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TESTIMONY OF BARBARA DAFOE WHITEHEAD, PH.D,

CO-DIRECTOR, NATIONAL MARRIAGE PROJECT

RUTGERS, THE STATE UNIVERSITY OF NEW JERSEY

BEFORE THE

COMMITTEE ON HEALTH, EDUCATION, LABOR AND PENSIONS

SUBCOMMITTEE ON CHILDREN AND FAMILIES

U.S. SENATE

April 28, 2004

 Thank you, Mr. Chairman and members of the Subcommittee, for the opportunity to testify today on this important topic.  My name is Barbara Dafoe Whitehead, and I am a Co-Director of the National Marriage Project at Rutgers, a research organization founded in 1997 to monitor and report on social trends affecting marriage. 

 I would like to address three questions:  What is marriage for?  What do we know about the benefits of marriage for children and adults?  How does marriage benefit the society?

What is marriage for?

Marriage is a universal human institution.  It performs a number of key functions in virtually every known society.  Marriage organizes kinship, establishes family identities, regulates sexual behavior, attaches fathers to their offspring, supports childrearing, channels the flow of economic resources and mutual caregiving between generations, and situates individuals within families, kin groups and communities.   

In our society, marriage is the central institution of the family.  It establishes a family household, organized around the spousal couple and, in many cases, their dependent children.  In this system, marriage plays a key role in fostering the social, economic and emotional bonds between husband and wife, parents and children, and the family and larger community.  It prescribes a set of norms, responsibilities and binding obligations for its members.  It shapes family identity, creates a context for intimacy and builds a sense of belonging among its members.  Finally, marriage enjoys social approval and public recognition.  It confers positive social status and a new social identity on men and women.

When marriage is low-conflict and, ideally, long-lasting, it is good for children.  It brings together under one roof the mother and father who have brought the child into the world through birth or adoption and who share a mutual interest in the child’s wellbeing.   It gives children a chance to know, associate with, and develop close bonds with both parents.  Marriage provides for regular paternal involvement and investment in children’s family households.  Indeed, more than any other family arrangement, marriage reliably connects kids to their dads and fathers to the mothers of their children. 

Marriage contributes to the physical, emotional and economic wellbeing of individual adults as well.  It provides an efficient way to pool resources, combine individual talents, and recruit kin support for the purposes of fostering the wellbeing of the family.  It encourages wealth production and limits material hardship and want.  Marriage unites mothers and fathers in the common work of childrearing and family life and helps to create a more equitable distribution of family responsibilities between the genders. 

Marriage is also good for the society.  Within the civil society, marriage fosters social connectedness, civic and religious involvement, and charitable giving. This is especially true for men.  More than any other family arrangement, marriage connects men to the larger community and encourages personal responsibility, family commitment, community voluntarism and social altruism. 

What Do We Know About the Benefits of Marriage ?

Today, thanks to resurgent scholarly interest in family structure, we have a large body of social science research on marriage and its effects.  Overall, the available research evidence persuasively demonstrates the advantages of marriage for children, adults and the society.   Though it is impossible to cover the entire scope of the research in this limited space, let me summarize key findings.   

Benefits for Children

Marriage¾especially if it is low-conflict and long-lasting¾is a source of economic, educational and social advantage for most children.  Researchers now agree that, except in cases of high and unremitting parental conflict, children who grow up in households with their married mother and father do better on a wide range of economic, social, educational, and emotional measures than do children in other kinds of family arrangements.[1]   According to some researchers, growing up with both married parents in a low-conflict marriage is so important to child wellbeing that it is replacing race, class, and neighborhood as the greatest source of difference in child outcomes.

Economic benefits

Children from intact families are far less likely to be poor or to experience persistent economic insecurity.  In fact, if it were not for the demographic shift from married parent families to other kinds of family structures in recent decades, the child poverty rate would be significantly lower.  For example, according to one study, if family structure had not changed between 1960 and 98, the black child poverty rate in 1998 would have been 28.4 percent rather than 45.6 percent, and the white child poverty rate would have been 11.4 percent rather than 15.4 percent.[2]  Children who grow up in married parent families are shielded from the economic effects of parental divorce.  Estimates suggest that children experience a 70 percent drop in their household income in the immediate aftermath of divorce and, unless there is a remarriage, the income is still 40 to 45 percent lower six years later than for children in intact families.[3] 

Educational benefits

Children from intact married parent families are more likely to stay in school. According to a 1994 research review by Sara McLanahan and Gary Sandefur, the risk of high school dropout for children from two-parent biological families is substantially less than that for those from single parent or stepfamilies.[4]  Children from married parent families also have fewer behavioral or school attendance problems and higher levels of educational attainment.  They are better able to withstand pressures to engage in early sexual activity and to avoid unwed teen parenthood, behaviors that can derail educational achievement and attainment.   They are significantly more likely to earn four-year college degrees or better and to do better occupationally than children from divorced or single parent families.

Emotional benefits

Warm, responsive, firm and fair parenting helps to promote healthy emotional development and to foster emotional resilience in children.  Parents, stepparents and grandparents in all kinds of family arrangements can, and do, manage to establish emotionally warm and secure environments, often against daunting odds.   However, parents in long-lasting, low-conflict marriages are more likely to have the time, resources, relational and residential stability to coparent effectively.  On average, children reared in married parent families are less vulnerable to serious emotional illness, depression and suicide than children in nonintact families.  Further, because parental divorce is such a commonplace childhood experience, with close to four out of ten American children going through a parental divorce, it is an advantage to grow up in a low-conflict married parent household undisrupted by divorce.  As the American Academy of Pediatrics notes, the effect of divorce on children is more than a set of discrete symptoms.  It can be a “long searing experience.” [5]

Finally, in their own future dating and marriage relationships, children benefit from the models set by their married parents.  Children from married parent families have more satisfying dating relationships, more positive attitudes toward future marriage and greater success in forming lasting marriages.  According to a nationally representative survey of young men, ages 25-34, commissioned by Rutgers’ National Marriage Project in 2004, young men from married parent families are less likely to be divorced and more likely to be married.   Among the never-married young men surveyed, those from married parent families were more likely to express readiness to be married than young men from other kinds of family backgrounds.  In addition, young men from married parent households have more positive attitudes toward women, children and family life than men who grew up in nonintact families.[6]   

Benefits of Marriage for Adults

Married people are better off than those who are not married in a number of ways.  On average, they are happier, healthier, wealthier, enjoy longer lives, and report greater sexual satisfaction than single, divorced or cohabiting individuals.[7]  Married people are less likely to take moral or mortal risks, and are even less inclined to risk-taking when they have children.  They have better health habits and receive more regular health care.  They are less likely to attempt or to commit suicide.  They are also more likely to enjoy close and supportive relationships with their close relatives and to have a wider social support network.  They are better equipped to cope with major life crises, such as severe illness, job loss, and extraordinary care needs of sick children or aging parents.

Married parents are significantly less likely to be poor.  For example, according to a study by economist Robert Lerman, poverty rates for married couples are half those of cohabiting couple parents and one third that of noncohabiting single parents in households with other adults.[8]  Even poor parents who marry gain economic advantage from marriage. Though marriage itself may not lift a family out of poverty, it may reduce economic hardship. This effect occurs because marriage, especially if it is long-lasting, allows couples to pool earnings, to recruit support from a larger social network of family, friends, and community members, to share risks, and to mitigate the disruptions of job loss, loss of job benefits, or loss of earnings due to absenteeism, illness, reduced hours on the job, or lay-offs. 

Benefits to Men

Marriage promotes better health habits and greater longevity among men, largely due to the care, attention and monitoring by their wives.  In fact, men appear to reap the most physical health benefits from marriage and suffer the greatest health consequences when they divorce.  Once married, men are also less likely to hang out with male friends, to spend time at bars, to abuse alcohol or drugs or to engage in illegal activities.  They are more likely than unmarried men to attend religious services regularly, to join faith groups, and to spend time with relatives.  In brief, men settle down when they get married.

Married men earn more money than do single men with similar education and job histories.  Indeed, for men, marriage reaps as many benefits as education.[9]  The causes for this are not entirely clear.  However, it is likely that married men benefit from specialization within marriage and from the emotional support they receive from their wives.  It is also likely that married men’s domestic routines and health habits reduce job absenteeism, quit rates, and sick days.  And it may be that men’s role obligation to provide for others gives them a greater sense of purpose and intensifies their commitment to work. 

Marriage strengthens the bonds between fathers and their children.  Married men are more involved and have better relationships with their children than unwed or divorced fathers.  In part, this is because married fathers share the same residence with their children.  But it is also because the role of husband encourages men to voluntarily take responsibility for their own children.  Paternity by itself does not seem to accomplish the same transformation in men’s lives.[10]

Benefits to Women

Women gain financially from marriage.  Although married women often leave the workforce to care for children or other relatives, on average, they are still economically better off than divorced, cohabiting or never-married women. Even among the most at-risk women (minority mothers, mothers with low levels of educational achievement or low income), marriage has significant economic benefits.[11]  Married women also enjoy their sex lives more than sexually active single or cohabiting women, a finding that researchers attribute to women’s greater trust and expectation of marital monogamy and permanence.  In addition, marriage makes for happier mothers.  Compared to cohabiting mothers or single mothers, married mothers are more likely to receive the cooperation, hands-on help, emotional support, and positive involvement from their child’s father and his kin. Having practical and emotional support reduces maternal stress, anxiety and depression and enhances a mother’s ability to parent effectively. 

Intergenerational benefits

Marriage creates a new and expanded set of binding obligations between spouses; between parents and children; and between the married couple and their combined kin groups.  Such obligations are encoded within the social norms of marriage and are assumed voluntarily as part of the status of “being married.” 

Consequently, marriage generates higher levels of help, support and care from families than other kinds of family arrangements. Though single parents receive significant family support, they lose the benefits of sustained help and support from the estranged or absent biological parent’s side of the family.  Close to 17 percent of married parents report support from father’s kin whereas just two percent of single mothers and no unwed mothers got financial support from relatives of the father.[12]  At the same time that married couples receive more help from family, they are also better able to give help to elderly parents and relatives, an important benefit in an aging society.

How Does Marriage Benefit the Civil Society?

Marriage is not simply a contractual relationship between two people or a government-sanctioned form of intimate partnership. It is also a central institution in the civil society.  As such, marriage performs certain critical social tasks and produces certain social goods that are valuable to the community and far harder to achieve through individual action, private enterprise, public programs or through alternative institutions.

Marriage is a childrearing institution.

 Though not all married people are parents, the institution of marriage reliably creates the social, economic and affective conditions for effective parenting.  Of course, in fulfilling the task of rearing competent, healthy children, some married parents fail miserably while some single parents succeed brilliantly.  Yet in general, marriage promotes parental investment and mother/father cooperation during what has become an increasingly prolonged period of youthful dependency.  When marriages break up or fail to form, the task of rearing children becomes harder, lonelier and more stressful for parents, especially for those who are lone parents.  When parents divorce or never marry, the state becomes more involved in requiring and regulating childrearing obligations that married parents assume voluntarily.  Paternity establishment, child support, child custody, children’s living arrangements, and even their school, sports and religious activities become matters for government oversight and enforcement.   Moreover, from a child’s standpoint, publicly sponsored alternatives for childrearing such as foster care, group homes or child support enforcement cannot easily replicate the advantages of growing up in a home with one’s own married mother and father.

Marriage produces wealth. 

Marriage provides economies of scale, encourages specialization and cooperation, provides access to work-related benefits such as retirement savings, pensions and life insurance, promotes saving, and generates help and support from kin and community.  On the verge of retirement, one study found, married couples’ net worth is more than twice that in other households. Because the accumulation of wealth usually requires time, the wealth-generating effects of marriage are strongest among those whose marriages are long-lasting.  A study of retirement data from 1992 by Purdue University sociologists found that “individuals who are not continuously married have significantly lower wealth than those who remain married throughout the life course.”  Further, compared to those who are currently married, the researchers found a 63 percent reduction in total wealth. The study concluded that “participating in the social institution of marriage can lead to cumulative advantage” while not participating or interrupting participation can “set the stage for negative outcomes later in life.”[13]

Marriage is a “seedbed” of prosocial behavior.

Social scientists have long debated this question:  Are the benefits and advantages of marriage due to the characteristics of people who marry and stay married (the so-called “selection effect”) or does marriage itself¾and the status of being a married person¾create certain advantages?  The answer is: both.  People who are economically and educationally advantaged, who are religiously observant, and who grew up in married parent families themselves are more likely to marry and to stay married than others.  However, marriage itself has a transformative effect on attitudes and behavior.  Being married changes people’s lifestyles, habits, associations, and obligations in ways that are personally and socially beneficial.

Marriage generates social capital

Sociologist James Coleman introduced the concept of social capital to refer to goods that are produced through relationships among people.[14] Unlike physical capital (machines, tools, productive equipment) and individual capital (skills, capacities, competencies), social capital is generated through relational bonds of mutual trust, dependability, commitment, shared values, and obligation.  Social capital is not “acquired,” as one might acquire a computer or a college degree.  It is generated as a byproduct of social relations.[15]

As the primary social institution governing familial and kinship relationships, marriage is a source of social capital.  The social bonds created through marriage yield benefits not just for family members but for others as well.  For example, married parents are more likely to vote and to be involved in community, religious and civic activities.  Because marriage embeds people within larger social networks, married parents are better able to connect with other parents, including those who are working single parents, and to recruit help, friendship and emotional support in the community.   Marriage gets men involved with others.   Married fathers serve as important role models, not only for their own children but also for other people’s children.  Their example and mentorship can be an especially valuable social resource in communities where there are too few married fathers and too many children who lack responsible fathers or positive male role models. 

Concluding Comments

Let me conclude with a word of caution about the implications of these findings.      Marriage is not a magic bullet solution to problems of poverty, disadvantage, crime, and discrimination.  Nor should the existence of government funding for the promotion of healthy marriage be used as a reason for reducing or limiting other forms of government support for low-income families, such as childcare, healthcare, education, job training and other supports.  Nor should marriage promotion be used as a substitute for other effective anti-poverty strategies such as reducing the incidence of unwed teen parenthood.  Nor should the advantages of marriage be used to pressure everyone to get married. 

 Like all human institutions, marriage is far from perfect.  And getting married does not turn people into saints.  Yet the fact remains: despite its acknowledged problems and imperfections, marriage remains an indispensable source of social goods, individual benefits, mutual caregiving, affectionate attachments, and long-term commitments.  And people who are married, though not saints, tend to behave in ways that benefit themselves, their children, families and communities. 

Given these advantages, it makes good sense for the public and private sector to explore ways to reduce the barriers to healthy marriage and to make it possible for more parents to form strong and lasting marital unions.  Even a relatively modest increase in healthy marriage formation and duration could reduce levels of child poverty, increase parental income and promote higher levels of child wellbeing among families with children.

[1] For a recent summary of relevant research, see Mary Parke, “Are Married Parents Really Better for Children?,” Center for Law and Social Policy, May 2003.  www.clasp.org. See also Why Marriage Matters: Twenty-One Conclusions from the Social Sciences (NY: Institute for American Values, 2002) http://www.marriagemovement.org..

 [2] Adam Thomas and Isabel  Sawhill, “For Richer or For Poorer: Marriage As an Antipoverty Strategy,” Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, 21:4, 2002.

 [3] Parke, “Are Married Parents Really Better for Children?”, 7.

 [4]  The risk for an average white child in a two parent family was 11 percent compared to 28 percent for a child in a single or step-parent family.   For an average African American child in a two parent family, it was 17 percent compared to 30 percent in a single or step-parent family.  For an average Hispanic child from a two-parent family, the risk was 25 percent compared to 49 percent for single or stepparent families.  Cited in Parke, Are Married Parents Really Better for Children?, 2-3.

 [5] Cited in State of Our Unions: The Social Health of Marriage in America, 2003  (Piscataway, NJ: The National Marriage Project), 2003. Available at http://marriage.rutgers.edu.

 [6] The Marrying Kind: Men Who Marry and Why, State of Our Unions: The Social Health of Marriage in America, 2004, (Piscataway, NJ: The National Marriage Project), forthcoming June 2004.

 [7] A comprehensive summary of research evidence on the benefits of marriage for adults may be found in Linda J. Waite and Maggie Gallagher, The Case for Marriage (NY: Doubleday, 2000).

 [8] See Robert I. Lerman, “How Do Marriage, Cohabitation and Single Parenthood Affect the Material Hardships of Families With Children?,” July 2002; see also Robert I. Lerman, “Married and Unmarried Parenthood and Economic Well-Being: A Dynamic Analysis of a Recent Cohort,"  July 2002. Available at http://www.urban.org/expert.cfm?ID=RobertILerman.

 [9] See Robert I Lerman, “Marriage and the Economic Well-Being of Families With Children: A Review of the Literature,” 2002.  Available at http://www.urban.org/expert.cfm?ID=RobertILerman.

 [10] Steven Nock, Marriage in Men’s Lives (N.Y: Oxford University Press, 1998); David Popenoe, Life Without Father: Compelling New Evidence That Fatherhood and Marriage Are Indispensable for the Good of Children and Society (NY: The Free Press, 1996).

 [11] Lerman, “Married and Unmarried Parenthood,” 2002.

 [12] Waite and Gallagher, Case for Marriage, p. 118; Lingxin Hao, “Family Structure, Private Transfers, and the Economic Well-Being of Families with Children,” Social Forces 75, 1996, 269-92.

 [13] Janet Wilmoth and Gregor Koso, “Does Marital History Matter? Marital Status and Wealth Outcomes Among Preretirement Adults,” Journal of Marriage and the Family 64: 2002, 254-68.

 [14] James S. Coleman, Social Capital in the Creation of Human Capital, American Journal of Sociology  1988,94:S95-S120,.

 [15] One illustration of social capital:  During the deadly 1995 heat wave in Chicago, poor elderly residents who had regular social contacts with neighbors, shopkeepers, churches and who lived in neighborhoods with a bustling street life were far less likely to die than poor elderly residents who lacked these social contacts.  Those who survived were drawn to familiar, safe, air-conditioned stores in their neighborhoods whereas those who suffered or died were unaware of, or reluctant to go to, special city “cooling centers” established during the crisis.  Thus, for these elderly Chicagoans, the presence or absence of “social capital” made a life or death difference.  See Eric Klinenberg, Heat Wave: A Social Autopsy of Disaster in Chicago (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002).