'Uncoupling' Words from Harsh Reality

"Conscious uncoupling." Is that even a thing?

The odd coupling of those two words has put an unusual bright spotlight on the announcement that Oscar-winning actor Gwyneth Paltrow and her husband, Chris Martin of the rock band Coldplay, are pulling the plug on their marriage.

Even odder is their plea for privacy. "We have always conducted our relationship privately," says the announcement on Goop.com, Paltrow's website, and we hope that as we consciously uncouple and coparent, we will be able to continue in the same manner."

"Privately?" Nice try. But in the age of the Worldwide 24/7 Celebrity News Monster, the couple's painfully euphemistic "conscious uncoupling" after 10 years of marriage and two children ignited worldwide headlines -- and ridicule.

From a couple already widely known for annoying surprises, such as naming their daughter Apple and mommy's website Goop, "conscious uncoupling" threw new catnip to commentators.

The clever Web geeks at Slate even created a new widget on which you, too, can input your name and romantic status to find out how Gwyneth might Goopify you, if she had the opportunity. (I'm "purposefully bound," it turned out. I can't wait to tell my wife.)

The wish for privacy seems even more unlikely in light of how the term "conscious uncoupling" has been around for years, including in the title of a five-week break-up therapy program by author and psychotherapist Katherine Woodward Thomas.

Below her announcement, Paltrow's website offers a lengthy essay on the concept by doctors Dr. Habib Sadeghi, who has written earlier for Goop, and his wife, Dr. Sherry Sami. They describe "conscious uncoupling" as "the ability to understand that every irritation and argument (within a marriage) was a signal to look inside ourselves and identify a negative internal object that needed healing."

"From this perspective, there are no bad guys, just two people," they say, "it's about people as individuals, not just the relationship."

The doctors also cite rising divorce rates to contend that, "human beings haven't been able to fully adapt to our skyrocketing life expectancy. Our biology and psychology aren't set up to be with one person for four, five or six decades."

Yet, by that theory, long-lasting marriages sound like an unnatural act. That's contrary, as the Los Angeles Times' Robin Abcarian reports, to census data that indicate marital breakups are more likely to occur in the early years than later.

The "conscious uncoupling" conundrum caught my eye as a new front in a culture war that stretches far beyond Hollywood. The institution of marriage has become a central and contentious issue in debates of all sorts in recent decades, especially its decline in families with children.

In fact, if there is any place in our society where firearms have declined, one might say, it is the fading ethos of the "shotgun marriage."

That's the old-fashioned label for the expectation that young men who impregnated their sweethearts would, in the great lyrics of a Beyonce hit, "put a ring on it."

Although out-of-wedlock births have soared sharply, most famously but not only among African-Americans, census data reveal that the decline of marriage is linked less to race than to differences in income and education.

Out-of-wedlock births among high school dropouts, for example, have soared in all major racial groups since the mid-1960s, while those among college graduates have hardly budged.

Paltrow and Martin are at the other end of that debate. They're rich and married and, by their own accounts, they put in a good try before they decided to call it quits. The term "conscious uncoupling" sounds like a way to say, "Hey, we tried -- and we're still going to take care of the kids like good, if separated, parents."

With that, they suggest what should be the core concern in the marriage debate: taking care of the kids. In that task, as a fellow parent, I wish Paltrow and Martin the best. To raise children, both parents need to work together. Call it "conscientious coupling."

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E-mail Clarence Page at cpage@tribune.com.