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The State of Our Unions

The Social Health of Marriage in America

2003

Essay: Marriage and Children:
Coming Together Again?
 

Barbara Dafoe Whitehead

David Popenoe

© Copyright 2003

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Executive Summary

This report on marriage as a child-rearing institution offers some good news and some bad news for children. On the upside, there has been a slight and recent increase in the percentage of children in two-married-parent families, the first reversal of a four-decade-long trend. Some government indicators point to improvement in key areas of child wellbeing. A growing number of private and public initiatives are aimed at strengthening married parent families.

On the downside, marriage has continued to decline as a status of parenthood over four decades. There has been a sharp increase in cohabiting couples with children. The percentage of households with children has dropped from nearly half of all households in 1960 to less than one-third today, a demographic shift with major implications for children’s centrality in the society. Further, amid a society of material abundance, there are signs that the psychosocial wellbeing of children is declining.

Marriage has been much in the news lately, but we hear little about the actual state of marriage. How is marriage faring in American society today? Is it becoming stronger or weaker? Sicker or healthier? Better or worse?

Answers to these questions from official sources have been hard to come by. The federal government issues thousands of reports on nearly every dimension of American life, from what we eat to how many hours we commute each day. But it provides no annual index or report on the state of marriage. Indeed, the National Center for Health Statistics, the federal agency responsible for collecting marriage and divorce data from the states, has scaled back this activity. As a consequence, this important data source has deteriorated. Neither the Congress nor the President has ever convened a bipartisan commission or study group to investigate and report on the state of contemporary marriage. And no private agency, academic institution or private foundation has stepped forward to take on the task of monitoring the indices of marital health.

The neglect of marriage is all the more remarkable because mating and marrying behavior has changed dramatically in recent decades. Although some measures of these changes, such as the rise in unwed childbearing, have been duly noted, discussed and monitored, the state of marriage itself has been slighted. Why this is so remains a great puzzle. Marriage is a fundamental social institution. It is central to the nurture and raising of children. It is the "social glue" that reliably attaches fathers to children. It contributes to the physical, emotional and economic health of men, women and children, and thus to the nation as a whole. It is also one of the most highly prized of all human relationships and a central life goal of most Americans. Knowledge about marriage is especially important to the younger generation of men and women, who grew up in the midst of the divorce revolution in the 1970s and 1980s, and are now approaching their prime marrying years. Without some sense of how marriage is faring in America today, the portrait of the nation’s social health is incomplete.

The National Marriage Project seeks to fill in this missing feature in our portrait of the nation’s social health with The State of Our Unions. The report is divided into two sections. The first section is an essay in a continuing series devoted to marriage and marriage-related issues. The second section includes what we consider the most important annually or biennially updated indicators related to marriage, divorce, unmarried cohabitation, loss of child centeredness, fragile families with children and teen attitudes about marriage and family. For each area, a key finding is highlighted. These indicators are updated annually and provide opportunities for fresh appraisals each June.

We have used the latest and most reliable data available. We cover the period from 1960 to the present, so these data reflect historical trends over several decades. Most of the data come from the United States Bureau of the Census. All of the data were collected by long established and scientifically reputable institutions that rely on nationally representative samples.

Marriage and Children:
Coming Together Again?

In this year’s essay, we look at the state of marriage as a child-rearing institution. This is not a new topic for us. Since the National Marriage Project began, our principal goal has been to report on marriage trends that affect the lives and future prospects of the nation’s children. But the topic is especially compelling today because there are signs that the four-decade-long decline in two-married-parent families may be coming to an end.

In last few years, for example, the percentage of children in two-married-parent families inched up nationwide by about one point, from 68 to 69 percent, the first reversal in decades. The percentage of black children living in two-married-parent families increased from 34 to 39 percent between 1996-2002. In addition, there has been a decline in the proportion of unwed births among black women, from 70.4 percent in 1994 to 68.5 percent in 2001. (See "Did a Family Turnaround Begin in the Late 1990s?")

These are small and very recent changes, but they represent good news for children. A robust body of social science evidence indicates that children do best when they grow up with both married biological parents who are in a low-conflict relationship.¹ According to the research, children who grow up in other kinds of family arrangements are at higher risk for poverty, economic insecurity, emotional and school problems and unwed teen pregnancy, even after researchers control for race, income and family background.

The recent uptick in two-married-parent families is hopeful in another sense. It suggests that there is nothing inevitable about the marriage trends of the past four decades. They can change in a more positive direction. At the same time, however, it is too early to say whether this turnaround is here to stay. Strong countervailing social and cultural trends continue to threaten marriage as a child-rearing and child-centered institution.

This essay looks at some of the longer-term trends that contribute to a decline in marriage as the primary institution for bearing and rearing children. It also reports on evidence of a new kind of poverty that threatens youthful wellbeing. In doing so, our larger goal is not to minimize the good news of a possible turnaround in children’s family lives but to ground it in an appraisal of the obstacles that may stand in the way of sustained progress.

In recent years, marriage has enjoyed something of a comeback in the popular culture. From hit movies like My Big Fat Greek Wedding to top-rated dating reality shows like The Bachelor to best-sellers on sexier marriage, popular attention has turned to the pursuit and pleasures of matrimony.² But the revived enthusiasm for marriage is mostly about romantic relationships and lavish weddings. It has little to do with the importance of marriage for children, or the connection between marriage and parenthood. Indeed, though Americans aspire to marriage, they are ever more inclined to see it as an intimate relationship between adults rather than as a necessary social arrangement for rearing children.

To be sure, marriage is not only about children, nor are children essential to marriage. A couple does not have to have children in order to participate in the privileges and obligations of marriage. Yet, throughout the nation’s history and through much of the world today, marriage is first and foremost an institution designed to unite men and women in the shared tasks of child rearing. The possibility or presence of children is the key reason why the state and society treat marriage differently from other intimate partnerships. But in American society today, this institutional role is eroding.

Marriage is undergoing legal, social and cultural changes, and many of these changes are shifting its meaning and purpose away from children and toward adults.

Chief among these changes is the weakening connection between marriage as a couple relationship and marriage as a parental partnership. The two used to be joined together. Today, however, the couple relationship is increasingly independent of the procreative and parental partnership. As a consequence, there is a growing split between adults’ and children’s experience of marriage. Though most adults continue to prize marriage and to seek it for themselves, children are less able to count on their parents’ marriage as the secure foundation of their family lives. Indeed, if there is a story to be told about marriage over recent decades, it is not that it is withering away for adults but that it is withering away for children.

The Separation of Parenthood From Marriage

Marriage used to be the principal pathway into parenthood, but that is changing. About a third of all children and more than two-thirds of African-American children are born out of wedlock. In addition, since 1960, there has also been an 850 percent increase in the number of cohabiting couples who live with children. An estimated 40 percent of all children today are expected to spend some time in a cohabiting couple household during their growing up years. The persistently high rate of divorce is still another factor separating marriage and parenthood. Roughly a million children each year experience parental divorce and its aftermath. As a consequence of these combined forces, 69 percent of all children are living with two married parents compared to 85 percent as recently as 1970. Only 38 percent of black children live with two married parents compared to 58 percent in 1970.³

Recent signs of a shift toward two married-parent families offer hope that this trend can be reversed. At the same time, it will be hard to sustain a turnaround in the face of growing acceptance of parenthood outside of marriage, especially among the young. In a Gallup survey of twentysomething young adults, commissioned by the National Marriage Project in 2001, less than half (44 percent) of the young men and women agree that "it is wrong to have a child outside of marriage." For young adults, unwed parenthood is often viewed as a "choice" rather than the result of an unplanned or unwanted pregnancy. In the same survey, 40 percent of single women agreed with the statement that "although it might not be the ideal option, you would consider having a child on your own if you reached your mid-thirties and had not found the right man to marry." Notably, the proportion of unwed births among women, 20-24, has gone up, from 48.2 percent in 1990 to 61.7 in 2001.

Indeed, in the minds of many single young adults, the connection between marriage and parenthood is fading. Getting married and becoming a parent seem to be entirely separate life pursuits, with different requirements for each. Likewise, single young adults are changing their views of the timing of marriage and parenthood. Marriage used to come before parenthood in the sequence of life events. Today, however, the sequence is reversed, according to a recent analysis of findings from the General Social Survey. The survey asked people to identify the "normal" age for selected events traditionally associated with the transition to adulthood, like marrying, buying a home, and having children. Survey respondents who were divorced, married, and widowed put the "normal" age of marrying as slightly younger than the age of having a child (by 0.5-1.1 years), while never-married people put having a child 0.5 years before getting married.⁴

The Retreat of Fathers From Children

Though most women think it would be a good thing if men shared more fully in the rearing and nurturing of children, trends are moving in the opposite direction. Men are

increasingly disengaged from daily tasks of nurturing and providing for their children. They are staying single longer before they marry, having more children out of wedlock, cohabiting rather than marrying, and divorcing in large numbers. A small but growing percentage may be foregoing marriage altogether. Eighteen percent of men, ages 35 to 44, today have never married compared to seven percent in 1970. The result is that, compared to children in mid-twentieth-century America, the proportion of children living apart from their biological fathers has increased sharply, from 17 percent in 1960 to 34 percent in 2000.

Of course, these figures don’t tell the whole story. Perhaps more than at any time in the past, many fathers are actively participating in child rearing from the moment their

offspring are born. They change diapers, comfort cranky babies at two AM, and take the kids to the pediatrician. Indeed, the pattern in American fatherhood today is confounding: while a growing number of fathers are highly engaged in their children’s lives, there are also more fathers who are disengaged or entirely absent. The key factor contributing to this divergent pattern is marriage.

Ideally, fathers would provide lifelong nurture and support for their offspring, whether they were married or not. But in reality, marriage is the social glue that holds fathers to their offspring. Marriage encourages regular and routine father involvement. When marriage and fatherhood come unglued, father involvement often weakens. Some fathers become entirely disconnected from their children. According to one recent study, 28 percent of children with nonresident fathers had no contact with them in the past year.⁵ Compared to married fathers, men who are not married to their children’s mothers are significantly less likely to be consistently and positively involved with their children during their growing up years. Unmarried cohabiting fathers fail to show as much warmth or put in as much time or money in the care of their biological children as do married fathers.⁶ And cohabiting men who are living with nonbiological children pose a risk of physical or sexual abuse to such children.⁷

Recent changes in the early adult life course also affect men’s attitudes toward marriage and fatherhood. Today’s young adults are putting off marriage until older ages. The delay of marriage is due to several well-recognized factors: more years of schooling, an effort to achieve economic independence after the end of formal schooling, and a more prolonged and often ragged transition from the parental home to living on one’s own continuously. Young men today take longer than young women to leave home and are more likely to return home after they have left for the first time.⁸

Men’s delay of marriage pushes plans for fatherhood into the distant future. Though most single young men want children once they get married, they aren’t ready to think about having them anytime soon. In the meantime, however, they are leading sexually active lives that put them at increased risk of unmarried fatherhood. Perhaps for that reason, they express ambivalence and wariness about children. In a recent National Marriage Project study of young never-married men, a significant number viewed children negatively, as a source of burdensome financial obligation, conflict and even "trickery" by women.⁹ Most said they avoided dating women with children, for fear of conflict with the child’s biological father or fear that their girlfriend was chiefly interested in finding a father for her child. They also worried that a "one-night" stand would lead to unplanned fatherhood and a long-lasting parental relationship with a woman they did not care about and would not want to marry. (This fear did not make them renounce one-night stands, however.) And they are concerned that their sexual partners might deliberately deceive them about "being on the pill" or "being infertile" and get pregnant "on purpose." Some expressed the view that the legal deck is stacked against men in divorce, so why risk marriage at all?

A Shift From Child-Centered Marriage to Soul-Mate Marriage

Americans today tend to see marriage as a couples relationship, designed to fulfill the emotional needs of adults, rather than as an institution dedicated to bringing up children. In a recent cross-national comparison of industrialized nations, nearly 70 percent of Americans disagreed with the statement that "the main purpose of marriage is having children," compared with just 51 percent of Norwegians and 45 percent of Italians.¹⁰ An even higher percentage of younger Americans—more than 79 percent of men and women, ages twenty to twenty-nine—disagree with the same statement, according to the National Marriage Project’s 2001 Gallup survey.

Of course, the focus on the couple relationship is not new. The ideal of romantic friendship in marriage is a distinctive part of a long-standing marriage tradition in western societies. In many ways, this vision of marriage has been positive. It has inspired past and present efforts to enhance and improve the quality of the couple relationship. Today, however, the ideal of friendship in marriage, or what sociologists call companionate marriage, has been notched up to a more demanding ideal. People now expect their marriages to be a spiritualized union of souls.

The soul-mate view of marriage is particularly strong among young adults. An astonishing 94 percent of single men and women, ages twenty to twenty-nine agree with the statement that "when you marry, you want your spouse to be your soul mate, first and foremost." Eighty-eight percent believe that there is one person "out there" who is specially destined to be their soul mate.¹¹

It is understandable that people are seeking at least one enduring, intimate attachment in their lives. Amid the frazzling pace and fragmented relationships in a mobile society and dynamic economy, marriage holds out the promise of the kind of emotional closeness and solicitude that is missing in other domains of adult life. Unfortunately, the very time-pressured and work-stressed conditions that fuel the hunger for emotional intimacy also may undermine the chances for achieving it. Building a soul-mate relationship takes a commitment to permanence, and permanence is going out of style in contemporary American relationships.

Moreover, in unexpected ways, the pursuit of a soul-mate relationship may weaken marriage as an institution for rearing children. For one thing, it changes the characteristics one is likely to seek in a future spouse. In times past, people who were thinking about marriage tended to think about their future spouse’s capacity to be a good mother or a good father. Today, however, fitness for future parenthood is less important in evaluating a mate. In general, people tend to be far pickier about the person they marry than the person they conceive a child with.

Also, the exacting emotional requirements of a soul-mate relationship are likely to make marriages unhappier and potentially more fragile. There is a natural tension between adult desires for intimacy and privacy and children’s needs for security and attention. Heightened expectations for couple intimacy during the prime child-rearing years may intensify this tension and lead to higher levels of marital discontent and discord. This is not to say that parents should neglect each other’s sexual or emotional needs during the child-rearing years, but it is to suggest that the new soul-mate ideal may create unrealistic expectations for intimacy that, if unfulfilled, may lead to disappointment, estrangement and even a search for a new soul mate. Indeed, this may help explain why marital satisfaction has declined in recent decades, despite the fact that the easy availability of divorce might be expected to reduce the number of unhappy marriages.

The emphasis on more adult-centered measures of marital happiness also figures in the persistently high rate of parental divorce. In the past, when marriage was more closely linked to the tasks of rearing children, most Americans believed that parents had an obligation to stay together "for the sake of the children." Today, only 15 percent of the population agree that "when there are children in the family, parents should stay together even if they don’t get along." (See "Loss of Child Centeredness") Moreover, the definition of "getting along" has been liberalized to include more subjective individual measures of marital satisfaction. As many as two-thirds of the divorces in recent years occur not because of high conflict or physical violence but because of "softer" forms of psychological distress and unhappiness. ¹²

The demands of work also take their toll. Many married parents with young children, especially those who also have full-time jobs outside the home, are often chronically stressed, time-starved and sleep-deprived, and their harried state probably contributes to the decline in marital satisfaction during the most demanding child-rearing years. At the same time, the popular culture pushes images of sexy singles and hot romance, a portrait that hardly fits the reality of many working parents’ lives or confers social value on their commitment to marriage and children.

A Population Shift Away from Married-Parent Households

Demographic trends play a role in the social shift away from children. Compared to earlier generations, Americans today live longer, have fewer children, and spend a longer proportion of the life span as single adults than they do in continuous marriage. In 1960 the proportion of one’s life spent living with a spouse and children was 62 percent, the highest in our history. By 1985, this proportion had dropped to 43 percent, the lowest in our history.¹³ The percentage of households with children has also dropped dramatically in recent decades, from nearly half of all households in 1960 to less than one-third today. Census Bureau projections suggest that by 2010, married couples with children will account for only 20 percent of total households, and families with children will account for little more than one-quarter of all households- the lowest share in recorded U.S. history. By contrast, the percentage of one-person households is projected to reach close to 27 percent of total American households by 2010.¹⁴

The number of children in a family household is projected to decline slightly as well. Among family households with children, one-child families are growing rapidly. Childlessness among American women is also on the rise. In 1998, 19 percent of women ages 40-44 were childless compared to just 10 percent in 1980.

The combined effects of these demographic changes are profound: within families and communities today, and into the future, adults are less likely to be living with children,

neighborhoods are less likely to contain children, and children are less likely to be a presence in daily life. Children are pushed to the margins of the society and—except when they cause mayhem—to the sidelines of our social consciousness.

Faltering Public Focus on Children

In the public realm, there has been another kind of shift from the needs and interests of children. Children don’t vote or join unions or run for public office. They depend on adults to represent their political interests, and their parents are the most likely voters to do so. However, the proportion of parents with dependent children has declined while other voting groups such as single adults and empty-nest couples are on the rise. Also, the society is aging. And aging Americans have pressing political priorities of their own, such as expanded health care, prescription drug benefits, and low real estate taxes. Since seniors vote in high numbers, these priorities tend to dominate the domestic political agenda.

A strong libertarian strain in American politics plays a part in this trend as well. In the libertarian view, society is made up of free, rights-bearing adults. This political philosophy leaves little room for children who, by virtue of their age, legal status, and developmental immaturity, depend on others to represent their political interests and to fulfill their basic needs. Moreover, in the libertarian perspective, the conduct of intimate relationships is a private matter. A couple’s intimate relationship is nobody’s business but the two people involved, unless, of course, their relationship hurts, taxes, or impinges on another’s liberties. According to this view, marriage is just one kind of intimate relationship between freely consenting adults and thus does not warrant special privileges by the state. The special status of children, as dependents who do not freely choose their parents but who have a stake in their parents’ marriage, is little acknowledged, much less considered as a reason for the state to treat marriage differently from other kinds of intimate partnerships.

Apparently, the libertarian perspective on marriage is gaining ground among young adults. According to the 2001 Gallup survey, eight out of ten men and women, ages 20-29, agree that marriage is nobody’s business but the two people involved; forty-five percent agree that the government should not be involved in licensing marriages; and four out of ten agree that government should provide cohabiting couples the same benefits provided to a married couple.¹⁵

Legal Trends in Marriage and Parenthood

In law, as in the society, the connection between marriage and parenthood has weakened in recent decades. Family law has increasingly moved in the direction of treating parenthood as a status independent of marriage.

For centuries, marriage has been the legal institution governing parenthood. It has been the means of establishing paternity, legitimacy, and the rights and responsibilities of parents for their children. However, as marriage has weakened as the primary institution for bearing and rearing children, the law has sought to establish new rules governing parent-child relationships independent of marriage. In this overall trend, two developments have major implications for children’s family lives. The first is a shift toward greater legal oversight over parent-child relationships. In response to the growing number of unwed, divorced, and cohabiting parents, laws governing parent-child relationships have proliferated in recent decades. Though there is strong public resistance to the law’s presence in the bedroom, there is growing acceptance of the law’s presence in the family room. As the late sociologist William J. Goode has observed: "People have come to expect that the government and thus new laws must try to solve an expanding array of problems that are related to the family, from welfare to gender equality."¹⁶ This trend has occurred simultaneously, and probably not accidentally, with the public’s rejection of extralegal measures, such as social pressure and stigma, to enforce norms of married parenthood.

The second trend affecting children’s family lives is the legal recognition of the "social parent." This refers to an adult whose parentage is based on the nature and duration of the adult’s relationship to the child rather than on the bonds of blood, marriage or legal adoption. Though the law still takes biological parenthood seriously, it is clearly moving toward greater recognition of parenthood as a matter of affectionate rather than genetic bonds.

This legal innovation reflects the challenge of assigning children to parents in a society where marriage no longer reliably serves as the legal basis for parenthood. Yet the law is a blunt instrument. It is poorly designed as the means of regulating the intricate complexities of parent-child relationships. And its limitations are manifest. Despite stepped-up efforts to establish paternity, enforce child support obligations, and develop workable child custody arrangements, the law has been unable to coerce from unmarried or unrelated "parents" the same level of financial commitment, cooperation and sustained dedication that is typically volunteered by married parents. What’s more, in its attempt to do so, it has institutionalized family arrangements that have been empirically demonstrated to be less advantageous to children.

A Poverty of Connectedness

The weakening of marriage has contributed to a new kind of poverty among the young. It is a poverty of connectedness. Four decades of persistently high levels of marital disruption and nonmarriage have taken a toll on children’s primary sources of emotional nurturance and security. Parent-child, and especially father-child ties, have become more fragile, inconsistent and distant. Children’s emotional lives have become more turbulent, insecure, and anxiety-filled as a result.

Amid a society of material abundance, there are growing signs of emotional want and deprivation even among some of the most economically privileged young. There has been a notable increase in emotional and psychiatric distress. Problems such as anxiety, depression, eating disorders, and other psychosocial difficulties are on the rise. For example, one recent study found that levels of anxiety among a nonclinical population of children and college students have appreciated substantially in recent decades. In fact, the average American child in the 1980s reported more anxiety than child psychiatric patients in the 1950s. ¹⁷ Another study, published in the journal Pediatrics, found a substantial increase between 1979 and 1996 in clinician-identified psychosocial problems among 4-15 year olds who came in to primary care offices, such as depression and suicidal ideation.¹⁸ A third study, of college students seeking counseling, found that those treated for depression doubled between 1989 and 2000.¹⁹ Finally, a systematic review of social indicators between 1975 and 1998 found that the indices for social relationships and emotional/spiritual well-being "show long-term declines across the three decades studied," concluding that improvements in other areas of children’s lives have been offset by declining levels of emotional wellbeing. Thus, according to the researchers, the overall quality of life of children/youth in the United States was, on balance, not better in 1998 than in 1975.²⁰

Of course, not all these problems can be directly attributed to family disruption. A number of social and cultural forces contribute to these problems, including the stresses of an achievement-oriented culture, the pressures of peer culture, the pervasive influence of violent and sexually graphic popular entertainment, the "hurried child" syndrome, the isolation of children from the larger community, and the persistent threat of gang, school and street violence, especially for children in some inner city neighborhoods. The rise in the incidence of psychological problems may also reflect increased reporting, a greater readiness to medicalize behavior that might once have been dismissed as "growing pains" or "adolescent angst," and the growing availability of psychotropic drugs to treat these problems.

However, in searching for proximate sources of this trend, it is impossible to ignore what has happened in children’s family lives over the past four decades. Children reared in nonintact families have more than twice the risk of social and behavioral problems as children reared in married parent families. It defies common sense to think that the rise in nonintact families would not have an impact on children’s emotional wellbeing.

Indeed, recent reports and studies point toward family structure changes as a source of children’s psychosocial distress. Most children who experience parental divorce do not suffer severe emotional problems. Nonetheless, there is evidence that divorce is an emotionally distressing experience for children. For example, in its official 2002 policy statement on divorce, the American Academy of Pediatrics identifies a number of age-related psychosocial symptoms associated with divorce, including distress among the very young: for infants, crying, sleep disturbance, and gastrointestinal problems; for four-to-five year olds, nightmares, aggression and clinginess; for school-aged children, discomfort with gender identity, aggression, and moodiness; for adolescents, substance abuse, inappropriate sexual behavior, and depression.²¹ Other studies link higher rates of emotional distress and mental illness among children who experience parental divorce.²² One recent study of youth suicide observes that the "increased share of youths living in homes with a divorced parent" explains as much as two-thirds of the increase in youth suicides over time.²³

Recent studies also point to the persistence of emotional distress among some children of divorce, a shift from earlier thinking. In the 1970s and ‘80s, the emotional impact of family breakup on children was thought to be short-term, like a bout of the flu. This view was based on studies of children’s divorce experience that relied heavily on mothers’ reports and on small, unrepresentative samples of divorced families. Today, however, clinical and social science research, based on large representative samples and longitudinal clinical studies, point to long-lasting emotional damage associated with broken or disrupted family bonds. Apparently, the emotional effects of family breakup on some children more closely resemble a debilitating chronic ailment than a brief bout of the flu. As the American Academy of Pediatrics notes, the experience of divorce is more than a set of discrete symptoms. It is "a long searing experience" for children.²⁴ A study following more than 11,000 British children from birth through age thirty-three concluded that "a parental divorce during childhood or adolescence continues to have a negative effect [on mental health] when a person is in his or her twenties or thirties."²⁵ In her twenty-five year clinical study of middle-class children of divorce, Judith Wallerstein found that the experience of divorce has long-term effects on the young adults’ pursuit of happy, lasting relationships. Compared to young adults from intact families, adult children of divorce have a harder time dealing with even moderate conflict, are more fearful of failure, are more insecure about relationships, and more likely to experience a divorce themselves.²⁶

The increase in youthful psychosocial and mental health problems could not have come at a worse time. American society today requires ever-higher levels of individual competence and educational achievement for a successful adult life. To meet these demands, children need strong characters as well as healthy bodies and able minds. Warm, consistent, and firm attachments to parents help children defer gratification, set and stick to goals, and resist harmful peer pressures. Close parent-child bonds protect teens from emotional distress as well as risky behaviors such as early sexual activity, smoking, drinking and drug use.²⁷ Young adults’ ability to form strong, lasting marriages enhances their own emotional wellbeing and confers psychological benefits on their children as well.

Solving the problem of children’s declining emotional and mental health poses special challenges to the society. Some effects of family breakup, such as child poverty, loss of family income, poor quality housing, and lack of health insurance, can be addressed through law, public policy or increased public spending on child health, daycare, family tax credits, better housing, more effective policing, and innovative youth programs. By contrast, emotional impoverishment associated with the loss or lack of stable family connections is harder to remediate through laws, programs or public spending alone. In Sweden, where there is a strong social safety net for children and where the poverty rate among single mothers is low, the emotional problems found among children living with a single parent are similar to those found among American children in single parent families, according to a 2003 study in the British medical journal, The Lancet. After examining such problems as psychiatric disease, suicide or attempted suicide, injury and addiction the study concluded that "even when a wide range of demographic and socioeconomic circumstances are included in multivariate models, children of single parents still have increased risks of mortality, severe morbidity, and injury."²⁸

Given this evidence and given the shortcomings of other possible interventions, such as putting more and more children on Prozac, Paxil or Ritalin or sending them off to treatment centers and boot camps, it seems clear that the most effective way to foster children’s emotional wellbeing is to increase their chances of growing up in a household with both married parents who get along with each other.

Conclusion

Someone once observed that the brunt of rapid social change falls disproportionately on the young. This is surely the case when it comes to marriage. Children have borne more than a fair share of the burdens associated with the weakening of marriage in recent times.

It is easy to ignore children’s interests in marriage, when marriage is defined primarily as a couple relationship. Yet, children have a compelling stake in their parents’ marriage. It is a source of social and economic advantage for them. It provides a reliable means of attaching their fathers to the family household over the long term. It brings together under one roof the two people who have brought them into the world and who have a mutual interest in their wellbeing.

At the same time, children are powerless to preserve or defend their stake in their parents’ marriage. In the past, social strictures and sanctions against divorce and illegitimacy helped protect children’s stake in marriage. But today, these strictures have vanished. Nor has the law been any more successful in representing children’s interests. Indeed, no-fault divorce has contributed to the easy and unilateral dissolution of marriages with children. More surprisingly, the revolution in no-fault divorce law occurred with almost no consideration of its impact on children. And finally, the revived enthusiasm for marriage in popular media has ignored children, focusing on the cult of the wedding rather than on building a marriage culture in which children can flourish.

One of the best things that the society can do for children is to create the conditions for healthy marriages. Achieving this goal does not mean pushing marriage at any cost on everyone. But it does mean increasing the proportion of parental marriages that are low in conflict and high in mutual respect, cooperation and duration. It also means reducing the economic and social obstacles that stand in the way of successful and long-lasting marriage. Finally, it means creating a culture where marriage is reconnected to parenthood and where married parents are encouraged, supported and valued for their long-term commitment to marriage.

The difficulty of achieving this goal cannot be underestimated. Long-term trends militate against easy success. However, there are signs of hope. In some key areas, child wellbeing has improved in the past few years. Child poverty has dropped from 23 percent in 1993 to about 16 percent in 2000, the lowest level in more than 20 years.²⁹ Teen pregnancy and birth rates have steadily declined for the past 12 years. The percentage of teens who have ever had sexual intercourse dropped from 54.1 percent in 1991 to 49.9 percent in 1999.³⁰ Youth violent crime peaked in 1993 and has since been followed by a sustained decline.³¹ Other clustered risk behaviors associated with young people, such as cigarette smoking, drinking alcohol, and illicit drug use, have dropped or remained relatively stable in recent years.³²

The climate of opinion about children’s family lives has changed as well. The polarizing debate about the impact of family disruption on children is over. Experts have reached a working consensus, based on a robust body of research, that marriage benefits children. Along with policy consensus, there is social activism on behalf of marriage. A grass-roots marriage movement, dedicated to providing people with the resources and skills to prepare for and achieve long-lasting healthy marriages is gaining momentum and adherents.³³ A handful of states are experimenting with projects designed to lower the divorce rate or strengthen marriage.³⁴ Some communities are organizing coalitions of faith, business and public groups to develop a common strategy for supporting healthy marriages.³⁵ As part of welfare reform, the Bush administration is seeking funding for pilot projects designed to help low-income couples who choose to be married to gain access to marriage education, skills training and counseling resources. Think tanks and research centers across the political spectrum are studying and reporting on people’s attitudes, behavior and readiness to marry.³⁶ Other experts are involved in evaluating the effectiveness of current marriage preparation and education programs.

Altogether, these efforts mark a new chapter in the society’s response to marriage decline. Where there was once a sense of inevitability about the decline of marriage, there is now a sense of possibility about reversing that decline. Where once there was a sense of despair about the chances of improving marital relationships, there is now a growing sense of optimism that relationships can be repaired, that steps can be taken to improve children’s chances of growing up in married parent families, that skills can be taught to help parents form and sustain good marriages, and that the institution of marriage can be revitalized through public as well as private action. Whether recent initiatives will lead to a sustained trend toward two-married-parent families remains to be seen. But they represent the most promising development to come along in four decades.

Notes

26 Judith Wallerstein et.al., The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce: A 25 Year Landmark Study (New York: Hyperion, 2000), 299-300

SOCIAL INDICATORS OF MARITAL HEALTH AND WELLBEING

 TRENDS OF THE PAST FOUR DECADES

 Marriage

Sidebar: Did a "Family Turnaround" Begin in the Late 1990s?

Divorce

Unmarried Cohabitation

Loss of Child Centeredness

Fragile Families with Children

Teen Attitudes About Marriage and Family

Much has been written about the possibility of a "family turnaround" beginning in the late 1990s—that is, about a reversal of the family weakening trends of recent decades of the kind highlighted in the annual State of Our Unions reports. If there were such a turnaround, the steady increases in out-of-wedlock births, single parent families, divorce, and nonmarital cohabitation would end. There would be a surge of interest in forming lifelong unions and in having babies born to married couples. There would be fewer divorces and fewer parents with children cohabiting as a chosen way of life. In short, marriage and children would be reconnected. Has such a turnaround actually begun? While the statistics discussed in this annual report deal mostly with long-term (i.e. decade by decade) trends, here we will review the short-term trends of the past few years.

Most prominent in the public discussion have been recent trends in the African American community, where evidence for a family turnaround has been the strongest. The proportion of out-of-wedlock births among black women, long the highest in the nation, declined from 70.4% in 1994 to 68.6% in 2001. Although modest, this change is the first improvement in this statistic for many decades. By the same token, the percentage of black children living in two-parent families increased from 34% to 39% between 1996 and 2002

Are similar changes underway in the rest of America? A few statistics hint of this possibility. The percentage of children in two-parent families increased nationwide by about one point between 1998 and 2002, from 68% to 69%, and there was a slight increase between 1999 and 2002 in the percentage of persons age 35-44 who were married. Also, the divorce rate has continued its slow but steady decline since reaching a peak in the early 1980s, and an upturn occurred in the past few years in the percentage of married persons who said their marriages were "very happy."

The problem in positing a "family turnaround" based on these changes is that the changes have been recent, small, and in some cases based on samples, and thus subject to sampling error. Also, they may have been generated by the strong economy of the 1990s or even, in part, by the sudden impact of welfare reform. Therefore, we cannot have full confidence that they will continue.

Other recent trends may presage a continuing weakening of the family. The marriage rate continues its long-term drop, which began around 1970. This drop is partly due to the sharp increase in the number of cohabiting couples, including couples with children, which was the most dramatic ten-year family change documented by the 2000 census and has continued in the past few years. Nationwide, the proportion of out-of-wedlock births increased again in 2000 and 2002 following several years of leveling off, probably due in large part to the growth of nonmarital cohabitation. A Census Bureau report has found that childlessness among American women is on the rise over the long term: in 2000, 19% of women age 40-44 were childless, compared to just 10% in 1980. And the birth rate (total fertility), after rising during the 1990s, fell back in 2001 below its 1990 level.

It is too soon to speak of anything so significant as a "family turnaround." The only thing that can be said with confidence at this time is that many of the family trends toward a weakening family structure in the past few decades have slowed dramatically, and in some cases leveled off. What the future holds, of course, awaits the coming to maturity of the next generation.

Key Finding: Marriage trends in the United States in recent decades indicate that Americans have become less likely to marry, and that fewer of those who do marry have marriages they consider to be "very happy."

Americans have become less likely to marry. This is reflected in a decline of more than one third, from 1970 to 2001, in the annual number of marriages per 1000 unmarried adult women (Figure 1). Some of this decline—it is not clear just how much—results from the delaying of first marriages until older ages: the median age at first marriage went from 20 for females and 23 for males in 1960 to about 25 and 27, respectively, in recent years. (See "Age at First Marriage: What’s Best?") Other factors accounting for the decline are the growth of unmarried cohabitation and a small decrease in the tendency of divorced persons to remarry.

The decline also probably reflects an actual increase in lifelong singlehood, though this will not be known for sure until current young and middle-aged adults pass through the life course.

The percentage of adults in the population who are married has also diminished. Since 1960, the decline of those married among all persons age 15 and older has been twelve percentage points—and over 23 points among black females (Figure 2). It should be noted that these data include both people who have never married and those who have married and then divorced.

In order partially to control for a decline in married adults simply due to delayed first marriages, we have looked at changes in the percentage of persons age 35 through 44 who were married (Figure 3). Since 1960, there has been a drop of 18 percentage points for married men and 16 points for married women. A slight increase in the percentage of married people in this age group occurred beginning in 1999, but the reasons for this are not yet known.

Marriage trends in the age range of 35 to 44 are suggestive of lifelong singlehood. In times past and still today, virtually all persons who were going to marry during their lifetimes had married by age 45. More than 90 percent of women have married eventually in every generation for which records exist, going back to the mid-1800s. By 1960, 94 percent of women then alive had been married at least once by age 45—probably an historical high point.¹ If the present marriage trend continues, some demographers are predicting that fewer that 85 percent of current young adults will ever marry.²

It is important to note that the decline in marriage does not mean that people are giving up on living together with a sexual partner. On the contrary, with the incidence of unmarried cohabitation increasing rapidly, marriage is giving ground to unwed unions. Most people now live together before they marry for the first time. An even higher percentage of those divorced who subsequently remarry live together first. And a still small but growing number of persons, both young and old, are living together with no plans for eventual marriage.

There is a common belief that, although a smaller percentage of Americans are now marrying than was the case a few decades ago, those who marry have marriages of higher quality. It seems reasonable that if divorce removes poor marriages from the pool of married couples and cohabitation "trial marriages" deter some bad marriages from forming, the remaining marriages on average should be happier. The best available evidence on the topic, however, does not support these assumptions. Since 1973, the General Social Survey periodically has asked representative samples of married Americans to rate their marriages as either "very happy," "pretty happy," or "not too happy."³ As Figure 4 indicates, the percentage of both men and women saying "very happy" has declined moderately over the past 25 years.⁴ This trend has shown a turnaround since reaching a low point in 1994, however, and is now heading in a more positive direction.

Scholars are now widely in agreement that the best family situation for children and adolescents is to live with married parents who have a good marriage. A rough indicator of changes over time in this ideal family arrangement is shown in Figure 5, which we are introducing this year for the first time. As can be seen, the percentage of young people (persons under 18) living with married adults in a marriage that the reporting spouse said was "very happy" has declined sharply over a thirty-year period. Part of the decline is because many more young people are living with an unmarried adult, also shown in Figure 5. The percentage of young people (data not shown) living with married parents who report less than "very happy" marriages, however, has remained relatively stable over the thirty years.