
191
Married individuals were also substantially less likely
to commit suicide than were divorced, widowed, or never-married
individuals.
192
In the last half-century, suicide rates among teens and
23.
24.
00679
Page 36
young adults have tripled. The single most important explanatory vari-
able, according to one new study, is the increased share of youths liv-
ing in homes with a divorced parent. The effect, note the researchers,
is large, explaining as much as two-thirds of the increase in youth
suicides over time.
193
Another study suggests that if family structure
remained as it was in 1970, 179,000 fewer children per year would con-
sider suicide and 71,000 fewer children would attempt suicide.
194
Married mothers have lower rates of depression than do
single or cohabiting mothers.
The absence of marriage is a serious risk factor for maternal depression.
Married mothers have lower rates of depression than do cohabiting or
single mothers. Cohabiting mothers are more likely to be depressed
because they are much less confident that their relationship will last,
compared to married mothers.
195
Married mothers also perceive that they
receive more support from their child(ren)s father.
196
Single mothers are
more likely to be depressed by the burdens associated with parenting
alone. One study of 2,300 urban adults found that, among parents of
preschoolers, the risk of depression was substantially greater for unmar-
ried as compared to married mothers.
197
Single mothers who marry (and
remain married), moreover, receive the same mental health benefits as
childless women who marry.
198
Marriage protects even older teen moth-
ers from the risk of depression. In one nationally representative sample
of eighteen- and nineteen-year-old mothers, 41 percent of single white
mothers having their first child reported high levels of depressive symp-
toms, compared to 28 percent of married white teen mothers in this age
group.
199
Longitudinal studies following young adults as they marry, divorce, and
remain single indicate that marriage boosts mental and emotional well-
being for both men and women.
200
We focus on maternal depression
because it is both a serious mental health problem for women and a
serious risk factor for children.
201
Not only are single mothers more likely
to be depressed, the consequences of maternal depression for child
well-being are greater in single-parent families, probably because single
parents have less support and because children in disrupted families
have less access to their (nondepressed) other parent.
202
One study found that single mothers who are no longer in a romantic
relationship (of any kind) with their childs father one year after the
birth exhibit the most mental health problems, but even those who are
25.
00680
Page 37
cohabiting with the father or in a romantic, non-cohabiting relationship
with the father have more mental health problems than married moth-
ers. In this study, about 29 percent of mothers who were no longer in
a romantic relationship with their childs father report at least one mental
health problem, compared to 24 percent of those in a romantic, non-
cohabiting relationship, 23 percent of those in a cohabiting relationship,
and 16 percent of those who were married. These differences persisted
even after controls for relevant background characteristics.
203
Crime and Domestic Violence
Boys raised in non-intact families are more likely to
engage in delinquent and criminal behavior.
Even after controlling for factors such as race, mothers education,
neighborhood quality, and cognitive ability, one recent study found that
boys raised in single-parent homes are about twice as likely (and boys
raised in stepfamilies are more than two-and-a-half times as likely) to
have committed a crime that leads to incarceration by the time they
reach their early thirties. (The study found that slightly more than 7 per-
cent of boys were incarcerated at some point between the ages of fif-
teen and thirty.)
204
Teens in both one-parent and remarried homes display more deviant
behavior and commit more delinquent acts than do teens whose par-
ents stayed married.
205
Teens in one-parent families are on average less
attached to their parents opinions and more attached to their peer
groups. Combined with lower levels of parental supervision, these atti-
tudes appear to set the stage for delinquent behavior.
206
However, some
research indicates that the link between single-parenthood and delin-
quency does not hold for African American children.
207
The research on cohabiting families and youth crime and delinquency
is still in its infancy. Nevertheless, studies indicate that adolescents in
cohabiting families are more likely to engage in delinquent behavior, to
cheat, and to be suspended from school.
208
Moreover, white and Latino
adolescents in cohabiting households were more likely to have behav-
ioral problems than adolescents living in intact, married households and
adolescents living in single-mother households.
209
One reason that teens
in cohabiting households appear to do worse than teens living in single-
parent homes is that cohabiting households are usually led by their
mother and an unrelated male. Such boyfriends are more likely to be
26.
00681
Page 38
abusive than a married father, and they are also more likely to compete
with the child for the attention of the mother.
210
Family transitions are also related to increases in delinquency among
adolescents. Specifically, moving from a two-biological parent family to
a single-mother family and moving from a single-mother family to either
a cohabiting or married stepfamily is associated with an increase in
delinquency for adolescents. However, moving to a single-mother family
from a married or cohabiting stepfamily does not appear to matter, nor
does moving from a cohabiting stepfamily to a married stepfamily. In
other words, children who transition out of a stable, intact, married
family are more likely to engage in delinquent behavior.
211
Marriage appears to reduce the risk that adults will be
either perpetrators or victims of crime.
Overall, single and divorced women are four to five times more likely
to be victims of violent crime in any given year than are married
women. Single and divorced women are almost ten times more likely
than are wives to be raped, and about three times more likely to be the
victims of aggravated assault. For instance, the U.S. Department of
Justice estimates that the violent victimization rate was 17 per 1000 mar-
ried women compared to more than 60 per 1000 single and divorced
women in 19921993. Similarly, compared to husbands, unmarried men
are about four times as likely to become victims of violent crime.
212
Marriage also plays a crucial role in reducing male criminality.
213
A study
of five hundred chronic juvenile offenders found that those who mar-
ried and enjoyed high-quality marriages reduced their offense rate by
two-thirds, compared to criminals who did not marry or who did not
establish good marriages.
214
Research by sociologist Robert Sampson
indicates that murder and robbery rates in urban America are strongly
tied to the health of marriage in urban communities. Specifically, he
found that high rates of family disruption and low rates of marriage
were associated with high rates of murder and robbery among both
African American and white adults and juveniles.
215
In his words,
Family structure is one of the strongest, if not the strongest, predictor
of variations in urban violence across cities in the United States.
216
Another recent study comes to a similar conclusion, claiming that the
difference in family structure between whites and blacks is one of the
most consistent explanations for the black-white homicide gap.
217
Marriage also reduces criminality in the Netherlands, indicating the
27.
00682
Page 39
effect is not unique to the American context.
218
Other research indicates
that declines in marriage rates among working-class and poor men in
the 1970s drove crime rates markedly higher in that decade. The rea-
son? Married men spend more time with their wives, who discourage
criminal behavior, and less time with peers, who often do not.
219
Some
of the most rigorous research on the causal relationship between mar-
riage and crime finds that marriage reduces the odds of a man com-
mitting a crime by about 35 percent.
220
Married women appear to have a lower risk of experi-
encing domestic violence than do cohabiting or dating
women.
Domestic violence remains a serious problem both inside and outside
of marriage.
While young women must recognize that marriage is not a good strategy
for reforming violent men, a large body of research shows that being
unmarried, and especially living with a man outside of marriage, is asso-
ciated with an increased risk of domestic abuse.
221
One analysis of the
National Survey of Families and Households found that cohabitors were
over three times more likely than spouses to say that arguments became
physical over the last year (13 percent of cohabitors versus 4 percent of
spouses). Even after controlling for race, age, and education, people
who live together are still more likely than married people to report vio-
lent arguments.
222
Mothers of infants likewise report higher incidence of
partner violence when they are either cohabiting or in a non-cohabiting
romantic relationship.
223
During young adulthood, however, when mar-
riage is less normative and dating more so, there does not appear to be
differences in relationship violence between marrieds and daters. Even
so, the difference between marrieds and cohabitors persists for young
adult women.
224
Another study of domestic violence among African
Americans found that African American women were more likely to be
victimized if they were living in neighborhoods with higher proportions
of cohabiting couples.
225
Overall, as one scholar sums up the relevant
research, Regardless of methodology, the studies yielded similar results:
Cohabitors engage in more violence than do spouses.
226
Selection effects play a powerful role. Women are less likely to marry,
and more likely to divorce, violent men. So, one reason that women in
cohabiting relationships are more likely to have a violent partner is that
cohabiting women in nonviolent relationships are more likely to move
28.
00683
Page 40
into marriage, whereas cohabiting women in violent relationships are
less likely to move on to marriage; this means that the most violent rela-
tionships are more likely to remain cohabiting ones.
227
However, scholars
suggest that the greater integration of married men into the community,
and the greater investment of spouses in each other, also play a role.
228
Married men, for example, are more responsive to policies such as
mandatory arrest policies, designed to signal strong disapproval of
domestic violence.
229
A child who is not living with his or her own two married
parents is at greater risk of child abuse.
Children living with single mothers, mothers boyfriends, or stepfathers
are more likely to become victims of child abuse.
230
Children living in
single-mother homes have increased rates of death from intentional
injuries.
231
Another national study found that 7 percent of children who
had lived with one parent had experienced sexual abuse, compared to
4 percent of children who lived with both biological parents, largely
because they had more contact with unrelated adult males.
232
Other
research found that, although boyfriends contribute less than 2 percent
of nonparental childcare, they commit half of all reported child abuse
by nonparents. The researcher concludes that a young child left alone
with a mothers boyfriend experiences elevated risk of physical
abuse.
233
A recent federal report on child maltreatment found that
[c]hildren living with two married biological parents had the lowest rate
of overall Harm Standard maltreatment, at 6.8 per 1,000 children,
whereas [c]hildren living with one parent who had an unmarried partner
in the household had the highest incidence of Harm Standard maltreat-
ment (57.2 per 1,000).
234
Another study focusing on fatal child abuse in
Missouri found that preschool children were 47.6 times more likely to
die in a cohabiting household, compared to preschool children living in
an intact, married household.
235
Stepfathers also present risks to children. As psychologists Martin Daly
and Margo Wilson reported, Living with a stepparent has turned out
to be the most powerful predictor of severe child abuse yet.
236
Studies
have found that young children in stepfamilies are more than fifty
times more likely to be murdered by a stepparent (usually a stepfa-
ther) than by a biological parent.
237
One study found that a preschool-
er living with a stepfather was forty times more likely to be sexually
abused than one living with both of his or her biological parents.
238
29.
00684
Page 41
There is a growing marriage gap between college-edu-
cated Americans and less-educated Americans.
As late as the 1970s, the vast majority of adult Americans were living in
an intact marriage, and almost nine in ten children were born into mar-
ried families. No longer. Now, less than half of adults are married, and
almost half white high-school educated Americans.
239
Clearly, the
nations retreat from marriage has dramatically reshaped the nature of
adult life, and the context of family life for children.
But this retreat from marriage has hit poor, working-class, and
minority communities with particular force. By contrast, marriage
trends among more educated and affluent Americans have largedly
stabilized or taken a turn for the better. For instance, nonmarital child-
bearing rose more than six-fold from 5 percent in 1982 to 34 percent
in 20062008 among white high-school educated Americans. Over this
same period, it did not rise at all for white college-educated
Americans, among whom only 2 percent of children were born ou
tside of marriage in the 1980s and the 2000s. Similarly, over this same
period, family instability rose among Americans who did not have col-
lege degrees, but fell among college-educated Americans. Since 1982,
the percentage of fourteen-year-olds living with both of their parents
has declined for children living with parents who do not have college
degrees, while it has increased for children whose parents have college
degrees.
240
Thus, in the United States today, there is a growing marriage gap such
that the educated and the affluent are enjoying more stable and high-
quality marriages, and the less educated and less affluent are experi-
encing lower-quality and less stable marriages. Indeed, poor and working-
class Americans are increasingly foregoing marriage entirely, opting
instead for cohabiting unions that often do not serve them and their
children well over the long term.
The growing marriage gap is troubling for at least two reasons. It
leaves working-class and poor adults more distanced from an institu-
tion that has historically lent purpose, meaning, responsibility, mutual
aid, and a sense of solidarity to the lives of countless men and
women. And it leaves children in poor and working-class communities
doubly disadvantaged, insofar as children in these communities have
access to fewer socioeconomic resources and fewer intact, married
families.
30.
00685
Page 42
Conclusion
M
ARRIAGE IS MORE THAN A PRIVATE EMOTIONAL RELATIONSHIP. It is
also a social good. This is not to claim that every person can
or should marry. Or that every child raised outside of marriage
is damaged as a result. Marriage is not a panacea that will solve all of
our social problems.
But marriage matters. Children in average intact, married families are
more likely to thrive than children in average single- and stepparent
families, and families headed by cohabiting couples. Communities
where good-enough marriages are common have better outcomes for
children, women, and men than do communities marked by high rates
of divorce, unmarried childbearing, cohabition, and high-conflict or vio-
lent marriages. Moreover, as we have seen, the benefits of a strong mar-
riage culture extend across lines of race, ethnicity, and class.
Indeed, if we adapt a public health perspective in thinking about the
effects of marriage on the commonweal, we can see that the effects of
marriage areat the societal levelquite large. Sociologist Paul Amato
recently estimated the effects of returning marriage rates for households
with children to the level they were in 1980. This is what he found:
Increasing marital stability to the same level as in 1980 is associated
with a decline of nearly one-half million children suspended from
school, about two hundred thousand fewer children engaging in
delinquency or violence, a quarter of a million fewer children receiv-
ing therapy, about a quarter of a million fewer smokers, about
80,000 fewer children thinking about suicide, and about 28,000
fewer children attempting suicide.
241
So the institutional strength of marriage in our society has clear conse-
quences for children, adults, and the communities in which they live.
If policy makers are concerned about issues as varied as poverty, crime,
child well-being, rising economic inequality, and the fiscal limits of the
contemporary welfare state, they should recognize that the nations
retreat from marriage is closely connected to all of these issues. To
strengthen marriage, more funding is needed for research that points
the way toward new public policies, community initiatives, and public
campaigns to help strengthen marriage, particularly in minority and
low-income communities most affected by the retreat from marriage.
We also need ongoing, basic scientific research on marriage, cohabitation,
00686
Page 43
and family instability that contributes to the development of strategies
and programs that help strengthen marriage and slow the relational
merry-go-round that all too many adults and children now find them-
selves riding.
242
There is promising evidence of successful strategies,
243
but such strategies should continue to be informed by ongoing
research.
We need to answer questions like the following: What are the long-term
consequences for children of growing up in increasingly unstable and
complex families? How can we prevent nonmarital childbearing and
bridge the marriage gap? How can families, marriage educators, thera-
pists, and public policy help working-class and poor parents recognize
that cohabitation does not compare to marriage when it comes to start-
ing a family? How can communities be mobilized to promote a marriage-
friendly culture? And how do we bring together those who are doing
the grassroots work of strengthening marriage with researchers and
public officials in order to create synergies of knowledge, practice, and
public policy?
If marriage is not merely a private preference, but also a social and
public good, concerned citizens, as well as scholars, need and deserve
answers to these and similar questions.
00687
Page 44
Appendix: Figures
FIGURE 2. PERCENT OF CHILDREN EXPERIENCING PARENTAL DIVORCE/SEPARATION AND
PARENTAL COHABITATION, BY AGE 12; PERIOD LIFE TABLE ESTIMATES, 2002-07
50
40
30
20
10
0
P
E
R
C
E
N
T
PARENTAL DIVORCE PARENTAL COHABITATION
Source: Kennedy and Bumpass, 2011. Data from National Survey of Family
Growth. Note: The divorce/separation rate only applies to children born to
married parents.
24%
42%
28
27
26
25
24
23
22
21
20
FIGURE 1. PERCENT OF FIRST CHILDREN EXPERIENCING PARENTAL DIVORCE BY AGE 10,
BY PARENTS YEAR OF MARRIAGE (1960-1997)
Source: SIPP Data, 2001, 2004, and 2008. Women with premarital births excluded.
1960
TO
1964
1965
TO
1969
1970
TO
1974
1975
TO
1979
1980
TO
1984
1985
TO
1989
1990
TO
1994
1995
TO
1997
P
E
R
C
E
N
T
00688
Page 45
20
15
10
5
0
FIGURE 3. INCIDENCE PER 1,000 CHILDREN OF HARM STANDARD ABUSE BY
FAMILY STRUCTURE AND LIVING ARRANGEMENT, 2005-2006
Source: Figure 5-2 in Fourth National Incidence Study of Child Abuse and Neglect
(NIS-4): Report to Congress.
1.9
9.8
8.2
19.5
5.9
6.8
0.5
4.3
2.4
9.9
5.3
0.8
5.0
2.5
2.9
4.0
PHYSICAL ABUSE SEXUAL ABUSE EMOTIONAL ABUSE
2.4
8.2
Married biological parents
Other married parents
Cohabiting biological parents
Parent with cohabiting partner
Single parent, no partner
Neither parent
FIGURE 4. PERCENT OF 16-YEAR-OLDS LIVING WITH MOTHER AND FATHER,
1978-1984 AND 1998-2004
80
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
P
E
R
C
E
N
T
1978-1984 1998-2004
Source: General Social Survey, 1980-2010.
66%
55%
00689
Page 46
FIGURE 5. PERCENT OF CHILDREN EXPERIENCING PARENTAL SEPARATION BY AGE 12
BY MOTHERS RELATIONSHIP STATUS AT BIRTH; PERIOD LIFE TABLE ESTIMATES, 2002-07
MARRIED MOTHER COHABITING MOTHER
Source: Kennedy and Bumpass, 2011. Data from National Survey of Family
Growth.
80
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
P
E
R
C
E
N
T
24%
65%
FIGURE 6. PERCENT OF 14-YEAR-OLD GIRLS LIVING WITH MOTHER AND FATHER,
BY MOTHERS EDUCATION AND YEAR
100
80
60
40
20
0
P
E
R
C
E
N
T
Source: National Survey of Family Growth, 1982 and 2006-08.
65%
52%
74%
58%
80%
81%
MOTHER HAD NO
HIGH SCHOOL
DEGREE
MOTHER HAD HIGH
SCHOOL DEGREE,
NO FOUR-YEAR
COLLEGE DEGREE
MOTHER HAD
FOUR-YEAR COLLEGE
DEGREE
1974-1981
2000-2007
00690
Page 47
Endnotes
Endnotes are located online at:
http://www.americanvalues.org/wmm/endnotes.php
00691
The Institute for American Values, founded in 1987, is a private, nonpartisan
organization devoted to research, publication, and public education on issues
of family well-being and civil society. By providing forums for scholarly
inquiry and debate, the Institute seeks to bring fresh knowledge to bear on
the challenges facing families and civil society. Through its publications and
other educational activities, the Institute seeks to bridge the gap between
scholarship and policy making, bringing new information to the attention of
policy makers in the government, opinion makers in the media, and decision
makers in the private sector.
About the National Marriage Project
The National Marriage Project, founded in 1997 at Rutgers University, is a
nonpartisan, nonsectarian, and interdisciplinary initiative now located at
the University of Virginia. The Projects mission is to provide research and
analysis on the health of marriage in America, to analyze the social and cul-
tural forces shaping contemporary marriage, and to identify strategies to
increase marital quality and stability.
1841 Broadway
Suite 211
New York, NY 10023
Tel: (212) 246-3942
Fax: (212) 541-6665
info@americanvalues.org
www.americanvalues.org
National Marriage Project
The University of Virginia
P.O. Box 400766
The Dynamics Building
Charlottesville, VA 22904-4766
Tel: (434) 321-8601
Fax: (434) 924-7028
marriage@virginia.edu
www.virginia.edu/marriageproject/
00692

ATTACHMENT C

Births: Preliminary Data for 2012
National Vital Statistics Reports
00693
National Vital
Statistics Reports
Volume 62, Number 3 September 6, 2013
Births: Preliminary Data for 2012
by Brady E. Hamilton, Ph.D.; JoyceA. Martin, M.P.H.; and Stephanie J. Ventura, M.A., Division of Vital Statistics
live-birthorder,race,andHispanicoriginofmother.Dataonmarital
Abstract
status, cesarean delivery, preterm births, and low birthweight are
also presented.
ObjectivesThis report presents preliminary data for 2012 on
MethodsDatainthisreportarebasedon99.96%of2012births.
births in the United States. U.S. data on births are shown by age,
Recordsforthefewstateswithlessthan100%ofrecordsreceived
1
Includes persons of Hispanic, non-Hispanic, and origin not stated, according to the mother's reported race.
SOURCE: CDC/NCHS, National Vital Statistics System.
0
20
40
60
80
100
120
140
160
180
Non-
Hispanic
white
Non-
Hispanic
black
American
Indian or
Alaska Native
1
Asian or
Pacific
Islander
1
Hispanic Non-
Hispanic
white
Non-
Hispanic
black
American
Indian or
Alaska Native
1
Asian or
Pacific
Islander
1
Hispanic
R
a
t
e
s

p
e
r

1
,
0
0
0

w
o
m
e
n

a
g
e
d

1
5
1
9

i
n

s
p
e
c
i
f
i
e
d

g
r
o
u
p

1991 2012
15 17 years 18 19 years
Figure 1. Birth rates for teenagers aged 1517 and 1819, by race and Hispanic origin: United States, final 1991 and
preliminary 2012
U.S.DEPARTMENTOFHEALTHANDHUMANSERVICES
CentersforDiseaseControlandPrevention
NationalCenterforHealthStatistics
NationalVitalStatisticsSystem
00694
2 National Vital Statistics Reports, Vol. 62, No. 3, September 6, 2013
are weighted to independent control counts of all births received in
statevitalstatisticsofficesin2012.Comparisonsaremadewithfinal
2011 data.
ResultsThepreliminarynumberofbirthsfortheUnitedStates
in 2012 was 3,952,937, essentially unchanged (not statistically sig-
nificant)from2011;thegeneralfertilityratewas63.0birthsper1,000
women aged 1544, down only slightly from 2011, after declining
nearly3%ayearfrom2007through2010.Thenumberofbirthsand
fertility rate either declined or were unchanged for most race and
Hispanicorigingroupsfrom2011to2012;however,boththenumber
ofbirthsandthefertilityrateforAsianorPacificIslanderwomenrose
in2012(7%and4%,respectively).Thebirthrateforteenagersaged
1519wasdown6%in2012(29.4birthsper1,000teenagersaged
1519), yet another historic low for the United States, with rates
decliningforyoungerandolderteenagersandfornearlyallraceand
Hispanicorigingroups.Thebirthrateforwomenintheirearly20s
also declined in 2012, to a new record low of 83.1 births per 1,000
women.Birthratesforwomenintheir30srosein2012,asdidthe
birthrateforwomenintheirearly40s.Thebirthrateforwomenin
theirlate40swasunchanged.Thenonmaritalbirthratedeclinedin
2012(to45.3birthper1,000unmarriedwomenaged1544),whereas
thenumberofbirthstounmarriedwomenrose1%andthepercentage
of births to unmarried women was unchanged (at 40.7%). The
cesareandeliveryratefortheUnitedStateswasunchangedin2012
at32.8%.Thepretermbirthratefellforthesixthstraightyearin2012
to11.54%.Thelowbirthweightratealsodeclinedin2012,to7.99%.
Keywords: birth rates maternal and infant health vital
statistics
Introduction
This report from the Centers for Disease Control and Preventions
NationalCenterforHealthStatistics(NCHS)presentspreliminarydataon
birthsandbirthrates[includingbirthstoteenagers(Figure1)]andselected
maternalandinfanthealthcharacteristicsfortheUnitedStatesin2012.The
findingsarebasedonnearly100%ofregisteredvitalrecordsoccurringin
calendaryear2012,whichwerereceivedandprocessedbyNCHSasof
April24,2013.Trendsinthepreliminaryreportsfor19952011birthswere
confirmedbythefinalvitalstatisticsforeachyear(1,2).Comparisonsare
based on the final data for 2011 and earlier years(2). Changes and
differences presented in this report are statistically significant at the 0.05
level,unlessnotedotherwise.
State-specificdetailedtablesfor2012births,basedonprelimi-
narydatashowing thepercentages of births to unmarriedwomen,
delivered by cesarean, born preterm, and of low birthweightare
availableontheNCHSwebsite(seeInternetTablesI1throughI4
at http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr62/nvsr62_03_tables.pdf).
Results
Births and birth rates
Key findings are listed below:
+ In 2012, the preliminary number of births for the United States
was 3,952,937, essentially unchanged (not statistically signifi-
cant)from2011(3,953,590)(Tables13andFigure2) (2). From
NOTES: Beginning with 1959, trend lines are based on registered live births; trend lines
for 19201958 are based on live births adjusted for underregistration.
Year
0
20
40
60
80
100
120
140
160
180
200
0
1
2
3
4
5
1920 1930 1940 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010
M
i
l
l
i
o
n
s

o
f

b
i
r
t
h
s

Number
Rate
R
a
t
e

p
e
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1
,
0
0
0

w
o
m
e
n

a
g
e
d

1
5
4
4

2012
Figure 2. Live births and general fertility rates:
United States, final 19202011 and preliminary 2012
2007through2010,thetrendinthenumberofbirthswasdown,
with births declining steadily from 2007 through 2010, then
slowingfrom2010to2011.From2011to2012,thetrendinbirths
appears to have flattened(3).
Births declined for non-Hispanic white and Hispanic women
(down 1% each) and were essentially unchanged for non-
Hispanic black and American Indian or Alaska Native (AIAN)
women.BirthsforAsianorPacificIslander(API)women,how-
ever, rose in 2012, by 7%.
+ In 2012, the preliminary general fertility rate (GFR) was 63.0
birthsper1,000womenaged1544,downslightly(lessthan1%)
fromtherecordlowratereportedfortheUnitedStatesin2011
(63.2)(Tables1,2,and4andFigure2)(2,4).Aswiththenumber
ofbirths,thetrendinthefertilityratedeclinedsteadilyfrom2007
through2010(downnearly3%peryear),thenslowlyfrom2010
to 2011 (down 1%).
Ratesdeclinedin2012forHispanicwomen(down2%)and
non-Hispanicblackwomen(down1%).Theratefornon-Hispanic
whitewomenwasunchanged.Theratesfornon-Hispanicblack
andHispanicwomenin2012wereagainatrecordlows(2).The
GFRforAIANwomenwasdown1%in2012,whereastherate
forAPI women rose 4%.
+ From2011to2012,birthratesdeclinedforwomenaged1529,
but rose for women aged 3044. The rates for women aged
1014 and 4549 were unchanged.
+ Thebirthrateforteenagerscontinuedtofallin2012,reaching
29.4birthsper1,000teenagersaged1519,down6%from2011
00695
(31.3).Theratein2012wasanhistoriclowfortheUnitedStates
(seeTables2,4,and5andFigure1for1991and2012)(2,5).
Since 2007, the rate has dropped almost one-third (from 41.5)
andmorethanone-halfintheyearsfrom1991(61.8)to2012(6).
+ Thenumberofbirthstoteenagersaged1519dropped7%
during20112012,to305,420,thefewestsincetheendof
WorldWarII.The2012totalwasalmostone-thirdfewerthan
in2007(444,899)andlessthanone-halfthetotalin1970,
the all-time peak year for the number of teen births
(644,708).
+ The birth rate for the youngest teenagers, aged 1014,
remained at 0.4 births per 1,000 in 2012. Because the
femalepopulationinthisagegroupdeclinedveryslightly,the
numberofbirthstomothersunderage15declinedaswell
during 20112012 to 3,674, the fewest since 1946.
+ Birthratesfellsignificantlyfrom2011to2012forteenagers
in age groups 1517 and 1819 years. Consistent with
recenttrends,therateforyoungerteenagersfellmoreduring
20112012thantherateforolderteenagers,8%compared
with5%.Since1991,therateforages1517fell63%,to
14.1 per 1,000 in 2012, while the rate for ages 1819
dropped 45%, to 51.4.
+ Amongracialandethnicgroups,declinesfrom2011to2012
forteenagersaged1519rangedfrom3%forAIANteen-
agersto5%7%fornon-Hispanicwhite,non-Hispanicblack,
API, and Hispanic teenagers. The largest decline for any
population group since 2007 was reported for Hispanic
teenagers,down39%,to46.3per1,000in2012.Birthrates
forteenagersaged1517fellsignificantlyfrom2011to2012
in all racial and ethnic groups; rates for ages 1819 were
significantlylowerin2012forallgroupsexceptforAIANand
API teenagers.
+ Thebirthrateforwomenaged2024was83.1birthsper1,000
womenin2012,3%lowerthantheratein2011(85.3)andanother
record low for the United States (Tables24 and Figure3) (4).
Therateforwomeninthisagegrouphasdeclinedsteadilysince
2007atnearly5%annually.Thenumberofbirthstowomenin
their early 20s declined 1% in 2012 (Tables24).The rate for
womenaged2529was106.5birthsper1,000women,down
1%fromtheratein2011(107.2)(2).Therateforwomeninthis
agegrouphasdeclined2%ayearsince2008.Thenumberof
birthstowomenintheirlate20salsodeclinedslightlyfrom2011
to 2012.
women,anincreaseof1%overtheratein2011(96.5)(Tables2
and4andFigure3).Thenumberofbirthstowomeninthisage
groupalsoincreasedin2012,by3%.Therateforwomenaged
3539increased2%to48.3birthsper1,000women,from47.2
in 2011(2). The number of births to women in this age group
increased 2% from 2011 to 2012.
womenin2012,1%abovetheratein2011(10.3)(2).Therate
forwomeninthisagegrouphasrisensteadilysince2000at2%
annually(4).Thenumberofbirthstowomenintheirearly40swas
essentiallyunchangedin2012.Therateforwomenaged4549
(whichincludesbirthstowomenaged50andover)remainedat
R
a
t
e

p
e
r

1
,
0
0
0

w
o
m
e
n

NOTE: Rates are plotted on a logarithmic scale.
Year
10
5
1
20
1990 1995 2000 2005 2010 2012
200
100
50
10
5
1
20
200
100
50
4044 years
3539 years
2529 years
3034 years
2024 years
1519 years
Figure 3. Birth rates, by selected age of mother:
United States, final 19902011 and preliminary 2012
0.7 births per 1,000 women; the number of births to womenin
this age group was essentially unchanged (Tables24).
+ Thepreliminarytotalfertilityrate(TFR)fortheUnitedStatesin
2012was1,880.5birthsper1,000women,1%belowtheratein
2011(1,894.5).Theratehasdeclinedsteadilysince2007,falling
anaverageofmorethan2%annually(2).TheTFRestimatesthe
numberofbirthsthatahypotheticalgroupof1,000womenwould
haveovertheirlifetimes,basedontheage-specificbirthratesin
a given year.
+ In2012,theTFRwasbelowreplacement,thelevel(2,100
births per 1,000 women) at which a given generation can
exactlyreplaceitself.Theratehadbeenabovereplacement
in2006and2007,buthasbeenbelowsincethen,andwas
also below replacement from 1972 through 2005(2).
+ TheTFRs declined for nearly all race and Hispanic origin
groups,falling2%forHispanicandAIANwomenand1%for
non-Hispanic white and non-Hispanic black women. How-
ever, the rate forAPI women rose in 2012, by 4%.
+ ThepreliminaryfirstbirthratefortheUnitedStatesin2012was
25.2 births per 1,000 women aged 1544, another record low,
down1%fromtheratein2011(25.4)(Table4)(2,4).First-birth
rates declined for women aged 1529, rose for women aged
3039, and were essentially unchanged for women in all other
agegroups.Thesecond-orderbirthrateforwomenaged1544
alsodeclinedin2012(down1%).However,thethird-orderbirth
ratewasunchangedat10.4andtherateforfourth- andhigher-
order births increased to 7.5 in 2012 from 7.4 in 2011.
00696
+ TheGFRdecreasedfor13statesfrom2011to2012(Alabama,
Alaska, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Mas-
sachusetts, Mississippi, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey,
andNorthCarolina)andPuertoRico,andincreasedfor4states
(Idaho,Kansas,NorthDakota,andOhio).GFRsfortheremaining
33states,theDistrictofColumbia,andremainingterritorieswere
essentiallyunchanged.Ratesbystaterangedfrom50.2birthsper
1,000 women aged 1544 in New Hampshire to 83.1 in Utah
(Table6).
+ Thenonmaritalbirthratedeclined2%in2012to45.3birthsper
1,000unmarriedwomenaged1544.Theratehasdroppedfor
4 consecutive years, falling 13% since 2008 (51.8 per 1,000),
according to preliminary data. The 2012 rate was the lowest
reportedsince2003.Untilthecurrentdeclinebegan,theratehad
risensteadily,increasing19%from2002(43.6)to2007(51.8).
+ Thetotalnumber of births to unmarriedwomen increased
by 1% in 2012 to 1,609,912, the first increase since
20072008. From 2008 to 2011, the number fell by 7%
overall. Nonmarital births dropped for teenagers and
increased for women aged 20 and over.
+ Theproportionofallbirthstounmarriedwomenin2012was
unchangedfrom2011at40.7%.Theproportionsincreased
significantly for births to non-Hispanic white, AIAN, and
Hispanicwomen;changesforotherraceandHispanicorigin
groups were not significant (Tables1 and 7).
+ Unmarried teenagers accounted for 17% of all nonmarital
birthsin2012,thelowestpercentageeverreported.In1970,
teenagers accounted for 50% of births to unmarried
women(7).
+ The percentage of births to unmarried women increased
significantlyin10statesanddeclinedin4states.Changes
intheother36statesandtheDistrictofColumbiawerenot
significant (TableI1).
Maternal and infant health birth characteristics
Key findings are listed below:
+ The2012cesareandeliveryratewas32.8%,unchangedsince
2010.Therecentstabilizationinthecesareanratefollowsmore
than a decade of steady increase of nearly 60% from 1996
through 2009 (Table8) (2).
+ Therateofcesareandeliverydeclinedamongnon-Hispanic
whitewomenforthethirdstraightyearto32.3%in2012.The
2012 cesarean rates rose, however, among non-Hispanic
black(35.8%)andHispanic(32.2%)womentothehighest
levelsreportedsincedataonthistopicfirstbecameavailable
onbirthcertificatesin1989.RatesforAIAN(28.6%in2012)
andAPI mothers (33.2%) were essentially unchanged.
+ Thepretermbirthratefellforthesixthstraightyearin2012,to
11.54%,down2%from2011,and10%from2006.Thisrate(the
percentageofbirthsdeliveredatlessthan37completedweeks
P
e
r
c
e
n
t

Year
8
10
12
14
16
18
20
1990 1992 1994 1996 1998 2000 2002 2004 2006 2008 2010 2012
All races and origins
Non-Hispanic white
Non-Hispanic black
Hispanic
0
Figure 4. Preterm birth rates, by race and Hispanic origin of mother: United States, final 19902011 and preliminary
2012
00697
ofgestation)rosebymorethanone-thirdfrom1981to2006(see
Tables8 and 9 and Figure4) (2).
+ Declines from 2011 to 2012 were seen among both early
preterm (less than 34 completed weeks of gestation) and
latepreterm(3436completedweeks)deliveries.Theearly
pretermratewas3.41%in2012,downfrom3.44%in2011
and3.66%in2006.Thelatepretermbirthratedeclinedfrom
8.28%to8.13%from2011to2012,andisdown11%from
the 2006 high (Table9).
+ Preterm birth rates declined among non-Hispanic white,
non-Hispanicblack,andAPIinfantsfrom2011to2012;rates
were essentially stable for Hispanic and AIAN infants
(Table8).Since2006,pretermrateshavedeclined12%for
non-Hispanicwhite,10%fornon-Hispanicblack,and5%for
Hispanic infants(2). The 2012 preterm rate among black
infants (16.53%), although higher than that for other race
andHispanicorigingroups,representsanotherrecordlow
(comparable data available since 1989).
+ Declinesinpretermratesareobservedfrom2006to2012
in44statesandtheDistrictofColumbia.Changesinrates
intheremainingsixstateswerenotstatisticallysignificant
(TableI3).
+ The2012lowbirthweight(LBW)ratewas7.99,down1%from
2011and3%fromthe2006high(Table8)(2).TheLBWrate(the
percentageofinfantsbornatlessthan2,500gramsor5pounds,
8ounces)roseduringthemid-1980sthrough2006,peakingat
8.26% of all births(2). The rate of very low birthweight (less
than1,500gramsor3pounds,4ounces)was1.42%in2012,
downfrom1.44%in2011and1.49%for20052007(Table8) (2).
Thepercentageofinfantsbornmoderatelylowbirthweight(1,500
grams2,499grams)alsodeclinedin2012,to6.57%from6.66%
in 2011, and is down from 6.77% in 2006 (data not shown).
+ Modest downward trends in LBW rates are observed for
non-Hispanicwhiteandnon-Hispanicblackinfantsbetween
2011and2012andfrom2006to2012.Since2006,rates
aredown5%and6%,respectivelyforthetwogroups.LBW
among Hispanic births has been essentially stable from
2006 to 2012 (Table8) (2).
References
1. HamiltonBE,MartinJA,VenturaSJ.Births:Preliminarydatafor2011.
National vital statistics reports; vol 61 no 5. Hyattsville, MD: National
Center for Health Statistics. 2012. Available from:
http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr61/nvsr61_05.pdf.
2. MartinJA,HamiltonBE,VenturaSJ,etal.Births:Finaldatafor2011.
National vital statistics reports; vol 62 no 1. Hyattsville, MD: National
3. Hamilton BE, Sutton PD. Recent trends in births and fertility rates
through December 2012. NCHS Health E-Stat. Hyattsville, MD:
National Center for Health Statistics. 2013. Available from:
http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/hestat/births_fertility_december_2012/
births_fertility_december_2012.htm.
4. National Center for Health Statistics. Vital statistics of the United
States, 2003, volume I, natality. Available from:
http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/vsus.htm.
5. Ventura SJ, Mathews TJ, Hamilton BE. Births to teenagers in the
United States, 19402000. National vital statistics reports; vol 49 no
10. Hyattsville, MD: National Center for Health Statistics. 2001.
6. Hamilton BE, Mathews TJ, Ventura SJ. Declines in state teen birth
rates by race and Hispanic origin. NCHS data brief, no 123.
Hyattsville, MD: National Center for Health Statistics. 2013.Available
from: http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/databriefs/db123.pdf.
7. Ventura SJ. Changing patterns of nonmarital childbearing in the
United States. NCHS data brief, no 18. Hyattsville, MD: National
http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/databriefs/db18.pdf.
8. HamiltonBE,MartinJA,VenturaSJ.Births:Preliminarydatafor2005.
Nationalvitalstatisticsreports;vol55no11.Hyattsville,MD:National
9. National Center for Health Statistics. 2011 addendum to the user
guide to the 2011 natality public use file. Hyattsville, MD: National
Center for Health Statistics. Annual product 2013. Available from:
ftp://ftp.cdc.gov/pub/Health_Statistics/NCHS/Dataset_Documentation/
DVS/natality/UserGuide2011.pdf.
10. NationalCenterforHealthStatistics.U.S.StandardCertificateofLive
Birth. 2003. Available from: http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/dvs/birth11-
03final-ACC.pdf.
11. NationalCenterforHealthStatistics.ReportofthePaneltoEvaluate
the U.S. Standard Certificates. National Center for Health Statistics.
2000. Available from: http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vital_certificate_
revisions.htm and http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/dvs/panelreport_
acc.pdf.
12. U.S. Office of Management and Budget. Revisions to the standards
fortheclassificationoffederaldataonraceandethnicity.FedRegist
62(210):5878290. 1997. Available from: http://www.whitehouse.gov/
omb/fedreg_1997standards.
13. U.S. Office of Management and Budget. Race and ethnic standards
for federal statistics and administrative reporting. Statistical Policy
Directive 15. 1977.
14. IngramDD,ParkerJD,SchenkerN,etal.UnitedStatesCensus2000
population with bridged race categories. National Center for Health
Statistics. Vital Health Stat 2(135). 2003. Available from:
http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/series/sr_02/sr02_135.pdf.
15. Johnson D. Coding and editing multiple race. Presented at the 2004
Joint Meeting of NAPHSIS and VSCP. Portland, Oregon. June 610,
2004.
16. Weed JA. NCHS procedures for multiple-race and Hispanic origin
data: Collection, coding, editing, and transmitting. Presented at the
2004 Joint Meeting of NAPHSIS and VSCP. Portland, Oregon. June
610, 2004. Available from: http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/dvs/
Multiple_race_docu_5-10-04.pdf.
17. Hamilton BE, Ventura SJ. Characteristics of births to single- and
multiple-race women: California, Hawaii, Pennsylvania, Utah, and
Washington, 2003. National vital statistics reports; vol 55 no 15.
from: http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr55/nvsr55_15.pdf.
18. National Center for Health Statistics. Vintage 2012 postcensal esti-
mates of the resident population of the United States (April 1, 2010,
July 1, 2010July 1, 2012), by year, county, single-year of age (0, 1,
2,..,85yearsandover),bridgedrace,Hispanicorigin,andsex.2013.
Available from: http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/bridged_race.htm.
19. U.S. Census Bureau. International data base. Population by single
years of age and sex, 2012. Available from:
http://www.census.gov/population/international/data/idb/information
Gateway.php [Accessed May 13, 2013].
00698
20. U.S. Census Bureau.Annual estimates of the resident population by
single year of age and sex for the United States, states, and Puerto
Rico Commonwealth: April 1, 2010 to July 1, 2012. 2013. Available
from: http://factfinder2.census.gov/bkmk/table/1.0/en/PEP/2012/PEPS
YASEX/0400000US72.
21. Ventura SJ, Bachrach CA. Nonmarital childbearing in the United
States, 194099. National vital statistics reports; vol 48 no 16.
from: http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr48/nvs48_16.pdf.
22. U.S. Census Bureau. DataFerrettCurrent Population Survey, March
2012. Washington, DC.
00699
List of Detailed Tables
1. Selected demographic characteristics, by race and Hispanic
origin of mother: United States, final 2011 and preliminary
2012 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
2. Births by age, race, and Hispanic origin of mother:
United States, final 2011 and preliminary 2012 . . . . . . . . . . . 9
3. Births by age of mother, live-birth order, and race and Hispanic
origin of mother: United States, preliminary 2012. . . . . . . . . . 11
4. Birth rates, by age of mother, live-birth order, and race and
Hispanic origin of mother: United States, preliminary 2012. . . . 12
5. Birth rates for women aged 1019, by age and race and
Hispanic origin of mother: United States, final 1991, 2007, and
20102011, and preliminary 2012 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
6. BirthsbyraceandHispanicoriginofmother:UnitedStatesand
each state and territory, preliminary 2012. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
7. Births to unmarried women, by age: United States, final 2011
and preliminary 2012 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
8. Selectedcharacteristicsofbirths,byraceandHispanicoriginof
mother: United States, final 2011 and preliminary 2012. . . . . . 16
9. Distribution of preterm births (prior to 37 completed weeks of
gestation):UnitedStates,final1990,2006,2010,and2011,and
preliminary 2012. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
10. Totalcountofrecordsandcompletenessofpreliminaryfileoflive
births: United States, each state and territory, preliminary
2012 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
List of Internet Tables
Available from:
http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr62/nvsr62_03_tables.pdf
I1. Births to unmarried mothers: United States, each state and
territory, final 2011 and preliminary 2012
I2. Births by cesarean delivery: United States, each state and
I3. Preterm and late preterm births: United States, each state and
I4. Low birthweight births: United States, each state and territory,
final 2011 and preliminary 2012
00700
2012
Table 1. Selected demographic characteristics, by race and Hispanic origin of mother: United States, final 2011 and preliminary
[Data for 2012 are based on a continuous file of records received from the states. Figures for 2012 are based on weighted data rounded to the nearest individual. Birth rates
are the total number of births per 1,000 population in specified group. Fertility rates are the total number of births (regardless of the age of the mother) per 1,000 women aged
1544 in specified group.Total fertility rates are sums of birth rates for 5-year age groups in specified group multiplied by 5]
Number Birth rate Fertility rate
Total
fertility rate
Percent of births
to unmarried women
Race and Hispanic origin of mother 2012 2011 2012 2011 2012 2011 2012 2011 2012 2011
1
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3,952,937 3,953,590 12.6 12.7 63.0 63.2 1,880.5 1,894.5 40.7 40.7
Non-Hispanic white
2
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Non-Hispanic black
2
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
American Indian orAlaska Native total
2,3
. .
Asian or Pacific Islander total
2,3
. . . . . . . .
Hispanic
4
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
2,133,115
583,080
46,093
272,949
907,405
2,146,566
582,345
46,419
253,915
918,129
10.7
14.6
10.5
15.1
17.1
10.8
14.7
10.7
14.5
17.6
58.7
65.0
47.0
62.2
74.4
58.7
65.4
47.7
59.9
76.2
1,761.5
1,898.5
1,350.0
1,770.0
2,188.5
1,773.5
1,919.5
1,373.5
1,706.5
2,240.0
29.4
72.2
66.9
17.1
53.5
29.0
72.3
66.2
17.2
53.3
1
Includes births to race and origin groups not shown separately, such as white Hispanic and black Hispanic women, and births with origin not stated.
2
Race and Hispanic origin are reported separately on birth certificates. Persons of Hispanic origin may be of any race. Race categories are consistent with the 1977 Office of Management and Budget
(OMB) standards. Forty-one states and the District of Columbia reported multiple-race data in 2012.The multiple-race data for these states were bridged to the single-race categories of the 1977 OMB
standards for comparability with other states; seeTechnical Notes. Multiple-race reporting areas vary for 20112012; seeTechnical Notes.
3
Includes persons of Hispanic, non-Hispanic, and origin not stated, according to the mothers reported race; seeTechnical Notes.
4
Includes all persons of Hispanic origin of any race; seeTechnical Notes.
NOTE: For information on the relative standard errors of the data and further discussion, see reference 8.
00701
Table 2. Births by age, race, and Hispanic origin of mother: United States, final 2011 and preliminary 2012
[Data for 2012 are based on a continuous file of records received from the states. Figures for 2012 are based on weighted data rounded to the nearest individual, so
categories may not add to totals. Rates per 1,000 women in specified age and race and Hispanic origin group]
2012 2011
Age in years and race and Hispanic origin of mother
1
Total
2
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
1014 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
1519 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
1517 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
1819 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
2024 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
2529 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
3034 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
3539 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
4044 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
4554
3
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Non-Hispanic white
4
Total
2
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
1014 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
1519 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
1517 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
1819 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
2024 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
2529 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
3034 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
3539 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
4044 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
4554
3
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Non-Hispanic black
4
Total
2
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
1014 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
1519 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
1517 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
1819 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
2024 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
2529 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
3034 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
3539 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
4044 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
4554
3
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
American Indian or Alaska Native total
4,5
Total
2
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
1014 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
1519 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
1517 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
1819 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
2024 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
2529 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
3034 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
3539 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
4044 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
4554
3
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Number
3,952,937
3,674
305,420
86,440
218,980
916,868
1,124,010
1,013,473
472,206
109,535
7,750
2,133,115
866
119,777
29,008
90,769
444,371
641,353
602,549
261,509
58,515
4,174
583,080
1,263
71,271
20,553
50,719
187,386
149,548
107,768
51,461
13,360
1,022
46,093
89
6,478
1,856
4,621
15,168
12,290
7,871
3,355
778
64
Rate
63.0
0.4
29.4
14.1
51.4
83.1
106.5
97.3
48.3
10.4
0.7
58.7
0.2
20.5
8.4
37.9
70.2
104.4
100.5
46.8
9.1
0.6
65.0
0.8
43.9
21.9
74.1
109.0
101.7
75.1
38.9
9.6
0.7
47.0
0.5
34.9
17.0
60.6
81.7
73.9
49.7
23.3
5.5
0.5
Number
3,953,590
3,974
329,772
95,538
234,234
925,200
1,127,583
986,682
463,849
108,920
7,610
2,146,566
869
129,329
31,461
97,868
451,939
647,520
591,266
260,596
60,724
4,323
582,345
1,378
78,558
23,659
54,899
186,229
147,708
104,274
50,245
12,952
1,001
46,419
95
6,802
2,014
4,788
15,569
12,477
7,380
3,292
772
32
Rate
63.2
0.4
31.3
15.4
54.1
85.3
107.2
96.5
47.2
10.3
0.7
58.7
0.2
21.7
9.0
39.9
71.8
105.2
100.1
45.8
9.3
0.6
65.4
0.9
47.3
24.6
78.8
112.3
101.7
73.9
37.8
9.3
0.7
47.7
0.5
36.1
18.2
61.6
86.6
75.4
47.3
23.1
5.5
0.2
See footnotes at end of table.
00702
Table 2. Births by age, race, and Hispanic origin of mother: United States, final 2011 and preliminary 2012Con.
[Data for 2012 are based on a continuous file of records received from the states. Figures for 2012 are based on weighted data rounded to the nearest individual, so
categories may not add to totals. Rates per 1,000 women in specified age and race and Hispanic origin group]
2012 2011
Age in years and race and Hispanic origin of mother
4,5
Total
2
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
1014 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
1519 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
1517 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
1819 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
2024 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
2529 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
3034 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
3539 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
4044 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
4554
3
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Hispanic
6
Total
2
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
1014 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
1519 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
1517 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
1819 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
2024 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
2529 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
3034 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
3539 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
4044 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
4554
3
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Number
272,949
62
5,544
1,414
4,131
28,580
74,254
97,986
53,392
12,196
935
907,405
1,397
102,698
33,756
68,942
241,049
244,403
193,106
99,820
23,657
1,275
Rate
62.2
0.1
9.7
4.2
17.8
41.4
95.8
121.4
68.1
16.1
1.4
74.4
0.6
46.3
25.5
77.2
111.4
119.6
94.3
51.5
13.2
0.8
Number
253,915
65
5,708
1,532
4,176
27,783
70,461
88,660
49,474
10,963
801
918,129
1,576
109,660
36,979
72,681
243,724
248,269
192,517
98,340
22,807
1,236
Rate
59.9
0.1
10.2
4.6
18.1
41.9
93.7
114.9
64.1
15.2
1.2
76.2
0.7
49.6
28.0
81.5
116.0
121.3
95.2
51.3
13.1
0.8
1
2
Includes births to women of all ages.The rate shown for all ages is the fertility rate, which is defined as the total number of births (regardless of the age of the mother) per 1,000 women aged
1544.
3
The birth rate for women aged 4549 is computed by relating the number of births to women aged 45 and over to women aged 4549 because most of the births in this group are to women aged
4549.
4
5
6
NOTE: For information on the relative standard errors of the data and further discussion; see reference 8.
00703
National Vital Statistics Reports, Vol. 62, No. 3, September 6, 2013 11
Table 3. Births by age of mother, live-birth order, and race and Hispanic origin of mother: United States, preliminary 2012
[Data are based on a continuous file of records received from the states. Figures are based on weighted data rounded to the nearest individual, so categories may not add to
totals]
Live-birth order and race and
Age of mother in years
Hispanic origin of mother All ages Under 15 1519 2024 2529 3034 3539 4044 4554
1
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3,952,937 3,674 305,420 916,868 1,124,010 1,013,473 472,206 109,535 7,750
1st child. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1,569,943 3,580 250,985 461,445 421,522 299,379 106,715 24,208 2,109
2nd child . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1,244,555 60 45,522 298,047 369,862 346,482 151,769 30,851 1,960
3nd child . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 650,242 8 6,380 111,071 202,018 201,814 105,269 22,471 1,211
4th child and over. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 465,673 8 865 41,077 124,590 160,074 105,457 31,219 2,383
Not stated. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22,524 18 1,668 5,229 6,017 5,723 2,996 786 87
Non-Hispanic white
2
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2,133,115 866 119,777 444,371 641,353 602,549 261,509 58,515 4,174
1st child. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 894,666 841 102,656 242,556 271,221 195,337 65,928 14,857 1,270
2nd child . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 696,630 16 14,894 140,806 214,683 217,794 89,648 17,657 1,132
3nd child . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 328,230 2 1,624 45,605 100,746 111,875 56,268 11,476 634
4th child and over. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205,299 2 174 13,655 52,321 75,210 48,585 14,243 1,110
Not stated. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8,289 5 428 1,750 2,382 2,334 1,079 282 29
Non-Hispanic black
2
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 583,080 1,263 71,271 187,386 149,548 107,768 51,461 13,360 1,022
1st child. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 222,583 1,224 56,747 86,698 41,729 23,818 9,581 2,537 247
2nd child . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165,147 26 11,498 59,390 46,090 31,087 13,546 3,281 228
3nd child . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99,070 3 1,956 26,470 31,949 23,986 11,762 2,780 164
4th child and over. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90,059 1 304 12,844 28,283 27,692 15,950 4,618 367
Not stated. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6,222 9 767 1,984 1,497 1,186 620 144 15
2,3
. . . . . . . . . . . . 46,093 89 6,478 15,168 12,290 7,871 3,355 778 64
1st child. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15,959 88 5,203 6,225 2,698 1,229 428 84 3
2nd child . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12,417 1 1,062 5,152 3,531 1,880 644 129 17
3nd child . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8,269 162 2,497 2,947 1,795 725 135 7
4th child and over. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9,175 24 1,205 3,041 2,920 1,526 424 34
Not stated. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 274 26 90 72 46 31 6 3
2,3
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 272,949 62 5,544 28,580 74,254 97,986 53,392 12,196 935
1st child. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 122,656 61 4,591 17,236 41,112 40,721 15,361 3,284 291
2nd child . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97,554 1 818 7,885 22,055 39,290 22,708 4,512 284
3nd child . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33,589 101 2,450 7,066 11,600 9,794 2,430 150
4th child and over. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17,850 11 880 3,649 5,932 5,264 1,910 204
Not stated. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1,300 22 130 373 443 265 60 6
Hispanic
4
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 907,405 1,397 102,698 241,049 244,403 193,106 99,820 23,657 1,275
1st child. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 310,139 1,367 82,119 108,456 63,681 36,556 14,561 3,149 250
2nd child . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 270,546 17 17,349 84,965 83,094 55,389 24,499 4,982 250
3nd child . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 180,492 3 2,539 34,155 59,355 52,308 26,406 5,520 207
4th child and over. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142,489 5 353 12,556 37,228 48,019 33,889 9,880 559
Not stated. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3,739 4 338 917 1,045 834 466 126 9
Quantity zero.
1
2
standards for comparability with other states; seeTechnical Notes.
3
4
00704
Table 4. Birth rates, by age of mother, live-birth order, and race and Hispanic origin of mother: United States, preliminary 2012
[Data are based on a continuous file of records received from the states. Rates per 1,000 women in specified age and race and Hispanic origin group]
Age of mother in years
Live-birth order and race and Hispanic origin of mother
1
1544 1014 1519 2024 2529 3034 3539 4044
2
4549
3
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63.0 0.4 29.4 83.1 106.5 97.3 48.3 10.4 0.7
1st child . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25.2 0.4 24.3 42.1 40.2 28.9 11.0 2.3 0.2
2nd child. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19.9 0.0 4.4 27.2 35.2 33.4 15.6 2.9 0.2
3nd child. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10.4 * 0.6 10.1 19.2 19.5 10.8 2.1 0.1
4th child and over . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.5 * 0.1 3.7 11.9 15.5 10.9 3.0 0.2
Non-Hispanic white
4
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58.7 0.2 20.5 70.2 104.4 100.5 46.8 9.1 0.6
1st child . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24.7 0.2 17.6 38.5 44.3 32.8 11.9 2.3 0.2
2nd child. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19.2 * 2.6 22.3 35.1 36.4 16.1 2.8 0.2
3nd child. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9.1 * 0.3 7.2 16.5 18.7 10.1 1.8 0.1
4th child and over . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.7 * 0.0 2.2 8.6 12.6 8.7 2.2 0.2
Non-Hispanic black
4
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65.0 0.8 43.9 109.0 101.7 75.1 38.9 9.6 0.7
1st child . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25.1 0.8 35.3 51.0 28.7 16.9 7.4 1.9 0.2
2nd child. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18.6 0.0 7.2 34.9 31.7 21.9 10.4 2.4 0.2
3nd child. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11.2 * 1.2 15.6 21.9 16.9 9.0 2.0 0.1
4th child and over . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10.1 * 0.2 7.5 19.4 19.5 12.2 3.3 0.3
4,5
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47.0 0.5 34.9 81.7 73.9 49.7 23.3 5.5 0.5
1st child . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16.4 0.5 28.2 33.7 16.3 7.8 3.0 0.6 *
2nd child. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12.7 * 5.7 27.9 21.4 11.9 4.5 0.9 *
3nd child. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8.5 * 0.9 13.5 17.8 11.4 5.1 1.0 *
4th child and over . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9.4 * 0.1 6.5 18.4 18.5 10.7 3.0 0.3
4,5
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62.2 0.1 9.7 41.4 95.8 121.4 68.1 16.1 1.4
1st child . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28.1 0.1 8.0 25.1 53.3 50.7 19.7 4.3 0.4
2nd child. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22.3 * 1.4 11.5 28.6 48.9 29.1 6.0 0.4
3nd child. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.7 * 0.2 3.6 9.2 14.4 12.6 3.2 0.2
4th child and over . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.1 * * 1.3 4.7 7.4 6.7 2.5 0.3
Hispanic
6
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74.4 0.6 46.3 111.4 119.6 94.3 51.5 13.2 0.8
1st child . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25.5 0.6 37.1 50.3 31.3 17.9 7.6 1.8 0.2
2nd child. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22.3 * 7.8 39.4 40.8 27.2 12.7 2.8 0.2
3nd child. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14.9 * 1.1 15.8 29.2 25.6 13.7 3.1 0.1
4th child and over . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11.7 * 0.2 5.8 18.3 23.5 17.6 5.5 0.4
0.0Quantity more than zero but less than 0.05.
*Figure does not meet standards of reliability or precision; based on fewer than 20 births in the numerator.
1
The rate shown is the fertility rate, which is defined as the total number of births, regardless of age of mother, per 1,000 women aged 1544.
2
The birth rate for women aged 4549 is computed by relating births to women aged 45 and over to women aged 4549 because most of the births in this group are to women aged 4549.
3
4
5
6
00705
Table 5. Birth rates for women aged 1019, by age and race and Hispanic origin of mother: United States, final 1991, 2007, and
20102011, and preliminary 2012
[Rates per 1,000 women in specified age and race and Hispanic origin group. Population based on counts enumerated as ofApril 1 for 2010 and estimated as of July 1 for all
other years]
Year Percent change
Age and race and Hispanic origin of mother 2012 2011 2010 2007 1991 20112012 20072012 19912012
1014 years
1
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Non-Hispanic white
2
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
0.4
0.2
0.4
0.2
0.4
0.2
0.6
0.2
1.4
0.5

33

71
60
Non-Hispanic black
2
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 0.8 0.9 1.0 1.4 4.9 11 43 84
2,3
. . . . . . . . . . . . 0.5 0.5 0.5 0.7 1.6 29 69
2,3
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.2 0.8 50 88
Hispanic
4
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 0.6 0.7 0.8 1.2 2.4 14 50 75
1519 years
1
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29.4 31.3 34.2 41.5 61.8 6 29 52
Non-Hispanic white
2
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20.5 21.7 23.5 27.2 43.4 6 25 53
Non-Hispanic black
2
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43.9 47.3 51.5 62.0 118.2 7 29 63
2,3
. . . . . . . . . . . . 34.9 36.1 38.7 49.3 84.1 3 29 59
2,3
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9.7 10.2 10.9 14.8 27.3 5 34 64
Hispanic
4
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46.3 49.6 55.7 75.3 104.6 7 39 56
1517 years
1
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14.1 15.4 17.3 21.7 38.6 8 35 63
Non-Hispanic white
2
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Non-Hispanic black
2
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
8.4
21.9
9.0
24.6
10.0
27.4
11.9
34.6
23.6
86.1
7
11
29
37
64
75
2,3
. . . . . . . . . . . . 17.0 18.2 20.1 26.1 51.9 7 35 67
2,3
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.2 4.6 5.1 7.4 16.3 9 43 74
Hispanic
4
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25.5 28.0 32.3 44.4 69.2 9 43 63
1819 years
1
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51.4 54.1 58.2 71.7 94.0 5 28 45
Non-Hispanic white
2
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37.9 39.9 42.5 50.4 70.6 5 25 46
Non-Hispanic black
2
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74.1 78.8 85.6 105.2 162.2 6 30 54
2,3
. . . . . . . . . . . . 60.6 61.6 66.1 86.3 134.2 30 55
2,3
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17.8 18.1 18.7 24.9 42.2 29 58
Hispanic
4
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77.2 81.5 90.7 124.7 155.5 5 38 50
Difference not statistically significant.
1
2
standards for comparability with other states; seeTechnical Notes. Multiple-race reporting areas vary for 2007 and 20102012; seeTechnical Notes.
3
4
00706
Table 6. Births by race and Hispanic origin of mother: United States and each state and territory, preliminary 2012
[By place of residence. Data are based on a continuous file of records received from the states. Figures are based on weighted data rounded to the nearest individual, so
categories may not add to totals. Birth rates are total births per 1,000 total population; fertility rates are total births per 1,000 women aged 1544]
Number of births
All races American Indian Asian or Fertility
and Non-Hispanic Non-Hispanic orAlaska Pacific Islander Birth rate, rate,
Area origins
1
white
2
black
2
Native total
2,3
total
2,3
Hispanic
4
all races all races
United States
5
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3,952,937 2,133,115 583,080 46,093 272,949 907,405 12.6 63.0
Alabama. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58,424 35,149 18,090 211 1,073 3,922 12.1 60.9
Alaska. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11,186 5,770 360 2,811 1,132 722 15.3 75.9
Arizona . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86,441 38,838 4,445 5,856 3,667 33,906 13.2 67.5
Arkansas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38,331 25,913 7,297 312 911 3,853 13.0 66.9
California . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 503,746 142,695 29,435 3,462 77,919 244,926 13.2 63.3
Colorado . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65,183 39,995 3,120 759 2,877 17,791 12.6 62.0
Connecticut. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36,545 21,265 4,716 246 2,346 7,947 10.2 53.2
Delaware . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11,017 6,139 2,911 24 592 1,354 12.0 61.4
District of Columbia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9,414 2,816 4,784 29 557 1,373 14.9 55.4
Florida. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213,121 97,020 49,350 404 7,553 57,875 11.0 59.0
Georgia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 130,638 60,488 44,417 266 6,240 17,514 13.2 62.5
Hawaii. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18,967 4,722 487 83 12,511 2,963 13.6 71.6
Idaho . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22,961 18,408 181 482 463 3,496 14.4 74.1
Illinois . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159,160 86,193 27,274 225 10,081 34,787 12.4 60.9
Indiana . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83,225 63,799 10,043 153 2,239 7,032 12.7 64.7
Iowa. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38,701 32,075 2,006 274 1,311 3,151 12.6 66.8
Kansas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40,338 29,437 2,959 328 1,401 6,291 14.0 72.3
Kentucky . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55,756 46,688 5,071 77 1,232 2,731 12.7 65.4
Louisiana . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62,629 33,359 23,868 351 1,531 3,732 13.6 67.0
Maine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12,794 11,780 399 129 241 207 9.6 53.9
Maryland . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72,870 33,159 23,867 212 5,723 10,218 12.4 60.8
Massachusetts. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72,523 44,510 6,558 162 6,669 12,314 10.9 53.6
Michigan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113,090 79,046 21,542 751 4,140 7,378 11.4 59.6
Minnesota. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68,769 50,065 6,960 1,436 5,462 4,831 12.8 65.7
Mississippi . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38,666 20,157 16,499 246 463 1,280 13.0 64.2
Missouri. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75,441 57,346 11,319 400 2,131 4,052 12.5 64.3
Montana. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12,114 9,962 77 1,469 158 468 12.1 66.6
Nebraska . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25,941 19,172 1,787 513 839 3,834 14.0 72.3
Nevada . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34,913 14,969 3,709 444 3,105 12,759 12.7 63.0
New Hampshire . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12,347 10,956 201 28 495 558 9.3 50.2
New Jersey. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104,214 47,941 16,173 182 12,253 27,609 11.8 60.3
New Mexico . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27,066 7,674 443 3,638 568 14,869 13.0 67.8
New York . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 240,874 116,131 38,478 1,080 26,932 55,703 12.3 59.7
North Carolina . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119,809 67,141 28,465 1,929 5,514 17,952 12.3 61.0
North Dakota. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10,104 8,161 269 1,043 208 378 14.4 74.6
Ohio. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 138,503 104,133 23,267 297 3,890 6,526 12.0 62.6
Oklahoma. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52,754 33,539 4,916 6,075 1,583 6,880 13.8 70.5
Oregon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45,060 31,767 1,157 886 2,749 8,559 11.6 59.0
Pennsylvania. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142,488 99,514 21,206 385 6,906 14,055 11.2 58.7
Rhode Island. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10,927 6,710 856 149 625 2,467 10.4 51.7
South Carolina. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57,103 32,817 18,161 227 1,271 4,592 12.1 61.3
South Dakota. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12,103 9,048 308 2,084 219 547 14.5 78.1
Tennessee . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80,358 54,702 16,644 198 2,184 6,988 12.4 62.6
Texas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 382,719 135,567 44,528 1,232 19,073 182,982 14.7 69.9
Utah. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51,462 39,982 500 784 1,846 7,645 18.0 83.1
Vermont . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6,006 5,598 94 21 164 97 9.6 51.6
Virginia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102,991 59,981 21,972 221 8,123 12,897 12.6 61.6
Washington. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87,446 55,351 4,348 2,162 10,141 15,759 12.7 63.5
West Virginia. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20,834 19,582 788 22 185 193 11.2 61.3
Wisconsin. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67,293 49,729 6,695 1,002 3,338 6,575 11.8 61.8
Wyoming . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7,571 6,154 81 332 113 864 13.1 69.5
See footnotes at end of table.
00707
Table 6. Births by race and Hispanic origin of mother: United States and each state and territory, preliminary 2012Con.
[By place of residence. Data are based on a continuous file of records received from the states. Figures are based on weighted data rounded to the nearest individual, so
categories may not add to totals. Birth rates are total births per 1,000 total population; fertility rates are total births per 1,000 women aged 1544]
Number of births
All races American Indian Asian or Fertility
and Non-Hispanic Non-Hispanic orAlaska Pacific Islander Birth rate, rate,
Area origins
1
white
2
black
2
Native total
2,3
total
2,3
Hispanic
4
all races all races
Puerto Rico. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39,017 2,502 308 - - - - - - 36,032 10.6 51.9
Virgin Islands. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Guam . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . * * * * * * * *
American Samoa. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1,163 - - - - - - 1,162 - - - 21.2 89.0
Northern Marianas. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
- - - Data not available.
Quantity zero.
*Figure does not meet standards of reliability or precision; less than 75% of data for the area were available as of release of the preliminary file; seereference 8.
1
2
(OMB) standards. Forty-one states and the District of Columbia reported multiple-race data in 2012.The multiple-race data for these states were bridged to the single race categories of the 1977 OMB
3
4
5
Excludes data for the territories.
00708
Table 7. Births to unmarried women, by age: United States, final 2011 and preliminary 2012
[Data for 2012 are based on a continuous file of records received from the states. Figures for 2012 are based on weighted data rounded to the nearest individual so
categories may not add to total]
Number Percent
Age of mother in years 2012 2011 2012 2011
All ages. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1,609,912 1,607,773 40.7 40.7
Under 20 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 274,528 295,675 88.8 88.6
Under 15 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3,640 3,939 99.1 99.1
1519 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 270,888 291,736 88.7 88.5
1517 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82,503 91,053 95.4 95.3
1819 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 188,385 200,683 86.0 85.7
2024 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 593,969 592,554 64.8 64.0
2529 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 393,931 387,354 35.0 34.4
3034 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 222,382 212,974 21.9 21.6
3539 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97,862 93,155 20.7 20.1
40 and over . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27,240 26,061 23.2 22.4
Table 8. Selected characteristics of births, by race and Hispanic origin of mother: United States, final 2011 and preliminary 2012
[Data for 2012 are based on a continuous file of records received from the states. Figures for 2012 are based on weighted data rounded to the nearest individual]
Preterm Low birthweight
Very low
Number Cesarean rate
1
Total
2
Late
3
Total
4
birthweight
5
Race and Hispanic origin of mother 2012 2011 2012 2011 2012 2011 2012 2011 2012 2011 2012 2011
6
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3,952,937 3,953,590 32.8 32.8 11.54 11.73 8.13 8.28 7.99 8.10 1.42 1.44
Non-Hispanic white
7
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2,133,115 2,146,566 32.3 32.4 10.29 10.50 7.44 7.62 6.97 7.09 1.13 1.14
Non-Hispanic black
7
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 583,080 582,345 35.8 35.5 16.53 16.77 10.59 10.74 13.18 13.33 2.94 2.99
7,8
. . . . . . . 46,093 46,419 28.6 28.4 13.25 13.50 9.26 9.64 7.61 7.55 1.33 1.32
7,8
. . . . . . . . . . . . 272,949 253,915 33.2 33.2 10.15 10.40 7.47 7.62 8.21 8.36 1.13 1.18
Hispanic
9
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 907,405 918,129 32.2 32.0 11.58 11.65 8.31 8.40 6.96 7.02 1.22 1.20
1
All births by cesarean delivery per 100 live births.
2
Born prior to 37 completed weeks of gestation.
3
Born between 34 and 36 completed weeks of gestation.
4
Birthweight of less than 2,500 grams (5 pounds, 8 ounces).
5
Birthweight of less than 1,500 grams (3 pounds, 4 ounces).
6
7
8
9
Table 9. Distribution of preterm births (prior to 37 completed weeks of gestation): United States, final 1990, 2006, 2010, and 2011,
and preliminary 2012
[Data for 2012 are based on a continuous file of records received from the states]
Percent
Gestational age 2012 2011 2010 2006 1990
Under 32 weeks. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.93 1.93 1.96 2.04 1.92
3233 weeks. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.49 1.52 1.53 1.62 1.40
Total under 34 weeks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.41 3.44 3.50 3.66 3.32
3436 weeks. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8.13 8.28 8.49 9.15 7.30
Total under 37 weeks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11.54 11.73 11.99 12.80 10.62
00709
Table 10. Total count of records and completeness of preliminary file of live births: United States, each state and territory,
preliminary 2012
[By place of occurrence]
Live births
Counts Percent
Area of records completeness
United States
1
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3,959,188 99.956
Alabama . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56,941 100.000
Alaska . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11,052 100.000
Arizona . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87,207 100.000
Arkansas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37,326 100.000
California . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 504,634 100.000
Colorado. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65,643 100.000
Connecticut . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37,292 99.984
Delaware . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11,376 100.000
District of Columbia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13,906 99.506
Florida . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213,402 100.000
Georgia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131,861 99.848
Hawaii . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18,974 100.000
Idaho. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22,482 100.000
Illinois . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155,814 100.000
Indiana. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84,204 100.000
Iowa . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38,427 100.000
Kansas. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41,173 100.000
Kentucky. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53,360 100.000
Louisiana . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62,567 100.000
Maine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12,594 100.000
Maryland. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70,415 99.996
Massachusetts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71,563 98.158
Michigan. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112,154 99.996
Minnesota . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68,054 100.000
Mississippi . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37,787 100.000
Missouri . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76,412 100.000
Montana . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12,071 100.000
Nebraska . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26,282 100.000
Nevada . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34,625 100.000
New Hampshire . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12,578 100.000
New Jersey . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101,611 99.941
New Mexico. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26,147 99.996
New York . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 242,217 100.000
New York (excluding New York City). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118,986 100.000
New York City . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123,231 100.000
North Carolina . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121,132 100.000
North Dakota . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11,507 100.000
Ohio . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139,066 99.973
Oklahoma . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51,753 99.983
Oregon. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45,557 100.000
Pennsylvania . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141,981 100.000
Rhode Island . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11,652 100.000
South Carolina . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54,259 100.000
South Dakota . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12,713 100.000
Tennessee. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85,600 100.000
Texas. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 389,895 99.998
Utah . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52,514 99.992
Vermont . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5,686 100.000
Virginia. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101,400 100.000
Washington . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87,345 100.000
West Virginia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21,146 99.929
Wisconsin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66,975 100.000
Wyoming . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6,856 99.985
Puerto Rico . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38,903 99.601
Virgin Islands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . - - - - - -
Guam . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2,396 66.482
American Samoa. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1,163 100.000
Northern Marianas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . - - - - - -
- - - Data not available.
1
Excludes data for Puerto Rico, Virgin Islands, Guam, American Samoa, and Northern Marianas.
NOTE: Percent completeness = Number of records in preliminary file * 100 / Count of records.
00710
Technical Notes
Nature and sources of data
Preliminarydatafor2012arebasedonnearlyallbirthsforthat
year (99.96%, seeTable10), with levels for 37 states at 100% and
levelsfortheremaining13statesandtheDistrictofColumbiaabove
98%. Preliminary 2012 data are based on continuous receipt and
processing of statistical records through April 24, 2013, by the
Centers for Disease Control and Preventions National Center for
Health Statistics (NCHS). NCHS receives the data from the states
vital registration systems through the Vital Statistics Cooperative
Program. In this report, U.S. totals include only events occurring
within the 50 states and the District of Columbia. Data for
Puerto Rico and American Samoa are included in tables
showing data by state, but are not included in U.S. totals
(see Tables 6 and 10 and state-specific Internet tables
at http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr62/nvsr62_03_tables.pdf).
DataforNorthernMarianasandtheVirginIslandswerenotavailable
andlessthan75%ofdataforGuamwereavailableasofreleaseof
the 2012 preliminary file. Accordingly, data for these territories are
not included in this report(8). Detailed information on reporting
completenessandimputationproceduresmaybefoundintheUser
Guide to the 2011 Natality Public Use File(9).
Toproducethepreliminaryestimatesshowninthisreport,records
inthefilewereweightedusingindependentcontrolcountsofall2012
birthsbystateofoccurrence.Detailedinformationonweightingand
the reliability of estimates also may be found elsewhere(8).
The 1989 and 2003 U.S. Standard Certificates of
Live Birth
This report includes selected 2012 data on items that are
collectedonboththe1989revisionoftheU.S.StandardCertificate
of Live Birth (unrevised) and 2003 revision of the U.S. Standard
Certificate of Live Birth (revised). The 2003 revision is described in
detail elsewhere (2,911). Thirty-eight states (California, Colorado,
Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas,
Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minne-
sota, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New
Mexico, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma,
Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee,
Texas, Utah, Vermont, Washington, Wisconsin, and Wyoming), the
DistrictofColumbia,Guam,PuertoRico,andNorthernMarianashad
implementedtherevisedbirthcertificateasofJanuary1,2012.One
additionalstate,Virginia,implementedtherevisedbirthcertificatein
2012, but after January 1.The 38 revised states and the District of
ColumbiathatimplementedasofJanuary1,2012,represent86%of
all births in 2012.
Dataitemsexclusivetoeitherthe1989orthe2003birthcertificate
revisionarenotshowninthisreport.Aforthcomingreportanddata
releasebasedon2012finaldatawillpresentselecteddataexclusive
to the 2003 revised certificate.
Age of mother
For information and discussion of age of mother, see User
Guide to the 2011 Natality Public Use File(9).
Hispanic origin and race
Hispanic origin
Hispanic origin and race are reported separately on the birth
certificate. Data shown by race (i.e., American Indian or Alaska
NativeandAsianorPacificIslander)includepersonsofHispanicor
non-Hispanicorigin,anddataforHispanicoriginincludeallpersons
of Hispanic origin of any race. Data for non-Hispanic persons are
shown separately for white and black mother given the substantial
differences in fertility and maternal and infant health characteristics
betweenHispanicandnon-HispanicwhitewomenandHispanicand
non-Hispanic black women. Items asking for the Hispanic origin of
the mother have been included on the birth certificates of all states
and the District of Columbia, the Virgin Islands, and Guam since
1993,onthebirthcertificateofPuertoRicostartingin2005,andon
the birth certificate of Northern Marianas starting in 2010(9).
American Samoa does not collect this information.
Single, multiple, and bridgedrace
The2003revisionoftheU.S.StandardCertificateofLiveBirth
allowsthereportingofmorethanonerace(multipleraces)foreach
parent (10) in accordance with the revised standards issued by the
Office of Management and Budget (OMB) in 1997 (12). Information
on this change is presented elsewhere (9,1316).
In2012,41statesandtheDistrictofColumbiareportedmultiple
races.Multiple-racereportingareasincludethe39revisedorpartially
revisedstates(seethe1989and2003U.S.StandardCertificatesof
LiveBirth)andtheDistrictofColumbia,whichusedthe2003revision
oftheU.S.StandardCertificateofLiveBirth,aswellasHawaiiand
Rhode Island, which used the 1989 revision of the U.S. Standard
CertificateofLiveBirth,butwhichcollectedmultiple-racedatacom-
parabletodataofthestatesusingtherevisedcertificate.PuertoRico,
which revised its birth certificate in 2005, continued to report race
accordingtothe1989revisionoftheU.S.StandardCertificateofLive
Birth(thatis,asanopen-endedquestioninwhichonlyoneresponse
isaccepted).The41statesandtheDistrictofColumbiaaccountedfor
90%ofU.S.birthsin2012.Datafromthevitalrecordsoftheremaining
9 states (Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Connecticut, Maine,
Mississippi, New Jersey, and West Virginia) are based on the 1989
revisionoftheU.S.StandardCertificateofLiveBirththatfollowsthe
1977OMBstandard,allowingonlyasingleracetobereported(13,14).
To provide uniformity and comparability of the data during the
transitionperiod,beforeallormostofthedataareavailableinthenew
multiple-race format, it was necessary to bridgethe responses of
thosewhoreportedmorethanonerace(multiplerace)toone,single
race.Thebridgingprocedureformultiple-racemothersandfathersis
basedontheprocedureusedtobridgethemultiple-racepopulation
estimates (see Population denominators) (1416). Information
detailingtheprocessingandtabulationofdatabyraceispresented
elsewhere(9).Apreviousreportdescribesmultiple-racebirthdatafor
2003 (17).
Marital status
For information and discussion of marital status, see User
Guide to the 2011 Natality Public Use File(9). Data on mothers
00711
marital status at time of birth for Puerto Rico have been excluded
fromTableI-1 due to inaccurate reporting.
Method of delivery, gestation, and birthweight
For information and discussion of method of delivery, gesta-
tional age, and birthweight, see User Guide to the 2011 Natality
Public Use File(9).
Population denominators
U.S. national and state-level birth and fertility rates for 2012
showninthisreportarebasedonpopulationestimatesderivedfrom
the2010census,asofJuly1,2012.Thesepopulationestimatesare
available on the NCHS website (18). The production of these
population estimates is described in detail elsewhere (14).
Birthandfertilityratesfortheterritoriesshowninthisreportare
basedonpopulationestimatesprovidedbytheU.S.CensusBureau
(19,20).
Ratesbystateandterritoryshowninthisreportmaydifferfrom
ratescomputedonthebasisofotherpopulationestimates.Ratesfor
statesandterritorieswithsmallerpopulations,orgroupswithsmaller
populations,aremorelikelytobeaffectedbydifferencesinpopulation
base.
Information on the national estimates of births to unmarried
women(i.e.,methodsofdeterminingmaritalstatus)andthecompu-
tationofthepreliminarybirthratesforunmarriedwomenispresented
elsewhere (2,9,21).The birth rate for unmarried women for 2012 is
estimatedonthebasisofthepopulationdistributionsbymaritalstatus
providedbytheU.S.CensusBureauasofMarch2012andapplied
tothenationalpopulationestimatesasofJuly1,2012,whichisderived
from the 2010 census (18,21,22).
The populations for the United States used in this report were
produced under a collaborative arrangement with the U.S. Census
Bureauandareconsistentwiththe2010censuscountsbyage,race,
andsex.Reflectingtheguidelinesissuedin1997byOMB,the2010
censusincludedanoptionforpersonstoreportmorethanonerace
asappropriateforthemselvesandhouseholdmembers(12).Begin-
ning with births occurring in 2003, several states began reporting
multiple-racedata.Thisnumberhasincreasedto41statesandthe
DistrictofColumbiain2012(seeSingle,multiple,andbridgedrace).
Toproducebirthandfertilityratesbyraceduringthetransitionperiod,
the bridging of population data for multiple-race persons back to
single-racecategorieswasnecessary.Onceallstatesrevisetheirbirth
certificatestobecompliantwiththe1997OMBstandards,theuseof
bridgedpopulationscanbediscontinued.Fordetailedinformationon
the revised OMB standards on race reporting and procedures used
toproducethebridgedpopulations,seeUnitedStatesCensus2000
with Bridged Race Categories(14).
Computing rates and percentages and reliability
of estimates
For information and further discussion on computing rates and
percentagesandtherelativestandarderrorsofthedata,seeBirths:
Preliminary Data for 2005(8).
00712
U.S. DEPARTMENTOF
HEALTH & HUMAN SERVICES
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
National Center for Health Statistics
3311Toledo Road, Room 5419
Hyattsville, MD 20782
FIRSTCLASSMAIL
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CDC/NCHS
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PENALTYFOR PRIVATE USE, $300
National Vital Statistics Reports, Vol. 62, No. 3, September 6, 2013
Contents
Abstract . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
Births and birth rates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
Maternal and infant health birth characteristics . . . . . . . . . . . 4
References. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
List of DetailedTables. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
List of InternetTables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
Technical Notes. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
Acknowledgments
This report was prepared under the general direction of Delton Atkinson,
Acting Director of the Division of Vital Statistics (DVS) and Stephanie J.
Ventura,ChiefoftheReproductiveStatisticsBranch(RSB).NicholasF.Pace,
Chief of the Systems, Programming, and Statistical Resources Branch
(SPSRB), and Steve J. Steimel and Annie S. Liu provided computer
programmingsupportandstatisticaltables.SteveJ.SteimelandAnnieS.Liu
ofSPSRBpreparedthenatalityfile.SharonKirmeyerandMarieE.Thomaof
RSB provided content review. Staff of the Data Acquisition and Evaluation
Branchcarriedoutqualityevaluationandacceptanceproceduresforthestate
data files on which this report is based. The Registration Methods staff of
DVSconsultedwithstatevitalstatisticsofficesregardingthecollectionofbirth
certificate data. This report was edited and produced by NCHS/Office of
Information Services, Information Design and Publishing Staff: Betsy M.
Finley edited the report; typesetting was done by Annette F. Holman; and
graphics were produced by Jessica Newman (contractor).
Suggested citation
Copyright information
National Center for Health Statistics
Hamilton BE, Martin JA, Ventura SJ. Births: Preliminary
All material appearing in this report is in the public
Charles J. Rothwell, M.S., Acting Director
data for 2012. National vital statistics reports; vol 62
domain and may be reproduced or copied without Jennifer H. Madans, Ph.D., Associate Director for
no3. Hyattsville, MD: National Center for Health
Statistics. 2013.
permission; citation as to source, however, is
appreciated.
Science
Division of Vital Statistics
DeltonAtkinson, M.P.H., M.P.H., P.M.P., Acting
Director
For e-mail updates on NCHS publication releases, subscribe online at: http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/govdelivery.htm.
For questions or general information about NCHS:Tel: 1800CDCINFO (18002324636) TTY: 18882326348
Internet: http://www.cdc.gov/nchs Online request form: http://www.cdc.gov/cdc-info/requestform.html
DHHS Publication No. 20141120 CS243693
00713

ATTACHMENT B

Marriage Rates by State: 1990, 1995,
and 1999-2011
00714
Marriage rates by State: 1990, 1995, and 1999-2011
2011 2010 2009 2008 2007 2006 2005 2004 2003 2002 2001 2000 1999 1995 1990
Alabama 8.4 8.2 8.3 8.6 8.9 9.2 9.2 9.4 9.6 9.9 9.4 10.1 10.8 9.8 10.6
Alaska 7.8 8.0 7.8 8.4 8.5 8.2 8.2 8.5 8.1 8.3 8.1 8.9 8.6 9.0 10.2
Arizona 5.7 5.9 5.6 6.0 6.4 6.5 6.6 6.7 6.5 6.7 7.6 7.5 8.2 8.8 10.0
Arkansas 10.4 10.8 10.7 10.6 12.0 12.4 12.9 13.4 13.4 14.3 14.3 15.4 14.8 14.4 15.3
California
1
5.8 5.8 5.8 6.7 6.2 6.3 6.4 6.4 6.1 6.2 6.5 5.8 6.4 6.3 7.9
Colorado 7.0 6.9 6.9 7.4 7.1 7.2 7.6 7.4 7.8 8.0 8.2 8.3 8.2 9.0 9.8
Connecticut 5.5 5.6 5.9 5.4 5.5 5.5 5.8 5.8 5.5 5.7 5.4 5.7 5.8 6.6 7.9
Delaware 5.2 5.2 5.4 5.5 5.7 5.9 5.9 6.1 6.0 6.4 6.5 6.5 6.7 7.3 8.4
District of Columbia 8.7 7.6 4.7 4.1 4.2 4.0 4.1 5.2 5.1 5.1 6.2 4.9 6.6 6.1 8.2
Florida 7.4 7.3 7.5 8.0 8.5 8.6 8.9 9.0 9.0 9.4 9.3 8.9 8.7 9.9 10.9
Georgia 6.6 7.3 6.6 6.0 6.8 7.3 7.0 7.9 7.0 6.5 6.1 6.8 7.8 8.4 10.3
Hawaii 17.6 17.6 17.2 19.1 20.8 21.9 22.6 22.6 22.0 20.8 19.6 20.6 18.9 15.7 16.4
Idaho 8.6 8.8 8.9 9.5 10.0 10.1 10.5 10.8 10.9 11.0 11.2 10.8 12.1 13.1 13.9
Illinois 5.6 5.7 5.7 5.9 6.1 6.2 5.9 6.2 6.5 6.6 7.2 6.9 7.0 6.9 8.8
Indiana 6.8 6.3 7.9 8.0 7.0 7.0 6.9 7.8 7.1 7.9 7.9 7.9 8.1 8.6 9.6
Iowa 6.7 6.9 7.0 6.5 6.6 6.7 6.9 6.9 6.9 7.0 7.1 6.9 7.9 7.7 9.0
Kansas 6.3 6.4 6.4 6.7 6.8 6.8 6.8 7.0 6.9 7.3 7.5 8.3 7.1 8.5 9.2
Kentucky 7.5 7.4 7.6 7.9 7.8 8.4 8.7 8.8 9.1 9.0 9.0 9.8 10.9 12.2 13.5
Louisiana 6.4 6.9 7.1 6.8 7.5 --- 8.0 8.0 8.2 8.1 8.4 9.1 9.1 9.3 9.6
Maine 7.2 7.1 7.1 7.4 7.4 7.8 8.2 8.6 8.4 8.4 8.6 8.8 8.6 8.7 9.7
Maryland 5.8 5.7 5.8 5.9 6.5 6.6 6.9 6.9 6.9 7.1 7.0 7.5 7.5 8.4 9.7
Massachusetts 5.5 5.6 5.6 5.7 5.9 5.9 6.2 6.5 5.6 5.9 6.2 5.8 6.2 7.1 7.9
Michigan 5.7 5.5 5.4 5.6 5.7 5.9 6.1 6.2 6.3 6.5 6.7 6.7 6.8 7.3 8.2
Minnesota 5.6 5.3 5.3 5.4 5.8 6.0 6.0 6.0 6.3 6.5 6.6 6.8 6.8 7.0 7.7
Mississippi 4.9 4.9 4.8 5.1 5.4 5.7 5.8 6.1 6.2 6.4 6.5 6.9 7.8 7.9 9.4
Missouri 6.6 6.5 6.5 6.8 6.9 6.9 7.0 7.1 7.2 7.3 7.5 7.8 8.1 8.3 9.6
Montana 7.8 7.4 7.3 7.6 7.5 7.4 7.4 7.5 7.2 7.1 7.1 7.3 7.4 7.6 8.6
Nebraska 6.6 6.6 6.6 6.9 6.8 6.8 7.0 7.1 7.0 7.5 7.9 7.6 7.5 7.3 8.0
Nevada 36.9 38.3 40.3 42.3 48.6 52.1 57.4 62.1 63.9 67.4 69.6 72.2 82.3 85.2 99.0
New Hampshire 7.1 7.3 6.5 6.8 7.1 7.2 7.3 8.0 8.1 8.3 8.5 9.4 7.9 8.3 9.5
New J ersey 4.8 5.1 5.0 5.4 5.4 5.5 5.7 5.9 5.8 6.0 6.4 6.0 5.9 6.5 7.6
New Mexico 8.0 7.7 5.0 4.0 5.6 6.8 6.6 7.4 6.9 7.9 7.6 8.0 8.0 8.8 8.8
New York 6.9 6.5 6.5 6.6 6.8 6.9 6.8 6.8 6.8 7.3 7.6 7.1 7.3 8.0 8.6
North Carolina 6.7 6.6 6.6 6.9 7.0 7.3 7.3 7.3 7.4 7.7 7.4 8.2 8.5 8.4 7.8
North Dakota 6.7 6.5 6.4 6.5 6.6 6.7 6.8 6.9 7.1 6.8 6.5 7.2 6.6 7.1 7.5
Ohio 5.9 5.8 5.8 6.0 6.1 6.3 6.5 6.6 6.7 7.0 7.2 7.8 7.8 8.0 9.0
Oklahoma 6.9 7.2 6.9 7.1 7.3 7.3 7.3 6.5 --- --- --- --- 6.8 8.6 10.6
Oregon 6.6 6.5 6.6 6.9 7.2 7.3 7.3 8.1 7.2 7.1 7.5 7.6 7.6 8.1 8.9
Pennsylvania 5.3 5.3 5.3 5.5 5.7 5.7 5.8 5.9 5.9 5.7 5.8 6.0 6.1 6.2 7.1
Rhode Island 6.0 5.8 5.9 6.1 6.4 6.6 7.0 7.7 7.8 7.8 8.1 7.6 7.5 7.3 8.1
South Carolina 7.2 7.4 7.3 7.3 7.9 7.8 8.3 8.2 9.0 9.3 9.9 10.6 10.2 11.9 15.9
South Dakota 7.5 7.3 7.3 7.7 7.8 8.0 8.4 8.4 8.4 8.8 8.9 9.4 9.1 9.9 11.1
Tennessee 9.0 8.8 8.4 9.4 10.1 10.6 10.9 11.4 11.9 13.1 13.5 15.5 14.7 15.5 13.9
Texas 7.1 7.1 7.1 7.3 7.4 7.6 7.8 8.0 8.1 8.4 9.1 9.4 9.1 9.9 10.5
Utah 8.6 8.5 8.4 9.0 9.6 9.2 9.8 9.9 10.2 10.4 10.2 10.8 9.6 10.7 11.2
Vermont 8.3 9.3 8.7 7.9 8.5 8.6 8.9 9.4 9.7 9.8 9.8 10.0 10.0 10.3 10.9
Virginia 6.8 6.8 6.9 7.2 7.5 7.8 8.2 8.3 8.4 8.6 8.8 8.8 9.2 10.2 11.4
Washington 6.1 6.0 6.0 6.3 6.4 6.5 6.5 6.5 6.5 6.5 7.0 6.9 7.2 7.7 9.5
West Virginia 7.2 6.7 6.7 7.1 7.3 7.3 7.4 7.5 7.5 8.1 7.9 8.7 7.5 6.1 7.2
Wisconsin 5.3 5.3 5.3 5.6 5.7 6.0 6.1 6.2 6.2 6.3 6.5 6.7 6.7 7.0 7.9
Wyoming 7.8 7.6 8.0 8.6 9.0 9.3 9.3 9.3 9.3 9.5 10.0 10.0 9.9 10.6 10.7
[Rates are based on provisional counts of marriages by state of occurrence. Rates are per 1,000 total population residing in area. Population
enumerated as of April 1 for 1990, 2000, and 2010 and estimated as of J uly 1 for all other years]
Source: CDC/NCHS, National Vital Statistics System.
1
Marriage data includes nonlicensed marriages registered.
--- Data not available.
State
Note: Rates for 2001-2009 have been revised and are based on intercensal population estimates from the 2000 and 2010 censuses. Populations
for 2010 rates are based on the 2010 census.
Marriage rate
00715

ATTACHMENT A (Part 1)

Households and Families: 2010
2010 Census Briefs
(Pages 1-16)
00716
U.S. Department of Commerce
Economics and Statistics Administration
U.S. CENSUS BUREAU
Issued April 2012
C2010BR-14
2010 Census Briefs
By
Daphne Lofquist,
Terry Lugaila,
Martin OConnell,
and
Sarah Feliz
INTRODUCTION
The 2010 Census enumerated 308.7
million people in the United States,
a 9.7 percent increase from 281.4
million in Census 2000. Of the total
population in 2010, 300.8 million
lived in 116.7 million households
for an average of 2.58 people per
household. This was down from an
average of 2.59 in 2000 when 273.6
million people lived in 105.5 million
households. The remaining 8.0 million
people in 2010 lived in group-quarters
arrangements such as school dormito-
ries, nursing homes, or military barracks.
This report presents information on the
number and types of living arrangements
of American households in 2010 derived
from the relationship question on the
2010 Census.
HOUSEHOLD RELATIONSHIP
QUESTION
The relationship item (Figure 1), a version
of which has been on the census since
1880, asks the relationship of each mem-
ber of the household to the householder
or the person designated as the individual
who owns or rents the housing unit.
1
This
question provides information about indi-
viduals as well as the composition of fami-
lies and households. Three separate cat-
egories describe the sons and daughters
1
In a case of joint ownership, one individual is
chosen as the householder. If this choice cannot be
made, the first person 15 years and over listed on the
form is chosen as the householder.
of the householder in 2010: biological,
adopted, or stepchild. Relatives identified
in the questionnaire are spouses, brothers,
sisters, and parents of the householder, as
well as grandchildren, parents-in-law, and
sons/daughters-in-law.
Those who live in households but who
were not related to the householder were
identified as housemates/roommates,
roomers or boarders, and unmarried part-
ners of the householder. This latter group
includes people who initially identified
themselves as being same-sex spouses of
the householder. The tables with same-sex
couples show these groups in two ways.
One estimate shows households as origi-
nally reported on the census forms. The
second presents improved and preferred
estimates of the same-sex household
population, accounting for marking errors
that inadvertently overestimated that
Figure 1.
Reproduction of the Question on
Relationship to Householder From
the 2010 Census
Source: U.S. Census Bureau, 2010 Census questionnaire.
00717
2 U.S. Census Bureau
populations size.
2
This report uses
this set of estimates in the text, as
it represents the best set of num-
bers from the 2010 Census.
People related to the
householder
Despite the diversity of households
in the United States, three rela-
tionship categories made up the
majority of people in 2010. The
householder, his or her spouse, and
his or her sons and daughters com-
prised 262.0 million people or 87
percent of the population (Table 1).
Of the 88.8 million children of
householders, 93 percent were
biological children. There were
approximately twice as many step-
children (4.2 million) as adopted
children (2.1 million).
As expected, most of the children
living with their parents were
under 18 years old. These three
child types exhibit different age
distributions. About 73 percent
of either biological or adopted
2
See Martin OConnell and Sarah Feliz,
Same-sex Couple Household Statistics From
the 2010 Census, SEHSD Working Paper
Number 2011-26, September 27, 2011,
<www.census.gov/hhes/samesex/data
/decennial.html>.
children were under 18, compared
with 67 percent of stepchildren.
Stepchildren were more likely to be
young adults ages 18 to 29 years
(26 percent) than either biological
or adopted children (19 percent
each). Stepchildren were older in
general as they reflect the blending
of two different families where the
spouse already has older children
from a prior marriage.
In the same generation as the
children of the householder are the
sons-in-law and daughters-in-law
of the householder. They numbered
1.2 million in 2010, and almost half
of them were young adults who
depended on their in-laws for hous-
ing assistance. Given their age,
most were probably recently mar-
ried. About one-third of all brothers
and sisters of the householder (3.4
million) were 18-to-29 years old.
Another 1.1 million young adults
were grandchildren of the house-
holder. This age group made up
16 percent of the 7.1 million
grandchildren living with their
grand parentsthe majority of
these grandchildren were under 18
(82 percent). At the other end of
the generational continuum were
the parents and parents-in-law of
the householder, comprising about
3.0 million and 926,000 relatives,
respectively. Unlike people in any
other relationship category, the
majority of these were 65 years
and over57 percent of parents
and 69 percent of parents-in-law
were this age.
Although not specified by detailed
type in the 2010 Census, another
4.7 million were other relatives
who lived in households. About
one-third of them were under
18 and were often nephews and
nieces of the householder.
3

Nonrelatives of the
householder
People who were not related to
the householder numbered 18.3
million in 2010 (6.1 percent of the
household population), up from
14.6 million in 2000 (5.2 percent
of the household population). In
fact, 1 out of every 8 homes in
3
There were 845,000 nephews and nieces
of the householder under 18 in Census 2000.
See Terry Lugaila and Julia Overturf, Children
and the Households They Live In: 2000,
Census 2000 Special Reports, CENSR-14
(March 2004), Table 1.
Table 1.
Relationship to Householder by Age: 2010
(For information on condentiality protection, nonsampling errors, and denitions, see www.census.gov/prod/cen2010/doc/sf1.pdf)
Relationship type
Total
Number
Under 18
years
18 to 29
years
30 to 44
years
45 to 64
years
65 years and
over
Total household population . . . . . 300,758,215 73,920,881 47,903,506 59,766,531 80,357,019 38,810,278
Householder . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116,716,292 28,297 13,862,048 30,758,709 46,247,402 25,819,836
Spouse . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56,510,377 8,793 4,863,702 17,524,307 24,935,103 9,178,472
Biological son or daughter . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82,582,058 60,466,596 16,007,784 3,941,728 2,093,818 72,132
Adopted son or daughter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2,072,312 1,527,020 403,558 99,376 41,282 1,076
Stepson or stepdaughter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4,165,886 2,784,531 1,100,511 217,220 61,226 2,398
Brother or sister . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3,433,951 298,242 1,125,419 848,247 922,338 239,705
Father or mother . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3,033,003 (X) (X) 128,343 1,187,041 1,717,619
Grandchild . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7,139,601 5,825,229 1,117,324 180,096 16,926 26
Parent-in-law . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 925,713 (X) (X) 10,178 281,266 634,269
Son-in-law or daughter-in-law . . . . . . . . . . 1,216,299 25,063 593,674 428,186 158,997 10,379
Other relative . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4,662,672 1,631,262 1,268,787 774,403 648,580 339,640
Roomer or boarder . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1,526,210 142,899 559,814 376,180 363,573 83,744
Housemate or roommate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5,223,365 42,515 3,163,824 1,084,638 769,490 162,898
Unmarried partner . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7,744,711 11,651 2,622,772 2,724,034 2,020,431 365,823
Other nonrelative . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3,805,765 1,128,783 1,214,289 670,886 609,546 182,261
(X) Not applicable
Source: U.S. Census Bureau, 2010 Census Summary File 1.
00718
U.S. Census Bureau 3
2010 contained one or more people
not related to the householder.
4

Roomers or boarders comprised
1.5 million individuals who repre-
sented a wide array of people such
as students, migrants to an area
waiting for better accommodations,
or people who could not afford
4
Proportion derived from U.S. Census
Bureau, 2010 Census Summary File 1,
Table P27.
to rent their own home.
5
About
143,000 (9.4 percent) of roomers
and boarders were less than 18
years old, suggesting they might
be children of displaced families
living in boarding homes. Another
61.3 percent (936,000) were in the
prime working ages of 18 to 44
years, compared with 35.8 percent
5
A historical perspective and the growth
and characteristics of roomers and board-
ers is presented in Melissa Scopilliti and
Martin OConnell, Roomers and Boarders:
18802005, paper presented at the Annual
Meetings of the Population Association of
America, New Orleans, LA, April 1719,
2008, <www.census.gov/population
/www/documentation/paa2008/Scopilliti-
OConnell-PAA-2008.ppt>.
for the household population as a
whole.
Housemates or roommates who
were coequals with the house-
holder and who shared mainte-
nance of the housing unit had more
economic equality with the house-
holder. Looking at the age structure
of these 5.2 million people, 61
percent were young adults ages
18 to 29 who might be sharing
living expenses. The percentage
declined sharply for the next older
age group, 30 to 44 years old (21
percent).
Overall, the unmarried partner
population numbered 7.7 million in
2010 and grew 41 percent between
2000 and 2010, four times as fast
as the overall household population
(10 percent). Unmarried partners
were generally older than house-
mates: 2.6 million (34 percent)
were 18 to 29 years old, while 2.7
million (35 percent) were 30 to 44
years old. In addition, 26 percent of
unmarried partners were 45-to-64
year olds, compared with 15 per-
cent of housemates. This difference
in age profiles reflects the transi-
tions occurring first when a young
person shares expenses as a house-
mate or roommate after leaving the
parents home and later when that
person develops a more permanent
and personal relationship with an
unmarried partner.
UNMARRIED PARTNER HOUSEHOLDS
An unmarried partner household consists of a householder and a
person living in the household who reports that he or she is (1) an
unmarried partner of the householder and of the opposite sex;
(2) an unmarried partner of the householder and of the same sex; or
(3) a spouse of the householder and of the same sex. Procedures for
the 2010 Census edited same-sex spouse households as unmarried
partner households, and these households appear as such in pub-
lished Summary File 1 tabulations. During the review of the data,
counts of same-sex spouses appeared inflated due to mismarking
errors in the gender item on the census forms. Up to 28 percent of
the total number of same-sex unmarried partner households may
actually be opposite-sex households: 62 percent of reported same-
sex spouses were probably marked in error compared with 7 per-
cent of reported same-sex unmarried partners. This report presents
data both for same-sex households as shown in Summary File 1
tabulations and for a set of preferred estimates that attempts to
remove statistically same-sex households that are likely opposite-
sex households.
00719
HOUSEHOLDS
All of these various relationship
types contribute to the forma-
tion of households, both family
and nonfamily households. Who
lives in a household has impor-
tant consequences for economic
resources available to housing
units and for access to everyday
social support systems such as
care for young children or older
parents. The following sections
show the different types of
households in 2010 and their
growth over the decade.
The number of households
grew by over 11 million
since 2000.
The number of households in
the United States increased
11 percent, from 105.5 mil-
lion in 2000 to 116.7 million in
2010. While family households
increased 8 percent, from 71.8
million in 2000 to 77.5 million
in 2010, nonfamily households
increased faster, 16 percent,
from 33.6 million in 2000 to
39.2 million in 2010. As a
proportion of all households,
family households declined from
68 percent in 2000 to 66 percent
in 2010, while the proportion of
nonfamily households increased
from 32 percent to 34 percent,
respectively.
Table 2 shows that husband-wife
households numbered 56.5 million
in 2010 and made up 73 percent
of all family households in 2010
(households containing at least one
person related to the householder
by birth, marriage, or adoption).
Family households maintained by a
female householder with no spouse
present numbered 15.3 million,
more than twice the number main-
tained by a male householder with
no spouse present (5.8 million).
Among nonfamily households,
one-person households predomi-
nated (31.2 million) and were more
than three times as common as
nonfamily households with two
or more people (8.0 million). More
women than men lived alone (17.2
million and 13.9 million, respec-
tively). A geographic look at one-
person households follows later in
this report.
Despite increases in both the num-
ber of households and of people in
the United States since 2000, the
HOUSEHOLD DEFINITIONS
A household includes all of the people who occupy a housing unit.
One person in each household is designated as the householder.
In most cases, this is the person, or one of the people, in whose
name the home is owned, being bought, or rented. If there is no
such person in the household, any household member 15 years old
and over can be designated as the householder.
A family consists of a householder and one or more other people
living in the same household who are related to the householder by
birth, marriage, or adoption. Biological, adopted, and stepchildren
of the householder who are under 18 are the own children of the
householder. Own children do not include other children present in
the household, regardless of the presence or absence of the other
childrens parents.
A family household may also contain people not related to the
householder. A family in which the householder and his or her
spouse of the opposite sex are enumerated as members of the
same household is a husband-wife household. In this report,
husband-wife households only refer to opposite-sex spouses and do
not include households that were originally reported as same-sex
spouse households. Same-sex spousal households are included in
the category, same-sex unmarried partner households but may be
either a family or nonfamily household depending on the presence
of another person who is related to the householder. The remain-
ing types of family households not maintained by a husband-wife
couple are designated by the sex of the householder.
A nonfamily household consists of a householder living alone
or with nonrelatives only, for example, with roommates or an
unmarried partner.
00720
average household size decreased
over the decade, from 2.59 to 2.58,
but average family size stayed
the same, 3.14.
6
These indicators
show a slowing of the downward
trends that have existed since
the end of the Baby Boom in the
1960s. In 1960, the average house-
hold size was 3.29 people per
6
Average family size is the number of
family members in the household (persons
related to the householder including the
householder) per family household. This
computation excludes persons not related to
the householder.
household, and the average family
size was 3.65 people per family.
7
The number of households within
each category type increased in the
last 10 years, including husband-
wife households, which increased
7
Average household size for 1960 may
be found in Frank Hobbs and Nicole Stoops,
Demographic Trends in the 20th Century,
(November 2002), Figure 5-3. Average
family size for 1960 may be found in U.S.
Census Bureau, 1960 Census of Population,
Supplementary Reports, PC(S1)-38, Families in
the United States: 1960, Table 280.
by 2.0 million. Figure 2 shows that,
despite this increase, in 2010 less
than half of all households (48 per-
cent) were husband-wife house-
holds, down from 52 percent in
2000 and 55 percent in 1990. This
is the first time that husband-wife
families fell below 50 percent of
all households in the United States
since data on families were first
Table 2.
Households by Type: 2000 and 2010
Household type
2000 2010 Change, 2000 to 2010
Number Percent Number Percent Number Percent
Total households . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105,480,101 100.0 116,716,292 100.0 11,236,191 10.7
Family household. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71,787,347 68.1 77,538,296 66.4 5,750,949 8.0
Husband-wife households . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54,493,232 51.7 56,510,377 48.4 2,017,145 3.7
With own children . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24,835,505 23.5 23,588,268 20.2 1,247,237 5.0
Without own children . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29,657,727 28.1 32,922,109 28.2 3,264,382 11.0
Female householder, no spouse present . . . . . . 12,900,103 12.2 15,250,349 13.1 2,350,246 18.2
With own children . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7,561,874 7.2 8,365,912 7.2 804,038 10.6
Without own children . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5,338,229 5.1 6,884,437 5.9 1,546,208 29.0
Male householder, no spouse present . . . . . . . . 4,394,012 4.2 5,777,570 5.0 1,383,558 31.5
With own children . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2,190,989 2.1 2,789,424 2.4 598,435 27.3
Without own children . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2,203,023 2.1 2,988,146 2.6 785,123 35.6
Nonfamily households . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33,692,754 31.9 39,177,996 33.6 5,485,242 16.3
Male householder . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15,556,103 14.7 18,459,253 15.8 2,903,150 18.7
Living alone . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11,779,106 11.2 13,906,294 11.9 2,127,188 18.1
Not living alone . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3,776,997 3.6 4,552,959 3.9 775,962 20.5
Female householder . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18,136,651 17.2 20,718,743 17.8 2,582,092 14.2
Living alone . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15,450,969 14.6 17,298,615 14.8 1,847,646 12.0
Not living alone . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2,685,682 2.5 3,420,128 2.9 734,446 27.3
Unmarried couple households
1
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5,475,768 5.2 7,744,711 6.6 2,268,943 41.4
Opposite-sex partners . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4,881,377 4.6 6,842,714 5.9 1,961,337 40.2
Same-sex partners
2
Summary File 1 counts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 594,391 0.6 901,997 0.8 307,606 51.8
Preferred estimates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 358,390 0.3 646,464 0.6 288,074 80.4
Average household size . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.59 (X) 2.58 (X) 0.01 (X)
Average family size . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.14 (X) 3.14 (X) 0.00 (X)
(X) Not applicable.
1
Unmarried couple households can be family or nonfamily households depending on the relationship of others in the household to the householder. In this
table, it is the sum of opposite-sex partners and same-sex partners from Summary File 1 counts.
2
Summary File 1 counts in this table are consistent with Summary File 1 counts shown in American FactFinder.
Sources: U.S. Census Bureau, Census 2000 Summary File 1 and 2010 Census Summary File 1.
00721
tabulated in 1940.
8
For each of the
other types of households shown in
Figure 2, the percentage share has
increased since 1990.
Opposite-sex unmarried partner
households increased by 40 percent
8
See the Census Bureaus Families and
Living Arrangements Web page, Historical
Table HH-1, <www.census.gov/population
/socdemo/hh-fam/hh1.xls>.
since 2000, almost four times the
national average. For same-sex
households, the preferred esti-
mates for 2000 and 2010 showed
an 80 percent increase. However,
same-sex partner households made
up less than 1 percent of all house-
holds in both 2000 and 2010.
Household types varied by
race of householder in 2010.
Two-thirds of all households in the
United States were family house-
holds (Table 3). This proportion
varied considerably by race: 64 per-
cent of non-Hispanic White alone
households were family house-
holds, compared with 78 percent
of Hispanic or Latino households.
Figure 2.
Households by Type: 1990, 2000, and 2010
Sources: U.S. Census Bureau, Census 2010 Summary File 1; Census 2000 Summary File 1; 1990 Census of Population, Summary
Population and Housing Characteristics, United States (1990 CPH-1-1).
Husband-wife family household
Female householder, other family
Male householder, other family
Two or more people, nonfamily
One person, nonfamily
2010 2000 1990
(Percent distribution. For information on confidentiality protection, nonsampling error, and definitions, see
www.census.gov/prod/cen2010/doc/sf1.pdf)
55.2
48.4
11.6
13.1
3.4
5.0
51.7
6.1
26.7
34.3
12.2
4.2
6.8
35.9
5.2
24.6
25.8
00722
Households containing husband-
wife families varied as well:
29 percent of all Black or African
American alone households were
husband-wife households, while 60
percent of Asian alone households
were husband-wife families.
Three in 10 Black or African
American alone households were
female householder, no spouse
present families, three times as
high as White alone households
(9.9 percent) and Asian alone
households (9.5 percent). The
majority of female family house-
holds with no spouse present
contained own children of the
householder, except for Asian
alone households. Male family
households with no spouse pres-
ent represented 5 percent of all
households. Almost one-half of all
of these households contained own
children of the householder.
Households containing unmarried
couples can be family or nonfamily
households, depending on the
presence of relatives of the house-
holder. Nationally, 6.6 percent of all
households were unmarried partner
households. American Indian and
Alaska Native alone households
reported the largest percentage
of unmarried partner households
(10.9 percent). Asian alone house-
holds had the lowest proportion
of unmarried couple households,
3.6 percent. The majority of all
DEFINITION OF RACE CATEGORIES USED IN THE
2010 CENSUS
The U.S. Census Bureau collects race and Hispanic origin infor-
mation following the guidance of the U.S. Office of Management
and Budgets (OMB) 1997 Revisions to the Standards for the
Classification of Federal Data on Race and Ethnicity. These federal
standards mandate that race and Hispanic origin (ethnicity) are
separate and distinct concepts and that when collecting these
data via self-identification, two different questions must be
used. Individuals who responded to the question on Hispanic origin
are classified as either Hispanic or as non-Hispanic.
Individuals who responded to the question on race by indicat-
ing only one race are referred to as the race-alone population or
the group that reported only one race category (e.g., White alone,
Black or African American alone, American Indian and Alaska Native
alone, Asian alone, Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander
alone, and Some Other Race alone). Individuals who chose more
than one of the six race categories are referred to as the Two or
More Races population in this report. All respondents who indicated
multiple races (more than one race) or races in combination with
each other can be collapsed into the Two or More Races population
category, which, combined with the six race-alone categories, yields
seven mutually exclusive and exhaustive categories. Thus, the six
race-alone categories and the Two or More Races category sum to
the total population.
As a matter of policy, the Census Bureau does not advocate the use
of the alone population over the alone-or-in-combination popula-
tion or vice versa. The use of the alone population in sections of
this report does not imply that it is a preferred method of present-
ing or analyzing data. The same is true for household and family
tables presented in Summary Files 1 or 2 that show the alone-or-in-
combination population. Data on race from the 2010 Census can be
presented and discussed in a variety of ways.
00723
Table 3.
Household Type by Race and Hispanic Origin: 2010
Household type
Total
White
alone
Non-
Hispanic
White alone
Black or
African
American
alone
American
Indian
and
Alaska
Native
alone
Asian
alone
Native
Hawaiian
and Pacic
Islander
alone
Some
Other
Race
alone
Two or
more
races
Hispanic
or Latino
of any race
Total households
(number) . . . . . . . . . . . . 116,716,292 89,754,352 82,333,080 14,129,983 939,707 4,632,164 143,932 4,916,427 2,199,727 13,461,366
Total households
(percent) . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0
Family households . . . . . . . . . . . . 66.4 65.4 64.3 64.9 70.4 73.9 77.0 80.8 67.6 78.4
Husband-wife households . . . . 48.4 51.2 51.1 28.5 40.1 59.7 51.3 49.6 41.0 50.1
With own children . . . . . . . . . 20.2 19.9 19.0 12.8 19.4 31.8 29.0 34.2 23.0 31.3
Under 6 years only . . . . . . 4.6 4.5 4.4 2.3 3.6 8.9 6.1 6.9 5.7 6.4
Under 6 years and
6 to 17 years . . . . . . . . . 4.4 4.1 3.7 3.0 5.1 6.3 8.2 10.8 6.0 9.4
6 to 17 years only . . . . . . 11.3 11.3 10.9 7.5 10.7 16.6 14.7 16.5 11.3 15.5
Without own children . . . . . . 28.2 31.2 32.1 15.7 20.7 27.9 22.2 15.4 18.0 18.8
Female householder,
no spouse present . . . . . . . . . 13.1 9.9 9.2 30.1 21.4 9.5 17.0 20.2 19.2 19.2
Under 6 years only . . . . . . 1.5 1.1 1.0 3.6 2.6 0.7 2.2 2.6 3.0 2.4
Under 6 years and
6 to 17 years . . . . . . . . . . 1.3 0.8 0.7 3.7 2.8 0.5 2.3 3.4 2.6 2.9
6 to 17 years only . . . . . . . 4.4 3.3 3.1 10.1 6.8 2.8 5.3 7.6 6.8 6.9
Male householder,
no spouse present . . . . . . . . . 5.0 4.3 4.0 6.3 8.9 4.7 8.7 10.9 7.3 9.1
Under 6 years only . . . . . . 0.7 0.6 0.5 0.8 1.3 0.4 1.3 1.8 1.2 1.5
Under 6 years and
6 to 17 years . . . . . . . . . . 0.4 .03 0.2 0.5 0.9 0.2 0.9 1.4 0.7 1.1
6 to 17 years only . . . . . . . 1.4 1.3 1.2 1.6 2.3 0.9 2.0 2.5 1.8 2.1
Nonfamily households . . . . . . . . . 33.6 34.6 35.7 35.1 29.6 26.1 23.0 19.2 32.4 21.6
One person . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26.7 27.6 28.6 29.7 22.6 19.0 15.7 12.6 23.4 15.2
Two or more people . . . . . . . . . 6.8 7.0 7.1 5.4 7.0 7.2 7.3 6.6 9.0 6.4
Unmarried couple households
1
. . 6.6 6.4 6.2 7.0 10.9 3.6 9.3 10.2 9.8 9.4
Opposite-sex partner . . . . . . . . 5.9 5.6 5.4 6.4 10.0 3.1 8.2 9.4 8.8 8.6
Same-sex partner
Summary File 1 counts
2
. . . . . 0.8 0.8 0.8 0.6 0.9 0.5 1.1 0.8 1.0 0.8
Same-sex partner
Preferred estimates
3
. . . . . . . . 0.6 0.6 0.6 0.4 0.6 0.4 0.9 0.5 0.8 0.5
1
Unmarried couple households can be family or nonfamily households depending on the relationship of others in the household to the householder. In this table
it is the sum of opposite-sex partners and same-sex partners from Summary File 1 counts.
2
Summary File 1 counts in this table are consistent with Summary File 1 counts shown in American FactFinder.
3
Preferred estimates remove likely numbers of opposite-sex couples included in same-sex tabulations.
00724
unmarried partner households were
opposite-sex partner households.
Also shown in Table 3 are the
preferred estimates for same-sex
partner households by race and
Hispanic or Latino origin. The
preferred estimates removed the
households that were likely to
have been opposite-sex house-
holds as judged by inconsistencies
between their first names and their
responses to the gender item.
9
This
resulted in a reduction of same-sex
households as a percentage of all
households from 0.8 percent to
0.6 percent. About 0.1 percent of
all households in the United States
in 2010 were estimated to be
same-sex partner households with
own children of the householder
present, the highest being 0.3 per-
cent for Native Hawaiian and Pacific
Islander alone households.
Thirty-one percent of all
households were in four
states.
Table 4 shows that four states con-
tained 31 percent of all households
enumerated in 2010: California
(12.6 million), Texas (8.9 million),
Florida (7.4 million), and New York
9
See OConnell and Feliz, op. cit., for
a detailed discussion of this statistical
procedure.
(7.3 million).
10
These states also
had the most households in 2000,
although Florida, which had the
fourth-highest number of house-
holds in 2000, was the third high-
est in 2010, topping New York.
Sixteen states had less than 1.0
million households, with Wyoming
having the fewest (227,000).
Nevada, which had 751,000 house-
holds in 2000, had slightly over
1.0 million households in 2010.
No state experienced a decline in
the number of households in 2010.
On a regional basis, more house-
holds were located in the South
(43.6 million) than any other region
in the country.
11

The average number of people per
household in 2010 ranged from a
10
These four states (California, Texas,
Florida, and New York) also were the states
with the largest populations.
11
There were four regions (Northeast,
Midwest, South, and West). The Northeast
region includes Connecticut, Maine,
Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey,
New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island,
and Vermont. The Midwest region includes
Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan,
Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota,
Ohio, South Dakota, and Wisconsin. The
South region includes Alabama, Arkansas,
Delaware, the District of Columbia, Florida,
Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland,
Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South
Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, and West
Virginia. The West region includes Alaska,
Arizona, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Idaho,
Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah,
Washington, and Wyoming.
low of 2.30 in North Dakota to a
high of 3.10 in Utah, the only state
in 2010 that averaged more than 3
people per household. The District
of Columbia averaged only 2.11
people per household, a decline
from 2.16 in 2000. Regionally, the
West had the highest average num-
ber of people per household (2.74),
while the lowest average was in the
Midwest (2.49).
Utah had the highest average
number of people per family (3.56),
followed by California (3.45) and
Hawaii (3.42). Ten states averaged
less than 3 people per family in
2010: Maine, New Hampshire, and
Vermont in the Northeast; West
Virginia and Kentucky in the South;
Iowa, North Dakota, and Wisconsin
in the Midwest; and Montana and
Wyoming in the West.
HOUSEHOLD COMPOSITION
Utah had the highest
proportion of husband-wife
households in 2010.
Sixty-one percent of all households
in Utah were married husband-wife
couple households, the high-
est in the country. New York and
Louisiana had the lowest propor-
tions of husband-wife households
(44 percent). Husband-wife couples
00725
Table 4.
Households and Families for the United States, Regions, States, and for Puerto Rico:
2000 and 2010
Area
All households
Percent of households in 2010
Average number of
people in 2010
Family households Nonfamily households
Husband-wife
households
Female family
households
1
Male family
households
1
One person
Two or
more
people
Per
house-
hold
Per
family
April 1,
2000
April 1,
2010 Total
With own
children
under 18
years Total
With own
children
under 18
years
Total
With own
children
under 18
years Total
With
house-
holder
65 years
and over
United States . . . 105,480,101 116,716,292 48.4 20.2 13.1 7.2 5.0 2.4 26.7 9.4 6.8 2.58 3.14
REGION
Northeast . . . . . . . . . . . 20,285,622 21,215,415 46.9 19.5 13.3 6.9 4.7 2.1 28.1 10.7 7.0 2.53 3.12
Midwest . . . . . . . . . . . . 24,734,532 26,215,951 48.8 19.7 11.9 6.9 4.6 2.4 28.1 10.1 6.5 2.49 3.06
South . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38,015,214 43,609,929 48.3 19.7 14.2 7.8 4.9 2.3 26.4 9.0 6.3 2.56 3.10
West . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22,444,733 25,674,997 49.5 22.1 12.2 6.6 5.6 2.8 24.8 8.4 8.0 2.74 3.30

STATE
Alabama . . . . . . . . . . . 1,737,080 1,883,791 47.9 18.5 15.3 8.1 4.6 2.0 27.4 9.8 4.8 2.48 3.02
Alaska . . . . . . . . . . . . . 221,600 258,058 49.4 22.7 10.7 6.8 6.0 3.5 25.6 5.4 8.2 2.65 3.21
Arizona . . . . . . . . . . . . 1,901,327 2,380,990 48.1 19.5 12.4 7.1 5.6 3.0 26.1 9.1 7.7 2.63 3.19
Arkansas . . . . . . . . . . . 1,042,696 1,147,084 49.5 18.9 13.4 7.7 4.7 2.4 27.1 10.1 5.3 2.47 3.00
California . . . . . . . . . . . 11,502,870 12,577,498 49.4 23.4 13.3 6.8 6.0 2.8 23.3 8.1 8.0 2.90 3.45
Colorado . . . . . . . . . . . 1,658,238 1,972,868 49.2 21.4 10.1 6.0 4.6 2.5 27.9 7.8 8.1 2.49 3.08
Connecticut . . . . . . . . . 1,301,670 1,371,087 49.0 20.9 12.9 7.1 4.4 1.9 27.3 10.6 6.5 2.52 3.08
Delaware . . . . . . . . . . . 298,736 342,297 48.3 18.3 14.2 7.6 5.0 2.4 25.6 9.7 7.0 2.55 3.06
District of Columbia . . . 248,338 266,707 22.0 7.9 16.4 7.9 3.9 1.3 44.0 9.7 13.7 2.11 3.01
Florida . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6,337,929 7,420,802 46.6 16.6 13.5 7.1 5.0 2.3 27.2 11.1 7.6 2.48 3.01
Georgia . . . . . . . . . . . . 3,006,369 3,585,584 47.8 21.1 15.8 8.9 4.9 2.2 25.4 7.5 6.1 2.63 3.17
Hawaii . . . . . . . . . . . . . 403,240 455,338 50.5 20.1 12.6 5.2 5.8 2.4 23.3 8.1 7.7 2.89 3.42
Idaho . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 469,645 579,408 55.3 24.0 9.6 5.9 4.7 2.8 23.8 8.8 6.6 2.66 3.16
Illinois . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4,591,779 4,836,972 48.2 21.0 12.9 6.9 4.7 2.2 27.8 9.7 6.4 2.59 3.20
Indiana . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2,336,306 2,502,154 49.6 19.9 12.4 7.3 4.9 2.6 26.9 9.5 6.2 2.52 3.05
Iowa . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1,149,276 1,221,576 51.2 20.0 9.3 5.9 4.2 2.5 28.4 11.1 6.9 2.41 2.97
Kansas . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1,037,891 1,112,096 51.1 21.3 10.4 6.5 4.5 2.6 27.8 9.9 6.2 2.49 3.06
Kentucky . . . . . . . . . . . 1,590,647 1,719,965 49.3 19.1 12.7 7.1 4.8 2.4 27.5 9.8 5.6 2.45 2.98
Louisiana . . . . . . . . . . . 1,656,053 1,728,360 44.4 17.6 17.2 9.3 5.5 2.6 26.9 8.9 6.0 2.55 3.10
Maine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 518,200 557,219 48.5 16.7 10.0 6.0 4.5 2.7 28.6 11.3 8.4 2.32 2.83
Maryland . . . . . . . . . . . 1,980,859 2,156,411 47.6 20.4 14.6 7.6 4.8 2.2 26.1 8.7 6.8 2.61 3.15
Massachusetts . . . . . . . 2,443,580 2,547,075 46.3 19.7 12.5 6.8 4.2 1.8 28.7 10.6 8.3 2.48 3.08
Michigan . . . . . . . . . . . 3,785,661 3,872,508 48.0 18.9 13.2 7.3 4.8 2.4 27.9 10.2 6.2 2.49 3.05
Minnesota . . . . . . . . . . 1,895,127 2,087,227 50.8 21.2 9.5 5.9 4.3 2.3 28.0 9.7 7.4 2.48 3.05
Mississippi . . . . . . . . . . 1,046,434 1,115,768 45.4 17.8 18.5 10.0 5.2 2.4 26.3 9.5 4.6 2.58 3.11
Missouri . . . . . . . . . . . . 2,194,594 2,375,611 48.4 18.9 12.3 7.1 4.6 2.5 28.3 10.1 6.4 2.45 3.00
Montana . . . . . . . . . . . . 358,667 409,607 49.2 17.8 9.0 5.4 4.5 2.6 29.7 10.7 7.5 2.35 2.91
Nebraska . . . . . . . . . . . 666,184 721,130 50.8 21.2 9.8 6.2 4.2 2.3 28.7 10.4 6.5 2.46 3.04
Nevada . . . . . . . . . . . . 751,165 1,006,250 46.0 19.6 12.7 7.0 6.6 3.3 25.7 7.9 9.1 2.65 3.20
New Hampshire . . . . . . 474,606 518,973 52.1 20.4 9.7 5.7 4.5 2.5 25.6 9.2 8.0 2.46 2.96
New Jersey . . . . . . . . . 3,064,645 3,214,360 51.1 23.3 13.3 6.6 4.8 2.0 25.2 10.1 5.5 2.68 3.22
New Mexico . . . . . . . . . 677,971 791,395 45.3 17.9 14.0 7.8 6.2 3.4 28.0 9.3 6.5 2.55 3.13
New York . . . . . . . . . . . 7,056,860 7,317,755 43.6 18.7 14.9 7.5 5.0 2.1 29.1 10.5 7.3 2.57 3.20
North Carolina . . . . . . . 3,132,013 3,745,155 48.4 19.6 13.7 7.8 4.6 2.3 27.0 9.1 6.3 2.48 3.01
North Dakota . . . . . . . . 257,152 281,192 48.6 18.6 8.2 5.2 4.1 2.2 31.5 11.0 7.7 2.30 2.91
Ohio . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4,445,773 4,603,435 47.2 18.2 13.1 7.5 4.7 2.4 28.9 10.4 6.2 2.44 3.01
Oklahoma . . . . . . . . . . 1,342,293 1,460,450 49.5 19.7 12.3 7.0 5.0 2.7 27.5 9.9 5.8 2.49 3.04
Oregon . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1,333,723 1,518,938 48.3 18.7 10.5 6.1 4.7 2.5 27.4 9.7 9.1 2.47 3.00
Pennsylvania . . . . . . . . 4,777,003 5,018,904 48.2 18.3 12.2 6.5 4.6 2.2 28.6 11.4 6.5 2.45 3.02
Rhode Island . . . . . . . . 408,424 413,600 44.5 17.6 13.5 7.7 4.8 2.2 29.6 11.3 7.6 2.44 3.04
South Carolina . . . . . . . 1,533,854 1,801,181 47.2 17.7 15.6 8.4 4.7 2.2 26.5 9.2 5.9 2.49 3.01
South Dakota . . . . . . . . 290,245 322,282 50.1 19.7 9.7 6.2 4.4 2.6 29.4 10.9 6.4 2.42 3.00
Tennessee . . . . . . . . . . 2,232,905 2,493,552 48.7 18.7 13.9 7.5 4.8 2.3 26.9 9.4 5.7 2.48 3.01
Texas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7,393,354 8,922,933 50.6 23.7 14.1 8.0 5.2 2.5 24.2 7.2 5.9 2.75 3.31
Utah . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 701,281 877,692 61.0 31.7 9.7 5.5 4.4 2.2 18.7 6.4 6.1 3.10 3.56
Vermont . . . . . . . . . . . . 240,634 256,442 48.5 17.6 9.6 6.0 4.4 2.6 28.2 10.3 9.3 2.34 2.85
Virginia . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2,699,173 3,056,058 50.2 21.1 12.4 6.7 4.4 2.0 26.0 8.5 7.0 2.54 3.06
Washington . . . . . . . . . 2,271,398 2,620,076 49.2 20.4 10.5 6.2 4.7 2.5 27.2 8.7 8.4 2.51 3.06
West Virginia . . . . . . . . 736,481 763,831 49.8 17.0 11.2 5.7 4.8 2.3 28.4 11.6 5.8 2.36 2.88
Wisconsin . . . . . . . . . . 2,084,544 2,279,768 49.6 19.4 10.3 6.4 4.5 2.5 28.2 10.2 7.4 2.43 2.99
Wyoming . . . . . . . . . . . 193,608 226,879 50.9 19.6 8.9 5.6 4.8 2.8 28.0 8.8 7.4 2.42 2.96
Puerto Rico . . . . . . . . 1,261,325 1,376,531 45.0 18.2 22.6 10.9 5.5 2.2 23.8 9.5 3.1 2.68 3.17
1
No spouse present in household.
Sources: U.S. Census Bureau, Census 2000 Summary File 1 and 2010 Census Summary File 1.
00726
maintained only 22 percent of
households in the District of
Columbia. Regional patterns in
the proportion of husband-wife
households show that the highest
percentage was in the West (50 per-
cent) while the lowest percentage
was in the Northeast (47 percent).
Over a quarter of households
were one-person households.
In 2010, 31.2 million households
consisted of one person living
alone.
12
This represents a 4.0 mil-
lion increase in one-person house-
holds since 2000. Although this
increase from 2000 to 2010 was
smaller than the growth experi-
enced between 1990 and 2000
(4.6 million), the proportion of one-
person households grew slightly
from 26 percent in 2000 to 27 per-
cent in 2010. About one-third of
12
One-person households are a subset of
nonfamily households. In one-person house-
holds the householder lives alone.
all one-person households in 2010
had householders who were 65
years and over, compared with
22 percent of all householders
(Table 1).
Table 5 shows the top ten places
with the highest proportion of
one-person households and the
percentage of these households
maintained by a person 65 and
older. In 2010, one-person house-
holds were the most common
form of household type in Atlanta,
Georgia, and Washington, DC (both
44 percent), followed by St. Louis,
Missouri; Cincinnati, Ohio; and
Alexandria, Virginia, with 43 per-
cent. People over the age of 65
occupied less than 20 percent of
one-person households in Atlanta;
Arlington, Virginia; and Alexandria.
These areas may represent cit-
ies inhabited by younger adults
who may move in search of job
opportunities.
Figures 3a, 3b, and 3c are maps
showing the percentage of one-
person households and their
geographical concentration at the
county level.
13
Figure 3a shows
a high percentage of one-person
households concentrated along the
upper and central Midwest extend-
ing down into northeastern New
Mexico. Figure 3b shows a much
smaller proportion of Midwestern
counties with high concentrations
of persons living alone for those
aged 15 to 64 years. Figure 3c
specifically examines one-person
households composed of individu-
als 65 years and older. It shows
that the high percentages noted in
Figure 3a in the Midwest are the
result of the elderly living alone,
perhaps staying in or not moving
far from homes or towns where
13
A reference to state includes states
and their statistically equivalent entities.
A reference to county includes counties and
their statistically equivalent entities.
Table 5.
Top Ten Places of 100,000 or More Population With the Highest Percentage of One-Person
Households: 2010
Place
1
Total households
One-person households
Number Percent of total
With householder 65 years and over
Number
Percent of
one-person
households
Atlanta city, Georgia. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185,142 81,555 44.0 15,832 19.4
Washington city, District of Columbia . . . . 266,707 117,431 44.0 25,913 22.1
Cincinnati city, Ohio . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133,420 57,941 43.4 13,230 22.8
Alexandria city, Virginia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68,082 29,564 43.4 4,882 16.5
St. Louis city, Missouri . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142,057 60,468 42.6 14,424 23.9
Pittsburgh city, Pennsylvania . . . . . . . . . . . 136,217 56,823 41.7 16,469 29.0
Arlington CDP, Virginia. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98,050 40,516 41.3 6,523 16.1
Seattle city, Washington . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 283,510 117,054 41.3 24,611 21.0
Cambridge city, Massachusetts . . . . . . . . . 44,032 17,933 40.7 4,242 23.7
Denver city, Colorado. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 263,107 106,828 40.6 23,686 22.2
1
The 2010 Census showed 282 places in the United States with 100,000 or more population. They included 273 incorporated places (including 5 city-county
consolidations) and 9 census designated places (CDPs) that were not legally incorporated.
00727
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00730
they were born.
14
Note that in
Alaska the reverse is true: relatively
high numbers of counties with
younger people living alone and
very low concentrations of people
65 years and over living alone. This
may result from the presence of
industries such as mining and log-
gingthat attract younger people.
Unmarried partner households
increased from 2000 to 2010.
The unmarried partner category
identifies people with a close and
personal relationship to the house-
holder that goes beyond sharing
household expenses. Two people
may live together as an unmar-
ried couple for a variety of rea-
sons. For young men and women,
the arrangement may represent
a transitory or trial relationship,
while for others it may be a pre-
cursor to an eventual marriage.
For older couples that have been
formerly married, it could represent
an alternative lifestyle to the one
they previously experienced, espe-
cially if they do not anticipate any
future childbearing or childrear-
ing activities. Unmarried partners
can be either opposite-sex couple
households or same-sex couple
households.
There were 4.9 million opposite-
sex unmarried partner households
in 2000, increasing to 6.8 million
by 2010 (Table 2). Opposite-sex
unmarried partner households
accounted for 4.6 percent of all
households in 2000, while in 2010
they accounted for 5.9 percent of
all households. State-level data in
Table 6 show that Maine had the
highest percentage of opposite-
14
Data from the 2010 American
Community Survey indicated that the Midwest
region had the highest proportion of people
living in the state where they were born. See
Ping Ren, Lifetime Mobility in the United
States: 2010, American Community Survey
Briefs, ACSBR/10-07 (November 2011),
<www.census.gov/prod/2011pubs/acsbr10
-07.pdf>.
(8.4 percent), followed by Vermont
(8.1 percent). The only states with
less than 5 percent of households
reporting as opposite-sex unmar-
ried partner households were Utah
and Alabama (3.9 percent and 4.1
percent, respectively). Puerto Rico
recorded 5.9 percent of its house-
holds as opposite-sex unmarried
partner households.
Using the preferred set of estimates
for measuring same-sex unmarried
partner households shows there
were 358,000 same-sex unmar-
ried partner households in 2000,
increasing to 646,000 in the 2010
Census (Table 2). In 2000, same-
accounted for 0.3 percent of all
households, doubling in proportion
to 0.6 percent of all households
in 2010. Regionally, same-sex
unmarried partner households
were most common in the West
(0.7 percent) and least common
in the Midwest (0.4 percent). Of
all areas, Washington, DC, had the
highest percentage of same-sex
unmarried partner households (1.8
percent). Among the states, propor-
tions of 0.8 percent were found
only on the east coast (Delaware,
Massachusetts, and Vermont) and
the west coast (California and
Oregon). North Dakota and South
Dakota had the lowest percentages
(0.2 percent). Puerto Rico reported
only 0.3 percent of all households
were same-sex partner households.
Multigenerational families
numbered 5.1 million in 2010.
A topic of growing interest is that
of multigenerational families
family households consisting
of three or more generations of
relatives, such as a householder
living with his or her children and
grandchildren.
15
Multigenerational
households may be more likely to
reside in areas where new immi-
grants live with their relatives, in
areas where housing shortages or
high costs force families to double
up their living arrangements, or in
areas that have relatively high per-
centages of children born to unmar-
ried mothers and where unmarried
mothers live with their children in
their parents homes.
In 2000, there were 3.9 million
multigenerational households; that
number increased to 5.1 million in
2010.
16
In 2000, multigenerational
households made up 3.7 percent
of all households, while in 2010
they made up 4.4 percent of all
households. Hawaii had the high-
est percentage of multigenerational
households, which accounted for
8.8 percent of all households in
that state. Other states exceeding
5 percent in 2010 tended to be in
the West and in the South, includ-
ing California (6.7 percent), Georgia
(5.1 percent), Louisiana (5.2
percent), Maryland (5.1 percent),
Mississippi (5.7 percent), Nevada
(5.1 percent), and Texas (5.8 per-
cent). The state with the smallest
percentage of multigenerational
households was North Dakota (1.4
percent), which was also the state
with the highest proportion of
15
The numbers in this report only identify
three types of commonly encountered multi-
generational households: (1) householder-
child-grandchild, (2) parent/parent-in-law
of householder-householder-child, and
(3) parent/parent-in-law of householder-
householder-child-grandchild. These num-
bers, then, represent a subset of all possible
multigenerational households but were the
most common combinations; they made
up 98.1 percent of all households in 2000
with three or more generations of relatives.
See Frank Hobbs, Examining American
Household Composition: 1990 and 2000,
(August 2005), Table 7, <www.census.gov
/prod/2005pubs/censr-24.pdf>.
16
The data in this section referring to
numbers for 2000 are from Tavia Simmons
and Grace ONeill, Households and Families:
2000, Census 2000 Briefs, C2KBR/01-8
(September 2001). The data for 2010 are
from the U.S. Census Bureau, Census 2010
Summary File 1.
00731
Table 6.
Household Indicators for the United States, Regions, and States, and for Puerto Rico: 2010
Area
Percent of all households
Multi-
generational
households
Presence of
nonrelatives in
the household
With
individuals
under 18 years
With
individuals
65 years and
over
Opposite-sex
partners
Same-sex partners
Summary File 1
counts
1
Preferred
estimates
2
United States . . . . . . . . . . 5.9 0.8 0.6 4.4 12.1 33.4 24.9
REGION
Northeast . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.9 0.8 0.6 4.1 11.9 31.5 26.7
Midwest . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.0 0.6 0.4 3.2 11.2 32.0 24.5
South . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.4 0.8 0.5 4.7 11.4 34.0 24.8
West . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.3 0.9 0.7 5.3 14.5 35.4 24.2
STATE
Alabama . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.1 0.6 0.3 4.4 8.8 33.1 25.5
Alaska . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.8 0.7 0.5 3.7 15.1 36.4 16.0
Arizona . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.9 0.9 0.7 4.9 13.9 33.6 26.4
Arkansas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.1 0.6 0.4 3.8 9.8 33.0 26.2
California . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.2 1.0 0.8 6.7 15.3 37.5 24.7
Colorado . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.6 0.8 0.6 3.2 12.6 32.7 20.2
Connecticut . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.8 0.8 0.6 3.7 11.2 32.7 26.5
Delaware . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.4 1.0 0.8 4.7 12.8 32.5 27.0
District of Columbia . . . . . . . . . . . 5.8 1.9 1.8 3.9 18.3 20.7 20.4
Florida . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.5 0.9 0.7 4.6 13.4 29.8 31.4
Georgia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.1 0.8 0.6 5.1 11.4 36.8 21.2
Hawaii . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.3 0.9 0.7 8.8 15.5 34.3 30.3
Idaho . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.7 0.6 0.4 3.0 11.6 35.7 23.9
Illinois . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.7 0.7 0.5 4.4 11.1 33.5 24.2
Indiana . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.3 0.7 0.4 3.4 11.3 33.3 23.9
Iowa . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.2 0.5 0.3 2.0 11.2 30.6 25.5
Kansas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.3 0.6 0.4 2.8 10.6 33.2 23.7
Kentucky . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.7 0.7 0.4 3.5 10.3 32.6 24.4
Louisiana . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.1 0.7 0.5 5.2 11.4 34.7 23.7
Maine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8.4 1.0 0.7 2.2 13.9 27.8 27.1
Maryland . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.6 0.8 0.6 5.1 12.6 34.3 23.9
Massachusetts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.0 1.0 0.8 3.5 12.8 30.8 25.6
Michigan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.8 0.6 0.4 3.4 10.9 31.6 25.4
Minnesota . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.2 0.7 0.5 2.2 11.9 31.6 22.8
Mississippi . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.1 0.6 0.3 5.7 9.7 35.8 25.1
Missouri . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.1 0.6 0.4 3.2 11.1 31.8 25.0
Montana . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.1 0.6 0.3 2.3 11.8 28.4 25.6
Nebraska . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.5 0.5 0.3 2.2 10.8 32.0 23.9
Nevada . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.7 0.9 0.7 5.1 16.4 33.9 24.0
New Hampshire . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.4 0.9 0.6 2.8 13.1 31.0 24.4
New Jersey . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.2 0.8 0.5 5.0 10.5 35.0 26.9
New Mexico . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.3 1.0 0.7 5.0 12.8 33.7 25.3
New York . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.9 0.9 0.7 4.6 12.7 31.7 26.3
North Carolina . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.2 0.7 0.5 3.8 10.9 33.3 23.9
North Dakota . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.0 0.4 0.2 1.4 11.4 27.9 23.9
Ohio . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.1 0.6 0.4 3.2 10.9 31.3 25.3
Oklahoma . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.3 0.7 0.4 3.7 10.6 33.3 25.0
Oregon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.1 1.0 0.8 3.0 14.9 30.1 25.3
Pennsylvania . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.0 0.7 0.4 3.5 10.9 29.9 27.9
Rhode Island . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.7 0.9 0.7 3.8 12.7 30.1 26.6
South Carolina . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.3 0.6 0.4 4.6 10.8 32.8 25.5
South Dakota . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.1 0.4 0.2 2.2 10.9 31.1 24.9
Tennessee . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.2 0.7 0.4 4.2 10.4 32.6 24.9
Texas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.2 0.8 0.5 5.8 11.1 38.9 21.2
Utah . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.9 0.7 0.4 4.6 11.1 43.3 20.0
Vermont . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8.1 1.1 0.8 1.9 14.8 28.3 25.4
Virginia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.0 0.7 0.5 4.0 11.8 33.4 23.3
Washington . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.7 0.9 0.7 3.2 14.1 31.9 22.8
West Virginia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.0 0.7 0.4 3.2 10.4 28.6 28.5
Wisconsin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.7 0.6 0.4 2.2 11.8 30.6 24.0
Wyoming . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.6 0.5 0.3 2.4 12.3 30.9 22.0
Puerto Rico . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.9 0.5 0.3 6.6 8.3 37.0 29.6
1
Summary File 1 counts in this table are consistent with Summary File 1 counts shown in the American FactFinder.
2
00732

ATTACHMENT A (Part 2)

2010 Census Briefs
(Pages 17-21)
00733
one-person households (31.5 per-
cent, Table 4). Puerto Rico recorded
6.6 percent of households as multi-
generational households.
Thirty-three percent of
households included
people under 18 years,
and 25 percent included
people 65 years and over.
There were 38 million households
in 2000 with individuals under the
age of 18, representing 36 per-
cent of all households.
17
By 2010,
this number slightly increased to
39 million households, but the
proportion of these households
declined to 33 percent. Utah, in
2010, had the highest percentage
of households with individuals
under the age of 18 years, account-
ing for 43 percent of all house-
holds in Utah. States with less than
28 percent of households with indi-
viduals under the age of 18 years
were Maine and North Dakota,
while the District of Columbia
recorded 21 percent.
In 2000, 25 million households had
individuals aged 65 years and over,
which amounted to 23 percent of
all households. In 2010, the num-
ber of households with people aged
65 and over increased to 29 mil-
lion, which accounted for 25 per-
cent of households. Only two states
had a person aged 65 years and
over living in at least 30 percent of
the states households: Florida (31
percent) and Hawaii (30 percent).
These areas probably reflect popu-
lar retirement destinations. Alaska
and Utah had the lowest percent-
ages of households with a person
65 years and over (16 percent and
20 percent, respectively).
17
See Simmons and ONeill, op. cit.
The data for 2010 are from the U.S. Census
Bureau, Census 2010 Summary File 1.
Interracial couples were most
prevalent in the West.
In 2010, almost 7 percent of
married couple households
included a householder and spouse
of different races (Table 7).
18
Four
to 6 percent of married couples in
the Midwest, the Northeast, and
the South consisted of spouses of
different races, compared with 11
percent in the West. Hawaii had the
highest proportion (37 percent),
followed by Oklahoma and Alaska
(both about 17 percent). Because
these states have high proportions
of native populations (for example,
Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific
Islanders, and American Indian and
Alaska Natives, respectively), these
states may have greater potential
for the likelihood of interracial
marriage.
consistently had higher percent-
ages of partners of different races
than do married couple households
at national and regional levels and
for individual states.
19
Nationally,
the percentage for both opposite-
sex and same-sex couples was
14 percent.
20
For opposite-sex
unmarried partner households, the
18
The seven race groups used in this
report were White alone; Black or African
American alone, American Indian and Alaska
Native alone, Asian alone, Native Hawaiian
and Other Pacific Islander alone; Some other
race alone; and Two or more races. If either
spouse or partner was not in the same single
race as the other spouse or partner, or if at
least one spouse or partner was in a multiple-
race group, then the couple was classified as
an interracial couple.
19
Since unmarried partner relationships
are often short-term or trial relationships, the
partners may be less likely to choose partners
with the same characteristics, such as race or
ethnicity, as do married couples. See Robert
Schoen and Robin M. Weinick, Partner Choice
in Marriage and Cohabitations, Journal of
Marriage and Family, Vol. 55, No. 2 (1993),
pp. 408414.
20
Data in this section refer to same-sex
households using preferred estimates. About
85 percent of the 255,000 misclassified
same-sex households in the Summary File 1
counts are estimated to be married opposite-
sex households (OConnell and Feliz, op. cit.,
Appendix Table 6b).
highest percentage of mixed-race
partnerships was in the West (21
percent) while the lowest was in
the Midwest (11 percent). Over half
(56 percent) of these households
in Hawaii had partners of differ-
ent races, followed by Alaska and
Oklahoma (28 percent each).
Regional patterns and levels for
same-sex unmarried partner
households were similar to those
for opposite-sex unmarried part-
ner households. Again, as with
opposite-sex unmarried partners,
same-sex unmarried partners had
the highest percentage of mixed-
race partnerships in the West (21
percent) while the lowest was in
the Midwest (11 percent). Fifty per-
cent of same-sex unmarried partner
households in Hawaii had partners
of different races, followed by
California, Oklahoma, and Alaska
(23 percent each).
Four percent of married
couple households had one
Hispanic partner and one
non-Hispanic partner.
Nationally, 4.3 percent of married
couples had partners where one
is Hispanic and the other is not of
Hispanic origin, compared with 8.2
percent of opposite-sex unmarried
partners and 10.4 percent of same-
sex unmarried partners (Table 7).
Similar to the geographic pattern
noted for interracial partners, the
highest percentages of Hispanic/
non-Hispanic partner households
for all three types of households
were in the West. New Mexico had
twice the national average of the
proportion of households hav-
ing only one Hispanic partner for
each household type. West Virginia
had the lowest proportions for
both opposite-sex married and
unmarried partners (0.9 percent
and 1.7 percent, respectively),
while Mississippi had the lowest
00734
Table 7.
Percent of Households With Partners of a Dierent Race or Hispanic Origin for the
United Sates, Regions, and States, and for Puerto Rico: 2010
Area
Householders with partner of
a different race
a different Hispanic origin
a different race or origin
Husband-
wife
Unmarried partner
households
Husband-
wife
Unmarried partner
households
Husband-
wife
Unmarried partner
households
Opposite-
sex
partners
Same-sex
partners
Opposite-
sex
partners
Same-sex
partners
Opposite-
sex
partners
Same-sex
partners
Summary
File 1
counts
1
Preferred
estimates
2
Summary
File 1
counts
1
Preferred
estimates
2
Summary
File 1
counts
1
Preferred
estimates
2
United States . . . 6.9 14.2 12.6 14.5 4.3 8.2 8.8 10.4 9.5 18.3 17.7 20.6
REGION
Northeast . . . . . . . . . . . 5.3 12.3 11.0 12.8 3.2 7.1 7.3 8.7 7.5 16.0 15.4 18.1
Midwest . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.4 11.1 9.4 11.1 2.4 5.4 5.1 6.1 6.0 13.9 12.4 14.7
South . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.2 12.7 10.5 12.1 3.9 7.2 7.6 9.2 8.8 16.5 15.3 18.1
West . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 11.6 20.9 19.1 20.9 7.5 13.4 13.9 15.6 15.9 26.8 26.4 29.2
STATE
Alabama . . . . . . . . . . . 3.9 9.3 6.6 7.8 1.4 2.8 2.3 2.8 4.8 10.5 8.0 9.4
Alaska . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17.1 28.4 22.2 22.9 4.8 6.8 7.8 9.0 19.7 31.3 26.1 27.8
Arizona . . . . . . . . . . . . 9.3 18.0 15.2 16.7 8.3 15.1 14.4 16.3 14.3 25.2 23.1 25.8
Arkansas . . . . . . . . . . . 4.7 11.0 8.6 10.3 2.0 4.0 3.0 3.5 5.9 12.7 10.3 12.2
California . . . . . . . . . . . 12.8 22.6 21.3 23.4 8.6 14.9 16.1 17.9 17.6 28.9 29.8 32.9
Colorado . . . . . . . . . . . 8.8 16.1 14.2 15.2 7.7 13.6 13.5 14.8 13.5 23.2 21.7 23.6
Connecticut . . . . . . . . . 5.5 13.8 10.1 11.5 3.7 9.2 7.3 8.7 8.0 18.2 14.6 16.9
Delaware . . . . . . . . . . . 5.7 13.3 9.6 10.6 2.7 6.1 4.5 4.7 7.3 16.2 12.2 13.4
District of Columbia . . . 10.6 13.8 18.7 19.1 5.1 6.4 12.1 12.7 14.1 17.6 26.8 27.6
Florida . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.5 12.7 10.2 11.3 5.9 10.0 11.0 12.7 10.9 18.8 18.2 20.6
Georgia . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.2 11.0 9.3 11.0 2.7 4.7 5.2 6.2 6.8 13.2 12.6 14.8
Hawaii . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37.2 56.4 47.2 49.7 7.6 14.2 11.8 12.6 39.2 58.9 50.1 52.9
Idaho . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.1 12.3 9.3 10.6 4.2 9.0 7.2 8.6 8.6 16.7 13.0 15.1
Illinois . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.2 11.7 11.7 13.8 3.6 7.5 8.2 9.9 7.6 15.6 16.5 19.7
Indiana . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.0 10.2 8.4 9.8 2.3 4.8 4.0 4.4 5.4 12.5 10.5 12.3
Iowa . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.1 9.6 7.1 8.6 1.8 4.7 4.0 5.0 4.2 12.1 9.4 11.5
Kansas . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.4 15.6 11.3 12.9 3.9 8.7 6.7 8.1 8.8 19.9 15.0 17.6
Kentucky . . . . . . . . . . . 3.3 9.5 7.0 8.4 1.3 2.9 2.3 2.8 4.1 10.8 8.3 10.0
Louisiana . . . . . . . . . . . 4.3 9.4 7.8 9.0 2.6 3.8 4.6 5.5 6.1 11.4 10.8 12.7
Maine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.2 6.5 5.2 5.6 1.1 2.0 2.3 2.9 4.0 7.7 6.7 7.4
Maryland . . . . . . . . . . . 6.9 12.8 12.3 14.0 2.9 4.5 5.3 6.1 8.8 15.1 15.6 17.8
Massachusetts . . . . . . . 5.4 12.3 9.9 11.1 2.4 6.5 5.9 6.8 7.0 15.6 13.6 15.4
Michigan . . . . . . . . . . . 4.7 11.2 8.9 10.5 2.5 5.5 4.3 5.2 6.3 14.3 11.5 13.6
Minnesota . . . . . . . . . . 4.4 12.4 10.2 11.7 1.8 4.4 4.3 5.2 5.5 14.6 12.4 14.5
Mississippi . . . . . . . . . . 2.9 7.1 5.3 7.3 1.3 2.2 1.8 2.4 3.7 8.1 6.3 8.5
Missouri . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.5 10.4 9.0 10.6 2.1 4.0 4.4 5.4 5.8 12.5 11.6 13.8
Montana . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.1 11.7 11.0 11.8 2.7 5.4 4.7 5.0 7.8 14.8 13.5 14.2
Nebraska . . . . . . . . . . . 4.4 12.7 9.5 11.1 2.8 7.3 6.0 6.6 6.0 16.1 12.9 14.9
Nevada . . . . . . . . . . . . 13.3 23.6 20.5 22.4 7.9 13.9 14.1 15.8 17.6 29.5 27.4 30.2
New Hampshire . . . . . . 3.6 6.7 5.7 6.5 1.7 3.4 3.4 4.0 4.7 8.6 8.0 9.2
New Jersey . . . . . . . . . 6.2 14.5 11.6 13.5 4.5 10.0 9.1 10.9 9.3 19.8 17.2 20.3
New Mexico . . . . . . . . . 11.1 19.7 17.2 18.8 13.2 20.2 19.4 21.8 19.4 29.7 28.2 31.3
New York . . . . . . . . . . . 6.6 14.3 13.7 15.9 4.1 8.5 9.7 11.3 9.3 18.7 19.6 22.7
North Carolina . . . . . . . 5.2 12.4 9.1 10.5 2.4 4.6 3.9 4.6 6.6 14.4 11.2 13.1
North Dakota . . . . . . . . 3.8 10.8 9.6 12.3 1.3 3.6 3.6 4.8 4.6 12.7 11.2 14.8
Ohio . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.8 10.4 8.3 9.7 1.7 3.9 3.5 4.2 4.9 12.4 10.4 12.2
Oklahoma . . . . . . . . . . 17.2 28.5 21.1 23.1 3.6 7.6 5.4 6.5 19.1 31.4 23.7 26.2
Oregon . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8.8 15.7 13.4 14.2 4.4 8.4 8.2 9.0 11.4 19.8 18.2 19.5
Pennsylvania . . . . . . . . 3.5 9.9 8.3 10.2 1.9 4.8 4.5 5.7 4.7 12.3 10.9 13.5
Rhode Island . . . . . . . . 5.7 14.1 10.9 11.8 2.5 6.9 4.7 5.1 7.1 17.1 13.4 14.5
South Carolina . . . . . . . 4.1 10.5 7.4 9.2 2.0 3.6 3.1 3.8 5.3 12.2 9.2 11.4
South Dakota . . . . . . . . 4.3 12.8 9.1 12.6 1.5 4.0 3.2 4.1 5.2 14.6 10.7 14.4
Tennessee . . . . . . . . . . 3.8 9.9 7.4 8.6 1.7 3.4 3.2 3.7 4.9 11.5 9.2 10.8
Texas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.6 15.2 12.8 14.8 7.1 13.3 13.8 16.8 12.2 22.0 21.2 25.2
Utah . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.5 15.4 10.8 12.2 5.0 11.6 9.7 11.4 9.4 20.9 16.0 18.3
Vermont . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.3 5.8 6.1 6.7 1.3 2.2 3.2 3.6 4.3 7.1 8.1 9.0
Virginia . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.2 14.3 11.7 13.4 3.2 5.4 5.6 6.6 9.2 16.9 15.1 17.6
Washington . . . . . . . . . 10.9 19.6 17.0 18.5 4.4 8.5 8.3 9.3 13.4 23.4 21.3 23.3
West Virginia . . . . . . . . 2.6 7.2 5.4 7.3 0.9 1.7 1.8 2.7 3.2 8.1 6.5 9.1
Wisconsin . . . . . . . . . . 3.8 10.6 8.6 10.3 2.1 5.4 5.2 6.3 5.1 13.3 11.6 14.1
Wyoming . . . . . . . . . . . 5.8 11.0 9.9 12.0 5.1 10.3 7.3 9.0 8.9 16.5 14.2 17.2
Puerto Rico . . . . . . . . 15.7 20.8 19.7 22.1 1.4 1.5 2.1 2.8 16.7 21.8 21.2 24.0
1
Summary File 1 counts in this table are consistent with Summary File 1 counts shown in the American FactFinder.
2
00735
proportion for same-sex unmar-
ried partners (2.4 percent). This, of
course, reflects the below-national
proportions of people in these
states who are Hispanic or Latino.
21
Figures 4a, 4b, and 4c summarize
state variations in coupled house-
holds with partners of either a
different race or Hispanic origin
for the three types of coupled
households.
22
The maps show the
state variations within each type
of coupled household, the similar-
ity in these geographical variations
among the types of households,
and the differences in the levels of
these proportions.
Overall, 10 percent of opposite-
sex married couples had partners
of a different race or Hispanic
origin. States with higher percent-
ages of couples of a different race
or Hispanic origin were primarily
located in the western and south-
western parts of the country. These
areas tend to have a high Hispanic
population. Hawaii had the highest
percentage of spouses of a dif-
ferent race or Hispanic origin (39
percent). Alaska, New Mexico, and
Oklahoma also had about 19 per-
cent of opposite-sex married cou-
ples where the partner is of a differ-
ent race or Hispanic origin than the
householder. This reflects the high
proportion of American Indian and
Alaska Native alone population in
Alaska and Oklahoma and the high
proportion of Hispanics or Latinos
in New Mexico. Another interesting
pattern of relatively low percent-
ages (less than 5 percent) emerges
in a range of states extending from
the Gulf Coast states of Mississippi
and Alabama through Appalachia
to Ohio and Pennsylvania, and
21
Sharon R. Ennis, Merarys Rios-Vargas,
and Nora Albert, The Hispanic Population:
2010, 2010 Census Briefs, C2010BR-04 (May
2011), Table 2.
22
A reference to state includes states and
their statistically equivalent entities. A refer-
ence to county includes counties and their
statistically equivalent entities.
another cluster emerges among
the New England states of Maine,
New Hampshire, and Vermont.
States in the South had a his-
tory of interracial marriage laws
that prohibited marriage between
Whites and Blacks. These laws
were not repealed until 1967 in the
Supreme Court decision of Loving
v. Virginia.
23
The low proportions
noted in the New England states
likely reflect the small proportions
of the population in those states
that are either Black or Hispanic
(1 percent to 2 percent).
24
Although opposite-sex unmar-
ried couples were approximately
twice as likely to have partners of
a different race or Hispanic ori-
gin (18 percent) as opposite-sex
married couples (10 percent), they
have a similar pattern of state per-
centages. Figure 4b shows that the
states with the highest percentages
of opposite-sex unmarried part-
ners of a different race or Hispanic
origin were in the western and
southwestern United States, includ-
ing Hawaii and Alaska.
25
Diverse
populations in terms of both racial
and ethnic origins characterize
these areas. Along with the areas
mentioned earlier, above-average
percentages of couples of different
racial and ethnic origins were noted
in Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas in
the West Central part of the United
States, Florida in the South, and
New Jersey and New York in the
Northeast.
23
Alabama did not officially remove lan-
guage prohibiting interracial marriage from
its state constitution until 2000. Alabama
removes ban on interracial marriage, USA
Today, November 7, 2000.
24
See Ennis, Rios-Vargas, and Albert,
op. cit., Table 2, and Sonya Rastogi, Tallese
D. Johnson, Elizabeth M. Hoeffel, and Malcom
P. Drewery, Jr., The Black Population: 2010,
2010 Census Briefs, C2010BR-06 (September
2011), Table 5.
25
The correlation between the percent-
ages of partners of a different race and
Hispanic origin between opposite-sex married
and unmarried couples for the 50 states and
the District of Columbia is 0.980.
The final map (Figure 4c) shows
that same-sex unmarried partners
with a partner of a different race
or Hispanic origin were about 2
percentage points higher than for
opposite-sex unmarried partners.
However, both household types
had similar geographical patterns.
26

As with opposite-sex unmarried
couples, the states with the high-
est percentages of different-race
same-sex unmarried partners were
in the western and southwestern
United States, along with Hawaii
and Alaska. New Jersey, New
York, and the District of Columbia
had higher than average percent-
ages on the east coast. The low-
est percentages of interracial/
ethnic same-sex couples were in a
band of states extending from the
lower Mississippi Valley through
Appalachia and in upper New
England.
The striking similarity in state vari-
ations among the three household
types suggests that the racial and
ethnic composition of populations
strongly influenced the patterns
shown among the states, while
the type of householdmarried
or unmarriedwas an important
factor that affected the proportion-
ate level of mixed race and ethnic
partners.
METHODOLOGY AND
SOURCES OF DATA
This report uses decennial census
data primarily for the years 2000
and 2010. Unrounded data are used
to compute all derived values. For
readability, most whole numbers in
the text are expressed in millions
or rounded to the nearest thou-
sand, and most percentages are
rounded to the nearest whole per-
cent. In the tables, whole numbers
are unrounded, and percentages
26
The correlation between the percentages
of partners of a different race and Hispanic
origin between opposite-sex and same-sex
unmarried couples for the 50 states and the
District of Columbia is 0.961.
00736
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00737
are rounded to the nearest tenth.
Maps are created using unrounded
data.
ABOUT THE 2010 CENSUS
Why was the 2010 Census
conducted?
The U.S. Constitution mandates
that a census be taken in the
United States every 10 years. This
is required in order to determine
the number of seats each state
is to receive in the U.S. House of
Representatives. The data collected
in the census is used to provide
states with the small-area data they
need to redraw state legislative
districts to distribute over $400
billion in federal program funding
per year and to help a variety of
stakeholders in tasks such as plan-
ning services for their communities
or researching the diversity of their
neighborhoods.
Why did we ask the household
relationship question?
The relationship question measures
the changing composition of fami-
lies and households in the United
States and provides essential
information for the planning and
carrying out of federal programs
designed to help families and chil-
dren. The information derived from
the relationship item helps to iden-
tify, for example, areas that have
experienced changes in the number
of children, elderly people living
alone or with their children, and
single-parent households so that
government agencies can develop
and evaluate programs that assist
these populations. Housing agen-
cies and developers use this infor-
mation to determine community
needs for different types of hous-
ing, such as multibedroom housing
for areas with large household pop-
ulations or special needs housing
for the elderly. Businesses use the
data to find potential new markets
or to change their product mix in
neighborhoods to reflect changes
in family structure and associated
consumer habits.
FOR MORE INFORMATION
For more information on families
and households in the United States
and additional 2010 Census tables
on interracial spouses and partners,
visit the U.S. Census Bureaus Web
site at <www.census.gov/hhes
/families>. Data on families and
households for state and local
areas are available on the Internet
at <factfinder2.census .gov>.
Information on confidentiality pro-
tection, nonsampling error, and def-
initions is available on the Census
Bureaus Web site at <www.census
.gov/prod/cen2010/doc/sf1>.
Information on other population
and housing topics is presented
in the 2010 Census Briefs series
located on the U.S. Census Bureaus
Web site at <www.census.gov
/prod/cen2010/>. This series
presents information about race,
Hispanic origin, age, sex, and hous-
ing tenure and type.
If you have questions or need
additional information, please call
the Customer Services Center at
1-800-923-8282. You can also visit
the Census Bureaus Question and
Answer Center at <ask.census.gov>
to submit your questions online.
00738
DEFENDANT CHRISTOPHER RICHS MOTION TO DISMISS - 1

LAWRENCE G. WASDEN
ATTORNEY GENERAL

STEVEN L. OLSEN

nd
Floor
P. O. Box 83720
Boise, ID 83720-0010
Telephone: (208) 334-2400
Fax: (208) 854-8073

Attorneys for Defendant Christopher Rich



ROBERTSON,

Plaintiffs,

vs.


Defendants.

)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)


DEFENDANT CHRISTOPHER
RICHS MOTION TO DISMISS

00739

Defendant Christopher Rich hereby requests dismissal of the complaint pursuant
to Fed. R. Civ. P. 12(b)(6),
AND AS GROUNDS THEREFOR states that the complaint fails to state a claim
against him for which relief may be granted for the reasons set forth in the accompanying
memorandum.

STATE OF IDAHO

By: /s/
W. SCOTT ZANZIG
CLAY R. SMITH

00740


I HEREBY CERTIFY that on the 9th day of J anuary 2014, I electronically filed
the foregoing Memorandum in Support of Defendant Christopher Richs Motion to
Dismiss with the Clerk of the Court using the CM/ECF system which sent a Notice of
Electronic Filing to the following Persons:

Deborah A. Ferguson


Shannon P. Minter


Thomas Perry

Cally Ann Younger

/s/
W. SCOTT ZANZIG

00741
LAWRENCE G. WASDEN
ATTORNEY GENERAL

STEVEN L. OLSEN

nd
Floor
P. O. Box 83720
Boise, ID 83720-0010
Telephone: (208) 334-2400
Fax: (208) 854-8073

Attorneys for Intervenor State of Idaho



WATSEN and SHARENE WATSEN,
SHELIA ROBERTSON and ANDREA
ALTMAYER, AMBER BEIERLE and
RACHAEL ROBERTSON,

Plaintiffs,

vs.


Defendants.
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STATE OF IDAHOS MOTION
TO INTERVENE

The State of Idaho, by and through the Attorney General of the State of Idaho,
moves this Court to intervene as a defendant pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure
STATE OF IDAHOS MOTION TO INTERVENE - 1
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24. This motion is accompanied by a Memorandum in Support of the State of Idahos
Motion to Intervene and a proposed Answer of Intervenor-Defendant State of Idaho, a
copy of which is attached as Exhibit 1 to this motion.
The Attorney Generals office has contacted counsel for the parties and advised
them of the State of Idahos intention to file this motion. Defendants counsel have
indicated that they have no objection to the State of Idahos proposed intervention.
Plaintiffs counsel has not yet advised the Attorney General whether plaintiffs will
oppose the proposed intervention.

DATED this 11th day of December, 2013.

STATE OF IDAHO

By: /s/
W. SCOTT ZANZIG

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I HEREBY CERTIFY that on the 11th day of December, 2013, I electronically
filed the foregoing State of Idahos Motion to Intervene with the Clerk of the Court using
the CM/ECF system which sent a Notice of Electronic Filing to the following Persons:

Deborah A. Ferguson


Shannon P. Minter


Theodore E. Argyle
teda@adaweb.net

Thomas Perry

/s/
W. SCOTT ZANZIG

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/s/W. Scott Zanzig
W. SCOTT ZANZIG


Case Nos. 14-35420 & 14-35421: Plaintiffs-Appellees

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Case Nos. 14-35420 & 14-35421: Plaintiffs-Appellees

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