Reports And Briefings

In Pursuit: Marriage, Motherhood, and Women’s Well-Being 

by: Jean M. Twenge, Jenet Erickson, Wendy Wang, and Brad Wilcox 

Marriage and fertility rates have reached all-time lows in the U.S. in recent years, as fewer people marry or have children. These trends are likely to continue in the future. In 2023, only 72% of 18-year-old women in the U.S. said they were likely to have children, down from 85% in the late 2000s.¹

Though there are likely many reasons for the declines in marriage and childbearing, one possible factor is the way marriage and parenthood, particularly for women, are portrayed in the media and in online discussions. Popular press articles often declare that single women without children are happier than married mothers, with headlines such as: “Women are happier without children or a spouse, says happiness expert,” or “4 reasons why single women are the happiest people on Earth—by a psychologist,” and “Why so many single women without children are happy.” Discussions on online forums such as Reddit ask, “Why do you think that single unmarried women without children are happier than married women with children?” 

These headlines are consistent with older survey data suggesting parents are less happy than non-parents, especially in the United States.² They are also consistent with studies finding that parenthood is more positive for men than for women.³ However, parenthood may increase other aspects of well-being, especially finding meaning in life.⁴

In addition, studies repeatedly find that married people are generally happier than unmarried people.⁵ Being married is the most important differentiator of happiness in America, with married people 30 percentage points happier than unmarried people.⁶ However, little of this research has focused specifically on women, and it is unclear how marriage and motherhood are linked to one another and to women’s happiness.  

There is a significant gender divide in the perception of marriage and happiness. A majority of both men (58%) and women (53%) agree that men who marry and have children are better off than those who do not. But only 32% of women believe that women who marry and have children live fuller, happier lives.⁷ At the same time, 55% of single women believe single women are generally happier than married women.⁸ In a 2024 Pew Research survey, less than half of single women (45%) said they eventually wanted to have children, while a majority of single young men (57%) said parenthood was an important life goal for them.⁹

Clearly, many single women today perceive getting married or becoming a mother to be transitions of loss. But is this perception true?  

New data paint a different picture. In the 2022 General Social Survey (GSS), the nation’s leading social barometer, married mothers are happier than single childless women as well as married childless women and unmarried mothers.¹⁰ Other surveys have found similar results.¹¹

To better clarify how marriage and motherhood are linked to women’s happiness, we fielded the Women’s Well-Being Survey (WWS) of 3,000 U.S. women, ages 25 to 55, conducted by YouGov in early March 2025 (for details, see About the Data and Methodology). We wanted to know: Why are married mothers the happiest group of women? 

Happiness

Consistent with previous surveys, our new survey finds that married mothers are happier than unmarried women or women without children. Nearly twice as many married mothers say they are “very happy” as unmarried women without children.  

Figure 1. Estimated share of U.S. women ages 25-55 who report being ‘very happy’ 
Source: IFS/Wheatley Institute, Women’s Well-Being Survey, March 2025 

Married mothers are also significantly more likely to be very happy than married women without children and unmarried women with children. The analyses presented in this report control for age, family income, and education, so these factors cannot be the reason for the differences.  

Married women are also more likely than unmarried women to say that life was enjoyable most or all of the time: 47% of married mothers and 43% of married childless women say life is enjoyable, compared to 40% of unmarried mothers and 34% of unmarried childless women.¹²

Figure 2. Estimated share of U.S. women ages 25-55 who report that their life has felt enjoyable most or all of the time in the past 30 days. Source: IFS/Wheatley Institute, Women’s Well-Being Survey, March 2025 

Why are married mothers happier? Both marriage and motherhood appear to play a role, though in different ways.  

Social Connection

Some past research has argued that marriage is linked to greater isolation, finding that, as The Atlantic put it, married people are  

less likely to visit or call parents and siblings—and less inclined to offer them emotional support or pragmatic help with things such as chores and transportation. They are also less likely to hang out with friends and neighbors.¹³

Single people, in contrast, had more contact with friends and extended family members. This research, focusing primarily on adult experiences in the 1990s and 2000s, suggests that married women might feel more isolated and alone.¹⁴

However, our survey finds that married women are markedly less likely to feel lonely: 11% of married mothers and 9% of married women without children feel lonely most or all of the time, compared to 23% of unmarried mothers and 20% of unmarried childless women. Thus, married women are only about half as likely as unmarried women to often feel lonely, with motherhood having less impact on loneliness.  

Figure 3. Estimated share of U.S. women ages 25-55 who report having been lonely most or all of the time in the past 30 days. Source: IFS/Wheatley Institute, Women’s Well-Being Survey, March 2025 

Contrary to a popular narrative that marriage entails social isolation, these findings show that married women are less lonely. While getting married and having children may mean less time hanging out with friends, marriage and children are also associated with other kinds of social engagement, including volunteer work, church attendance, and community connections.¹⁵ Moreover, in this new survey, married mothers are just as likely to say they feel satisfied with their number of friends as other women. In addition, unmarried women without children are more likely to report difficulties with making new friends than married and unmarried moms. The relationship between family status and friendship for adults may have changed since the pre-digital era when the previous research was conducted. That is, since the rise of the smartphone, marriage and motherhood may have become more important for facilitating social connections and protecting against the atomization now being induced by new technologies. So it’s possible that, today, women with family ties have more social ties than women without a spouse or children.  

Physical Touch

Americans spent 67 fewer hours per year in face-to-face social interactions in 2017 than they did in 2003; younger Americans (ages 15 to 25) spent 140 fewer hours per year.¹⁶With people spending more time online and less time with others in person, there are fewer opportunities for physical touch, leading to what some call “touch hunger.”¹⁷

Physical touch has not been frequently explored in survey data on well-being, but new research suggests it may play an important role in women’s emotional and social health. Touch, especially from a spouse, has been linked to relaxation, increased trust, greater feelings of safety, and increased emotional resilience in multiple studies.¹⁸ Touch elicits the release of oxytocin in the brain, promoting relaxation and reducing stress, while decreasing the sympathetic nervous system’s stress response.¹⁹ Lack of physical touch has been linked to feelings of loneliness and isolation.²⁰ 

The link between touch and emotional well-being in adulthood appears to be an extension of the important role of touch for development beginning in infancy. The attachment relationship that lays the foundations for development beginning in infancy is grounded in touch. As a mother and infant touch, oxytocin and prolactin hormones surge in her body, enhancing the bond through which she regulates her infant’s emotions and lays the foundations for the infant’s development. Not only does touch profoundly impact the infant, but it also strengthens the experience of well-being for the mother. Evidence suggests that touch continues to play an important role in bonding, emotional regulation, and well-being across the life course.  

Figure 4. Estimated share of U.S. women ages 25-55 who report that the statement, ‘I regularly receive physical affection from someone’ describes them ‘very well.’ Source: IFS/Wheatley Institute, Women’s Well-Being Survey, March 2025 

In the WWS, married women (both with and without children) report significantly higher levels of touch than unmarried women. Specifically, 47% of married mothers and 49% of married women without children report high physical touch levels; meanwhile, only 23% of unmarried mothers and 13% of unmarried women without children do.  

Figure 5. Estimated share of U.S. women ages 25-55 who report a high level of physical touch. Source: IFS/Wheatley Institute, Women’s Well-Being Survey, March 2025

More frequent touch is itself a significant predictor of increased happiness. Only 7% of women who report low levels of touch are very happy with their lives. In contrast, 22% of women who report high levels of touch are very happy.  

Figure 6. Estimated share of U.S. women ages 25-55, by level of physical touch, who report being ‘very happy.’ Source: IFS/Wheatley Institute, Women’s Well-Being Survey, March 2025 

Thus, one factor that explains why married women are happier than their unmarried peers is that they have more regular opportunities for kissing, hugging, and snuggling. For example, 58% of married women with children and 61% of married women without children report that they often get hugs or kisses, while only 36% of unmarried mothers and 18% of unmarried women without children report the same.  

Figure 7. Estimated share of U.S. women ages 25-55 who report that the statement, ‘Most days I get a hug or a kiss’ describes them ‘very well.’ Source: IFS/Wheatley Institute, Women’s Well-Being Survey, March 2025 

Similarly, married women are much more likely than unmarried women to say they hold hands often. Married women with children are almost twice as likely to hold hands frequently as unmarried women with children, and married women without children are over four times as likely to hold hands as often as unmarried women without children. 

Figure 8. Estimated share of U.S. women ages 25-55 who report that the statement, ‘I often hold hands with someone’ describes them ‘very well.’ Source: IFS/Wheatley Institute, Women’s Well-Being Survey, March 2025 

Finally, similar percentages of married mothers (48%) and married childless women (49%) say that they regularly get to snuggle and cuddle with someone, whereas only 26% of unmarried mothers and 14% of unmarried women without children do. 

Figure 9. Estimated share of U.S. women ages 25-55 who report that the statement, ‘I regularly get to snuggle or cuddle with someone’ describes them ‘very well.’ Source: IFS/Wheatley Institute, Women’s Well-Being Survey, March 2025 

Interestingly, within each of these categories, married women with and without kids report similar levels of touch. However, among unmarried women, those who have children tend to report higher levels of touch than those without children. The extra opportunities for touch that a child provides may not make a major difference for married women, but having a child might allow for many more opportunities to give and receive touch for unmarried mothers. 

Meaning and Purpose

Motherhood is connected to happiness and well-being through other means, including finding meaning and purpose in life. For example, mothers are more likely to strongly agree that “what I do in life is valuable and worthwhile”: 33% of married mothers and 30% of unmarried mothers agree with this statement, compared to 24% of married women without children and 20% of unmarried women without children. Mothers are also more likely than childless women to strongly agree that “my life has a clear sense of purpose.”  

Figure 10. Estimated share of U.S. women ages 25-55 who strongly agree that their life ‘has a clear sense of purpose.’ Source: IFS/Wheatley Institute, Women’s Well-Being Survey, March 2025 

In addition, 49% of married mothers say their life feels meaningful all or most of the time, compared to 43% of unmarried mothers, 41% of married women without children, and 32% of unmarried women without children. Overall, women with children find more purpose and meaning in their lives than women without children. 

Motherhood Challenges

To be fair, the WWS found that motherhood comes with many challenges as well. Mothers are more likely than non-mothers to feel overwhelmed and exhausted each day. About 64% of married and unmarried mothers report feeling overwhelmed on a daily basis, compared to 56% of married and single women without children. Additionally, 79% of unmarried mothers and 77% of married mothers feel exhausted every day, though 71% of unmarried childless women and 72% of married childless women do as well. 

Mothers also say they have less time to themselves: 59% of unmarried mothers and 58% of married mothers report they wish they had more time for themselves, compared with 40% of married childless women and 43% of unmarried childless women. Yet, as we have shown, married mothers simultaneously report greater happiness, meaning, and purpose.  

Conclusion

Contrary to the common narrative that women who marry and have children are unhappy, the 2025 Women’s Well-Being Survey finds that married mothers are happier than women who are unmarried and women who do not have children. Both marriage and motherhood contribute to well-being in different ways. Married women are more likely than their unmarried counterparts to report feeling deep connection and meaning in their relationships. They are also less likely to be lonely and more likely to receive physical affection—both strong predictors of happiness. Mothers are also more likely to find meaning and purpose in life.  

Despite the challenges associated with family life for women—including more stress and less time for oneself—there is no question that marriage and motherhood are linked to greater female flourishing on many other fronts. Moreover, marriage shapes and magnifies the experience of motherhood. Unmarried mothers with children still identify more purpose and meaning than childless women, but they are less happy, more stressed, and lonelier than married mothers.  

Marriage appears to offer a stabilizing and supportive context that lifts the burdens of motherhood, while strengthening happiness, connection, and meaning. That reality should invite our best efforts, both culturally and politically, to support and strengthen single mothers even as we also work to increase the likelihood and quality of marriages. The opportunities for greater touch, less loneliness, and more meaning seem to provide married mothers the most joyful lives. 

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Endnotes

1. Jean M. Twenge, Generations: The Real Differences between Gen Z, Millennials, Gen X, Boomers and Silents— and What They Mean for America’s Future, 2nd edition (Atria Books, 2025).

2. Jennifer Glass, Robin W. Simon, & Matthew A. Andersson, “Parenthood and happiness: Effects of workfamily reconciliation policies in 22 OCED countries,” American Journal of Sociology 122 (2016): 886-929.

3. S. Katherine Nelson, Kostadin Kushlev, et al., “In defense of parenthood: Children are associated with more joy than misery,” Psychological Science 24 (2013): 3–10.

4. Roy F. Baumeister, Kathleen D. Vohs, et al., “Some key differences between a happy life and a meaningful life,” The Journal of Positive Psychology 8 (2013): 505-516; Paul Bloom, The Sweet Spot: The Pleasures of Suffering and the Search for Meaning (Ecco, 2012); Op. Cit., S. Katherine Nelson, S. Kostadin Kushlev, et al. (2013).

5. Steven Stack and J.Ross Eshleman, “Marital status and happiness: A 17-nation study,” Journal of Marriage and the Family 60 (2018): 527-536.

6. Sam Peltzman, “The Socio-Political Demography of Happiness,” George J. Stigler Center for the Study of the Economy & the State, Working Paper No. 331, July 12, 2023.

7. Daniel A. Cox, “Is marriage better for men?” American Storylines, November 30, 2023.

8. Daniel A. Cox, “Why fear governs so many of the choices single young women make,” American Storylines, November 28, 2024.

9. Carolina Aragao, “Among young adults without children, men are more likely than women to say they want to be parents someday,” Pew Research Center, February 15, 2024.

10. Brad Wilcox and Wendy Wang, “Who is happiest? Married mothers and fathers, per the latest General Social Survey,” Institute for Family Studies Blog, September 12, 2023.

11. Wendy Wang and Brad Wilcox, “Women want more children than they're having. America can do more to help,” Deseret News, August 13, 2024.

12. These numbers, along with other reported survey results, are weighted marginal means that adjust for family income, age and education.

13. Mandy Len Catron, “What you lose when you gain a spouse,” The Atlantic, July 12, 2019.

14. Natalia Sarkisian and Naomi Gerstel, “Does singlehood isolate or integrate? Examining the link between marital status and ties to kin, friends, and neighbors,” Journal of Social and Personal Relationships 33, no. 3 (2016): 361-384.

15. Nicholas H. Wolfinger, “Marriage means community engagement: a Response to Mandy Len Cantron,” Institute for Family Studies Blog, July 22, 2019.

16. Jean M. Twenge and B.H. Spitzberg, “Declines in non-digital social interaction among Americans, 2003–2017,” Journal of Applied Social Psychology 50, no. 6 (2020): 363–367.

17. Krystine Batcho, “Are you hungry for touch in a touch-free world?” Psychology Today, June 15, 2018; T. Field, “Touch for socioemotional and physical well-being: A review,” Developmental Review 30, no. 4 (2010): 367-383.

18. James A. Coan, Hillary S. Schaefer, and Richard J. Davidson, “Lending a hand: Social regulation of the neural response to threat,” Psychological Science 17, no. 12 (2006): 1032-1039; Aljoscha Dreisoerner, Nina M. Junker, et al., “Self-soothing touch and being hugged reduce cortisol responses to stress: A randomized controlled trial on stress, physical touch, and social identity,” Comprehensive Psychoneuroendocrinology 8 (2021): 100091; Tiffany Field, “Touch for socioemotional and physical wellbeing: A review,” Developmental Review 30, no. 4 (2010): 367-383.

19. Julliane Holt-Lunstad, Wendy A. Birmingham, and Kathleen C. Light, “Influence of a ‘Warm Touch’ Support Enhancement Intervention Among Married Couples on Ambulatory Blood Pressure, Oxytocin, Alpha Amylase, and Cortisol,” Psychosomatic Medicine 70, no. 9 (2008): 976-985.

20. A. Heatley Tejada, Robin I. M. Dunbar, M. Montero, “Physical contact and loneliness: Being touched reduces perceptions of loneliness,” Adaptive Human Behavior & Physiology 6, no. 3 (2020): 292-306.

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Author Bios

Jean M. Twenge is Professor of Psychology at San Diego State University and the author of more than 190 scientific publications and books.

Jenet Erickson is a Fellow of the Wheatley Institute, Associate Professor in Religious Education in the School of Family Life at Brigham Young University, and a Senior Fellow at the Institute for Family Studies.

Wendy Wang is Director of Research at the Institute for Family Studies. She formerly served as a Senior Researcher at the Pew Research Center.

Brad Wilcox is Senior Fellow at the Institute for Family Studies. He is also a Visiting Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, and Distinguished University Professor of Sociology at the University of Virginia. 

Introduction

The “One Big, Beautiful Bill” (OBBB), enacted in July 2025, included numerous changes to child-related policies. Most notably, the Child Tax Credit (CTC) maximum benefit was increased from $2000 to $2200, that new value was indexed for inflation going forward, new “Trump Account” investments were established for children born 2025 and later, caps on employer-provided dependent care assistance were raised from $5,000 to $7,500, and the claimable percentage of expenses for the Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit (CDCTC) was increased for many filers. Nonetheless, there remain areas where modest changes to the current legislative language could generate large benefits for American families and fix the failure to keep family benefits on par with recent inflation. In this research brief, we outline three changes to family policies in the OBBB that could appreciably strengthen and support American family life. Taken together, these differences would result in the average American working family receiving $500 per child more per year.

First, the CTC’s total maximum value should be increased from the $2,200 level in the OBBB, to $2,600 to preserve its 2017-set value in real terms. Second, to incentivize work, the CTC’s phase-in should begin at the first dollar of income, rather than at $2,500. And finally, the CDCTC should be fixed by removing the marriage penalty for single-earner couples. Its current discriminatory language denies benefits to many working families with child care costs simply because of how couples choose to allocate their responsibilities and paid work. As marriage and birth rates continue to plummet to new lows, Congress should not rest on the limited victories for families achieved in the OBBB, but should instead go further, demonstrating continued commitment to marriage, work, and family life.

Key Findings

1. The One Big Beautiful Bill (OBBB) implemented many new supports for families, but benefits for families are below the inflation-adjusted value of benefits in the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017. 
2. The Child Tax Credit in particular was not increased enough to protect the inflation-adjusted value of President Trump’s 2017 tax credit for families; it would need to be increased to $2,600 for the TCJA’s pro-family accomplishments to be safeguarded.
3. To increase work incentives, the Child Tax Credit could also be adjusted to phase-in with the first dollar of earnings, instead of after $2,500 in earnings.
4. The OBBB made some enhancements to the Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit (CDCTC), but it did not fix the longstanding discriminatory design of this policy. 
5. Most of the discriminatory design of the CDCTC can be fixed by allowing benefits to be claimed based on the higher- rather than lower-earning spouse, and by increasing benefits for third children.

Protect the Child Tax Credit

There are two primary mechanisms in the U.S. tax code that have historically benefited families with children directly: dependent personal exemptions (PE), and child tax credits. Personal exemptions—allowing households to exclude some income for each child—date back to the earliest days of the tax code: U.S. law has always recognized the unfairness of ignoring children in the household when calculating tax liabilities, since families with children intrinsically have lower income-per-person, and thus less ability to pay. The 2017 TCJA repealed personal exemptions and instead provided an expanded child tax credit. This benefited most families, but there were complications: the personal exemption had been inflation-adjusted since President Reagan’s reforms in the 1980s, while the CTC was not inflation-adjusted. Likewise, the PE tended to give bigger benefits to higher-income families.

The maximum benefit from the personal exemption was very large, but most families were not at tax brackets high enough to claim such a large benefit. In order to estimate the value of child benefits over time, we convert personal exemption nominal values to estimated tax benefits deriving from those exemptions. To do this, we estimate the value of the personal exemption based on the tax experiences of typical tax filers, rather than the maximum credit (specifically, we take the greater of the Average Effective Income Tax Rate reported by the IRS times the Personal Exemption Value, or the Marginal Tax Rate of Median-Income Household times the Personal Exemption Value). For the CTC, since most claimants claim the full credit value, we simply use the full credit value. We then adjust both estimates for inflation, to track real values over time.

As can be seen, in real terms, tax benefits for families with kids declined from the 1970s through the late 1980s, then rose in the late 1990s and early 2000s. They likely rose again with the TCJA, and especially with the special 1-year expansion of the CTC in 2021 due to COVID, but in general, TCJA benefits have eroded. In 2025 dollars, the original TCJA benefit was worth $2,544. 

Thus, to preserve the pro-family shift achieved in the TCJA, we suggest Congress consider expanding the CTC’s maximum credit value to $2,600. Versus the existing OBBB, we estimate that this expansion, occurring via the nonrefundable portion of the CTC, would cost approximately $3-$5 billion in 2026, and approximately $30-$70 billion over 10 years, depending on future inflation, tax rates, and birth rates.

Increase Work Incentives

Families do not get any benefit from the refundable CTC until they have at least $2,500 in income, and at such low incomes, they have no tax liabilities to render them eligible for the nonrefundable CTC. As such, families with zero earnings face smaller work incentives than families with some earnings. For example, if a married couple with two children with $5,000 in earnings had the possibility of increasing earnings by $10,000, under current law, their credit value would increase by $1,500, an effective work-incentive rate of 15 percent. But if the same couple had $0 in earnings and had an opportunity to increase to $10,000 in earnings, their credit value would only increase by $1,125: just an 11% work incentive. Thus, the $2,500 threshold actually reduces the work incentives in the CTC.

We propose a simple fix: the refundable CTC should phase in at the first dollar of eligible income, rather than the 2,501st dollar. This fix would cost, at most, $375 in lost tax revenues per family in the impacted range, though many families would get far less. At the extreme upper maximum estimate, this would cost $4.5 billion in 2026, and likely nearer $2 billion.  Likewise, across 10 years, it would cost under $65 billion, likely under $30 billion. In prior research, we have extensively outlined the argument for the first-dollar-phase-in, but it’s worth repeating the arguments in favor of this policy design:

1. Increases incentives for zero-earning families to enter the workforce
2. Reduces complexity of the CTC
3. Specifically provides greater support to working low-income families

Combining the two CTC-related suggestions, the figure below shows the tax rates faced by a married couple with two children based on standard tax rates and the CTC, but not other tax provisions, under the OBBB as passed vs. our proposed fixes.

As the figure shows, our proposal greatly reduces taxes for working families at modest incomes and provides a modest tax break for middle-income families with children.

How does our proposal affect work incentives? The figure below shows Implicit Marginal Tax Rates (IMTRs). Implementing first-dollar-phase-in increases work incentives for the lowest-income families, though mostly by pulling work incentives down the income ladder from some other working-class families. But the expansion of the credit size reduces IMTRs, thus increasing work incentives for a nontrivial range of working-class to middle-income families.

And finally, we assess how these changes influence marriage penalties. We find that these fixes: slightly increase the incentives for very low-earning couples to marry (under $10,000 in combined earnings); reduce the incentives for couples with combined earnings of $22,000 to $44,000 to marry; and increase the incentives for couples with earnings of $44,000 to $64,000 to marry. On the whole, changes to marriage incentives are very small. The small reduction in marriage incentives for a few working-class families is purely due to a shift of those incentives towards lower incomes, incentivizing more marriage further down the income ladder.

Reduce Family Discrimination

The first federal subsidies for child care expenses were implemented in 1954 through a deduction system, which was converted into the Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit in 1976, and modified several times since. The OBBB changed the CDCTC to make it considerably more generous, offering much higher adjustment factors for most eligible families. The CDCTC is a famously complex tax credit: families are eligible for it based on a combination of total household income, number of children, income of each parent in the household, educational status of parents, working hours, type of child care purchased, statutorily set adjustment factors that phase-in and phase-out with income, and other factors. This complexity disguises one central key fact of the CDCTC: it is an openly discriminatory tax provision. Its benefits do not scale for larger families but cap at the second child, leaving families with more children no additional benefit. Moreover, the CDCTC completely excludes married-couple families with one income, where the other spouse stays home to care for their child(ren), even if that family has child care expenses that would otherwise be eligible. 

This discrimination is based on the prejudicial and incorrect assumption that in families where one spouse stays home, there is no need for child care: yet stay-at-home spouses often have a range of duties drawing them away from their children, and they are prohibited from claiming child care expenses incurred at these times. The federal government has no business deciding for families which child care expenses are legitimate, and which are not. Families are best suited to make their own decisions. In the 2019 National Survey of Early Care and Education, 65% of families with children under age 13 either had three or more such children, or had a non-working spouse: thus, 65% of families with children who were age-eligible for the CDCTC faced discrimination against them based on their family status.

Moreover, the NSECE shows that one-earner families do have lots of child care expenses—families with one earner and two parents in the NSECE still average around $2,000/year in expenses on center-based care, camps, preschools, babysitters, and other child care. One-earner couples with three or more children average over $3,000/year in expenses, and 30% of those families average over $6,000/year. It simply is not the case that one-earner families do not have child care expenses.

As such, we propose three fixes to the CDCTC: first, where 26 U.S. Code § 21 section (d) (1) (B) states that the basis for credit calculation shall be the “lesser” of two spousal incomes, we suggest lesser be changed to “greater,” so that any family with a working parent is eligible for the CDCTC. This would maintain the work-incentive function of the CDCTC while removing the statutory discrimination against one-earner families. It may also be necessary to strike “employment-related expenses” from section (a) (1), and to strike the entirety of section (b) (2). In principle, the IRS allows “employment-related” to refer to the higher-earning spouse, so these changes may not be strictly necessary, but removing them would clarify the categorical eligibility of one-earner households.

Secondly, we propose that a section (c) (3) be added, reading, “$9,000 if there are three or more qualifying individuals with respect to the taxpayer for such taxable year.” In essence, this change increases the cap on claimable child care expenses for families with three children under age 13 from $6,000 to $9,000. While it is understandable that taxpayers don’t wish to subsidize enormous child care costs for an open-ended number of children, denying the many three-child families in America a proportional benefit is unfair. 

These two changes reduce the share of families with young children facing discrimination from 65% to 5 percent. 

Finally, we suggest that section (a) (2) (A) (ii), which excludes spending on overnight camps from CDCTC claims, be stricken entirely. There is no reason to allow parents to claim the CDCTC for a camp that returns kids home at 8 PM, but not for one that returns them home at 8 AM the next day.

These three fixes would transform the CDCTC in important ways. 

• First, they would simplify the credit: one line of the credit form (identifying the lower-earning spouse) could be removed, allowing taxpayers to simply specify the higher-earning spouse; moreover, families would no longer have financial incentives to deny their kids participation in campout nights at summer camp, an absurdity of the current law. If provisions related to employment-relatedness are also stricken, this would dramatically simplify child care eligibility determinations by the IRS, reducing filing burdens for families and reducing auditing costs for the IRS.
• Second, this change would eliminate discrimination based on family work divisions and reduce discrimination based on family size. 
• Third, this proposal would help fix the longstanding decline in the value of the CDCTC by making more families eligible and raising the cap on eligibility.

To begin with, its’s worth reviewing the history of the CDCTC. In terms of real value, the CDCTC peaked in the mid-1980s, and has since declined, except for a huge COVID-era increase in 2021—at least among families who claimed the CDCTC. But very few families actually claim the CDCTC. Many are ineligible for income reasons: they lack enough tax liability to claim the CDCTC, which is nonrefundable, an issue these families face with the nonrefundable CTC as well. Others are ineligible for categorical reasons: they have just one earner, or used the wrong kind of child care, or did not pay for child care at all, or some other of many reasons the CDCTC excludes individuals. Still others may have been eligible but simply forgot to, failed to, or could not figure out how to claim their credits.

As a result, if we look at the value of the CDCTC per family that claimed a child tax credit (i.e., a benchmark for children in the tax population), the CDCTC is far smaller. Real benefit value on this basis increased from 1998 to 2016 as more families claimed the CDCTC due to rising child care costs, even as the CTC-claiming population was fairly stable. With the CTC expansion in 2017, more families claimed the CTC. In sum, the average tax family with reported children can expect less than $200 off their tax bill from the CDCTC. Adding the CDCTC to our earlier graph on CTC and PE, we can see how small the CDCTC is as a benefit for families:

What effect would our proposed change to the CDCTC have? To estimate this, we use the 2023 American Community Survey to simulate the effect of different CDCTC eligibility rules. 

The results are striking. First, the OBBB considerably expands the CDCTC. While public commentary has described OBBB changes to the CDCTC as relatively minor, they do not appear minor: total spending on the CDCTC is likely to rise considerably. 

Second, removing the discrimination against one-earner families increases benefits further. Whereas OBBB changes disproportionately benefited higher-earning families, eliminating one-earner discrimination provides roughly stable benefits to families from $40,000 to $200,000 in income, and thus much larger relative benefits for lower- and middle-income families.

Third, allowing a third-child benefit disproportionately benefits a few families with incomes around $20-$40,000 who had unusual tax liability patterns, as well as higher-earning families. But remember, a higher-earning family with more children is not as rich as it might seem. Healthcare subsidies under the Affordable Care Act extend to 400% of the poverty line, representing an understanding that families in this range are basically middle-income. A family at 400% of the poverty line with one child has $107,000 in income; with two, $129,000 in income; with three, $151,000 in income. The large benefit increases shown above are not flowing to families who have the highest purchasing power per family member; it just so happens that it takes a lot of money to support a family of five in America today.

How much would such a change cost? Fixing one-earner discrimination as we propose costs about $2-$4 billion in 2026, and plausibly $25-$50 billion over the next decade. Fixing third-child discrimination costs about $3.5-$5 billion in 2026, and plausibly $35-$60 billion over the next decade. Thus, our proposed reforms here cost a combined $60-$110 billion over the next decade.

America Can Afford to Fix Family Policy

Over the next decade, these combined proposed fixes would cost between $115 and $245 billion for taxpayers. That is a considerable sum. But it is worth paying—and the revenue can be raised without raising income taxes. Preserving the pro-family legacy of the TCJA, eliminating unfairness in child care programs, and rationalizing family policy is worth a modest price; and the price is, indeed, very modest. 

The fixes we have proposed pencil out to around $11-$25 billion in additional budgetary costs per year. This is a not a small sum in principle, but it is a drop in the bucket compared to federal revenues, and we have sensible suggestions on how the money could be raised without raising income taxes or cutting other family programs.

As we argued in previous research on the CTC, policymakers could consider special per-usage-minute excise taxes on pornography providers or producers, social media companies, and higher tax rates on gambling—similar to excise taxes already charged on gun manufacturers, gasoline, airline tickets, fishing equipment, indoor tanning services, ship passengers, expensive insurance policies, and alcohol, for example. In 2023 the Federal government raised $209 million from excise taxes on fishing gear and bows-and-arrows, and $68 million from taxes on tanning salons; these are small amounts overall, but they point to the absurdity of leaving addictive pornography and social media untaxed. Likewise, excise taxes on gambling (especially addictive online gambling) already exist: a paltry 0.25% of wages are charged as an excise tax, which raised $375 million in federal revenues in 2024 vs. industry revenues of almost $72 billion. 

Across all excise taxes, the Federal government raised almost $100 billion in revenue in 2023 alone; new excise taxes for addictive digital products or higher rates for existing products like alcohol would be a reasonable way to cover the entire revenue needs envisioned in this brief. Excise tax revenues would need to rise by only 10-25%, a perfectly feasible sum, especially if policymakers considered levying taxes on heavy electric vehicles to replace losses on gasoline taxes. 

There are plenty of revenue options available for policymakers to pay for these fixes. For comparison, the OBBB raised annual spending on agricultural insurance subsidies by $6.3 billion per year, added $1 billion per year to Mars mission spending, $1.2 billion per year to Air Traffic Control improvements, $2 billion per year to Coast Guard readiness, $100 million a year to expanded inland waterways development, $200 million a year to expand the Adoption Credit, $200 million a year reducing taxes on distilled liquors, $4 billion a year on expanded detention facilities for illegal immigrants, and $800 million more a year on nuclear waste management. We highlight these not to suggest they are good or bad expenditures—but simply to note that the scale of spending change we suggest is, well within the range of budget items that never made the news at any stage of budget debates: these are small spending items.

Yet, the benefits to families are large. The difference between the OBBB and our proposal is, for a typical family, almost $500 per child. Most of those benefits flow to working-class and middle-income families, since the first-dollar phase in, one-earner discrimination fix, and third-child discrimination fix all disproportionately benefit these families. At a time when falling birth and marriage rates show that American families are clearly struggling, it is advantageous for Congress to at least ensure families get as good a deal as President Trump delivered for them in the TCJA. The OBBB did not fully deliver that. But with a few enhancements, Congress can.

Abstract

Married-couple households are more affluent, less likely to be poor, and experience fewer hardships than other types of households, such as single-parent families or people living on their own. This research brief explores why, focusing on differences across household types in income, non-income resources, such as wealth, and demographic and socioeconomic characteristics, such as age and education.

In our recent study, published in Demographic Research, we find that married-couple households experience fewer hardships than other households while single-parent families with children experience the most. Other household types, such as cohabiting couples and people living alone, fall in between. The biggest reason for the married-couple advantage is wealth—married couples often have more savings and assets to fall back on. Income also plays a significant role, followed by demographic and socioeconomic characteristics.

In short, the income- and wealth-building capacity of married-couple households are important for helping them avoid hardships. Meanwhile, a more moderate portion of the married-couple household advantage reflects the selection of more fortunate demographic and socioeconomic groups into marriage—for instance, people with higher levels of education are more likely to marry than others. 

The U.S. individual income tax structure and the safety-net assistance system exact financial penalties on married couples, which worsen when children are in the family. The effect of these penalties is the opposite of what public policy should be. Research has established that society benefits immensely from stable and healthy marriages. This policy brief is divided into two sections. Section 1 focuses on the U.S. Tax Code and restoring the income tax to its primary purpose, while eliminating the marriage penalty. Section 2 presents a way for Congress to eliminate marriage penalties from safety-net programs.

Pronatal Policy Works, and America Can't Afford to Forego it

What would happen to American fertility if the child tax credit were appreciably increased? Many are skeptical of the influence of cash transfers on fertility, but that skepticism is misplaced. Cash-for-kids works. It is relatively cost-effective, and its fertility effects help families achieve their own stated family goals. The pronatal outcomes of an increased child tax credit are a good reason to support such an investment.

Key Findings:

• Financial incentives—such as child tax credits—can indeed boost fertility by a demographically significant degree, and have done so in many contexts around the world.
• We suggest raising the nonrefundable child tax credit (CTC) to $2,000 and making it claimable against payroll taxes, raising the refundable additional child tax credit (ACTC) to $2,500, and indexing both values to keep up with inflation.
• This reform to the child tax credit could plausibly boost fertility by 3–10%, raising U.S. population in 2100 by at least 5 and perhaps as much as 35 million people. 
• This plan would also increase incentives for parents to marry and increase incentives for parents to work, creating not only more births, but stronger families.

How the Character of Men's Work Is Linked to Their Family Status

Grant Martsolf, Brad Wilcox, Good Jobs, Strong Families. How the character of men's work is linked to their family status (The Institute for Family Studies, Penn’s Program for Research on Religion and Urban Civil Society (PRRUCS), 2025)

Media Coverage

John DiIulio, "The best natalist policy: good jobsThe makings of a second Baby Boom," UnHerd, May 26, 2025

Chris Bullivant, Grant Martsolf, Brad Wilcox, "Is the collapse of blue-collar marriage a foregone conclusion," The Washington Examiner, April 30, 2025

Grant Martsolf, "Good jobs, strong families in working-class America," Family Studies, April 29, 2025

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Introduction

Over the last half century, the U.S. economy has shifted, moving away from manufacturing and towards being an information and service economy. The mid-1980s, for instance, were punctuated by news of the closures of major steel manufacturers, including Homestead Works, Aliquippa Works, and Duquesne Works in Pittsburgh, PA, and Republic Works in Youngstown, OH. The closures were part and parcel of a period of massive deindustrialization. Between 1984 and 2004, the U.S. economy lost between 6 and 7 million manufacturing jobs that provided reliable and high-paying employment with good benefits for millions of working-class Americans.

The move away from manufacturing had a significant impact on America’s working class. Real wages of the median Americans with a high school diploma or less (a common measure of “working class”) declined by 11% between 1979 and 2019, while those of the median worker who had finished college increased by 15 percent. Many industrial communities, especially across America’s “Rust Belt,” experienced significant disinvestment and fell into blight. These economic shifts, both in the Rust Belt and nationwide, took a devastating toll. They pushed working-class men’s labor force participation down and led to declines in religious and secular expressions of community life in areas hit hardest by deindustrialization. Families not only broke apart but failed to form. In the wake of this economic dislocation and social breakdown, deaths of despair—that is, deaths from drug overdoses, suicides, and alcoholism—surged among working-class women and especially men.

The transformation of the American economy has been especially impactful on working-class men. As manufacturing receded, employment in service industries surged, especially in healthcare, financial, and information services. Many of these service jobs require a college degree. And most of the significant growth in jobs that do not require a college degree has been concentrated in industries and occupations that are female dominated. Since 1990, the healthcare industry alone has added roughly 9 million jobs to the US economy. Nearly 80% of Americans who do not have a college degree and work in healthcare are women.nbsp;In fact, declines in real wages for working-class workers were concentrated among men; working-class women have seen their real wages rise since 1979.

Over this same period, Americans have also experienced a significant reduction in marriage and family stability. Since 1970, the marriage rate has fallen by more than 60% to the point where only about 1 in 2 adults are married. Declines in marriage and family stability have been especially precipitous for working-class Americans since 1980. For instance, only 39% of non-college-educated Americans ages 18-55 are married, compared to 58% of college-educated Americans.

Our hypothesis in this Institute for Family Studies (IFS) report is that the nature and character of work play a key role in affecting male marriageability. We contend that features of work like job stability, predictable hours, good benefits, and high pay help men to flourish and, in turn, elevate their appeal as husbands. Moreover, we note that class divides in marriage today are driven in part by differences in the character of work, with college-educated men generally benefiting, in terms of marriage and family formation, from jobs that are more stable, predictable, higher status, and remunerative. But we also suspect that the character of work varies among working-class men themselves, such that some jobs among working-class men are more likely to facilitate marriage and family formation than others.

In this report, we examine family formation among working-class men, defined here as men without college degrees, within the context of distinct employment environments. We also examine differences in married family formation rates—measured here in terms of being married with children at home—between working-class and college-educated men, and we investigate the extent to which these differences might be explained by differences in “good job” variables—primarily differences in pay, benefits, and stability. We then explore differences in the rates of married family formation among working-class men by industry and estimate the extent to which differences across industries are explained by the same “good job” variables. We conclude with a discussion of how public policies might better support working-class men in their jobs to improve their family prospects.

Part 1: Family Formation Among Working-class Men

Trends in family formation rates

In this section, using historical Census data from 1980-2021, we discuss recent family formation trends among working-class men. Working class throughout this report is operationalized as completion of less than a college education. Here, college education is defined as completion of at least four years of college. Importantly, this is slightly different than the operationalization of “working class” because the measures of educational attainment in historical Census data are slightly different from the CPS data used in subsequent analyses.

There is ample evidence that college-educated Americans are more likely to get married, stay married, and avoid having children out of wedlock. This is partly because more educated men and women have more stable incomes, more shared assets, greater civic supports for their marriages, and networks that are dominated by married peers, as Wilcox argued in Get Married.

However, this has not always been the case. In fact, before the 1980s, men who did not complete college had higher rates of married family formation compared to those who did complete college. In our analysis of Census data, we found that in 1980, 59% of all prime working-age men (ages 25-55) who did not complete college were married with children living in their homes, compared to 55% of men who did complete college.

Over the course of the next 40 years, all men in America were increasingly less likely to be married and living with children. By 2021, only 37% of prime working-age men were married living with children compared to 58% in 1980 (Figure 1). But the overall decline in married family formation was more significant for men who had not completed college. Over the last 40 years, men who had not graduated from college were now actually less likely than college-educated men to be married and living with their own children. By 2021, 34% of non-college-educated, prime working-age men were married and living with their own children compared to 44% of college-educated men. 

Introduction

The last quarter century has seen a dramatic increase in grade inflation on student report cards in elementary, middle, and high schools throughout the United States. So much so that a student’s grade point average (GPA), which was once as useful as SAT or ACT scores, has become almost worthless as a predictor of how well the student would do in college or graduate school. And high school graduation rates have continued climbing even as the 12th-Grade results of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) have remained stagnant or even declined. There has also been a notable decline in disciplinary actions by schools for student misconduct or lack of application.

Progressive education reformers have sought to make family background less of a determinant of how well a student does in school. Yet evidence from two nationwide household surveys of parents conducted nearly a quarter of a century apart demonstrate that family factors, such as marital stability, parent education, family income, and race and ethnicity, are as important as ever—or even more so

Housing is a core part of the family formation process, yet surprisingly little is known about what kinds of houses Americans want for their families. We remedy that gap in our recent report, Homes for Young Families: A Pro-family Housing Agenda, which presents evidence from a survey of nearly 9,000 Americans ages 18-54. 

Today, apartments as a share of home construction are at their highest level in decades. This is concerning since, as we show in Homes for Young Families: A Pro-family Housing Agenda, almost nobody in America wants to raise a family in an apartment. Our survey of almost 9,000 Americans finds a broad-spectrum rejection of apartment living across every single demographic group surveyed.

For decades, one of the dominant trends in American housing geography has been suburbanization, which has always been associated with public narratives around crime. In Homes for Young Families: A Pro-family Housing Agenda, our survey of almost 9,000 Americans finds that safety is the single most important factor shaping the housing decisions of young families. No amount of affordability or amenities will ever be enough to convince a family that a neighborhood where they feel unsafe is a great place to raise kids.