The Marriage Paradox: Understanding and remedying the paradoxical place of marriage in America
August 19, 2024
Marriage has fallen upon hard times in the United States in the last 6 decades.
Demographically, in the wake of the divorce revolution of the 1960s and 1970s, and the ongoing decline in the marriage rate, this social institution has lost significant ground as the anchor of adulthood and foundation of family life (Cherlin, 2009; Wilcox, 2024). Culturally, support for the values and virtues that sustain marriage have dropped in recent years, as fewer Americans report they think marriage is important for men, women, and children or embrace virtues like fidelity and monogamy that sustain strong and stable marriages (Jones, 2020; Wilcox, 2024).
And yet. At the same time that marriage has lost demographic and cultural ground, the empirical evidence that marriage matters for the welfare of children, men, and women continues to mount (Kearney, 2023; McLanahan & Sawhill, 2015; Ribar, 2015; Wasserman, 2020; Wilcox, 2024). Children raised in stably married homes are markedly more likely to avoid poverty, flourish in school, and avoid incarceration (Kearney, 2023; Ribar, 2015; Wasserman, 2020). Men and women who are married are markedly more financially secure, less lonely, and report greater happiness than their peers who are not married (Wilcox, 2024). Even more surprisingly, there is growing evidence that the marriage premium in child and adult well-being is not only robust but growing for some outcomes (Iceland, 2021; Nock, 2009; Wilcox et al., 2023).
