LIFE’S UPS AND DOWNS 生活札記

EnglishWith all the stimulus ready to go into more broadband, bigger tax cuts and infrastructure, some of America’s most expensive societal investments are also on the decline and in need of a bailout — getting married.

Marriage in America is on the rocks. People skirt the issue, talking about how career women delay marriage until it’s too late, or about how men marry younger the second time around. But the truth is, except for the highest-income Americans among us, fewer and fewer of us are getting married at all.

Married couples with children now make up fewer than one in four U.S. households. That’s half the rate of 1960. Married households of any type have been in the minority since 2005.

It’s not that people are suddenly more promiscuous, or more celibate. Americans are pairing off and staying together just as much as ever, but now it’s without the rings, gowns and expensive photographers. They are America’s committed cohabiters, and theirs is the fastest-growing kind of U.S. household. According to the Census, there are 5.2 million such cohabiting couples, and they are raising 2.2 million children.

Committed cohabiters are more downscale than married parents — they have lower incomes, lower education levels and lower rates of home ownership. There is now a great and growing marital divide between the rich who can afford it and the downscale, who are living more and more without it.

But today it’s not just the young who are living in what just a generation ago was called living in sin — their parents have adapted and are living that way too. The fastest growth in cohabitation is among the over-50 set. Oftentimes, widows, widowers and divorced Americans over 50 — who now total 25 million people — don’t want to complicate inheritances (or burial plans) with a second marriage, but they are committing to each other with devotion just as tender as young people experience, and they are counting very much on the other’s being there at the end.

Society values marriage and monogamy, though, so why isn’t it doing anything about it? There are two options: make marriage economically and socially more attractive, or go with the flow and expand the privileges and obligations of “common law” couples. Right now we are letting the chips fall where they may — a tactic which is currently causing marriage to continue to wither away as an institution. The word “partner” is increasingly replacing the word “spouse.”

If we wanted to increase the number of marriages, we have a number of ideas readily at hand. Tax breaks, instead of tax penalties. Yes-fault divorce. A push for religious leaders to stop spending so much time decrying some marriages (e.g., gay ones, interracial ones), and instead focus on encouraging marriage in the first place. Maybe a national “Spouse Day,” to go along with Mother’s Day and Father’s Day.

How about revisiting those traditional anniversary gifts? Forget the paper in year one and the wood in year five — let’s upgrade the scale. Call 10 years the “silver” anniversary, to celebrate more lavishly those who make it there. Make 25 the “golden” one. And for those who make it to 50 years, hell, give them the Hope Diamond.

Alternatively, we could expand the rights and obligations of committed cohabiters. Every legal arrangement in society — from child custody to survivors’ benefits to next-of-kin decision-making — is affected by this new living arrangement. And so is every institution that gears its benefits around families. Can an unmarried significant other, even a longstanding one, skip the waiting list at the country club because his “friend” already belongs? Can a widowed life partner keep her beloved’s rent-controlled apartment? Can you still get the family rate at Disneyland if the adults in your group are unrelated by either blood or marriage?

Marketers, too, have yet to recognize committed cohabiters as a class and start offering products that acknowledge their unique status. Towels with his and her initials, but separately designed. Address labels that can actually handle two full names. How about a legal and will kit that allows cohabiters to choose just how separate-and-apart they want to be in death, as in life? And if Hallmark is missing out on all those wedding anniversary cards, maybe it’s time to celebrate when we moved in together.

In a sense, relationships at home are increasingly paralleling relationships at work with employers. Whereas 50 years ago, people expected to have one or two jobs for life, now some estimates say they expect six or seven. If marriage was meant to be “’til death do us part,” cohabitation is a little more like “’til life drives us apart.”

At home as at work, Americans are signing on, but without all the trappings that might make progression to the next stage too difficult. And social planners better catch up. They have fallen behind on what could be the most basic of trends — how to accommodate people navigating the middle ground between uncommitted hook-ups, and the “institution” of marriage. And with the financial crisis hitting the downscale the hardest, it may lead to even more cohabitation without marriage, accelerating this microtrend into something bigger.

Source: The Wall Street Journal

繁體中文景氣大蕭條，全球引發嚴重失業潮，求職市場遇上了大寒冬，想要獲得企業的青睞，履歷表變得各外格外重要，尤其是履歷表上的大頭照，日本有一位攝影師，會針對每位學生求職的職業別，拍出不同感覺的大頭照，非常受到學生歡迎。

求職市場，進入冷颼颼的寒冬，這對即將步出校門的學生來說，可是嚴峻的考驗，要如何在眾多的求職者中，脫穎而出給企業人事主管留下深刻印象，履歷表上的大頭照，可說是最重要的關鍵。

在日本札幌市經營照相館的橋場一宏，在不景氣中依舊生意興隆，而且上門拍照的幾乎都是為求職苦惱的大學生，橋場之所有擁有超高人氣，最主要是他會針對每位學生希望的求職類別，給予拍照時的建議。

在橋場的引導下，學生的表情越來越自然，嘴角上揚的大頭照，用來應徵國內的航空公司，而另一張露齒微笑的照片，則是應徵外國航空公司之用，想要進入出版業的三上杏那，在拍了30張照片之後，最後決定以一張展現知性笑容的大頭照，投入激烈的求職戰場。

每張大頭照展現了求職者的個性，以及想要獲得率取的決心。

EnglishAs stock markets across the globe have plummeted, more people have opted to try their luck looking for love online as a distraction from financial woes — and to save themselves money, according to dating Web sites.

A list of Web sites have reported a pickup in activity since the global financial crisis hit in September as people seek a companion during tough times and save money on face-to-face dates by searching for potential partners on the Internet.

“On days when the U.S. Dow Jones industrial (average) went down by a lot, by more than 100 points, more people were likely to log in and spend more time on the site,” Gian Gonzaga, senior research scientist at Web site eHarmony told Reuters.

“It makes a lot of sense. People seek out companionship in times of stress. Studies repeatedly show that being in a relationship can help a person’s psychological and physical health.”

The Dow Jones industrial average is down 35 percent this year, hitting a year low on November 21, and presenting a new situation for the relatively new online dating industry which has only gone through one economic crisis before, after the 9/11 attacks on the United States.

Match.com, an online dating service, said it had experienced its largest membership growth over the last seven years in November as the daily drumbeat of bad economics sent people looking for love.

“During these trying times, people are looking for hope in their inbox,” said Thomas Enraght-Moony, CEO of Match.com which has online dating sites in 40 countries.

Perfectmatch.com reported a 47 percent jump in the number of members in the three months to November compared to the previous quarter, supporting theories that online dating could be a countercyclical business that does well in an economic downturn.

A poll by Opinion Research Corp., conducted on behalf of eHarmony, found that 57 percent of Americans said the credit crunch made them worry about their love lives with married men the most stressed group with 63 percent of them concerned.

But when researchers divided the 1,092 respondents into age groups, those aged between 25 and 34 were most stressed about the impact their personal economic situation would have on their love lives, with 75 percent of them concerned.

However, researchers found that younger, single people who were stressed about the economy and its impact were more likely to seek out a relationship.

Older people, who were more likely to be married, were concerned that financial stress would harm their relationship, particularly if they feared losing their job or their house.

“When people are stressed they want to find a relationship but if they are in relationship, that extra stress will make that relationship that bit harder,” said Gonzaga, adding that similar surveys in Australia and Britain came up with the same results.

“Stress gets under the skin of relationships. Partners spend less time together because they have to work more. There are often more fights over bills and household budgets.”

Another survey by Avalanche LLC, which operates online dating Web sites date.com, matchmaker.com, and amor.com, found 48 percent of people were spending more time online or on the phone with a potential date before spending on a face-to-face meeting.

Source: Reuters (http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSTRE4B74ZY20081208)