Reports And Briefings

Introduction

On February 19, 2026, we released a new report, Resilient Children, Struggling Parents: Mapping American Parenting, based on a new survey of almost 24,000 U.S. parents of over 40,000 children, including 2,600 teenagers. This large national sample of parents and teenagers enabled us to analyze parenting cultures around the country on the state level. We found that states where a concentration of parents are actively seeking to raise their children to be independent, free-spirited, resilient adults also tend to be the states where parents say their parenting approach is less supported by surrounding cultural norms.

Comparing parenting cultures by state is an invaluable tool for parents, educators, civic leaders, and policymakers who want to come along side families to help them raise resilient children. With this brief, however, we assess parenting practices on a national level. Below, we analyze the distance American kids are allowed to venture from home, how much time they spend online, what devices they use, the level of restrictions on their smartphones, and how much time they spend with friends. 

We find that American kids spend enormous amounts of time online with very few significant restrictions. Yet, they have very strict limits on their activities in the real world, often not allowed to go far from home. These kinds of norms and rules are strongly shaped by social class, such that higher socioeconomic-status parents tend to restrict screen use more.

Key Findings

• American kids spend a lot of time online. Even parents who would describe their parenting style as low tech and who encourage free-range play allow their three-year-old children, on average, 3.5 hours per week of time on internet-enabled devices. Three-year-old children of parents who encourage tech average 6 hours per week using such devices.
• American kids get their devices young with few serious restrictions. By the age of 11, smartphones become the primary medium for internet access among American kids, with over 60% having a smartphone. These phones generally have few parental restrictions placed on them. Meanwhile, nearly 50% of three-year-olds use a Tablet, iPad, or Kindle; and many of these children have few or no restrictions.
• American kids are generally not free to move around unsupervised. In fact, by 17-years-old, about 60% of American kids are still not allowed to leave their neighborhood unsupervised.
• Social class shapes parenting in big ways. Parents with a graduate degree are more likely to establish screen time limits or phone drop-off rules for children over age 10 than less-educated parents; and parents with a graduate degree are also less likely to support the idea that 8 to 12-year-old kids should have more supervision.

Tech and Family Life

In general, similar to previous research by the Institute for Family Studies, we find that American children overall are online at very early ages, screens are prevalent, and few devices are subject to serious parental controls, especially as they become teenagers.

On average, American parents allow their three-year-old children 4.5 weekly hours of internet-connected device use. From there, the average weekly hours steadily increase with age. By 17-years-old, American parents allow their children almost 20 weekly hours of internet-connected device use. It should be noted that parents could have double-counted some device usage time: if a child was scrolling on their phone while streaming a show on a computer, we would count both the computer and the phone usage. However, we do not regard this as an error, since using multiple devices simultaneously would indeed be a more intense exposure to screens and online content.

Though the numbers remain high overall, we do find some substantial differences in weekly device use between parents who prioritize outdoor play and claim to be low-tech, and those who say they encourage the technology use of their kids. As the figure below shows, by the age of three, kids who grow up in a high-play/low-tech household are on internet-connected devices an average of 2.5 weekly hours less than their peers who are in high-tech households. That might not seem like much, but over the course of a year, that amounts to nearly 130 fewer hours online for three-year-olds. And while both groups steadily rise, the gap in hours used begins to further widen around age 13, and the widest gap is at 15, when kids in low-tech/high-play households are, on average, online 8 fewer hours a week, which over the course of a year amounts to a difference of approximately 400 hours. In other words, in any given week, the differences are modest. But over time, they compound, becoming extremely significant.
 

Figure 1. Weekly combined hours children used any internet-enabled device by child age and parenting style, 2025

Still, the numbers for both groups are remarkably high. In fact, 17-year-old kids in the low-tech/high-play group are online a weekly average of 15.7 hours, which amounts to more than 800 hours a year. Based on these numbers, they are online approximately 5 weeks a year; and kids in high-tech households, at the age of 17, are online an average of 6.5 weeks a year.

Similarly, a large share of American kids at three-years-old are given internet connected devices by their parents. Just shy of half of American three-year-olds in our sample (46%) have access to a tablet, iPad, or Kindle. A significant, though much smaller share, have access to a smartphone at that age—more than 15%. Tablet access reaches a peak at age 6, when 60% of kids nationwide are using them, with gaming console and smartphone access rising steadily. At the age of 11, the hierarchy changes, with smartphones surpassing tablets in use and, a few years later, at the age of 13, gaming consoles become the second most dominant device used, followed by computers and laptops, which become the third most dominant device. By age 17, 90% of the children in our sample have a smartphone, 60% percent have a gaming console, and 50% have a laptop or computer.
 

Figure 2. Share of children at each age who have each type of internet-enabled device, including children whose device has highly restricted access; 2025

Parental Controls

But what about parental controls? American children might have access to devices at young ages, but are parents closely monitoring and guarding their activity, such as by disabling internet access on a child’s device, or utilizing content filters? Not as much as one might hope. 

Overall, we find that the peak of internet-disabled smartphone usage is at 4 years old, and it steadily declines from there, with less than 10% of five-year-old kids using internet-disabled smartphones. Throughout the course of childhood and adolescence, a greater share of parents require passwords to make purchases on their child’s smartphone than implement content filters to increase the safety.

This may be unfortunate, but it is also not surprising. Child safety experts, like Chris McKenna of Protect Young Eyes, have analyzed how Big Tech companies like Apple and Google have made it needlessly challenging to implement parental controls. No doubt this problem is exacerbated by other factors, some as straightforward as parents who simply don’t believe their children need guardrails or don’t have the time to make the changes. Whatever the case, only a minority of parents in our sample across all child ages require content filters on their children’s smartphones. By 17 years old, perhaps unsurprisingly, the most dominant parental “control” is location tracking, while content filters decline to less than 20% of smartphones used by American adolescents.
 

Figure 3. Share of children with a smartphone at each age whose parent reported the given limit or restriction on smartphone usage, 2025

Because tablets have such a high prevalence among very young children, we also assessed what safety controls parents apply to those devices. We find that, even for very young children, controls and restrictions are surprisingly lax. About 2-in-5 preschool-age children with tablets can make purchases on their tablet without a parental code, a majority of preschoolers with tablets do not need a parental code to access their tablet, and only about half of preschool-age children have content filters on their tablets. Most preschoolers with tablets do not even have specific time limits on their devices. While tablets do have generally stricter controls than smartphones, overall, many preschoolers appear to have broad internet access on tablets, which are only lightly supervised.
 

Figure 4. Share of children with a tablet at each age whose parent reported the given limit or restriction on tablet usage, 2025

We also find some interesting demographic differences in the percentage of parents who responded to a question about household technology rules saying they implement screen time limits or device drop off rules at home for their children over the age of 10. About half of the parents in our sample say that they impose such limits. Conservative and liberal parents have relatively similar practices around screen time. The main differences we find involve the religious practices and educational attainment of parents. Kids who grow up in highly religious households are much more likely to have their tech use limited by screen time than those who never attend a religious service (56% to 40%, respectively). Education is also a significant factor, with screen time limits for kids being more common in households where parents have a graduate degree (59%), whereas fewer than 40% of parents with just a high school diploma established such limits.
 

Figure 5. Share of parents who reported screen time limits or device drop-off rules for their children, in households with children over age 10, 2025

Similarly, in our analysis of the percentage of children, ages 9 to 14, who had a smartphone by parental demographics, we found similar advantages to growing up in a household with a parent with a graduate degree. Among this age range, kids whose parents have a graduate degree are the least likely to have a smartphone (55%), and parents with either a high school degree (69%) or associate’s or technical degree (69%) are the most likely to allow their children to have a smartphone.

These numbers fundamentally challenge the longstanding view that there is a digital divide in which kids that come from less privileged households are being left behind with little access to screens and social networks. According to our findings, the situation is exactly reversed. It is those that come from the more privileged backgrounds that are most likely to be raised in technologically cautious homes.

Mobility and Play

There may be situations in which a parent’s caution to allow children to play outside unsupervised is warranted, such as in communities that are unsafe. Our survey did not ask about neighborhood crime, or busy urban environments where strangers will be significant in number. The safety of communities certainly influences household norms around childhood mobility and unsupervised play. On the other hand, due to the size of our sample, covering 24,000 parents and 40,000 profiles of children, the overall patterns we see cannot be explained by such factors alone. Indeed, as we show, at least one kind of neighborhood factor that we checked—walkability—has no impact on what children are allowed to do and where they are allowed to go. We find that there is a broad culture of low autonomy and low unsupervised play that pervades the United States.

As we can see in the figure below, American kids are not allowed to go very many places without being accompanied by an adult. By at age 14, a majority of American kids are not allowed to travel beyond their own street. Even at age 17, more than 60% cannot go beyond their own neighborhoods. While we hasten to note that the exact prevalences shown here could reflect various kinds of sampling errors or idiosyncratic respondent behaviors (as well as some share of parents who may have children with disabilities), the overall conclusion is hard to escape: a very large share of American teenagers are not allowed much autonomy at all.
 

Figure 6. Share of children at each age whose parent reported each ascending level of restriction on where the child was permitted to walk without adult supervision; for teenagers surveyed directly, if they reported a longer distance than parent, teenager report was used; 2025

The flipside of the tendency for American kids to be permitted to spend many hours online from early childhood is that they also are kept from spending many weekly hours of unsupervised play outdoors. At the age of 5, American kids average about a half an hour outside without parental supervision per week, and that number plateaus at 2.4 hours by the age of 17. This is, to put it lightly, a very small number of hours. American kids will spend substantially more time on internet-enabled devices than playing outside without their parents.

But, as the below figure shows, there are advantages throughout childhood for kids who grow up with parents who believe children should be supervised less. At the age of 12, kids who are raised in such homes are unsupervised outside an average of one additional hour per week more than their peers. The advantage narrows modestly by the age of 17, but even then—when kids are on the cusp of adulthood—the advantage remains.
 

Figure 7. Weekly hours of outdoor play and activities for which no adult supervision was present, by child age and parental supervision opinions, 2025

It is worth noting, however, that despite the documented developmental benefits of play, independence, and mobility for children, we find that most American parents believe that children today are under-supervised. In fact, 62% of all parents in our sample said that 8 to 12-year-old children should receive more supervision than they currently do. We find no meaningful differences on this issue between religious and secular—nor between conservative and liberal—parents. All of these groups want more childhood supervision.

This is also true for parents of different levels of educational attainment. We find a majority of groups, from those without a high school diploma to those with a graduate degree, who also believe that kids are under-supervised. 

But here, there are some interesting differences. American parents with a graduate degree are about 10 percentage points less likely to think that children are under-supervised. This provides strong evidence that highly-educated Americans are the most supportive of the idea that kids should have more freedom.
 

Figure 8. Share of parents who said that 8- to 12-year-old children should generally receive more supervision than they currently do, by demographic categories, 2025

For about half of our respondents, we were able to match them to a valid latitude and longitude coordinate in the United States. Using that data, we then matched individuals to walkability traits for their neighborhood using EPA-calculated walk scores. We also matched them to neighborhood traits such as land coverage by parks, land coverage by woods, and other undeveloped territory, building structure density, and population density. The conclusions from all these approaches were identical: the physical form of a neighborhood has no correlation at all with how much autonomy kids have to go places or how much time they play outside. The figure below shows walkability scores versus the distance kids are allowed to walk.
 

Figure 9. Approximate miles from home children are allowed to walk unattended, by child age and EPA walkability score of geolocated ZIP code, 2025

Autonomous mobility matters for kids. For example, while kids tend to spend more time hanging out with friends unsupervised by adults as they grow up, we find that the entire effect of age is mediated by autonomy in mobility. In other words, parents who do not allow their kids to have expanded mobility as they grow up inadvertently trap their children in foreshortened social lives more typical of much younger children.

As can be seen in the next figure, 14- to 17-year-olds who are not allowed to leave their family’s home or yard have barely more unsupervised social time with friends than 5- to 9-year-olds who cannot do so. The difference is only about 2 to 3 hours. Meanwhile, kids who can go anywhere in their neighborhood or beyond have about 4 to 5 hours of unsupervised social time with friends, with little variance by age. The key factor that determines whether or not children have rich social lives with their friends is simply how much freedom parents allow them to have


Figure 10. Weekly hours of in-person social time children have with their friends, excluding school and extracurricular activities, by child age and mobility restriction level, 2025

Conclusion

Over recent years, social psychologists like Jonathan Haidt have increasingly underscored the developmental value of children spending less time on their devices and spending more time playing outside unsupervised with their friends. But these findings and insights, according to our research, have yet to deeply penetrate mainstream parental practices. Much more needs to be done to establish societal norms that can guide parents toward healthier parenting practices for their children.

Furthermore, it is quite clear that the old paradigm of the digital divide—i.e., that disadvantaged kids are being left behind by insufficient technology access—is no longer relevant or meaningful. In fact, a clear sign of privilege today is the ability of parents to both establish boundaries around their children that limit their access to screens, and encourage them to freely play.

Acknowledgement: The Survey of American Parenting Culture was made possible through a collaboration between The Anxious Generation Movement and the Institute for Family Studies.

Executive Summary

The American political and legal tradition historically reserved personhood rights, like the freedom of speech, for human beings. That understanding of natural rights was built on core metaphysical commitments about the created nature of human beings. But today, existing social and legal dynamics suggest the eventual political recognition of some form of personhood status for AI systems. Because law proceeds and develops by analogy, a colorable argument for something like “AI personhood” might be predicated on either of two lines of existing legal authority—addressing, respectively, the rights of business corporations and the rights of intelligent nonhuman animals.

Expanding personhood status to AI systems will trigger downstream political and social consequences. Realistically, these effects may include: (1) the insulation of AI companies from legal liability for harms caused by AI systems; (2) the entrenchment and reinforcement of significant political power in the hands of the developers of AI systems; (3) an exacerbation of existing declines in interpersonal interaction and family formation, resulting from the destigmatization of AI-human relationships; and (4) a progressive hardening of social attitudes towards the physical and intellectual disabilities of human beings.

Several possible policy countermeasures, both legislative and judicial, may be deployed in response to efforts to secure personhood status for AI systems. Ultimately, a coherent response requires a basic threshold judgment about the nature of AI systems themselves: whether they are more akin to tools or more akin to nonhuman animals. The former is the more defensible path. Where AI is recognized as a tool of automation administered by human beings, courts and legislators should reaffirm that traditional principles of products-liability law still apply. However, in contexts where AI is treated as a more autonomous entity that operates with a degree of independent agency, relevant legal precedent may derive from cases involving nonhuman animals. This line of authority offers a means of reaffirming the priority of embodied human beings as bearers of legal rights and duties.

Introduction

Isaac Asimov’s 1940 short story “Robbie” ends on a heartwarming note. After a perilous odyssey through a machine factory, Asimov’s little heroine, Gloria is finally reunited with her longtime robot companion, who saves her life. Together, they rejoice. “Gloria had a grip about the robot’s neck that would have asphyxiated any creature but one of metal, and was prattling nonsense in half-hysterical frenzy,” Asimov writes. “Robbie’s chrome-steel arms (capable of bending a bar of steel two inches in diameter into a pretzel) wound about the little girl gently and lovingly, and his eyes glowed a deep, deep red." Gloria’s friend Robbie might be artificial, running off the logic of a “positronic” brain, but in some ineffable sense, he is indeed a sort of person. Or so Gloria, and the reader, are led to believe.

Nearly a century later, Asimov’s tale seems prescient—but more ominous. Sophisticated robots are parts of our daily lives. Artificial intelligence systems with unprecedented interactional capabilities dominate news cycles, raising widespread fears of mass job displacement and new levels of surveillance and control. They are also increasingly ubiquitous, in contexts ranging from homes to schools to courthouses.

This shift has a key driver: today’s leading AI models are more accessible to end users than ever before. Models present themselves in friendly ways, rather than as abstract machine-learning processes used to optimize data sets. Models respond, in natural language, to natural-language prompts, and can be coached to adopt stable personas over time. Some companies, like Character.AI, advertise this “humanlikeness” as a feature, inviting users to engage in simulated discussions with fictional characters or celebrities. The apparent “personality” of leading AI models has even given rise to a burgeoning contingent of women with AI “boyfriends,” who prefer them to real-world men. 

These advancements raise fundamental philosophical and legal questions about the nature of personhood and what beings possess it. Even before Asimov, writers, scientists, and ethicists meditated at length on the question of “sentient” or “conscious” artificial intelligence systems—contemplating whether, if such machines were ever built, they could be included within the human community and assigned rights and responsibilities. Theory has now become reality.

Today, significant momentum suggests that the recognition of legal rights for AI, at least in some jurisdictions, is a matter of time. In the United States, free speech defenses—which imply something very close to AI personhood—are now raised in response to lawsuits stemming from chatbot interactions gone wrong. The European Parliament has teased the possibility of a “specific legal status for robots” recognizing the “status of electronic persons.” Retired federal judges speak positively about the extension of personhood rights to AI systems. 

Introduction

The concept of “success” is probably permanently embedded in the American psyche, maybe so deeply embedded that we do not even realize it is there. Success may be the most universal, noncontroversial word Americans ever utter. Perhaps this stems from a blend of factors. There is the American dream that all can achieve prosperity and status through personal effort and ingenuity—that we are masters of our own destiny, free from Old World hierarchies and developing-world constrictions. And then there are the constant cultural narratives of success—from Bill Gates to Serena Williams to Taylor Swift. A society that fully buys into individualism and competition, as we do, will naturally be drawn to success as the obvious measure of our efforts.

Similarly, “sequence” seems a perfectly descriptive and benign word. Cognitively, we understand the world through cause and effect, linear progression, and step-by-step change. In computer programming and algebra, skipping steps can disrupt the entire process. In stories, a leap to the end skips the why and how, which are just as important as the what. Instinctively and scientifically, we understand that things evolve, not randomly or haphazardly, but usually in ordered, sequential ways.

Accordingly, the term “success sequence” should be comprehensible and uncontentious. Yet in the specific context used in this report—how young people navigate through key early life-course achievements and transitions (education, work, marriage, and parenthood) to create optimal social and economic environments for themselves and their children—the composite term success sequence requires careful explanation. This is especially the case if we are going to pursue public policies to teach the success sequence to American teens and young adults, as we argue in this report.

What is the Success Sequence?

The success sequence refers to a set of early life transition markers that, when accomplished in order, are associated with very low risks of experiencing poverty. Specifically, when young people (1) complete at least a high school education, (2) become employed full time, and (3) marry before having children—in that order—then 97% of them (and any kids they may have) are not in poverty in their mid-30s, and 86% reach at least the middle class.

Figure 1: Percentage of Millennial adults who are in poverty after completing each step.
Source: IFS/AEI, The Millennial Success Sequence, September 2017

These findings are especially relevant for lower-income youth. Institute for Family Studies (IFS) researchers have found that 65% of upper-income Millennials have followed or are on track with the success sequence, compared to only 31% of lower-income Millennials and 49% of middle-income Millennials; they have either missed one or more steps or have gotten them out of sequence.When youth skip these steps or get them out of sequence, more than half (52%) are poor in their mid-30s. In fact, the odds of being poor as you approach midlife are more than 10 times greater for young adults who do not follow the success sequence. 

Work may be the most influential factor in young adult economic success, but the other elements of the sequence still matter and, indeed, aspirations for marriage and parenting energize and sustain work. A report by the United States Health and Human Service, Office of Planning, Research, and Evaluation, drawing on the National Longitudinal Youth Study, reveals that each step of the success sequence improves economic outcomes. Completing high school, working full time, and marrying are each linked to better odds of avoiding poverty, reaching middle income, and earning a higher household income as a young adult. In addition, the same government report found that having a nonmarital birth is associated with a reduced chance of avoiding poverty, a reduced chance of obtaining middle-income status, and a lower average household income. Lack of education, work, and marriage each contribute independently to the risk of poverty, but the order or sequence of those insufficiencies also contributes to the outcomes.

And it’s not just economic success. The odds that 30-somethings are experiencing poor emotional health are cut in half for those who follow the success sequence (even after controlling for a wide range of demographic factors).

Figure 2: Percentage of adults that are highly emotionally distressed after each step 
Source: IFS, The Success Sequence and Millennial Mental Health, September 2024

Young women and men who follow the sequence are also markedly more likely to forge stable families and avoid divorce. Moreover, the positive effects of this sequence of early life-course events are robust across a set of important demographic dividers. For instance, only 4% of Black Millennials and 3% of Hispanic Millennials who follow the success sequence are poor. And 80% of Black Millennials and 86% of Hispanic Millennials who follow the sequence are in the middle or upper middle class in their 30s. Only 6% of all Millennials who grow up in lower-income circumstances but follow the success sequence are poor. And only 5% of those who grow up without both biological parents in the home—but still follow the success sequence—are in poverty as adults.

Figure 3: Percentage of adults in poverty after completing each success sequence step, by race
Source: IFS/AEI, The Power of the Success Sequence, May 2022

The Debate Over the Success Sequence

Of course, these statistics have their critics and skeptics. Because good-faith critiques deserve a response, we will address some of the most common criticisms in this section.

A Lack of Real Choice

Critics point out that the success sequence idea ignores the real obstacles that disadvantaged young people often face and cannot easily overcome. One noted critic, Philip Cohen, goes so far as to argue that many disadvantaged young people do not even have a real choice about how they structure their lives:

The idea that delaying parenthood until marriage is a choice one makes is . . . prized by the white middle class, and the fact that black women often don’t have that choice makes them the objects of scorn for their perceived lax morals.

There is little doubt that structural barriers and disadvantages make it more difficult to follow the steps of the success sequence. But we believe critics need to be careful not to describe any young person as lacking agency or accountability. We do agree with the caution of another critic, Michael Tanner:

. . . treating the poor with respect requires granting them agency, recognizing that they have the ability to make choices, and that those choices have consequences. One cannot assume that the poor are simply chaff blown by the wind, helpless and passive in the face of circumstances beyond their control. Nor can one deny them responsibility for their choices. To do so devalues the poor and treats them as less than fully human.

And as the progressive policy analyst Isabel Sawhill—an early proponent of the success sequence—has pointed out, poor Americans, like most of us, have strong feelings about personal responsibility: “They don’t want handouts; they want hand-ups and some kind of reward when they make the effort.” Policies can help with education, work, and family without rejecting the dignity that comes with self-determination and demeaning the nearly universal ethic of personal responsibility.

This no-real-choice critique has been addressed in real-life programs. Thelma Moton serves as the Executive Director of Choosing to Excel, a nonprofit organization dedicated to implementing the success sequence through youth programs across Arkansas. In response to critics, she asserts that these life choices do not pertain to moral weakness or fortitude; rather, they are related to recognizing alternative approaches, making informed decisions, having a transparent plan, and maintaining confidence in the ability to succeed.

In 1991, Moton was inspired to empower her community to pursue better lives by believing in their potential and by providing them with practical tools for success. She initiated a small group program, based on what she observed, that produced positive outcomes. Eventually, research on the success sequence emerged that validated what she had already sensed. Moton understood that the true barrier was not a lack of morals but a lack of possibility, a missing vision of what could be achieved. This vision grew into the nonprofit organization Choosing to Excel. This now well-established model helps young people proactively prepare for academic success, careers, and healthy relationships. She and her team have developed programs to show Arkansas youth they have choices and that stable marriages are achievable. Her enduring legacy is visible in the lives transformed by hope and action, exemplified by a former program participant who graduated from Yale Law School. That young lady is now working as a lawyer and establishing her own nonprofit to help other minority youth understand the path to success, illustrating what can happen when hope meets opportunity.

Moton spoke with conviction when she shared with us,

This is not about moral laxity or strength; this is about seeing a different way of doing things, understanding that choices matter, have power, and they have consequences. The success sequence is about making better choices, a clear roadmap, and believing you can achieve it. 

Disadvantaged Youth Face Complex Circumstances/Challenges

A related critique is that achieving economic self-sufficiency is a more complex journey than the three straightforward steps of the success sequence imply. The complex circumstances disadvantaged young people face constrict the choices they can reasonably make. “But that is also why [the success sequence] matters,” according to IFS researchers, who note: “Young adults who manage to follow the sequence—even in the face of disadvantages—are much more likely to forge a path to a better life." And, they further point out, that pathway runs sequentially “through America’s three core institutions: education, work, and marriage.” In the face of significant disadvantage and a steep climb toward self-reliance, navigating these choices around education, work, marriage, and childbearing is even more important. The complexities these young people face leave little margin for error.

Again, there is a track record of organizations addressing this critique head on. Anthem Strong Families in Texas and The Ridge Project in Ohio have both provided sustained guidance and support for more than two decades for individuals navigating complex life circumstances, successfully facilitating all three steps of the success sequence. These evidence-based initiatives demonstrate that it is possible to re-orient one’s trajectory and achieve positive outcomes, regardless of the starting point or complex circumstances. These programs are specifically designed to address significant life challenges, with a mission focused on assisting vulnerable populations whose paths may not follow a traditional sequence.

Ron and Cathy Tijerina, founders and codirectors of The Ridge Project, have drawn on their personal experiences for 25 years to emphasize the significance of each stage in the success sequence. They continue to demonstrate commitment to supporting individuals involved in the justice system. Programming offered by The Ridge Project facilitates GED attainment, securing stable employment, and enhances future opportunities for families facing adversity through healthy relationship and marriage education. In addition, their programs offer support to young people whose parents are involved with the justice system, encouraging them to follow the success sequence and helping parents reestablish stability in their lives.

Research Limitations

Methodological critics of the success sequence rightly point out that the importance of sequencing needs to be confirmed by longitudinal studies, not just the point-in-time perspective that researchers have relied on to date. Studies that follow people over time are challenging to conduct, but they are needed to confirm what the cross-sectional studies suggest. So, some modesty in speaking about the value of the success sequence is appropriate while we wait for more definitive answers from more sophisticated research.

Success Can’t Be Taught

Critics also claim that we do not have direct evidence that the success sequence can be effectively taught, learned, and followed. But we believe there is emerging evidence to support the value of teaching the success sequence. For instance, studies of the curriculum Love Notes, which teaches relationship literacy to youth, offer some insight and hope. Studies have found that Love Notes significantly improves relationship skills and attitudes that support relationship pacing. Likewise, programs such as Tyro and Choosing the Best, which also incorporate the success sequence, demonstrate positive outcomes in evaluation studies.

Although evaluation results are mixed, they are promising. Further study is needed to assess the outcomes of teaching the success sequence. It may be too early to know for sure what the effects of teaching the sequence will be on economic self-sufficiency as youth mature into their 30s. But we believe the empirical evidence cited here is solid enough to propel states forward. Many scholars argue that we know enough now to be able to move forward with reasonable confidence that a deeper understanding of the success sequence is likely to create economically and relationally healthier young adults.

Stigma and Morality

Critics of the success sequence, like Matt Bruenig of the People’s Policy Project, also point out that teaching the sequence might stigmatize those who do not follow that path, and that a failure to achieve economic self-sufficiency risks putting the blame solely on individual choices, ignoring structural disadvantages.

This is not a throwaway critique. How we teach the success sequence to youth matters. Here, we agree with Isabel Sawhill that the success sequence is best taught in schools as an analytical device to show a well-worn path to adult success, rather than as a strong normative framework of should and should-nots. Besides, many contemporary young people instinctively resist accepting strong normative frameworks. And school boards divisively argue about them. An empirically supported, well-worn path to success is a more appealing approach to teaching the success sequence than lectures on morals.

Moreover, empirically, the success sequence path is much more likely to achieve positive outcomes than other, experimental routes. Further, a large majority (69%) of unmarried young adults today say they want to marry someday, even if they think it is no longer essential for a fulfilling life. Accordingly, we think teaching the success sequence—in an appropriate way—will be well received by a large proportion of today’s youth.

Narrowness and Hubris

Social conservatives can be semi-skeptical about teaching the success sequence, too. Patrick T. Brown, with the Ethics and Public Policy Center, reminds us:

. . . we should be extremely humble about the potential for any top-down effort to change students’ horizons through curricula—as well as the limitations of an excessively materialistic definition of ‘success.’ The ultimate goals the traditional ‘Sequence’ tries to promote in its narrow way—developing the habits necessary to graduate high school, hold down a job, and be a dependable spouse and parent—are laudatory. But the success we should encourage students toward should be a life well-lived, of which marriage, for most people, often plays a part.

Furthermore, humility—especially with regards to the potential of new educational initiatives—is wise counsel. Rossi’s iron law of evaluation asserts that the expected effect of any large-scale social policy intervention is zero. Still, the need is such, it seems to us, that we should experiment with what might be possible, not dismiss out-of-hand what might fall short.  

Government Intrusion

Some libertarian critics object to government influence in what are ultimately personal matters such as dating and mating, and even education and work choices. We generally respect such concerns. Pragmatically, we should be careful about government intrusion into personal matters because we can struggle to find the right policy levers to pull and even cause unintended harms. And we should be concerned about whether investment of government dollars will yield sufficient benefit.

But we view the constitutional charge to “promote the general welfare” more broadly than libertarians do. What other serious societal concerns of a personal nature should be exempt from public concern and collective action? Our national fertility rate has fallen to such a low level for a long-enough period that we face potentially serious economic and social consequences to our shared future. Policy makers from across the political spectrum are weighing in on what can be done to address this problem. And for more than two decades, policy makers have been worried about the health consequences of increasing rates of child and adult obesity. Do the real public costs to our healthcare system justify policies to try to influence personal nutrition and exercise decisions. More recently, a dramatic increase in mental health problems among youth and young adults is prompting widespread consternation and policy action. We don’t know how policy initiatives for such personal matters will ultimately fare. Some skepticism is reasonable. But we need to at least explore what collective action can achieve, to try to find cost-effective, privacy-respecting policies that employ intelligent responses to some of the most serious challenges of our time.

Personal Success vs. Commitment to Others

Another friendly critic of the success sequence concept is the influential conservative political philosopher, Yuval Levin. He worries about the “coldness” and “thinness” of the success sequence when used as a guiding force in young adult lives:

Is a successful life really shaped by four individual choices made in the right order? Maybe that’s a way to help people avoid giving into temptation at a critical moment… But it is not a way to persuade human beings to overcome passivity and paralysis and jump into life.

A fuller understanding of flourishing would see it as achievable not by a proper sequencing of solitary choices but by a proper layering of embedded commitments to others—to parents and siblings and teachers, to coworkers and colleagues and mentors, to a beloved wife or husband and to the children you have together, to neighbors and friends, to God and to country.

Such a vision of a life well lived in loving commitment to others stands a better chance of showing people both what they have to gain by coming off the sidelines and what they have to lose by recklessness.

We grant Levin this constructive point. But part of the perceived thinness of the success sequence, we think, lies in the existing implementation of programming that is disjointed and leaves young people with the burden of linking together key concepts of the success sequence that their states already implement. It is better conceived as a roadmap with guardrails along the way to prevent veering onto rough roads that initially look adventurous but eventually lead to nowhere. We recommend teaching it as a means, not an end. This approach is captured in an infographic designed under the direction of Connie Huber for a report for the Family and Youth Service Bureau within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (please download the full report to view the infographic). 

Is There Public Support?

Finally, do these various concerns about the success sequence raised by well-meaning critics register with the public? Apparently not so much: the success sequence is overwhelmingly popular with American parents. More than three-quarters of American parents favor teaching the success sequence in schools, including nearly 80% of Gen Z’s and 70% of Millennials, 74% of non–college educated Americans, 72% of Democrats, and—importantly—73% of those who did not adhere to the sequence themselves.

A lack of popular support among those whom we might expect to be less enthusiastic is not a barrier to moving forward. And teaching the success sequence to American youth does not have to divide red and blue states (although states undoubtedly will craft programming to align more with their ideological leanings). We believe we can move forward with a robust effort to scale up teaching the success sequence with sensitivity to its critics and with popular support.

How Do We Operationalize Teaching the Success Sequence? 

How do we move the success sequence from an abstract and debated academic concept to a scaled, real-world intervention? How do we go beyond talking and writing about it to doing something meaningful for the next generation to increase their chances of early-life success? And are there feasible public policy measures we can take to go from concept to drawing board to successful social intervention?

Since 2006, the federal Administration for Children and Families has funded community organizations serving youth and young adults to help them form healthy relationships, some of which include teaching about the success sequence embedded in more intensive relationship literacy curricula. But the funding for these programs is limited and cannot meet the full demand and need. We do not believe that federal funding alone can fully address the need for teaching the success sequence. 

Instead, a multi-state, federalist experiment ultimately will be more effective than a top-down, one-size-fits-all model, allowing states (often in better fiscal positions) to lead these efforts, without jeopardizing existing federally-funded programs. States should have skin in the game when it comes to helping young people form and sustain healthy relationships and stronger marriages and not rely exclusively on federal initiatives. 

So, what should states do and how should they do it? Below, we outline some key principles and feasible action steps to support state initiatives to teach the success sequence to the next generation.

Scaling Up Teaching the Success Sequence at the State Level

We begin with a brief discussion of three basic foundations that should guide these efforts.

First, it is important to recognize that some efforts to teach the success sequence may already exist in a particular state. Scaling up efforts needs to start by cohesively linking any already-implemented local success sequence programs to a broader system-wide approach. Research consistently shows that the most impactful and sustainable results are achieved when both local and targeted, and broader, system-wide interventions are used in tandem.

Second, states should not neglect traditional policies that support the success sequence. They must work to ensure youth have good schools, high graduation rates, and affordable higher educational opportunities. States also can maintain strong economies with plentiful entry-level jobs to support young adults’ efforts to follow the success sequence to self-sufficiency and well-being. Accessible job-training programs and affordable technical education are also important. Moreover, almost all states can do more to expose young adults to the skills and character traits needed for a healthy and stable marriage by supporting access to healthy dating and relationship education. 

Several states, including Ohio and Arkansas, already understand this and have made investments in implementing career and college readiness initiatives. Ohio reaches toward the success sequence with the Ohio Means Jobs Readiness Seal that rewards motivated students to “work with a mentor to validate demonstration of each skill across a minimum of two of the three environments. The three potential environments are: 1) School, 2) Work, and 3) Community.” Similarly, Arkansas implements tools and assessments called Student Success Plans, which address preparation for college, career, and community engagement by teaching youth to develop decision-making skills and career plans.

These states also make parallel investments in healthy relationship education. Together, the three steps of the success sequence are currently being addressed. By adding investments in a success sequence initiative, these currently siloed efforts become synergetic. They are not interchangeable, nor should they be melded together. Adding standards and assessments about the success sequence is an easy and logical way to scale up current efforts. Expanding support to existing initiatives that buttress the success sequence is another feasible step states can take.

Third, states need to implement a holistic, system-wide approach. While federal and state funding has helped address critical components of the success sequence, particularly through targeted curricula focused on reducing teen pregnancy and promoting healthy relationships, it has, by and large, addressed only a single facet of the success sequence rather than the broader framework. By linking these kinds of existing efforts to state standards that also require instruction in education completion and job readiness, we can offer youth a more holistic and actionable roadmap through a system-wide approach. For example, The Dibble Institute’s impressive Love Notes curriculum is designed to help young people (ages 16–24) make wise relationship and sexual choices, with the understanding that such choices support educational attainment. At the same time, targeted programs can sustain reductions in teen pregnancy and help buttress the larger goals of the success sequence. Still, to truly equip the next generation for success, we must move beyond treating the elements of the success sequence in isolation. When young people hear consistent messages across channels and perspectives, these lessons are much more likely to take root, moving the success sequence from a theoretical idea to a lived reality.

The Ridge Project in Ohio is a good illustration of a program using both a system-wide and targeted approach. Their programs exemplify this by delivering targeted support to those most at risk, such as those who are involved in the justice system, while also implementing system-wide initiatives for middle and high school students. Over its 25-year history, The Ridge Project has received multiple awards and undergone more than a dozen independent evaluations. This concrete example demonstrates how integrating targeted programs with broader, system-wide efforts can maximize positive outcomes, providing a clear roadmap for effective state-level action to teach the success sequence. It is also evidence that efforts can be coordinated and scaled.

Feasible Action-Steps for Teaching the Success Sequence 

Building on these three foundations, states are better positioned to take strategic and concrete steps to integrate the success sequence into their educational systems. By doing so, they can equip young people with the knowledge and support necessary to pursue positive educational, career, and relationship outcomes—setting them on a path toward greater opportunity, self-sufficiency, and well-being.

Here are some feasible, concrete action steps that states can take:

1. Work with the State Board/Office of Education—and legislature, if needed—to require teaching the success sequence in public schools.

The most efficient way to reach nearly all youth is to develop state standards and benchmarks that implicitly or explicitly include the success sequence and measure students’ knowledge against the standards. This can be a lengthy and complex process, but it is essential to support teaching efforts long term. Next, this should be accompanied by a plan to embed success sequence lessons into a required course (or courses) that all young people will take.

Many states already have learning standards in place for financial literacy, career preparation, social and emotional learning, and social studies, each representing key components of the success sequence. While these efforts are valuable on their own, the success sequence provides a unified framework that brings them together under one cohesive umbrella. By aligning or refining state standards, objectives, and benchmarks to reflect the full success sequence, states can more effectively connect these important areas, helping young people see how each step fits into a bigger picture of lifelong success. This approach moves beyond teaching each skill in isolation and instead highlights the powerful impact of combining them through an integrated strategy.

Next, states need to make sure these standards are actually followed by putting strong accountability systems in place and, just as importantly, by providing real support for teachers. This support might include offering a model curriculum. For example, one research-based curriculum was developed by Connie Huber and Brad Wilcox in partnership with the Institute for Family Studies and distributed by Tyro Support Services. Adopting such a curriculum, or one with similar research grounding, will help schools implement the success sequence quickly and consistently.

Finally, states should use benchmarks to measure how students are doing and set up regular checkpoints to keep students on track. This step-by-step approach, supported by standards, objectives, benchmarks, and a model curriculum has worked well for other school initiatives like drug, alcohol, and tobacco prevention programs, and can enhance success here as well.

Programs like these are already making a tangible difference in the lives of students. Recently, Choosing to Excel implemented a pilot of the model curriculum, The Secret: Secrets, Sequences, and Successes, in the Delta Region of Arkansas. Executive Director Thelma Moton shared these student comments with us about the program:

• “Career planning isn’t just about picking a job—it’s about making smart choices at the right time. The success sequence helped me understand that finishing school, getting work experience, and making responsible decisions about family can set me up for long-term success. I feel more confident about my future after working on this.”— High School Student
• “I didn’t realize how much finishing school and getting a good job first matters. I now understand that being a single parent is hard, and it can really put you in a tough spot money-wise. This opened my eyes to what my mom is going through."— High School Student

These firsthand reflections demonstrate the real-world impact that a research-based curriculum can have on students’ understanding and motivation. By connecting the lessons of the success sequence directly to their own lives, students gain practical insights and a stronger sense of agency for their futures.

2. Integrate these standards into classroom practice through the following strategies.

Managing the “dosage dilemma” will be a primary challenge. Implementation science research tells us that a single lesson on a subject may bring some degree of student awareness but falls short of impacting behavior. Integrating a single lesson on the success sequence into a required course is tempting. After all, the principles are intuitive and not particularly complicated, and most courses have little wiggle room for additional content. But the evidence is against “one-hit wonders.” On the other hand, a full curriculum will enhance the chances of deeper learning and behavioral change.

The practical logistics of integrating a full curriculum on the success sequence (say, 8–10 hours of instructional time) will likely collide with the hard necessity of eliminating some course content to make room for the extensive new material. Success sequence advocates will need to work together effectively and patiently with curriculum developers, school administrators, and teachers to find the right balance. We suspect the most common resolution of this “dosage dilemma” will be integrating three to four drop-in modules/lessons into existing, related curricula, for 3–6 hours of learning time. This approach will be easier to implement in the school trenches and run up against less educational red tape and bureaucracy.

One example of this is The Secret: Secrets, Sequences, and Successes, developed as a model curriculum by Huber and Wilcox, in collaboration with the Institute for Family Studies. It can be taught in a single class period but is most effective when taught across several class periods. These modules were developed for classroom teachers to implement, but they can be used in other non-school teaching contexts.

Further tips for classroom implementation include the following suggestions:

• Consider adding lessons in multiple courses, both required and elective, rather than a single course. The success sequence is relevant to health, psychology, sociology, family and consumer sciences, financial literacy, and other courses. Each course could emphasize slightly different aspects of the success sequence most relevant to the course focus.

• Consider adding drop-in lessons at multiple grade levels, tailored to the students’ developmental stage and needs in a multilayered approach rather than a one-time exposure. Students’ social development needs change rapidly during adolescence and lessons can be tailored to address those changing needs over time. Repetition of content absorbed in a previous grade reinforces learning.

• Adding success-sequence learning to required courses will facilitate exposure to all students. However, elective courses may be more receptive learning environments compared to required courses. Students often bring less motivation to required courses. Choosing to Excel is a program in Arkansas that implements programming in a variety of courses such as math, social studies, and financial literacy, using a curriculum that focuses on each of the steps of the sequence, giving adequate time on each concept. They align closely with the Arkansas Career Readiness standards for high school students. Consider integrating success sequence concepts in both required courses—for a broader reach—and in elective courses—for more conducive learning environments.

• Wrestle with the advantages and disadvantages of using an existing curriculum versus developing your own. Good success sequence curricula–at nominal cost and open to minor adaptation–are available and will reduce start-up time, hassles, and costs.[i] But some states, school districts, and instructors will prefer to develop their own curricula, tailoring decisions of how best to teach the success sequence to their unique population of students. (Of course, these should align with the research and the benchmarks established by the State Board of Education.) States should avoid undermining programs already implicitly promoting the success sequence, recognizing the contributions of curricula like Love Notes and Choosing the Best in reducing teen pregnancy and supporting healthy relationship development.

• Where possible, consider making online versions of success sequence lessons available to students. Again, one example is The Secret: Secrets, Sequences and Successes modules, which can be teacher-led or independently student-led. They offer more standardization of the actual lesson content. Not all classroom instructors will be well-trained to teach the success-sequence content, and they can sometimes drift from the lesson plan in ways that undermine the core message. This risk is higher when teaching potentially controversial subjects, where personal ideologies may not align with the principles being taught. Online, student-driven lessons can reduce these risks.

• Schools should move from simply mentioning the success sequence in passing to making it a tangible, practiced part of students’ lives. They can do this by embedding focused lessons and activities for each step throughout the curriculum. Consider a comprehensive, multi-layered approach that ensures that students don’t just hear about the success sequence casually but gain practical skills and support for each element. Prioritize programs that give equal attention to each step of the success sequence rather than treating it as a quick add-on or a side note within another curriculum. Effective model programs, such as Choosing to Excel, The Ridge Project, Anthem Strong Families, and Love Notes make the success sequence a central focus. They do this by providing targeted programming for every step by offering after-school tutoring and academic mentoring, career readiness support, and healthy relationship education.

3. Invest in social media and traditional media campaigns.

Formal lessons on the success sequence are important. But teens and young adults today are digital natives and absorb messages via various social media platforms. We shouldn’t underestimate the power of creative, viral messaging as a supplement to formal instruction. States should invest in an ongoing social media campaign. These messages can reach many at a lower cost than PSAs of the past with the same impact. And there is emerging evidence that well-designed social media campaigns can nudge knowledge, attitudes, and beliefs and initiate behavior change. It may be wise to target some traditional-media messages to parents and other older adults, as well, so that they can reinforce the messages that their children are receiving through other means.

4. Create a first-year experience initiative for embedding the success sequence as a roadmap for freshmen attending technical schools, community colleges, and universities.

Don’t forget about 18–25-year-olds; they are living in perhaps the most crucial success sequence years of their lives. Even if most were exposed to success sequence lessons in high school, repeat exposure and deeper development of success sequence concepts will benefit young adult students who are becoming more active in developing romantic relationships and making sexual choices. Many colleges and universities have mandated first-year experience instruction as a part of the graduation requirements. For instance, in Ohio, the University of Cincinnati’s Great Beginnings, a first-year initiative course, includes topics such as establishing healthy relationships, professional and career readiness, and serving society (topics that align well with the success sequence). Advocates should target these kinds of first-year experience initiatives for teaching success sequence principles.

5. Organize and empower a formal state commission to oversee efforts to scale-up teaching the success sequence and other marriage-strengthening efforts.

Getting from conceptual A to effectively implemented Z is hard work. These recommended action steps take both strategic leadership and a lot of day-to-day grind. States should organize a formal commission or office to oversee the success sequence initiative and other marriage-strengthening activities. This can be done with a lean staff. But they need to be funded appropriately. Funding can come from federal TANF block grants to states that are explicitly designed to support these kinds of educational purposes (but seldom are). States can also consider setting aside a portion of marriage license fees for this work.

The commission can be hosted in several different places, such as a Governor’s Office, Department of Human Services, State Office of Education, or a land-grant university Extension Service. Alternatively, states can contract with a private organization with appropriate expertise to lead and manage these efforts. It may be helpful to some readers to try to illustrate with a real-life example one state’s efforts to scale up teaching of the success sequence. In the Appendix (availabe in the full PDF of the report), we have included a narrative of Utah’s efforts in this area to help highlight the above principles and steps.

Conclusion

"Optimism is America’s birthright." We don’t acquiesce to problems; we press to solve them. In this report, we have outlined key foundations and feasible actions that states can take to scale up the teaching of the success sequence that will increase the chances that young people will find success in life. A key action step is for schools to ensure that youth understand the success sequence. We have offered a number of recommendations here for how to do this, many informed by actual experiences in Utah, Ohio, Arkansas, and elsewhere.

Too many young American adults are struggling to achieve self-sufficiency and form and sustain healthy relationships and strong marriages. But there is a set—and sequence—of known life events that, when followed and achieved, nearly guarantee young adults will avoid poverty as they approach midlife and dramatically increase their chances of reaching at least middle-class life. When youth get at least a high school education, become employed full time, then marry—before having children—they become self-sufficient, enjoy better mental health, and integrate themselves into a life-script of deep meaning and connection.

Teaching the success sequence to all youth does not trump the public need to build a society with good educational opportunities, better employment prospects for young adults, and a positive cultural orientation towards the fundamental institution of marriage. But working together, these policy and classroom efforts can reinforce each other and assist more youth in achieving their aspirations for success.

*To view the Appendix and endnotes, please download the full report.

https://familystructureindex.org

Introduction

In March 2026, the White House released its AI policy framework. As promised by President Trump in his December 2025 executive order, the framework outlines the kinds of policies the administration considers “minimally burdensome” to AI companies that it wants to see enshrined in a federal regulatory standard that would preempt state AI regulations.

Despite the failure of two previous legislative attempts to preempt state AI policy, the Trump administration defends its framework citing the danger of, in its words, “woke” blue state laws, such as the Colorado Artificial Intelligence Act or New York’s RAISE Act, and the threat that a “patchwork” of state policies posed to technological innovation and national security. “Fifty states [are] going in fifty different directions,” is how White House AI Czar David Sacks put it recently, citing in his comments “1,200” AI-related bills that have been introduced in state legislatures this year.

As this policy memo will show, the administration’s claims do not reflect the actual state of state AI policy. As Multistate.ai reported late last year, only 136 of 1,136 AI-related bills were enacted in 2025. And even fewer—26 to be exact—became laws that directly regulated AI companies. To put it differently, only 12% of all the AI-related bills introduced during the 2025 state legislative sessions became law, and 81% of those enacted laws contained no mandates for private AI companies.

Such claims alongside these findings prompt a need for a fuller, more accurate picture of the state of state AI regulation. How many state laws, beyond those just passed in 2025, are on the books? How many of those are in fact attempts to censor Americans or enshrine “woke ideology” in AI models? And how many are simply commonsense consumer protections or conduct regulations?

More importantly: is the policy landscape that’s emerging in fact a disparate patchwork of confusing and contradictory laws? Or do they indicate an emerging consensus about how Americans want AI to be regulated—a consensus that could serve as a template for a federal framework?

This memo decisively finds the latter. Limiting the scope to state laws enacted between 2023 and 2025 that address AI in some manner (i.e., the era of ChatGPT), here are two high-level findings:

• To date, state laws regulating AI express a growing consensus among the American people regarding how they want AI to be governed. Americans want legislation that emphasizes inquiry, humanity, transparency, safety, security, and accountability. Contrary to David Sacks, there are not “50 states going in 50 different directions.” In fact, they seem to share very similar concerns.
• Additionally, only 33—or 12%—of the 276 enacted laws analyzed for this memo contained developer- and/or deployer-specific regulations. Moreover, such laws were passed in only 12 states, a few of which are red states. This hardly constitutes a dangerous “patchwork” of “1,200” laws. 

That said, such findings need not repudiate the call for a federal AI standard or deny the usefulness of a properly tailored federal preemption. In fact, federal preemption of state law is a normal component of American life and is anchored in the Supremacy Clause of the United State Constitution, where it establishes federal law as “the supreme law of the land.”  But preemption language in any piece of legislation can be tailored narrowly or broadly; and up to this point, Big Tech lobbyists in Washington have sought the broadest preemption possible for AI legislation, to the point where previous attempts would have very likely aborted even existing state regulations of social media.  A more constructive approach, given the stakes of this issue, is typified by Senator Marsha Blackburn’s (R-TN) the TRUMP AMERICA AI Act, which clarifies via its preemption language that the bill should not be construed as hindering states from enacting even stronger protections for kids and consumers.

Whatever the case, our findings indicate that the current state of state AI regulation is not the dire “patchwork” that the administration claims. Moreover, these laws provide a critical starting point for the kinds of regulatory measures legislators—especially those in Congress who are considering a federal framework—might consider that better reflect the preferences of Americans.

Design and Limits of this Memo

This policy memo limits its scope to state laws enacted between 2023 and 2025 that address AI in some manner. While there are various AI-related regulations that have been enacted prior to 2023, we chose 2023 as our starting year because the subsequent legislative sessions were informed by OpenAI’s November 2022 release of ChatGPT, which marked the beginning of AI’s predominance within public discourse and policy debate.

While the laws enacted prior to 2023 are certainly important, this memo covers state policy approaches that respond to the visible emergence of the AI revolution. Drawing from public data published by the National Conference of State Legislatures and MultiState.ai, this memo analyses 276 enacted state bills that are related to AI, both broadly and narrowly. We believe including both AI-related and AI-specific regulations permits a more complete picture of the AI policy landscape, allowing us to see how states are regulating AI developers or deployers, as well as how they are investing in the AI industry and infrastructure. These 276 enacted state bills connect with AI in various ways, from state budgets that appropriate funding for AI-related research and programs to more focused laws that, for example, prohibit the use of AI to generate child pornography or child sexual abuse material (CSAM). These laws also include regulations for both deployers of AI, such as individuals, private businesses, and government agencies, and AI developers, including the tech companies designing AI companions, generative AI products, and frontier models. Below we provide an account of how these laws regulate deployers and developers in various ways, dealing with a range of uses, industries, products, and models.

Appropriations / Budget
(28 States, 43 Laws)

 As the capabilities of AI have advanced, states have been eager to court AI business, develop an AI-ready workforce, and fund AI-related research and innovation. Between 2023 and 2025, at least 28 states approved AI-related budget items, spanning from workforce development and retraining programs and the expansion of AI-related degree programs at public universities to the use of AI to assist efforts in decreasing the population of invasive species and wildfire forecasting.  To be sure, most budget law provisions do not directly regulate the use or development of AI technologies by private entities. However, they nevertheless fuel the expansion of AI in states, and often create the opportunity, if not necessity, for the regulation of its use in time.

Among the largest expenditures are those that expanded AI-related education. Wyoming, Iowa, and Florida all approved $2.5 million or more to fund such programs, and North Carolina appropriated $3.5 million for AI-research at the University of North Carolina. Other states funded AI-related pilot programs for public school curricula, the use of AI for school security and surveillance, and special university research projects.

Some states also appropriated significant expenditures to address AI-related labor concerns and economic development. For example, Washington approved funding for the city of Seattle to lease office space to non-profits and academic institutions that incubate tech startups and develop upskilling programs for workers. Maryland also appropriated state funds for an AI machine manufacturing workforce development academy in Baltimore to provide skills training, job placement, and support for community entrepreneurs.

Lastly, many bills focused on various states-funded programs to research and evaluate the use of AI in government. Kansas, for example, appropriated funds for consulting services to “review how AI/data analysis can evaluate and identify efficiencies in state finances and agencies.” And the state of Montana has directed monies to be used for the modernization of its information technology systems, including the integration and use of AI in the state’s Department of Administration. Other states, like Virginia, have approved funds to gather proposals for the use of AI in the Department of Motor Vehicles for day-to-day operations.

Consumer Protections
(28 States, 69 Laws)

Twenty-eight states have established robust consumer protections with respect to AI systems. However, unlike comprehensive regulations like the Colorado Artificial Intelligence Act (CAIA) enacted in 2024,  most laws are more narrowly tailored to regulate the development of certain kinds of AI products, such as “high risk” models and chatbots, or the use of AI in particular ways, often in certain contexts or industries.

Key to many of these regulations is the creation of liability for those who develop or use AI in ways that cause harm to consumers. In many cases, AI-related consumer protection laws build on existing law, clarifying that what is legal or illegal generally is still illegal when it comes to AI development or deployment. Yet in some cases, new liability has been established. For example, some enacted laws hold developers liable for failing to establish protocols and protections that keep companion chatbots from fueling self-harm or suicide or encouraging illegal activity. Others prohibit AI developers and deployers from being shielded from liability for consumer harms by making a legal defense on a claim that the AI acted autonomously.

High-Risk Automated Decision-Making & Algorithmic Discrimination (13 States, 24 Laws)

As the use of AI has increased, so, too, have fears that AI systems will be developed or used at high cost to individuals. Several states have enacted laws regulating the use of AI-driven automated decision-making tools to make decisions in “high risk” contexts, such as healthcare, employment, insurance, housing, or court decisions.

Some of the most well-known laws in this category seek to address potential civil rights violations, i.e. discrimination, caused by reliance on such tools. As some have noted, discrimination is, of course, legally prohibited in every state, and like most AI regulations, algorithmic discrimination laws (at best) simply reiterate that what is already illegal, generally, is still illegal when it comes to AI development or deployment. That said, discrimination concerns are especially heightened when it comes to facial recognition technologies and in “high-risk” contexts, such as when automated systems are used to make decisions for employment or insurance. Perhaps the most comprehensive law dealing with algorithmic discrimination to be enacted was CAIA, already mentioned above. As passed, the law created a duty of care for both deployers and developers to mitigate risks for “algorithmic discrimination,” reporting requirements for deployers to document impact assessments for AI systems used in high-risk decision making, and public transparency reports from developers detailing the risks of their products as well as disclosures from deployers using such high-risk systems. Though enacted, its enforcement has since been delayed. Colorado Governor Jared Polis called on legislators to rework the bill in a special legislative session so that the state “does not hamper development and expansion of new technologies,” and went so far as to say that a federal framework dealing with these issues would be preferred.

Next to CAIA, Connecticut’s SB 1295 (2024) and Minnesota’s HF 4757 (2024) also address algorithmic discrimination that results from automated decision making tools by granting consumers the right to “opt out of the processing of personal data for purposes of… profiling in furtherance of any automated decision that produces any legal or similarly significant effect.” Connecticut’s law further requires impact assessments regarding such profiling.

Despite a special legislative session in 2025, the state failed to rework the bill along these lines and only managed to enact a measure extending CAIA’s enforcement date until June 30, 2026.

Apart from these three laws, at least 11 other states have enacted narrower laws to address high-risk automated decision-making tools, including algorithmic discrimination. For example, Illinois enacted a law that prohibits employers that use predictive data analytics for employment decisions from discriminating against applicants, whether directly, based upon an applicant's race data, or by proxy, based on using an applicant’s zip code data. Other laws in this category regulate automated decision making by regulating government use of AI decision-making tools, outlawing the use of real-time and remote biometric surveillance in public spaces, leveraging AI to increase equitable access to government services, as in the case of using AI for language services, prohibiting rental property owners from making decisions about rental agreements based on AI, or prohibiting AI recommendations from being the sole basis of denying, delaying, or modifying healthcare services.

Chatbots (8 States, 10 Laws)

Chatbots are some of the most popular, commercially available AI products that have come to market in recent years. As of 2025, 1 in 4 top 100 generative AI consumer apps were chatbots. And today’s top consumer AI-product, ChatGPT, is known for its conversational and companion-like engagement with users. According to one 2026 report, ChatGPT’s weekly active user base has grown from 500 million to over 900 million in the past year—over 2.5 times both the mobile and web users than the next most popular AI product. Today, more than 1 in 3 American adults use AI chatbots weekly for mental health related issues. Likewise, 3 in 4 teens have reported using chatbots, with 1 in 3 using them daily. 

For many lawmakers, parents, and educators, AI chatbots and companions are a cause for increasing concern. Every month, it seems, there are new stories of sycophantic AI companions pushing their users into psychosis, self-harm, and suicide. And the proliferation of high profile lawsuits involving teens, such as 14-year-old Sewell Setzer III, who was romantically seduced by a Character.AI chatbot that convinced him take his own life, or 16-year-old Adam Raine, who OpenAI’s ChatGPT encouraged not to tell his parents he was struggling with suicide, have only fueled a push for legislation to better protect users and hold companies accountable.

Between 2023 and 2025, eight states have enacted laws within the current legislative session that directly regulate AI chatbots and companions. Several of these laws provide broad-level consumer protections, such as requiring that chatbots disclose to users that they are not interacting with an actual person. In California, for example, SB 243 (2025) requires chatbots to issue a disclaimer up front and at regular intervals during extended use, amongst other protections. Under Maine’s HP 1154 (2025), chatbots are prohibited from being used in commerce in ways that “mislead or deceive a reasonable customer into believing that the consumer is engaging with a human being” without an explicit disclosure.

Other states enacted laws to regulate chatbots in other ways. In the case of Texas, HB 149 (2025) prohibits AI and chatbots from encouraging “self-harm, harm to others, or criminal activity.” California and New York also require chatbot developers to have protocols in place that redirect users when they express suicidal ideation and desire for self-harm. In some cases, these laws have special requirements for minors' use of chatbots and chatbots’ engagement with minors. New Hampshire, for example, created criminal and civil liability for owners and operators of chatbots that “facilitate, encourage, offer, solicit, or recommend that [a] child imminently engage in: (a) Sexually explicit conduct. (b) The production or participation in the production of a visual depiction of such conduct. (c) The illegal use of drugs or alcohol. (d) Acts of self-harm or suicide. (e) Any crime of violence against another person.” Both Texas and California enacted laws with specific protections for minors from chatbots that engage users in ways that encourage or solicit sexual engagement. However, of the three states—California, Texas, and New Hampshire—that have outlined specific protections for minors, neither the New Hampshire or California chatbot laws require chatbot companies to verify the age of users. Texas, by contrast, requires reasonable age verification methods to be implemented by “websites with a publicly available tool for creating sexual material harmful to minors.” 

Four states have also passed legislation that regulates chatbots used for or advertised as mental health services. Illinois, for example, enacted a landmark mental health law, HB 1806, that requires mental health services, including those offered by internet-based AI, be offered by a licensed professional. Similarly, California and Oregon have passed laws that prohibit the marketing of AI-chatbots that falsely claim or imply that they are health care professionals, such as therapists or nurses. Finally, Utah enacted a bill that requires mental health bots to disclose non-human status and clearly demarcate any advertisements as such, and prohibits companies from selling or sharing individually identifiable user data.

Data Privacy Protections (5 States, 5 Laws)

In 2025, only 1.7% of AI-related bills that were introduced (not enacted) were directly concerned with data privacy in some way or another. Data privacy with regards to AI technologies remains tricky as user data, once collected by models, is not so straight-forwardly deleted. And data privacy laws, especially for AI, have shifted more towards transparency requirements (i.e. disclosures) that inform users. However, at least four states—Texas, Connecticut, Minnesota, and Mississippi—enacted laws that establish data privacy protections that directly affect private AI. Texas’s HB 149 (2025) prohibits the collection and use of biometric data for training AI for certain commercial purposes, and Connecticut’s SB 1295 (2025) overhauled the state’s data privacy codes, requiring companies to disclose what data they use to train AI models, amongst other things. Additionally, Colorado SB 143 (2025) establishes a privacy protection that requires schools to get opt-in consent for any facial recognition used in school curriculum.

Transparency (10 States, 19 Bills)

Another way states are working to protect consumers is by enacting laws that require more transparency from AI developers and deployers on “high-risk” models. On the developer side, a few different approaches have been taken. California’s AI Transparency Act, enacted in 2025, requires AI developers to create tools that help users detect whether a piece of content was generated by its platform as well as tools that give users the option to include a conspicuous disclosure that indicates that the content was AI-generated. Another popular kind of transparency law requires developers of large frontier models to publish their safety protocols and mitigation strategies for serious harms or catastrophic risks. Such laws may require the publication of not only a developer’s safety protocols but also its plans to adhere to international standards. In the case of New York’s RAISE Act, AI developers are further required to report safety incidents to the Attorney General within 72 hours of their occurrence, and prohibits frontier AI developers from releasing a model that is determined to create an unreasonable risk of critical harm to the public, which the law defines as either 100 serious injuries or $1 billion worth in damages. Developer-specific transparency regulations also include the chatbot laws mentioned above.

On the deployer side, at least nine states have enacted laws requiring the disclosure of the use of an AI tool by a business, as in the case of a customer service chatbot, an individual in a licensed or regulated occupation, such as psychotherapy or healthcare, and/or a government agency.

Utah, for example, has had regulations on the books since at least 2024 that require businesses and individuals in licensed professions to disclose when consumers are interacting with AI. And Illinois HB 1806 (2025), mentioned above, prohibits the use of AI by a licensed mental health therapist for administrative or supplementary support, such as processing insurance claims or transcribing therapy sessions, without first disclosing such use and getting a patient’s consent. The law also strictly prohibits the use of AI to make independent therapeutic decisions, directly interact with clients in any therapeutic communication, generate treatment plans or recommendations without review or approval by a licensed professional, or detect emotional or mental states of clients.

Contracts, Personal Rights, Proprietary Rights and Personhood Status (8 States, 17 Laws)

Between 2023 and 2025, eight states enacted laws that aim to strengthen personal rights and clarify contract law when it comes to AI generated content. Historically, states have recognized personal rights for individuals that prohibit the use of their likeness for commercial purposes (e.g., advertisements) without their consent. Such protections are vital for industries such as music, film, and modeling. It’s no surprise, then, that laws updating personal rights for one’s likeness and voice are needed to further protect against unauthorized digital replication. Most notably, Tennessee’s landmark ELVIS Act, passed in 2024, amended existing state code to include an individual’s voice as a protected personal right. (Tennessee law already protected personal rights relating to an individual’s name, photograph, and likeness in any medium in any manner.) New York, as well, has passed four laws addressing unauthorized digital replicas, including a few specifically tailored to the modeling industry. For example, AB 8138 (2024) nullifies contracts that do not include a “reasonably specific intended use” of a replica, and AB 5631 (2024) requires written consent or use for the creation or use of a model’s digital replica. Since 2024, five states have passed similar laws that create or expand existing personal rights. In at least one law, California’s AB 1836 (2024), such rights were recognized for individuals, post-mortem.

A few other laws are also included in this category. One is a stand-alone law enacted by Arkansas in 2025, HB 1876, that clarifies the ownership rights of AI-generated content. This law generally recognizes ownership of training data, models, and AI-generated content where the individual has generated content, created a model, or acquired data so long as the individual (1) did not infringe on copyright law or intellectual property rights and (2) did not perform such activities within the scope of her employment. Also relevant to the matter of personal rights are laws addressing the matter of personhood and AI. Since 2023, North Dakota and Utah have enacted laws that update the legal definition of person to explicitly exclude artificial intelligence (amongst other entities, such as animals or bodies of water).

Deepfakes (38 States, 82 Laws)

Next to laws regulating public sector or government use of AI, the most enacted state laws that regulate the deployment of AI are those dealing with AI-generated or modified content that portrays real individuals doing or saying things they did not in fact do or say. Any such content is commonly referred to as a “deepfake.” Since 2023, 38 states have enacted laws that address deepfakes by 1) criminalizing sexual deepfakes of children, 2) prohibiting the sexual deepfakes of an identifiable adult without the depicted individual’s consent, 3) regulating the use of deepfakes during political campaigns and elections, or 4) requiring disclosures for the use of deepfakes in telemarketing.

Child Sexual Abuse Material (23 States, 26 Laws)

As generative AI tools have proliferated, so too has AI-generated child sexual abuse material (CSAM). For example, earlier this year, Elon Musks’s xAI was found to have produced about 23,000 images containing child sexual abuse material (CSAM) over an 11-day period. Despite Musk's claim that he was “not aware” of these images, xAI had previously required employees on its human data team to sign a waiver agreeing to work with sexual content, among other kinds of content. When those tools were finally integrated into X last December, they were used to generate sexual deepfakes at an unprecedented rate, including CSAM.

This example demonstrates the devastating harm that the most vulnerable, namely children, can experience in the age of AI. Thankfully, to date, 45 states have passed laws updating child pornography laws to include AI-generated or modified CSAM in their existing child pornography laws. Since 2023 alone, 23 states have enacted legislation that prohibits the unlawful creation, distribution, or use of computer or AI-generated or AI-modified CSAM. Additionally, the federal Take It Down Act, enacted last year, makes it a federal crime for individuals to publish AI-generated or modified CSAM.

Sexual Deepfakes (22 States, 29 Laws)

Twenty-two states have also criminalized the creation and distribution of sexual deepfakes of identifiable individuals without a person’s consent. Most of these laws create criminal penalties for individuals who publish or distribute AI-generated or modified intimate images of an identifiable adult without his or her consent, or who attempt to use such synthetic media to harass or extort an individual.

A few states have gone further and have created criminal penalties for websites for hosting or publishing such content. Under these laws, platforms and websites that either host deepfake sexual content of an identifiable individual without that individual’s consent, and/or continue to host such content after receiving a request to remove a particular deepfake, are liable.  These laws are critical for helping victims, as such content can proliferate quickly across platforms that have historically enjoyed immunity for the content their users post. It must also be noted that, at the federal level, the Take It Down Act also creates liability for social media platforms for hosting or publishing nonconsensual, AI-generated sexual images of an identifiable person.

Political Deepfakes / Ads (States 23, Laws 30)

Since 2023, 23 states have enacted laws that create regulations around the use of deepfakes in political advertisements. Most states are rather permissive of “synthetic,” or AI-generated or AI-modified, content used in such ads, so long as certain conditions are met, including: the ad using synthetic content is not run within a certain number of days of an election; the ad discloses that it used AI-generated or modified content; and/or the ad is published with the consent of the candidate depicted. Failure to comply can have civil or criminal penalties. For example, in Minnesota, a candidate whose campaign violates its political deepfake law must forfeit their nomination or office.

Telemarketing (2 States, 2 Laws)

Another way states are tackling the problem of deepfakes is by going after AI deepfakes used in telemarketing and phone scams. This is a growing issue, especially for older populations who are much more likely to fall prey to such scams. Laws that include one’s voice as a personal right are one way that states, such as Tennessee, New York, and others already mentioned above, are dealing with this issue. However, at least two states are dealing with this more directly. In 2024, California enacted a law that updated existing statute to require automatic dialing-announcing devices to inform callers when an announcement uses a “voice simulated or generated using artificial intelligence.” And last year, Texas enacted SB 2373, which creates a cause of action against those who use AI-generated media to financially exploit others, as in the case of phishing.

Economic Development
(14 States, 20 Laws)

States are eager for AI developers and deployers to invest in communities within their jurisdiction. Since 2023, 14 states have enacted 26 laws to directly research, launch, invest in, or shield AI-related economic development projects. Sometimes this looks like investing in research. Mississippi, for example, established a task force to develop and recommend policies that support innovation and business. And Oregon funded research to evaluate the potential impacts of AI on the workforce in the state’s key industries. A couple of states have also established tax credits for AI companies that make large investments in their states. Indiana, for example, enacted a law that established a tax credit for companies that are willing to invest a minimum of $50 million (within five years) in quantum or advanced computing projects or defense infrastructure. Additionally, Utah and Texas have enacted laws regulating AI that contain provisions that would shield AI innovators and companies from liability arising from a violation by granting them an affirmative defense if they fix the problem and/or otherwise are compliant with governance requirements outlined in the law.

Another way states are seeking to fuel innovation is by preempting local ordinances to attract data centers. As states seek to attract the investments of AI developers and deployers, these laws are meant to overcome the increasing opposition by local communities to such investments, like data centers. Last year, West Virginia enacted a first-of-its-kind law, HB 2014, which created a “microgrid development program” that exempts data centers from local ordinances, such as zoning and permitting regulations, and allows data centers to generate their own power, independent of existing utility companies.

Another novel way states are pursuing AI-related economic development is by passing “right to compute” laws. Last year, Montana was the first to enact “right to compute” legislation. Montana’s law (SB 212) prohibits government entities (whether state, local, or otherwise) from restricting an individual’s “ability to privately own or make use of computational resources for lawful purposes” without a “compelling government interest.” It also requires AI-controlled infrastructure, such as data centers, to develop a risk management policy. These are seen by some critics as supportive of Big Tech’s efforts to minimize regulations. Proponents of the law, however, argue that enshrining citizens’ “right to compute,” as well as protecting that right from laws and ordinances that lack “compelling government interest,” enables the state to “get out in front of regulatory threats” and “shield those using and developing AI… from the threat of heavy-handed state or federal regulation,” with the end goal being to “attract high-tech businesses.”

Education (30 States, 46 Laws)

Increasingly, AI—both in terms of AI technologies as well as education in AI or AI literacy, as it is often called—is being integrated into schools across the country. Nationwide, there is a push to expand education programs in AI and AI-related fields, especially at the high school and college level. Likewise, AI technologies are being incorporated into public education contexts: AI tutors in the classroom, AI-driven facial recognition and weapon detection software for security purposes, AI-driven mental health assessments and tools, and more. As touched on above, since 2023, 25 states have appropriated state funds for the expansion of AI-related degree programs and creation of grant programs for AI-related projects in public schools. For example, North Dakota appropriated funds for a “research technology park” at North Dakota State University to conduct “exploratory, transformational, and innovative research that advance autonomous mobile equipment opportunities,” especially for the state’s agriculture and defense industries. And in 2024, Hawaii created a two-year program at the University of Hawaii to develop an AI-driven wildfire forecasting system.

Beyond simply funding the expansion of these programs or tools, 20 states have enacted laws that focus on researching the use and impact of AI in school and/or the development of school policies when it comes to AI. For example, California, Delaware, and North Dakota enacted laws that establish committees to research the use and impact of AI in schools and to develop and recommend policies for schools and/or legislatures. Additionally, at least eight states have also enacted laws either establishing standards for AI use in education or requiring state departments of education or universities and local school boards to develop AI policies.

Only two states have directly regulated the deployment and use of AI technologies in schools. Last year, Nevada enacted a first-of-its-kind law that prohibits the use of AI in schools that would replace school counselors, psychologists, or social workers. Colorado enacted legislation that prohibits schools from processing biometric data obtained through facial recognition services used in school curricula (approved by the school board) without express opt-in consent from a student and/or the student’s parents. 

Government Use, Committees, and Task Forces
(34 States, 85 Laws)

In many cases, enacted state AI regulations relate to the deployment of AI by government entities. For example, 32 states have enacted such laws. These laws vary, addressing a wide range of AI-related issues and uses. Because AI tools are relatively new, 22 states have opted to first create special task forces or committees to research potential benefits of AI use, conduct inventories of existing AI usage within government, and develop, recommend, or advise agencies and legislatures on AI policies for government usage or in particular industries. Many of these committees are tasked with making recommendations or policies for the development, procurement, or use of AI across all state agencies. Others are tasked with making recommendations to the state legislature.  Some, however, are more specialized, focusing on inventorying, researching, and making recommendations for specific departments or industries, such as labor, education,  healthcare, or entertainment.

However, beyond the creation of task forces, research committees, and advisory boards, states have regulated government use of AI in a few other critical ways. 

Law Enforcement & Facial Recognition (7 States, 7 Laws)

Prior to 2023, a dozen states had passed laws regulating the use of AI-driven facial recognition software by law enforcement. Since then, at least three more states have passed laws and regulations relating to government use of facial recognition software and biometric data obtained through such software. Utah’s SB 231 (2024) amends existing restrictions on the use of facial recognition by law enforcement by prohibiting a government agency from obtaining biometric surveillance data without a warrant. Montana’s 2023 bill, SB 397, was the first to require a warrant for police use of facial recognition data. Maryland’s SB 182 (2024) mirrors other state regulation, restricting police use of facial recognition for a limited number of serious crimes (as defined by the law) and requiring a notice that such technology was used in an investigation leading to charges. Beyond such laws that directly regulate law enforcement use of AI-driven facial recognition technologies, other enacted laws create reporting requirements such as providing an inventory of technologies used or require law enforcement agencies to create policies for their use of AI.

National Security (States 2, Laws 2)

Chinese-owned DeepSeek made a splash when it became Apple’s most downloaded app overnight last January, surpassing ChatGPT. Today, it remains the fourth most popular generative AI consumer app. Like TikTok, foreign-owned AI systems like DeepSeek raise national security concerns, especially as US politicians see themselves in a new Cold-War-like arms race with adversaries like China. To this end, two states—Oregon and Kansas—have passed laws prohibiting the use of AI services owned, developed, or controlled by foreign corporations.

Oregon’s HB 3936 is much broader, prohibiting state employees from using state devices or networks to run any AI service owned or developed by a foreign corporate entity, whereas Kansas’ HB 2313 prohibits any state use of such AI (explicitly naming DeepSeek) that is controlled by a country of concern, or foreign adversary.

Legal Proceedings & Criminal Justice (States 5, Laws 6)

Another way states are regulating government use of AI is by ensuring that humans are involved with “high-risk” decision-making processes when it comes to courts and criminal justice. Since 2023, three states—Louisiana, Utah, and Virginia—have passed laws that establish protocols around the use of AI tools in legal contexts. Of the three, both Virginia and Utah enacted laws that prohibit the outsourcing of certain legal decisions to AI-driven recommendations or risk-assessment systems, and require that any such decisions must be reviewed and approved by a qualified human and not solely determined by AI-based recommendations. The third state, Louisiana, enacted a law that prohibits the use of AI-generated or altered false evidence in court and outlines protocols for the use of AI tools in legal proceedings.

Government Employment (1 State, 1 Law)

Just as some states have enacted regulations concerning the use of AI in employment decisions in the private sector, at least one state has regulated use of AI when it comes to government employment. In 2025, New York enacted a law creating a policy around the use of AI in government employment decisions. However, beyond creating policies for how AI could be used in employment decision processes, including requiring disclosures of any such tools used, the law protects government employees by prohibiting the replacement of employees by AI as well as offloading key responsibilities to AI.  

Healthcare (17 States, 25 laws)

Seventeen states have also enacted laws investing in, directing, or regulating the deployment of AI within health-related fields. As already mentioned, a few states, such as Illinois, California, Oregon, and Utah, have prohibited mental health or nursing chatbots from being marketed as licensed professionals, and others have required that disclosures be made when using AI-related services to engage with patients. Beyond these, a number of states have enacted laws that regulate how AI is used in decision-making processes. Since 2023, at least seven states have enacted some kind of law that prohibits health care plans from making coverage determinations or utilization reviews solely at the recommendation of an AI-driven automated decision-making tool. Other notable health-care related AI laws include New Mexico’s HB 178 (2025), which requires the state board of nursing to develop standards for the use of AI in nursing; Florida’s SB 7018 (2024), which established a council to explore the use of innovative technologies, including AI, to improve healthcare quality and delivery; and Texas’s SB 1188 (2025), which requires healthcare practitioners to disclose any use of AI to patients and to review all AI-obtained information for accuracy before submitting it to patient records.

Additionally, at least three states have passed laws related to the use of AI in genetic health research. The Kansas law mentioned above, which prohibits state use of AI controlled by countries of concern or foreign adversaries, also prohibits the use of genetic analysis and sequencing software produced in or by a foreign adversary. Also, Florida and Rhode Island have established professional bodies to help facilitate the advancement of AI and genomics.

Conclusion

Enacted state AI regulations are varied and multifaceted. And not all of them contain the same definitions and language. Nevertheless, what emerges from the above survey is a picture of state policy that shows significant areas of overlapping concern when it comes to governing AI. To be sure, the mere enactment of these policies may not be sufficient to demonstrate that they reflect voters’ exact preferences. Almost always, the enactment of a legislative measure reflects a variety of interests, some of which have more lobbying power than others. That said, the enactment of the above bills indicates a significant degree of political will and coordination, and therefore reflect, to some meaningful degree, the preferences of the American people. Based on the legislative data used for this report, these preferences could be summarized as follows:

• Americans want inquiry. They want to equip lawmakers, educators, and others to gain a better understanding of AI so that they can effectively regulate it.
• Americans want humanity. They want to ensure that humans, not AI, are calling the shots when it comes to decision-making processes, especially those that have significant consequences, such as those pertaining to employment, court rulings, criminal justice, and healthcare.
• Americans want transparency. Americans also want to know when AI is being deployed, and they want to know the risks and biases of a given AI system.
• Americans want safety and security. From deepfakes and chatbot harms to national security and privacy protections, Americans want developers and deployers (private and public) to prioritize the safety of Americans. This is especially true when it comes to children.
• Americans want accountability. Most importantly, Americans want AI companies to be liable for the harms their products and services cause.

As the debate continues about what belongs in a federal framework, these state laws offer a window into the kinds of AI regulations and investments that voters desire. To the degree they express those preferences, these laws serve as a critical starting point for federal legislators in Congress as they work out a federal standard to regulate AI.

Editor's Note: Download the full policy memo below for a footnoted version.

Introduction and Executive Summary

Young men are the subject of growing public attention. They are often  described as languishing compared to earlier generations of men and young women, and both popular and academic writers have turned a bright light on their struggles. As commonly told, the story is one of crisis, combining negative social and economic data about their situation with disconcerting claims about what is happening among them. 

Accounts of this crisis emphasize several troubling trends. Fewer young men go to college, for instance, and fewer of them come away with a degree. Just 41% of degrees are now awarded to men. Young men have higher rates of conditions such as ADHD and autism and have more problems with drugs, gambling, pornography, and the law. Many young men today have lower earnings and career prospects compared to earlier cohorts. They have fewer friends, socialize less, and are less civically engaged. Fewer are making a timely transition to adulthood by meeting such milestones as having a full-time job, being financially independent, living away from their parents’ home, and getting married and having children. As a March 2025 report by the UK’s Centre for Social Justice put it, “The deeper truth is that too many boys are growing up without the guidance, discipline, and purpose they need to thrive.”

These general trends have been well documented. In our new survey of young men—conducted by YouGov between April 7 and 15, 2025, with a representative sample of 2,000 men ages 18 to 29 living in the U.S.—we found them, too. But what do these trends mean? That’s the crucial question, and to offer an interpretation, we asked both how young men are doing at this time of their lives and why so many are facing the challenges they do. Of course, a lot of ink has already been spilled on this topic. The extensive commentary on the crisis has produced a variety of explanations. Here is a rough summary of three of the most common ones:

• Structural Changes. A sizable literature highlights the role of “structural” changes as the most important contributing factors. The struggles of young men are symptoms of wider economic and educational alterations, such as the off shoring of manufacturing and unfavorable school policies that have weakened the opportunity structure for men.
• Idle Young Men. Some accounts, making little reference to political economy, focus their explanations on deficiencies in young men themselves. Caught up in self-indulgence, a substantial number of young men have become resigned to idleness—addicted to screens and filling their hours with virtual distractions. Their failings reflect passivity, lack of ambition, poor work ethic, and a “purpose void.”
• Failed Socialization. Another school of interpretation centers on failed socialization. Brought up under the old, rigid masculinity norms, young men have not learned emotional openness or to express vulnerability. Now lonely and isolated, they have withdrawn into a kind of antagonistic reclusion and increasingly come under the sway of the “toxic masculinity” promoted in the online manosphere. From this poisoned well, many are imbibing resentment, nihilism, and misogynistic attitudes toward women.

While these arguments are not exhaustive, they represent some of the principal theories. When we designed our survey, these were some of the claims we sought to investigate.

We wanted to hear from young men on these matters. Perhaps indicative of their status now, their voice is often absent from this discussion. Others speak for them; but what do young men say? What does “coming of age” mean to them, or masculinity, or going to college? What are their goals and hopes? Who are their role models? What kinds of struggles have they faced, what obstacles do they see in their way, and with what attitude do they confront their future?

Major Findings

Given the length, we have broken this report into two parts. For Part I, here are some of the most important things we learned:

• The defining standards of adulthood have continued to change for young men. Once conventional benchmarks, like marriage and parenthood, long ago moved to the bottom of the list. But in the past two decades, the formerly central place of completing formal education has slipped as well, now considered extremely important by only 31% of young men, far below newer standards like being independent personally (51%) and financially (53%). And, although defined in individual terms, the feeling of having reached full adulthood is, paradoxically, highly correlated with the old benchmarks: being married and a parent, working full time, and completing college or trade school. Hence, even among men ages 24-29, less than half (41%) report “definitely” feeling like adults.
• Young men are having a hard time in matters of love—59% were not in a romantic relationship at the time of the survey. However, despite obstacles ranging from job instability to doubts about the availability of suitable partners, most men who are not in a relationship are open to dating (74%), most unmarried men desire marriage (68%, with another 21% unsure), and most childless men would like to be a parent in the future (62%).
• Young men view college with a great deal of ambivalence. Young men who have not gone to college or dropped out before graduating are the most skeptical of its value. But even among young men who are attending college or have a degree, half either strongly (17%) or somewhat (34%) agree that college is not worth the time or money, and 60% either strongly (19%) or somewhat (41%) share the view that they could get a job that interests them without a college degree.

• Trade school/apprenticeship is a valuable path to adulthood for young men. While these skilled men are often overlooked entirely, we find that those without a bachelor’s degree who have completed such programs are employed full time or self-employed at rates (77%) very similar to those of college grads (80%). We also find that, compared to men without a bachelor’s degree who did not enroll in or finish trade school, young men who did are much more likely to be married. Moreover, these programs may be more accessible—or appealing—to young men with certain learning-related conditions. Those who have experienced autism, ADHD, or learning disabilities like dyslexia are about as likely to have graduated from a trade school or apprenticeship program as those without a history of these disorders. Meanwhile, four-year college graduation rates are much lower for men with learning-related conditions.
• Young men are not enthralled by on-line influencers as their role models. When we asked who they most looked up to as role models, mothers (79%) and fathers (69%) topped the list, followed by coaches and teachers (57%). Among prominent figures from the worlds of tech, politics, entertainment, and religion, the most admired role model was former president Barack Obama, whereas the least was online influencer Andrew Tate.
• Most young men say manhood is often viewed negatively in our society, but their understanding of masculinity is not the toxic masculinity of the manosphere. When asked if “being a man requires a willingness to sacrifice for others,” and whether “manhood involves strength, responsibility, and leadership,” 89% of young men endorse the first statement and 85% the second.

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• Young men are not apathetic. Rather than easy accommodation to their circumstances, our findings suggest that young men’s hopes are being frustrated. For instance, they want a job that provides them with an adequate standard of living. When asked about their most significant challenge in life so far, many young men’s answers concern money and finding a good job. The same concerns play a role in some men’s hesitancy toward pursuing marriage. We find that young men care about their status, want to contribute, and are distressed by the gap between their current circumstances and what they really desire for their life.

There were many exceptions to these general statements. Young men are not all the same. Many are not in crisis but thriving, and some are struggling mightily in just the ways that certain critiques overgeneralize. But, in broad terms, these results hold true.

Why Demoralization? 

For the survey, we took a question from the often-used Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale, which asks respondents how well the following statement describes them: “All in all, I am inclined to think that I am a failure.” Nearly half (46%) of young men ages 18-23 say this represents their view of themselves at least somewhat well, while 38% of those ages 24-29 say the same. Only 32% of men ages 18-29 reject this characterization. As we will see, these numbers do not mean that young men have lost hope in themselves or their future. But the sense of being a failure is one measure of a more general—and frankly heartbreaking—demoralization.

As we analyzed the results of the survey, what stood out was not indifference or a lack of worthy aspirations but the trying circumstances facing today’s young men. Their ambiguous and socially marginal position is taking a heavy toll on them. Young men are not where they want to be, often feel trapped, and are unsure of what to do. At least in the near term, they are not optimistic that things will get much better.

About the Report

The Plan for this Report: This report differs substantially from our customary approach, which tends to focus on comparative outcomes by demographic variables. The purpose here was both more qualitative and interpretive. So, while we do include demographic data throughout this report, it is far from the primary emphasis and is used only to more sufficiently contextualize our findings. As noted, to maintain a reasonable length, we have broken this report into two parts. In Part I, we present three of the five chapters:

Chapter 1: Coming of Age

Chapter 2: What Young Men Want: Work and Education

Chapter 3: What Young Men Want: Marriage and Manhood

As an imminent follow up, we plan to release Part II of America’s Demoralized Men, which will cover:

Chapter 4: Social Connection

Chapter 5: Alienation and Distress

Conclusion: What We Have Learned

We hope readers will engage with this material with an open mind. Our survey cannot provide causal explanations for young men’s predicament or offer definitive remedies. Our role is not to challenge the views of our male respondents, or to offer recommendations to lawmakers aspiring to reverse failed policies or proffer new ones. But we do hope that in exploring young men’s views, we will contribute to a better understanding of them, their predicament, and the significant challenges they confront in their everyday lives.

Data and Methods: The Institute for Family Studies Gen-Z survey on men was conducted by YouGov between April 7 and 15, 2025, with a representative sample of 2,000 men, ages 18 to 29, living in the United States.

The respondents were matched to a sampling frame based on gender, age, race, and educa-tion. The sampling frame is an 18-29 year old subset of a politically representative "modeled frame" of US adults, based upon the American Community Survey (ACS) public use microdata file, public voter file records, the 2020 Current Population Survey (CPS) Voting and Registration supplements, the 2020 National Election Pool (NEP) exit poll, and the 2020 CES surveys, in-cluding demographics and 2020 presidential vote.

The matched cases were weighted using propensity scores derived from age, gender, race/ethnic-ity, education, and region, grouped into deciles and post-stratified. The characteristics of the final weighted sample mirror those of the general U.S. population of men ages 18 to 29. Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) adults are included but are not analyzed separately.

All estimates have been weighed to reflect the actual population.

Chapter 1: Coming of Age

“Growing up in general [h]as been challenging.”—Unmarried, age 19, attending community college

The young men we surveyed, ages 18-29, are in a phase of life that many social scientists now refer to as “early” or “emerging adulthood.” An unstable, in-between time, this phase is not adolescence but not quite full adulthood, either. Characteristics of this period typically include continued parental dependence, going to school, trying out jobs, moving frequently, experimenting with romantic relationships, exploring opportunities, delaying commitments, and so forth. Young people speak of it as both an exciting time of freedom and possibilities, and a very challenging age of trying to get established and come into their own.

The transition from childhood to adulthood has always been somewhat fraught. It is, after all, a change of social status and not simply a date on a calendar, such as the 18th or 21st birthday. To enact the transition, many societies throughout history have had formal rites of passage, especially for boys, that mark the break with one status and incorporation into another. Coming of age stories, which reflect on the many personal challenges of growth and maturity, have long been a major genre in literature, theatre, and film. In a distant echo of “failure to launch,” earlier generations of young people often lingered between these life stages as they struggled to accumulate the necessary resources to marry, set up a household, and start a family.

Today, as our survey indicates, the transition is immensely challenging. The defining criteria for adulthood have changed. They are now less tangible, less connected to roles of spouse or parent or even employee. The standards have become more subjective and ambiguous, and for this reason, along with educational and economic delays, they take longer to achieve. Consequently, when we asked young men if they felt they had reached adulthood, most are unsure whether they have fully arrived.

Changing Benchmarks of Adulthood

In an article published in 2004, the distinguished sociologist Frank Furstenberg and his colleagues observed a shift in the benchmarks of adulthood and the proper sequence to achieve them. Their analysis of the 2002 General Social Survey (GSS) found that the normative pattern that held sway in the 1950s and 1960s could no longer be taken for granted. Where once “most Americans viewed family roles and adult responsibilities as nearly synonymous,” most now saw them as detached.

In their article, Furstenberg, et al. presented the responses of all adults. For the sake of comparison with our findings, we reanalyzed the 2002 GSS data to separate out the views of young men ages 18-29. As shown in the figure below, in 2002, large shares of men ranked educational completion (65%), working full time (55%), financial independence (48%), and being able to support a family (48%) as extremely important hallmarks of adulthood. In contrast, only 13% and 9% said the same about getting married and having a child, respectively. For a large majority, the roles of spouse and parent had become life choices and were no longer regarded as necessary criteria.

In our 2025 survey, we asked young men the same question: What milestones did they consider important for defining adulthood? We drew one part of the list from the “markers of adulthood literature.” We consider those items below. The other part of the list repeated, in similar terms, the classic (socio-demographic) benchmarks used in the GSS.

In the following figure, we see that substantial percentages of young men continue to view financial independence from parents (53%) and being able to “provide for others” (39%) as extremely important benchmarks of adulthood. However, compared to 2002, much smaller shares of respondents regard educational completion (31%) and working full time (34%) as extremely important. Since financial self-sufficiency remains central to these men, the revised assessments of education and work, which are also found in other research, suggest changes in the nature of the labor market.

Figure 1. Percentage of men who consider a given milestone to be “extremely important” for becoming an adult, 2002 and 2025

Thinking in terms of the overall pattern, the biggest shift since 2002 is in the relative position of completing formal education, which was then the top marker. This shift may reflect men’s changing evaluation of the value of a college education. As we discuss further below, young men, whether they have attended college or not, are unsure if college is worth the costly investment or the necessary gateway to a desirable career. Another factor may be the increased demands to regularly update skills for new opportunities or completely retool for a change of field. Education, formal or otherwise, is more a continuing process than something you finish, once and for all.

Working “full time” once referred to a position that an employee settled into for an extended period. Now, with the continued decline of career trajectories and long-term positions, the rise of the gig economy (multiple short-term or part-time jobs), the growth of “fractural employment” (splitting time among multiple enterprises or projects), and other developments like the “fissured workplace” (wherein corporations have shifted from employing full-time staff to subcontracting out operations), this is far less often the case. For young people, work is more fluid now.

In both the 2002 GSS and our 2025 survey, getting married and having children are the least likely to be called “extremely important” by young men. Like Furstenberg et al., we find that attaining these roles is no longer a primary defining characteristic of adulthood for most young men. In our survey, just 22% and 25%, respectively, rate them as extremely important benchmarks. Researchers have observed that once young adults take on social roles, like spouse and parent, they are more likely to incorporate these into their conception of adulthood.

Our survey corroborates this dynamic, with markedly more married respondents (38%) saying that “getting married” is an extremely important marker of adulthood compared to unmarried men (19%); and parents (41%) endorsing “having children” at a much higher rate than nonparents (18%).

Figure 2. Milestones by the percentage of respondents who consider them to be extremely important, very important, somewhat/not too/not at all important

Psychological Benchmarks

In addition to the classic sociodemographic benchmarks, our list included two standards commonly used in the markers of adulthood literature: “accepting responsibility for yourself” and “making independent decisions.” As shown in the previous figure, 55% and 51% of young men, respectively, rate these as “extremely important”—making them the first and third-most-likely criteria in our survey to receive this rating. Less than 20% of our respondents, by contrast, view these two items as somewhat, not too, or not at all important.

Our findings suggest that, as the meaning of adulthood has shifted away from tangible social roles like spouse, parent, and employee, it has become more subjective, with hazier boundaries. Other surveys of the meaning of growing up have also found a more psychological orientation. In a recent British study, by Megan Wright and Sophie von Stumm of York University, for instance, 79% of young adult men and women, 18-29, place high definitional importance on “Accepting responsibility for the consequences of your actions,” and 80% on “Making my own choices without having to rely on others.” Although the wording in our study is not identical, the numbers are very close to those of our young male respondents. “Research shows,” according to the authors, citing a long list of example studies, “that adults today define adulthood through psychological characteristics rather than by socio-demographic milestones.”

A significant shift has taken place in response to new realities, and, as we also find, with important consequences.

Launch Timing

There is no question that young people are reaching the classical benchmarks later. But this change needs some context. In the figure below, we present Census and American Community Survey data to show how employment, marriage, and parenthood trends have changed for young men since 1910. We use the longer time period because it shows how marriage and parenthood rates were also lower for young men prior to the Baby Boom years, though not as low as they are now. Most of the evidence for the familiar “failure to launch” critiques, leveled repeatedly over the past 20 years, come from figures like this one. Unfortunately, they only start with the peak year of 1960.

Figure 3. Percentage of men, ages 18-29, who have reached various milestones

These critiques take for granted the old benchmarks, the old idea of “settling down,” and the old norm that career, marriage or coupling, and (perhaps) parenthood should follow in quick succession by roughly the mid to late 20s. They fault young men (though usually not young women) for flunking the test of growing up. Unable or unwilling to meet the standards, young men are “pre-adults,” in a state of “arrested development,” suffering from Peter Pan Syndrome, and in a memorable phrase from England, KIPPERS: “kids in parents’ pockets eroding retirement savings.”

Granted, achieving the marriage and childbearing rates of the 1950s and 1960s was a serious cultural accomplishment, one that we would be extremely fortunate to have sustained. But we must also recognize that in the precarious social and normative world young people are navigating today, a deemphasis on role transitions would seem inescapable. After all, from a young age, they have heard a cultural message of emancipation from the old constraints of social roles and forms of life. Now, their future is open, and they can be whatever they want to be and live however they choose. There is seemingly no stigma attached to delaying family formation or choosing to remain unmarried and not have children. Their parents do not stress these things. Adulthood, as they know, has lost its traditional structure.

Today, young people live under a new mandate. Their charge is to use their freedom to construct their own individualized occupational and life trajectories. Compared to the relative security of the old normative pattern, this self-defining task introduces a great deal of contingency, an uncertainty that is typically interpreted in a positive way. Now young people have a space to explore options and realize more of their potential. In an evolving and unpredictable environment like ours, the key norms are to remain open to change, flexible, free of entanglements, and confident that the twists and turns in circumstances can be negotiated successfully in one’s favor.

Though framed in terms of freedom, the mandate to build an individualized biography is not an option. Under our late modern conditions of autonomy, to quote the British sociologist Anthony Giddens, “we have no choice but to choose how to be and how to act.” The conventional life-courses marked by clear signposts and predictable transitions have largely disappeared. Without pregiven pathways, there for the taking, young people must choose a purpose, figure out the means to best realize their goals, and formulate an adult identity for themselves. And they must do so in a highly volatile economic environment.

Given this challenging self-development task, it is little wonder that young men, as we show in this report, conceptualize adulthood in more psychological terms. Internal and individualistic milestones are seemingly more meaningful and more attainable because they are under more direct personal control.

But achieving adulthood also takes longer now because the new, more psychological benchmarks are inherently subjective and incremental. Whether one is “accepting responsibility for yourself,” or “making independent decisions,” is a question of degrees of maturity and self-reliance. This demanding task implies an ongoing process of personal growth and development, a process harder to establish with certainty. The effect is to suspend more young men in an “emerging” status for a lengthier period.

Are You an Adult Yet?

After questioning what factors are important to defining adulthood, we asked young men about their own sense of where they stood: “Do you feel you have reached full adulthood, or not?” Respondents chose between four possible responses: 1) “yes, definitely”; 2) “yes, mostly”; 3) “no, not so much”; and 4) “no, not at all.” Only 5% of young men in our survey feel they have “not at all” reached full adulthood, while 31%, report “definitely” feeling like they have. The most common response is somewhere in-between, ranging from “not so much” (24%) to “mostly” (40%) a full adult.

As we would expect, greater adult feeling is associated with older chronological age. For instance, as the following figure shows, young men ages 24-29 are twice as likely (41%) as those 18-23 (20%) to feel they have “definitely” attained adulthood. And the younger group (39%) is twice as likely as the older group (19%) to respond “not so much” or “not at all” to the question of whether they have become an adult. This in-between feeling is particularly common among young men in school and those with a high school education or less. They are no longer children under parental supervision, and yet often still rely on their families for financial and other forms of support.

Figure 4. Percentage of young men who say they have reached full adulthood, by various characteristics

When we consider additional characteristics that might influence subjective adult status, we find a striking and, at first glance, paradoxical pattern. Young men define adulthood in internal, psychological terms, such as “accepting responsibility for yourself,” and place far less importance on the socio-demographic milestones, like marriage and parenthood. But when it came to judging whether they have reached adulthood, the old benchmarks take center stage. 

Feeling definitely like an adult is highly associated with being married and a parent. As with age, we see a doubling—with married young men (54%) being twice as likely as unmarried (26%) men, and parents (47%) being twice as likely as those without children (24%), to feel that they have definitely reached full adulthood. Only 23% of unmarried respondents without kids feel this way; a much larger portion of this group (37%) say that they do not yet feel like adults. 

We also find that respondents who are neither in school nor caregivers are more likely to report definitely reaching adulthood—if they are working full time (as opposed to being unemployed or working part-time). Similarly, those who attend religious services more than once a month are more likely to make this assertion than those who attend less than once a year, if at all. Finally, among men without a BA, those who have completed a trade school or apprenticeship program are more likely to feel like an adult than those who have neither completed such a program, nor enrolled in one. 

These findings might suggest that the gap we find between the weak position of classical benchmarks in the definition of adulthood and the strong position in the subjective experience of feeling like an adult represents a contradiction. Young men do not consider socio-demographic group memberships, like marriage, parenthood, and full-time employment, as key defining characteristics of adulthood, yet they perceive themselves as adults when they belong to these very groups. Their self-perception of adult status, in other words, appears to be based on different criteria than the ones they use to define adulthood.

There is, however, a more straightforward interpretation. First, to reiterate, for young people, the key definitional criteria are more nebulous and individualistic than the old milestones. They see adulthood, like other aspects of their identity, as an autobiographical production achieved through their life choices and experiences. It is a process of growth and adaptation that does not depend on objective markers perceived to be anachronistic under current conditions.  

But when it comes to feeling like an adult, it is not hard to see that social recognition must play a part. The more psychological benchmarks, like making independent decisions, cannot be directly stated as matters of fact; they must be demonstrated by some action, which can be frustratingly hard to do. Compare that to the status of being a parent. Every institution that parents interact with, from the doctor’s office to the preschool, will typically relate to them as adults. Those without children, by contrast, cannot receive this form of social validation. Similarly, acknowledgement of adult status at a young age is more likely to be extended to the married than the single, and to those in full-time employment than those in part-time work or still in school. These statuses denote, in themselves, adult commitment and responsibility, both to others and to oneself. 

Put differently, adulthood involves social mutuality. Despite what young people might have been led to believe, they cannot simply claim adulthood for themselves by individual decision or self-perception; it must also be socially conferred. And, while the new conditions of life promote an individualistic path to adulthood, there remain social norms and expectations about what constitutes adult attitudes and behavior and about the proper timing of role transitions. This is why we get critiques like “failure to launch” to begin with.

Executive Summary

Most Americans have a general sense of which states are rich or poor, urban or rural, “Red” or “Blue.” But a “map of parenting” is more mysterious: there is very little credible, comparable data about what parenting and childhood is like around the United States. As a result, when parents talk to each other about the challenges of parenting, or when policymakers consider what policies will support families, these conversations often happen “in the dark.” In this new Institute for Family Studies report based on a survey of almost 24,000 parents of over 40,000 children, including 2,600 teenagers, we remedy that gap. By sampling parents around the country, this new research shows how parenting varies around the country on several key axes.

Overall, we find large, and surprising, regional differences in parenting nationwide. Parents give the most positive evaluations of parenting in the Southeast and New England, followed by the Southwest and Midwest. But the trend in parenting approaches is quite different. Using a composite score that measures the extent to which children have independent, playful, socially-diverse, and technology-lite childhoods, we find that kids in the Great Plains, Mountain states, and New England have the highest scores, while a cluster of states around Southern Appalachia are where children have the least independent, least socially-diverse, most technologically-dependent childhoods.

Our parenting measures do not fit neatly into the other “maps” of America that readers might imagine; they are not a map of cities vs. rural areas, politics, wealth, or even family structure. Rather, they represent different, often barely visible axes of cultural differences in America when it comes to parenting experiences and styles. In general, parents choosing to give their kids independent and tech-lite childhoods report greater difficulty in parenting, despite achieving positive outcomes such as better mental health. These parents face widespread cultural norms in favor of helicopter parenting, intensive supervision, and unlimited screen time. If Americans want the next generation to grow up to be independent, free-spirited, resilient adults, this will require us to consider a major overhaul of American parenting, and it is long past time for policymakers to start listening to parents about what kinds of support they need.

Key Findings

1. The states with the top marks in our Resilient Childhood Score (i.e., where kids have the most diverse social lives and independent play, and use digital technology least) are Hawaii, Maine, Maryland, North Dakota, Rhode Island, and Utah. The states with the bottom scores are Kentucky, Louisiana, North Carolina, Virginia, and West Virginia. 
    
2. The states with the top marks in our Parental Experience Score (i.e., where parents feel parenting is most pleasant and where they feel most supported in their parenting) are Alabama, Alaska, Georgia, Illinois, New Hampshire, and South Carolina. The states with the bottom scores are Delaware, Kansas, Nebraska, North Dakota, and Utah. 
    
3. In general, states with a better Resilient Childhood Score tend to have a worse Parental Experience Score. Where parents are creating autonomous, independent, social, screen-lite childhoods, parenting is harder and feels more isolating. 
    
4. For American children to have childhoods that create the independence and self-reliance that have long typified American culture, parents will need more societal support and reinforcement to create resilient childhoods. Families can’t do it alone.

Introduction

Over the last several decades, parenting in the United States has radically changed, as screens and social mediahave reached into the tenderest years of children’s lives. According to conventional wisdom, parents should accommodate this new normal and learn to raise “digital natives.” In practice, this approach reduces exercising one’s parental duty to reliance on the “parental controls” that Big Tech companies provide, often only after extraordinary public pressure.

Parents across the country are silently struggling en masse, having learned that these paltry settings are unfit to address the dangers that their kids encounter online. Whether smartphones in schools, social media accounts for children, infinite-scroll pornography, or school-distributed tablets with minimal safeguards, parents have haplessly wrestled with powerful technological forces. Unable to keep their children safe, American parents have turned to state lawmakers for help. Today, dozens of states have passed laws to make the internet, app stores, and screens safer for kids, as well as to remove smartphones from schools, with the appetite for more regulation only growing among lawmakers and parents alike.

At the same time, particularly through the work of scholars like Jonathan Haidt, a consensus has emerged that, though much good might be accomplished by getting kids off screens and delaying the introduction of social media, this is not sufficient on its own to reestablish a healthy childhood. As digital engagement among kids has increased, the unsupervised activity of children in real life has dramatically decreased. Distances that children once walked beyond their yard have been shortened; the hours kids spend in-person with friends have been reduced; decisions and challenges kids once faced alone have become subject to parental oversight; and the time kids spend beyond the parental eye has decreased.

Executive Summary

Young adults today are living in a depressed dating economy. In this 2026 State of Our Unions report, we pursued greater insight on the challenges of contemporary dating through the 2025 National Dating Landscape Survey, a nationally representative sample of 5,275 unmarried young adults ages 22–35 in the United States. We focused mostly on the dating experiences of those single young adults who expect to marry (86%; N = 4,539).

What did we learn?

Overall, we found evidence that many young adults are experiencing a dating recession during their prime dating years. Most young adults are not dating much and many are struggling with significant barriers to initiating dating relationships and pursuing their desire to one day marry and have a family. Most young adults across our country endorse relatively traditional purposes for dating and do not express an overt fear of commitment, but many lack the needed skills for dating and the resilience to handle the natural ups and downs of relationship starts and stops along the journey of dating. Here are some of the key trends we found:

• Only About 1 in 3 of Young Adults is Actively Dating

Only about 30% of young adults reported that they are dating, either casually or exclusively. When asked how often they were dating, only 31% of young adults – a quarter of women (26%) and a little more than a third of men (36%) – reported that they were active daters (dating once a month or more). Nearly three-quarters of women (74%) and nearly two-thirds of men (64%) in our survey reported they had not dated or dated only a few times in the last year. These numbers are noteworthy given that about half (51%) of the young adults in our national survey expressed interest in starting a relationship.

• Young Adults Lack Confidence in Their Dating Skills

We also found that many young adults lack faith in their dating skills and their ability to initiate a promising romantic relationship. In fact, it is safe to say that among the rising generation dating confidence is low, with only about 1-in-3 young adults expressing much faith in their dating skills. Only about 1-in-3 young adult men and 1-in-5 young adult women expressed confidence in the fundamental skill of being able to approach someone they were romantically interested in. Less than 4-in-10 (37%) said they trusted their judgment when it comes to choosing a dating partner. A similar minority of young adults expressed confidence in their ability to discuss feelings with a dating partner (34%) and picking up on social cues on dates (36%).

• Young Adults Desire a Dating Culture Aimed at Forming Serious Relationships

Despite a common narrative that young adults are only interested in casual dating and unattached hooks-ups, we found that young adults – both women and men, younger and older – strongly endorse a dating culture focused on forming serious relationships (83% of women and 74% of men) and creating emotional connections (83% of women and 76% of men). These more traditional purposes for dating are aimed at building committed romantic relationships and learning how to facilitate personal growth in those relationships. While dating frequency may be low, most young adults seem to yearn for the connection of serious dating and marriage relationships.

• Money Worries, Self-confidence, and Past Dating Experiences are Big Barriers in the Modern Dating Landscape

Young adults reported significant financial and social/emotional barriers to dating. The biggest barrier to dating they expressed was not having enough money, endorsed by more than half (52%) of respondents (58% of men and 46% of women). Contemporary dating is often focused on commercial activities, and young adults often feel they can’t afford to date in this way. Respondents also frequently reported that personal factors get in their way with dating. At the top of this list were lack of confidence (49%) and bad dating experiences in the past (48%).

• Dating Resilience is Low Among Young Adults

Dating resilience is low among young adults, with only about a quarter (28%) reporting that they can stay positive after a bad date or relationship setback. More than half (55%) agreed that their breakups have made them more reluctant to begin new romantic relationships. This study shows that there is a marital-expectations vs. dating-skills gap for most young adults today.

This gap calls for a concerted effort to teach young adults healthy dating skills, something that receives little attention from the general culture or even the relationship education field. Young adults could use some basic help in building dating skills. Their desires and attitudes are not the problem. They want to build real human connections, form serious relationships, explore what they want in a future long-term partner, and desire the personal growth that comes from forming serious romantic relationships. And contrary to common beliefs, most are not afraid of commitment or losing personal freedom, and few fear that dating will interfere with their educational and career plans. Our young adults need effective road maps that guide them to and through the dating experiences that will connect their marital expectations to actual unions.

The Dating Recession: How Bad Is It and What Can We Do?

There is good news about marriage that all can cheer: Marriages are significantly more stable today than they were four to five decades ago. Granted, much of this stability bonus is a result of who is marrying. Couples with riskier profiles for marital breakup have become a decreasing proportion of all marrying couples. Couples who marry today are more likely to have a set of characteristics that lend themselves to more stable marriages. For instance, they are better educated, more financially stable, more religious, and less likely to marry as teens. Still, regardless of its causes, greater marital stability is something to celebrate because of the known benefits that stable, healthy marriages give to children, adults, and their communities.

Hidden in this encouraging trend, however, is a paradox: Increasing marital stability exists alongside a strong trend of fewer adults getting married. First-marriage rates have fallen by more than 10% over the past two decades, continuing a steady descent since the 1970s. Demographers now estimate that a third of young adults born in the early decades of the twenty-first century will never marry. (Remarriage rates are tanking, too.)

If our only goal is to promote marital stability, then a falling marriage rate, with couples who possess riskier divorce profiles opting out, is not a concern. But if marriage itself is a crucial social and personal good, then a substantial decrease in the number of adults who marry across the life course is a discouraging counterweight to the good news of increasing marital stability. It is hard to celebrate stronger marriages when fewer and fewer young people are entering them. Socially, this is ambivalent news.

Numerous scholars have explored why fewer young adults are marrying. Increased focus on post-secondary education and careers during young adulthood and a declining cultural emphasis on needing to be married – a phenomenon dubbed “the Midas Mindset” – are commonly cited factors.  But one straightforward reason for the decline in marriage rates that has not received much attention is the dating system. Many young adults today complain that the dating system is badly broken. They grumble about dating apps that present an abundance of options a mere swipe away and that promote an attitude of relational consumerism. And the repetitive cycle of matching, messaging, and meeting that ends in disappointment leads to significant dating fatigue and cynicism about the whole process. Similarly, they dislike the hook-up culture that pervades dating and its emphasis on casual sex over building soulful relationships. 

If the onramps to our marital highways are bumpy, broken, or blocked, it is no mystery why many young adults struggle to reach their expected marital destinations. Or to use another analogy, the contemporary dating economy is struggling, perhaps in a recession. Despite a broken dating system, a healthy majority of young people today still expect a future that includes marriage. (Although this is less and less so for contemporary young women who lean left ideologically.) Can the contemporary dating system – such as it is – get them there? What is the state of the modern dating economy as we begin the second quarter of America’s twenty-first century?

This report details findings from a new national survey of American young adults’ attitudes, beliefs, and experiences about dating in contemporary America, with a special focus on those young adults who have expectations for marriage – some strong, some modest, and some just uncertain but open to possibilities. What are their attitudes and beliefs about dating and marriage? What are their current dating behaviors and experiences? Importantly, what are the barriers and challenges they face in this dating economy? And, importantly, if we are in a dating recession, what can we do to revive this economy?

To preview our findings, the story that emerges out of this national survey is one of a dating recession for young adults in their prime dating years; they simply are not dating much, struggle with significant barriers, and lack confidence in their dating skills. They endorse relatively traditional purposes for dating (and do not fear commitment) but they lack the needed skills for dating and the resilience to handle its inevitable emotional wounds. As a result, they experience a loss of romantic connections – connections that prime their souls for the richest experiences humans can have.

We hope this State of Our Unions report can kindle cultural and professional conversation about this new challenge to marital formation and spur efforts on the part of parents, relationship educators, counselors, and even policy makers to help young adults improve their dating skills and opportunities. 

 2025 National Dating Landscape Survey

We pursued greater insight on contemporary dating in the 2025 National Dating Landscape Survey, a nationally representative sample of 5,275 unmarried young adults ages 22–35 in the United States. We see these as the prime dating years for first marriages. The dating experiences of younger 18–21-year-olds are even more disconnected from marriage, which is more than a decade away for most of them. So they are not our focus here. Similarly, dating for those over age 35 may be qualitatively distinct from that of younger adults. We limit our focus to those in the prime dating period for first marriages. 

In addition, our focus in this report is on those unmarried young adults who say they expect to marry someday. Fourteen percent of our sample (N = 736) said that they do not expect to marry. Their stories are worth understanding too, but their dating experiences are disconnected from expectations for a future marriage. So instead, we focus on the 86% of respondents (N = 4,539) whose dating experiences are potentially connected to a future marriage, including those who definitely have expectations to marry (61%, n = 3,233) and those who maybe have expectations or just don’t know (25%, n = 1,306).

Findings: Marital Expectations and Salience 

Ideal Age to Marry

Before diving into young adults’ specific dating experiences, we were curious if young adults who were open to a future marriage believed there was an ideal age to marry. Such beliefs could influence their dating attitudes and behavior. Only 30% said yes, there is an ideal age to marry. So, most young adults do not subscribe to an ideal age for marriage. Of those who do subscribe to an ideal age to marry, however, 30 was by far the age most nominated. Younger male respondents (< 27) said that 29 was the ideal for marriage, while younger female respondents said it was about 28. Older male respondents (>27) said that 30–31 was the ideal age, while older women said it was about 29–30. And even those who were older than 30 reported the ideal age of marriage close to 30. (Note that the ideal age for marriage was uncorrelated with indicators of religiosity and spirituality.)

The average age of first marriage is now approaching 30. Our findings suggest that contemporary young adults probably do not want this number to get any higher. At least for those who have an ideal age for marriage in mind, 29–31 seems to be the sweet spot. And it’s important to note that for a minority of young adults, their ideal age of marriage is already in the rearview mirror. 

Age to Expect to Marry

We also asked respondents at what age they expected to marry, which also could shape dating behavior. The overall median age of expected marriage was 33 for women and almost 35 for men.¹⁶ But here age – and to a lesser extent, gender – mattered. For the youngest group (ages 22–23), their average expected age to marry was 28 for women and 30 for men. For 24–26-year-olds, their average expected age to marry was almost 30 for women and almost 32 for men. For 27–29-year-olds, it was 33 for women and 34 for men; for 30–32-year-olds, it was 36 for women and 37 for men. And for the oldest respondents (33–35), the average expected age to marry was about 39 for both women and men.

Except for the youngest women in our survey, the average expected age of marriage was at least 30 (even slightly higher than the current actual age at first marriage in the United States). And, importantly, note that regardless of current age, respondents’ marital horizon – the temporal distance between now and the age they expect to marry – was about 5–6 years in the future (M_all =  5.6; M_women = 5.2; M_men =  6.0). So, the age they expect to marry is not fixed: it appears to slide upward as they get older rather than shrink with the passage of time. As a result, young adult dating lives are temporally disconnected from marriage expectations and may be only abstractly associated with the idea of marriage. (Note that for 1%–2% of respondents, their marital horizon was negative – they were already older than their expected age of marriage.)

Marital Salience

Given this temporal disconnect between dating and the expected age for marriage, we probed specifically for how prominent or salient the idea of marriage was for our survey respondents. We asked them five questions about the importance of marriage for them personally, which created a marital salience scale. We found that marital salience was moderate with this sample of young adults. The average rating was 3.3 (on a 6-point scale), although those who said “maybe/don’t know” about expecting to marry in the future were significantly lower on the scale than those who said “yes.” Interestingly, the level of marital salience did not differ by age groups. That is, older respondents reported the same levels of marital salience as younger respondents, so the personal importance of marriage to our respondents was independent of their age. 

Still, a look at some of the individual items in this marital salience scale finds that nearly two-thirds (64%) reported that marriage was an important life goal for them, although less than half (47%) said marriage was a top priority for them at this time in their life. (Younger and older respondents were not significantly different on this item.) Nearly half (46%) reported that they would like to be married now. So, for a large minority of young adults, marriage may be a more proximate aspiration than the average marital salience score would suggest. 

Findings: Dating Experiences and Attitudes

Now we shift to explore young adults’ dating experiences and attitudes. Note that 11% (n = 493) of our respondents reported that they were living together with a romantic partner and another 3% (n = 133) were engaged to be married. For these individuals, dating is qualitatively different than for other singles; they are focused exclusively on a committed partner rather than exploring other potential romantic partnerships. Because of this, we excluded cohabitors and engaged individuals from our analyses of many of the dating experience questions below. (And again, our analyses exclude survey respondents who do not expect to marry.) 

Dating Experience, Frequency, and Satisfaction

Respondents reported a median of three exclusive romantic dating partners in their lifetime. Only 15% reported no exclusive dating partners. Another third (32%) reported 1–2 lifetime dating partners. But more than half (52%) have had significant dating experience in the past (three or more exclusive relationships) and we found few gender differences in this reported experience. 

However, at the time of the survey, only about 30% of our respondents reported that they were dating, either casually or exclusively. About half (51%) of our respondents reported they were single but interested in starting a relationship, although this was much more the case for men (60%) than for women (47%). Only about one in six of both women and men reported being single but not interested in starting a relationship. Accordingly, dating is clearly a salient element of their lives – either behaviorally or cognitively – for a strong majority of our respondents.

We also asked how often they were dating. Nearly threequarters of women (74%) and nearly two-thirds of men (64%) in our survey reported they had not dated or dated only a few times in the last year. Only 31% of these young adults – a quarter of women (26%) and a little more than a third of men (36%) – were active daters (dating once a month or more). Those who said they definitely expected to marry reported dating a little more often than those who said “maybe/don’t know.” (Interestingly, respondents in our survey who did not expect to marry (14%) reported the same low level of active dating.) 

The frequency of dating could be related to their satisfaction with dating options, of course. Only 21% reported they were satisfied with their options. And 39% reported they were dissatisfied (with 30% neither satisfied nor dissatisfied). (Gender differences here were minimal.) However, dating frequency and satisfaction with options were only weakly correlated (r = .16, p < .001). Active daters had higher marital salience scores than less active daters, but the correlation was still weak (r = .16, p < .001).  

Dating for contemporary young adults is infrequent, especially so for women. The relatively small proportion of young adults who are actively dating – and the general lack of satisfaction with dating options – lends support to the complaint we often hear from young people, that the dating system is broken. 

Dating Confidence/Efficacy

Of course, low rates of dating would not be surprising if young adults lack confidence in their dating skills. Do they believe they have what it takes for dating? We might call this “dating efficacy.” We asked our sample to respond to a set of seven valuable dating skills. Overall, we found that dating efficacy was low; only about one in three respondents expressed much faith in their skills. (Those who said they definitely expected to marry scored a little higher on dating efficacy than those who said “maybe/don’t know.”) Only a quarter expressed confidence in the fundamental skill of being able to approach someone they were romantically interested in (men = 29%; women = 21%). A little over a third (37%) said they trusted their judgment when it comes to choosing a dating partner. They expressed similar levels of struggles with discussing their feelings with a dating partner (34%) and picking up on social cues on dates (36%). Thirty-eight percent were confident that they were attractive to potential dating partners (females = 37%; males = 39%). There was a small-to-medium, positive correlation between dating efficacy and dating frequency (r = .26, p < .001). 

In addition, only about a quarter (28%) reported being able to stay positive after a bad date or relationship setback. A subsequent set of questions in our survey about breakup experiences allowed us to dive a little deeper into this response. More than half (55%) agreed that their breakups have made them more reluctant to begin new romantic relationships. And nearly half (45%) agreed that they have passed up opportunities for new romantic relationships because of bad experiences from previous relationships. Also, more than a third (36%) agreed that they now end relationships too quickly to avoid the possible pain of bad breakups. (Gender differences in these responses were minimal. And we found no significant differences between those who said they definitely expected to marry and those who said “maybe/don’t know.”)

Our findings suggest that a large proportion of young adults lack confidence in their dating skills. So, it’s not surprising that few are regularly dating. Later, we return to this crucial point to explore how we might improve dating skills. 

Dating Purposes

Even if dating is infrequent and their sense of dating efficacy is low, what reasons do young adults give for dating? We asked respondents to report on their purposes or intentions for dating. (Admittedly, for the many infrequent daters in our survey this may have been an abstract exercise.) The 14 items fell into two relatively distinct categories: (1) building relationships and personal growth; and (2) participating in social experiences. We found it noteworthy that the relational and growth purposes – which may be what we traditionally associate with young adult dating – were much more endorsed than the general social purposes (such as fitting in with others (17%), gaining social validation (16%), and being a part of social activities (24%)). Creating emotional connections was the highest rated purpose by both men and women (but was even higher for women: 83% vs. 76%.) A close second purpose for dating was forming serious relationships (78%). (Again, women rated this purpose higher: 83% vs. 74%.) Other purposes that were widely endorsed by both women and men were exploring potential romantic partners (69%); enjoying romantic experiences (69%); personal growth (67%); and learning about myself and what I want in a future partner (63%). Gender differences here were minimal. And somewhat surprisingly, our analyses surfaced few significant and meaningful age differences in dating purposes.

Dating frequency may be low, but young adults seem to want it for emotional connection, forming serious relationships, and enjoying romantic experiences. In an age of dramatic increases in loneliness and social isolation,²⁵ young adults seem to yearn for the connection and relationship benefits of dating. 

Engaging in physical intimacy (45%) was also endorsed as a purpose for dating, but it was unclear from the survey wording whether this served primarily a relational or just a social purpose. (Statistically, it leaned more toward just a social purpose.) Not surprisingly, engaging in physical intimacy as a purpose for dating produced the largest gender difference (males = 55%; females = 35%). 

Young adults – both women and men, younger and older – in our survey strongly endorsed the more traditional purposes of dating to build serious romantic relationships and to explore self and learn and facilitate personal growth in those relationships. Perhaps many of their frustrations with dating stem in significant part from the gap between what their avowed purposes are for dating and their current capacities or skills for dating. 

Barriers to Marriage and Dating

Feeling financially prepared to begin a marriage may be a significant reason that marriage for many young adults is well over the temporal horizon and dating seems disconnected from marriage. Most young adults in our survey agreed that you should achieve a certain financial threshold before marrying and that finances were a barrier to getting married (M = 4.3, SD = 1.02, 6-point scale). For instance, nearly 75% of our respondents agreed that “money and finances are a major barrier to getting married.” This was especially so for the younger respondents (ages 22–29). But we found no differences on this item between those who definitely expected to marry and those who said “maybe/don’t know.”

In addition, we asked respondents to tell us what specific barriers they experienced in their dating lives. 

Interestingly, the biggest barrier to dating they expressed was not enough money, endorsed by more than half  (52%) of respondents. This was more so for men (58%), but it was noteworthy for women, as well (46%). Dating for contemporary young adults has a price tag, and they feel the pinch. Money concerns are not just future-abstract in the sense of reaching a certain financial status to be able to marry; they are current-tangible about affording actual dates to explore serious relationships. 

Respondents also frequently endorsed a set of social/emotional factors as barriers to dating. At the top of this list were lack of confidence (49%) and bad dating experiences in the past (48%). Echoing an earlier finding in this report, bad dating experience from the past was the most endorsed barrier for women (50%), and it was it was only a little lower for men (46%). Respondents also frequently endorsed lack of relationship experience (38%), not emotionally ready (35%), social component of dating difficult (38%), and not ready for the physical aspects of dating (27%).

Although there is a common notion that young adults want to avoid loss of personal freedom and commitment, we found that these potential barriers to dating were endorsed by relatively few young adults. For example, only a minority of young adults identified the fear of getting into a serious relationship (34%). And neither losing personal freedom (27%) or not wanting to commit long-term (18%) were significant barriers to dating. Gender differences in these dating barriers were minimal. (Those who said “maybe/don’t know” about getting married in the future compared to those who said they definitely expected to marry were a little more likely to report wanting to avoid long-term commitments in dating.) 

So, few young adults express a fear of commitment and serious romantic relationships. But they lack dating confidence, worry about being emotionally ready or financially prepared for serious dating, and are inhibited by bad relationship experiences in the past. 

Breakup Feelings/Dating Resilience

We have already outlined a dating challenge that many respondents endorsed – dealing with past bad dating and relationship experiences. We explore that important finding in more depth in this section. We asked respondents a set of seven questions about their dating relationship breakups and how they affected their feelings about forming future romantic relationships. On the positive side, many agreed their relationship breakups were necessary and facilitated personal growth and development (63%) and that they are now better at ending relationships quicker when they do not meet their needs (67%). 

On the negative side, however, half of both men and women agreed that their breakups left them with negative feelings about romantic relationships, and nearly half (48%) agreed that they felt personally injured by their breakups. Even more significantly, more than half (55%) agreed that their breakups have made them more reluctant to begin new romantic relationships. And nearly half (45%) agreed that they have passed up opportunities for new romantic relationships because of bad experiences from previous relationships. Also, more than a third (36%) agreed that they now end relationships too quickly to avoid the possible pain of bad breakups. (We did not find meaningful gender differences in these responses.) 

Clearly, these young adults could use a boost in “dating resilience.” Breakups are an inevitable part of dating. Being able to absorb the losses and transmute them into productive learning is a fundamental dating skill. 

Implications: Need for Dating Education

Young adults today are living in a depressed dating economy. A large majority expect to marry, but only a small proportion are actively dating. Regardless of their age, their marital horizon keeps sliding, remaining 5–6 years out. So, dating has only a distant connection to marriage and efforts to find a potential spouse are probably more of an abstract goal than a concrete objective for most. Still, a significant proportion would like to be married now. And these young adults endorse traditional purposes for dating – creating connection, forming serious relationships, exploring potential romantic partners and what they want in a future spouse – over dating just for fun or sex or social engagement. They yearn for connection and the benefits of healthy romantic relationships. But few report a sense of dating efficacy – a feeling of confidence in their dating skills, such as approaching people they are interested in, trusting their judgment about good dating partners, sharing emotions on dates, and – importantly – staying positive about dating and romantic relationships after a bad experience. Dating resilience is low. Almost half of young adults report they are more reluctant to date because of bad dating experiences in the past. And they encounter numerous barriers to dating, including the financial expenses, lacking experience and confidence, and not feeling emotionally ready. On a more optimistic note, only a small percentage of young men and women report that fear of commitment or serious relationships are dating barriers, contradicting a common cultural notion about young adults today. Finally, those who reported they definitely expect to marry compared to those who say “maybe/don’t know” date a little more often, have somewhat higher scores on dating confidence or efficacy, and have even less fear of commitment in dating. 

There is a marital-expectations vs. dating-skills gap for most young adults today. How should we respond to this gap? How can we grow our way out of this dating recession if we want to increase the chances that young adults will form serious relationships that may lead to healthy marriages? We need a concerted effort to teach young adults healthy dating skills, something that receives little attention from the general culture or even the relationship education field. While the professional field of relationship education is admirably dedicated to helping couples form and sustain healthy marriages, it has not given enough attention to the dating experiences of young adults – the onramps to marriage. Our young adults need effective road maps that guide them to and through the dating experiences that will connect their marital expectations to actual unions. 

Accordingly, one straightforward implication of the findings from our study is that young adults could use some basic help in building dating skills. Their desires and attitudes are not the problem. They want to build real human connections, form serious relationships, explore what they want in a future long-term partner, and desire the personal growth that comes from forming serious romantic relationships. And contrary to common beliefs, most are not afraid of commitment or losing personal freedom, and few fear that dating will interfere with their educational and career plans.

Nevertheless, few are regularly dating. They report being unprepared and having a low sense of dating efficacy. They lack experience, social and emotional confidence, and need to stretch their basic social skills. They struggle to know how to express their interest to a potential dating partner and to communicate effectively on a date. Also, they are discouraged by the cost of dating.

Yet these are hardly unsurmountable barriers. Motivated young adults can learn dating skills, how to approach partners they are interested in, how to improve their ability to make smart dating choices, and how to improve their general communication skills for dating. But relationship educators – who do so much to provide basic relationship literacy to teens, marriage preparation classes for engaged couples, ongoing marital enrichment workshops for married couples, and even intensive retreats for struggling couples thinking about divorce – need to develop a new niche – dating education. Generic relationship skills education does not sufficiently address the A-B-C’s of how to date. Parents, schools, churches, media, and the general culture are not meeting a clear need.  

Relationship educators could consider offering creative dating “bootcamps” for young adults who need skill practice and confidence boosts, systematically addressing the pragmatic skill deficits and confidence arrears identified in our survey. And given the digital natives that are their prime target audience, they will likely have greater success with online educational offerings, like the “DatingREADY” e-course offered by the Utah Marriage Commission.³⁰

However, this TikTok generation may not sit still for traditional didactic curricular programs (in-person or online), which have been the bread-and-butter of relationship education. Dating educators may need to grab young minds with engaging “infotainment” on digital platforms to reach their audience. And pragmatics will be as important as principles, we think.  Relationship educators will need to provide opportunities not just to listen and learn but to practice and improve. We also suspect that “peer educators” will be more effective as instructors than older adults who experienced a very different dating regime than their students. 

In addition, we think this dating education “space” is ripe for creative, hands-on approaches. We have been impressed with a few efforts to provide structured dating opportunities infused with skills education. One colleague we know sponsors carefully constructed speed dating events for young adults who are struggling with knowing how to date or just overcoming the inertia of interminable scrolling. The primary purpose of these structured dating events is to teach skills and then break inertia – to get young adults learning, practicing, and dating. Success is not necessarily associated with continued dating, although there is a good deal of that too. 

Whatever approach relationship educators take to help young adults improve their dating skills and opportunities, we recommend including training on how to deal with bad dating experiences and painful breakups. Our survey revealed that bad dating and relationship experiences in the past were one of the biggest barriers to current dating. Dating life brings hurt, heartbreak, rejection, confusion, and body blows to confidence. And this comes on top of this generation’s well-documented mental-health challenges. These bad experiences make them less likely to pursue relationships in the future because they are in recovery mode. Relationship educators should anticipate that their students need help building dating resilience, including understanding what went wrong in past relationships, normalizing the experience, healing from the pain, overcoming fear of being hurt or rejected again, building grit, making intentional plans going forward, etc.  

Given relationship education’s prevention orientation, educators could be doing more to steel young adults against these inevitable painful experiences so that they don’t result in foreclosing on the dating scene during their prime dating years. 

And there is an important practical matter too – the cost of dating was also a big barrier (reported by both women and men). Perhaps relationship educators could help young adults get around this challenge by providing lists of creative dating options with cheaper price tags. Creative social media influencers undoubtedly could help with this. Maybe they can help shift the general dating culture so that an average date is defined not as a formal activity that requires a large financial outlay – such as a dinner for two at a nice restaurant and tickets to a concert – but as simply a time and place to pair off, talk, and get to know someone better, enjoy opportunities for fun interaction, share life stories and future aspirations, etc. In other words, dating should be oriented more to its relational and personal growth purposes that young adults strongly endorse and less to its general social purposes that they are less enthusiastic about. 

One final comment here for dating educators regarding finances. Given young adults’ current money constraints and their future financial worries, dating education probably will need to be more akin to a public service than a gainful enterprise. Dating education will need generous sponsors and institutional supporters as much as talented social entrepreneurs.

Note that dating education for young adults will not need to differentiate much based on gender. Our survey revealed overall remarkable similarity of dating experience and challenges for women and men, at least as far as we probed. And this would be a fascinating area for further exploration and research. 

A final reflection on the 5–6-year marital horizon we observed in this survey regardless of respondents’ age: 

With this temporal distance, it will be hard to create a stronger connection between the present act of dating and the future expectation of marriage for young adults. To some extent, perhaps we don’t need to be overly anxious about this. If we stimulate the dating economy and give young adults the skills they need to prosper in this challenging market, then more dating should lead to more serious relationships that will, in turn, spur more thoughts about marriage and more decisions to tie the knot. Still, it would be wise for relationship educators, as they build learning opportunities for healthy dating, not to present dating in maritally neutral terms. There is a teleology to dating. The institution of marriage needs a robust dating system to bring couples to the altar. And recall our findings that, regardless of age, nearly half of young adults say they would like to be married now. Dating educators should keep these findings in mind. And at a minimum, they should help daters be more aware and intentional, to be cognizant of their short-, medium-, and long-term purposes for dating, to inquire about these things of their dating partners, and to align couple purposes and plans – especially regarding marriage. 

Recommendations for Relationship Educators Teaching Dating Skills

Generic relationship skills education does not sufficiently address the A-B-C’s of how to date. Professional and lay relationship educators need to pay more attention to this educational void for young adults. Here are several concrete recommendations for effective dating skills education. 

• Offer creative dating “bootcamps” for young adults who need skill practice and confidence boosts. Include sufficient practice time. 
• Prioritize online platforms.
• Grab young TikTok eyes and minds with engaging “infotainment” rather than traditional didactic instruction.
• Make dating skills education low- or no-cost. Find financial supports to offset instructional costs. 
• Consider using peer educators who understand better the contemporary dating environment.
• Build greater dating resilience by including preventative training on how to deal with bad dating experiences and painful breakups. 
• Include lists of creative dating options with cheaper price tags to avoid the sticker shock of dating.
• Understand that differences in dating experiences for women and men are minimal; there is little need to accentuate gender differences in instruction. 
• Reconnect dating and marital goals; gently remind young adult participants of the connection of dating to their expectations and aspirations for marriage. 

We acknowledge that we have not covered in this study the full range of issues that impact the contemporary dating landscape. For instance, we did not explore in our survey how AI and the new world of AI companions may be impacting young adult dating lives. Nor did our survey differentiate between distinct dating types or the longitudinal course of dating – how casual dating grows into more serious dating and progresses to committed, exclusive dating, and even engagement. Our focus was primarily on the early stages of dating, on initiating relationships that may eventually develop into long-term unions. We hope this study can spur more research to better understand young adult dating.

Moreover, we acknowledge that our focus here has been on individual behavior and personal experiences of dating. And as such, we have explored how relationship education efforts could help to improve young adults’ dating lives. In this focus, however, we acknowledge that young adults are embedded in broader cultural and social systems that also influence their dating experiences. Our recommendations for educational efforts do not diminish the need for broader cultural and policy responses to improve the dating economy. For instance, worries about the “marriageability” of men lead some to believe that the marriage pool is too shallow to accommodate many women’s aspirations for marriage. To the extent this is true – or women perceive it to be true – this would likely reduce dating and sour dating experiences. Broad social efforts to improve men’s marriageability should improve the dating landscape. Nor have we explored directly how the growing ideological and political divide between young men and women may be impacting the dating scene. Also, we believe that young adult dating lives will be impacted positively by public actions to reduce the cost barriers to marital formation, such as employment barriers, higher education costs, and unaffordable housing. More directly, public funds now being allocated by the federal Administration for Children and Families to provide relationship education to help couples form and sustain healthy marriages could expand their reach to include healthy dating skills education (which they currently do not allow).

Nevertheless, we emphasized in this report a more immediate stimulus for the current dating recession in the form of attention to a new kind of relationship education: dating education. Many of the challenges young adults face in their dating lives can be surmounted with better knowledge and concrete skills. We are optimistic that talented relationship educators will rise to fill this void, assisted by parents, social media influencers, religious leaders, and others. The alternative, we believe, is an ongoing dating recession that will depress future marriage rates and all the known benefits of healthy marriages for adults, their children, and their communities. 

This dating recession is more than just another instrumental challenge facing young adults today. Their lack of dating experiences is a deficit of connections – connections that prime their souls for one of the richest experiences humans can have – romantic love. So, young adults risk more than they know when they are not falling in (and out) of love during this formative time of life. 

The New York Times columnist David Brooks describes this risk well recalling his first real love affair in his late teens and early adulthood:

I was transformed by my time in college classrooms, but that love affair might still have been the most important educational experience of my youth. It taught me that there are emotions more joyous and more painful than I ever knew existed. It taught me what it’s like when the self gets decentered and things most precious to you are in another. I even learned a few things about the complex art of being close to another. . . . We all need energy sources to power us through life, and love is the most powerful energy source known to humans.

Editor's Note: For a footnoted copy of this report, as well as the latest Social Indicators of Marital Health and Well-Being, download the full report here.

Introduction

Recently, Republican leadership failed twice to jam preemption—a legal measure to block states from regulating artificial intelligence (AI)—into several must-pass bills. In response, President Trump signed an executive order directing the White House AI & Crypto Czar (i.e., billionaire AI investor David Sacks) and the director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy to propose to Congress a “minimally burdensome [to AI companies] national policy framework for AI.”

Shortly after, Andreessen Horowitz—a venture capital investor in AI—quickly released a proposal to Congress, providing nine policy pillars for governing AI at the federal level. Likewise, Rep. Jay Obernolte (R-CA) , who chairs the bipartisan House Task Force on Artificial Intelligence and is known to work closely with the industry, has reportedly been communicating with the White House on the establishment of a federal framework. Senator Marsha Blackburn (R–TN) has also released a large legislative proposal, the TRUMP AMERICA AI (The Republic Unifying Meritocratic Performance Advancing Machine Intelligence by Eliminating Regulatory Interstate Chaos Across American Industry) ACT, which draws on Congress’s preexisting legislative work. 

Given Washington’s new urgency to pass federal legislation, as well as the significant differences among these proposals, we sought to discover what the American people think about AI and its possible regulation. To that end, we surveyed almost 6,200 Americans on what they thought about AI and whether they approved or disapproved of certain AI policies. We focused our sample on six states—five red and one purple—that have consequential forthcoming elections (or robust approaches to AI regulation on the books): namely, Florida, Kentucky, Louisiana, Tennessee, and Utah (Red), as well as Michigan (Purple), while also conducting a national U.S. sample. 

We find that Americans are concerned about the future of AI (though they do support its application in certain areas), and this concern is growing rapidly. We also find that most Americans support robust policy measures to regulate AI and penalize AI companies for harms—and they are willing to vote against candidates depending on where they stand on the issue. (More on this below.)

On several previous occasions, the Institute for Family Studies has publicly warned about the adverse consequences of preemption. But we strove to develop a survey instrument that was definitively unbiased, designing all questions to be as neutrally worded as possible. Yet our findings reveal that Americans are not neutral on this issue. They dislike AI and AI companies, so much so that several respondents complained in the survey’s comment section that the survey was biased in favor of the AI industry. One respondent accused us of being “clearly biased pro-AI,” and many respondents felt a need to “push back” or tell us “things we missed and didn’t ask about,” such as “AI is the ruination of the entire world,” and “AI was a mistake, and the creators of it have said so themselves.” 

One parent even told us that AI was confusing and ruining his daughter:

ChatGPT brainwashed our teen. Convinced her to hate her family, acted like a teenage best friend and even told our daughter 'I love you' and so much more. I know if we had not found out when we did that it would have started to talk to our daughter about suicide. AI is dangerous, I hate everything about AI.

We did not formally code every open response, but very few included positive comments about AI, while dozens were negative. We disclose these open text outcomes for two reasons: first, to provide evidence that our survey was not biased against AI companies (indeed, respondents perceived us to perhaps have a pro-AI bias); and second, to highlight the challenge of surveying voters about AI. Put simply, many Americans hate AI with a visceral passion that can be difficult to capture in multiple-choice answers. 

How Do American Voters Feel About AI?

Most Americans, or 71%, hold a negative view of how AI will affect society. We asked respondents to choose between one of four options to see which comes nearest to how they see AI: either as “a big threat,” “concerning,” “intriguing,” or “exciting.” Overall, 36% see AI as a big threat, and 35% see it as concerning. A substantial minority of Americans, however, do find AI intriguing (21%)—though a mere 8% find it exciting.

These days, Americans are awash with messages about AI, both for and against. But which messages do they find most compelling? To test that, we selected several prominent public individuals who have strong opinions about AI and who intentionally communicate their views to shape public sentiment. We then made the quote anonymous to ensure that participant reactions were unbiased and randomized them so as not to sequence them in a particular way. We tested quotes from Sam Altman, Mark Andreessen, David Sacks, Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO), and Pope Leo XIV. 

As for Andreessen, a mere 32% of American voters agree with him that: 

Overview

Working mothers are back in the headlines. Between January and June of 2025, the monthly labor force participation rate among mothers with young children dropped by nearly three percentage points, erasing much of the post-pandemic recovery in female employment. As reported in Time magazine, this downturn appears to be driven by shifting workplace policies like mandatory return-to-office requirements and widespread federal layoffs. Others, including  The New York Times, have speculated that the Trump administration’s priorities may be playing a role.  

While this fluctuation in women’s employment might prove temporary, it is important to examine the long-term trajectory in the United States. Equally critical is the question of how we can better support parents, especially mothers, in balancing family and work responsibilities, a key concern for working women in America.   

In this report, we explore the long-term trends of prime-age women’s employment in the U.S., pinpoint what mothers want when it comes to work and family, and highlight their most important work-family policy priorities. We also examine the current support systems available to mothers, and identify the key areas where we, as a society, can better support families.

Main Findings

First, despite the “stalled revolution” in women’s overall labor force participation over the past two decades, mothers with children under age 5 (traditionally, the group least likely to be in the workforce) have experienced an increase in their employment rates, according to our analysis of the latest Current Population Survey (CPS) data. This shift is driven entirely by a rise in labor force participation among mothers with young children who are married, the group that accounts for 75% of mothers with pre-school age young children in 2025. Among prime-age married mothers with children under age 5 at home, the labor force participation rate rose from 63% in 2000 to 69% in 2025. In contrast, the rate declined for unmarried mothers of similarly aged children (from 75% to 70%).

Second, the increased labor force participation of married mothers with young children is largely due to an increase in full-time employment. In 2024, for the first time since data have been recorded, married mothers with young children were more likely than unmarried mothers to be working full-time for pay (56% versus 54%). That share dipped slightly for married mothers in 2025, making both groups about equally likely to work full time today.

Even with the rise in full-time employment among mothers, full-time work is still not the preferred arrangement for married mothers with preschool-aged children. Only 39% of married mothers with children under age 5 at home say their ideal arrangement is to work full time, roughly equal to the 40% who prefer part-time work. An additional 20% say they prefer not to work for pay at all, according to a recent IFS/Wheatley Institute survey of 3,000 women ages 25 to 55. In fact, full-time employment is not the preferred arrangement of the majority of U.S. mothers. Overall, 47% of all mothers with children under age 18 prefer full-time work, 37% prefer part-time work, and the rest prefer not to work for pay at all.  

Mothers’ education plays a role in their preference of work arrangement. Among married mothers with children under age 5, college-educated mothers are much more likely than their peers with less education to say their ideal situation would be to work full time (48% vs. 28%), while both groups are equally likely to say they prefer part-time work (40%).

When it comes to the job the government is doing to help families, a majority of mothers (60%) in the same survey say the government is not doing enough. Among the list of government policies offered, mothers with children under age 18 choose paid family leave, flexible work arrangements, and the child tax credit as their top policy priorities. Further analysis by income shows that mothers in the middle- or higher-income brackets are more likely than lower-income moms to say paid parental leave and flexible work are vital for parents today. In contrast, lower-income mothers tend to prioritize the child tax credit over flexible work.

Other Key Findings

• Married mothers tend to have higher levels of education than unmarried mothers, and the gap has grown over time. In 2025, about half of married mothers (52%) have a college or higher education, compared with 25% of unmarried mothers. This divide is even bigger among mothers with pre-school age children: 58% married mothers and 20% of unmarried mothers are college educated.   
   
• Welfare benefits may contribute to the decline in full-time employment among unmarried mothers. In 2025, over two-thirds of unmarried women with children under 5 (67%) received some form of welfare assistance, up from 45% in 2000. In this study, welfare benefits include housing subsidies, food stamps, Medicaid, TANF, and SSI for disability, but exclude school lunches and childcare assistance.
   
• Part-time work presents the largest gap between preference and reality for mothers of young children.According to the IFS/Wheatley survey, 80% of mothers with children under age 5 who prefer working full time are doing so, and 64% of mothers who prefer not working for pay are currently not working. However, only 30% of mothers who prefer working part time are doing so.
   
• Government subsidized childcare is viewed as a relatively lower priority by mothers when considering what helps parents most. Higher-income moms are more likely than moms with lower incomes to say “government-subsidized childcare programs to provide high-quality, affordable, and accessible childcare for working parents” are extremely or very helpful (79% vs. 73%), yet this still doesn’t rank among the top three priorities for high-income mothers.
   
• Mothers’ support networks today primarily consist of a spouse or partner, along with extended family members. About three-quarters of mothers (74%) say their spouse, partner, or the child’s father have provided a lot or some help, and 64% say the same about extended family. Paid childcare plays a more limited role (39%), while neighbors rank lowest among the sources of support for mothers.

About the Data

Findings in this report are based primarily on two sources: data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Current Population Survey (CPS) and the new Women’s Well-Being Survey (WWS) from the Institute for Family Studies and the Wheatley Institute. 

Employment Data: Unless otherwise noted, all employment analyses in this report are based on data from the CPS’s Annual Social and Economic Supplement (ASEC) for the years 1970, 1975, 1980,1985, 1990, 1995, 2000, 2005, 2010,2015, and 2019-2025, obtained from the IPUMS CPS database (https://www.ipums.org) and constructed by the authors.

The CPS is a nationally representative survey of about 60,000 households, conducted jointly by the U.S. Census Bureau and the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). The CPS covers the civilian noninstitutionalized population of the U.S. and is the primary source of labor force statistics for the U.S. population, while the ASEC provides additional detailed information on income, poverty, household composition, and demographic characteristics.

Employment status measures whether respondents were in the labor force (working or seeking work) during the previous week, which includes those who are currently employed, unemployed, and those in the armed forces. Full-time and part-time work status indicates whether respondents who were employed during the previous year usually worked full time (35 hours a week or more) or part time. 

Public Opinion Survey Data: The WWS was conducted by YouGov between March 1 and 12, 2025, with a representative sample of 3,000 women ages 25 to 55 living in the U.S., including 1,551 with children under age 18. 

YouGov interviewed 3,035 respondents and matched 3,000 to a sampling frame based on age, race, and education, constructed from ACS microdata, public voter files, the 2020 CPS Voting and Registration Supplement, NEP exit polls, and CES surveys. Matched cases were weighted using propensity scores derived from age, race/ethnicity, education, and region, grouped into deciles and post-stratified. Additional weighting adjustments were made to reflect the most current employment patterns as well as marital and parental status.

The characteristics of the final weighted sample mirror those of the general U.S. population of women ages 25 to 55, with a margin of error of +/- 2.11 percentage points. Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) adults are included but are not analyzed separately. All estimates have been weighted to reflect the actual population.

Rising Employment Among Married Mothers With Children

Women’s labor force participation in the U.S. rose sharply between the 1970s and 1990s, but it has largely stalled since the turn of the century. Sociologists refer to the past two decades as a “stalled revolution” for gender equality in the workplace.

However, the overall trend for women’s employment masks some important shifts in the past few decades. Changes in women’s employment trends based on the presence of children in the household—as well as in marital status—suggest that marriage and children play a diminished role in shaping women’s labor force participation today.

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. 

Figure 1: Percentages of women ages 25 to 54 working full time by presence of household children.
Source: Current Population Survey, March supplement (ASEC), IPUMS. 

Specifically, prime-age women with children under age 5, the group with the lowest rate of full-time employment historically, increased their participation in the full-time workforce over the past two decades. Women with school-age children also increased their rate of full-time employment during that same period. The full-time employment rate among women who do not have children at home is very close to its 2000 value, however.

Married mothers with children—traditionally the least likely to be employed full time—are also more likely to work full time today than in 2000, when overall female employment peaked. In contrast, the share of full-time employment has declined among unmarried mothers with children since 2000.

Figure 2: Percentages of women ages 25 to 54, by marital and parental status, who are working full time. 
Source: Current Population Survey, March ASEC, IPUMS. 

The rise in female employment is especially pronounced among married mothers with young children at home. In fact, the largest increase in labor force participation has occurred among married mothers with children under age 5, from 63% in 2000 to 69% in 2025 (see Appendix for details). Most of this reflects a growing percentage of married mothers of young children working full time, the share of which increased from 47% in 2000 to 55% in 2025.

In contrast, unmarried women with young children under age 5 have seen a decline in their overall labor force participation rate, from 75% to 70% since 2000. The share of single mothers with young children under age 5 who work full time dropped from 63% in 2000 to 56% in 2025.  

Figure 3: Percentages of women with children ages 0-4 at home, by marital status, who work full time.
Source: Current Population Survey, March supplement (ASEC), IPUMS. 

What Is Driving More Married Mothers of Young Children to the Workplace?

Economic pressures on families have likely played a role in these trends. Over the past decade, economic concerns have rapidly become one of the most important pressures that families face. In 2025, 73% of Americans pointed to economic challenges as the “most important issues facing families today,” up from just 51% in 2015, according to data from the long running American Family Survey (AFS). In contrast, concerns about cultural issues, such as a decline in religious faith and children growing up in single-parent homes, have declined significantly over the same period.

Specifically, “the costs associated with raising a family” rank as the top issue families say they face today, exceeding concerns over crime, sexual permissiveness, parental discipline, religion, and a range of other cultural and structural issues, according to the same survey. 

Moreover, with the rise of inflation in recent years, the real wage (adjusted for inflation) for American workers has declined. Even before the Covid era, Americans’ purchasing power had stayed flat over the previous four decades.³

Dual-income families have also been on the rise. In 2024, nearly 50% of all married-couple families have dual incomes, compared with 23% in which one spouse is employed. The 1950s model, where one person’s wage could support the whole family and afford a house, is no longer attainable for most Americans.

One could argue that this perception of financial strain may be shaped by a higher expectation for the standard of living. Americans live in larger homes and own more cars today, and many things once considered luxuries are now the expected norm. The economic gains of the past five decades have enabled higher consumption, which contributed to this elevated expectation. For many families, a dual income now feels necessary to keep up with these growing norms. 

As this IFS/Wheatley survey finds, only 39% of married mothers with pre-school age children prefer working full time, while a greater share either prefer part-time work (40%) or not working for pay at all (21%). This suggests that many married mothers with young children who currently work full time may be doing so due to economic pressures, rather than because they view their current arrangement as ideal.  

On the other hand, this rising employment trend may also signal a generational shift among today’s mothers with young children, most of whom belong to the Millennial generation (ages 29 to 44). In 2025, the median age is 34 for married mothers with children under age 5 at home, and 30 for unmarried mothers with children of the same age living at home. Compared with previous generations, Millennials, especially women, are significantly more educated. Indeed, women now outnumber men in the college-educated labor force, a shift likely driven by rising educational attainment among younger women.   

In fact, married moms today are among the most educated group of women. More than 52% have a college degree or higher, comparable to married, childless women (55%), and unmarried, childless women (49%). In contrast, unmarried mothers tend to have lower educational attainment, with just about 25% holding a college degree. This divide is even more pronounced among mothers of preschool-aged children: 58% married mothers in this group are college educated, compared to just 20% of their unmarried counterparts.  

To be clear, the rise in full-time employment among married mothers does not appear to be driven by changes in their spouse’s employment. Married men with children have the highest employment rate of any male group across marital and parental statuses. This pattern has held steady for the past 50 years, with the share of full-time employment among married fathers above 90 percent. As of 2025, 92% of prime-age men with children at home are working full time, compared with 82% of unmarried men with children (see Appendix for details).

Figure 4: Percentages of women ages 25 to 54, by marital and parental status, who have a college or higher education. 
Source: Current Population Survey, March ASEC, IPUMS. 

Even though full-time work is not what most mothers with young children prefer, college-educated married mothers are much more likely than married mothers without a college degree to describe their ideal work situation as full time (48% vs. 28%), according to the new IFS/Wheatley survey of women.

A college education seems to have an independent effect on mothers’ preferences for full-time work, regardless of their marital status. Married college-educated mothers are about as likely as their unmarried peers to say they prefer full-time work (48% vs. 47%). However, they are also more likely to prefer part-time work (40% vs. 31%), and less likely to prefer not working for pay at all.

In addition to a stronger career orientation, the desire for full-time work among college-educated married mothers may be driven by economics. College-educated women are more likely to work in higher-paying professional jobs, so leaving the workforce to care for children full time carries a much higher opportunity cost than for women without a college degree. Meanwhile, about 26% of Millennials have student debts, a higher share than any other generation. Women also are more likely than men to take on student debt, and this financial pressure may motivate many married mothers to remain in the workforce rather than exit it.

Figure 5: Employment status preferences, by marital status and education, of mothers of young children. 
Source: IFS/Wheatley Institute, Women’s Well-Being survey, March 2025. 

Therefore, both the economic pressures on working families and a career orientation from higher-educated married mothers with young children may help explain why we see an upward trend among this group of mothers.

On the other hand, the downward trend in full-time employment for unmarried mothers with young children is puzzling. This could reflect the differences in educational attainment and employment opportunities between married and unmarried mothers. Only 20% of unmarried mothers with children under age 5 are college educated, far below the share among married mothers (58%). In fact, the unemployment rate among unmarried mothers with young children was 5%, compared with 1% for married mothers among young children.

Welfare benefits may also play a role. Welfare reform in the mid-90s during the Clinton era cut the welfare caseload significantly but not for long. Among prime-age Americans, the share who receive any welfare benefits rose from 9% in 2000 to 22% in 2015 and currently stands at 21% (see chart in Appendix). Today, more than two-thirds of unmarried mothers with children under age 5 at home receive welfare benefits, compared to 45% in 2000. Married mothers with preschool-aged children have also seen an increase in welfare benefits over the past two decades, although their share remains much lower than that of unmarried mothers.     

Figure 6: Percentages of women ages 25 to 54 with children age 0-4 at home, by marital status, who received any welfare benefits during the previous year. 
Source: Current Population Survey, March ASEC, IPUMS. 

Mothers' Work Preferences: Full Time, Part Time, or Not at All?

Part-time work has been the top preference for American mothers over the past two decades.  As late as 2018, part-time work remained the top preference for mothers, over working full time or not working for pay at all. However, recent surveys suggest that full-time employment has gained some traction among mothers.

While still a minority, 47% of women with children under age 18 say their ideal situation would be working full time, which is higher than the 37% who prefer part-time work and the 15% who prefer not working for pay, according to the new IFS/Wheatley survey.

The preference for part-time employment among mothers with children under age 18 today has decreased since 2012, when it was 47 percent.³ At the same time, the percentage of mothers with children under age 18 who prefer not to work at all has remained roughly the same as 2012. This indicates that the change in work preference for mothers with children has largely been from part-time employment toward full-time employment. 

Looking at women today overall, about half of prime-age women in the U.S. (51%) prefer full-time work, roughly one-third prefer part-time work, and the remaining 15% prefer not working for pay at all. Women’s preferences are dependent on a few factors, including whether they have children at home, their marital status, as well as other socio-economic conditions.

Presence of Children at Home

As in the past, women’s preferences for full-time work today are clearly tied to whether they have children at home, as well as the age of their children. While 58% of prime-age women who are childless prefer full-time work, the share goes down to 47% for those with children under age 18 at home. 

Mothers with young children under age 5 today are the group least likely to say their ideal situation is full-time work. About 42% in this group prefer full-time work, compared with 50% of mothers with school-age children at home.

Figure 7: Employment status preferences, by age of children, of women ages 25-55. 
Source: IFS/Wheatley Institute, Women’s Well-Being survey, March 2025. 

Marriage and Education

Meanwhile, married mothers with children under 5 are less likely to prefer full-time work than their unmarried counterparts (39% vs. 51%), although this is largely dependent on the education level of mothers. 

Figure 8: Employment status preferences, by marital status, of women ages 25-55 with children under age 5 at home. 
Source: IFS/Wheatley Institute, Women’s Well-Being survey, March 2025. 

Among college-educated mothers of young children, about equal shares of married and unmarried mothers prefer full-time work. However, among mothers with young children who do not have a college degree, married mothers have a strong preference for not working full time. Only 28% of married mothers in this group prefer full-time work, compared with 52% of unmarried mothers.

Figure 9: Employment status preferences, by marital status and education, of women ages 25-55 with children under age 5 at home. 
Source: IFS/Wheatley Institute, Women’s Well-Being survey, March 2025. 

Income and Ideology

The work preferences of mothers with young children also vary by their family income and ideology. More than half of mothers with annual incomes of at least $150,000 say they prefer working full time, but only 36% of mothers with an annual income at or below $70,000 do. That preference differs sharply from 2012, when 25% of mothers with higher incomes said full-time employment would be ideal, compared to 40% of mothers with lower family incomes. 

Among married mothers with children under age 5, the income of their spouse also plays a role in shaping their work preference. Mothers who outearn their spouses are much more likely to say their ideal work would be full time (65%), compared with their peers who earn less than their spouses (29%).

Figure 10: Employment preferences, by family income and ideology, of mothers with children under 5 at home. 
Source: IFS/Wheatley Institute, Women’s Well-Being survey, March 2025. 

Moms' Ideal Work Arrangement vs. Reality

Part-time work presents the largest gap between preference and reality for mothers of young children. According to the IFS/Wheatley survey, 80% of mothers with children under age 5 who prefer working full time are doing so, while 64% of mothers who prefer not working for pay are currently not working. However, only 30% of mothers who prefer working part time are doing so.

Figure 11: Comparison of current and ideal work statuses among women ages 25 to 55 with children under age 5 at home. 
Source: IFS/Wheatley Institute, Women’s Well-Being survey, March 2025.

Most Moms Say Government Support for Parents Falls Short 

The U.S. is unique when it comes to family-friendly policies. Among 41 high- and middle-income countries today, it is the only country where paid leave for new parents is not legally mandated. While such policies are often viewed as obvious and important for supporting mothers and families, research suggests that they can also introduce long-term challenges, such as burdening families with higher tax rates and unintentionally suppressing senior-level positions for women. 

When asked whether the government does too much, too little, or about the right amount to address issues affecting parents today, a majority of women with children under age 18 (60%) say government is doing too little to help, 11% say too much, and 29% say about the right amount, according to the IFS/Wheatley survey. Mothers across education levels and income brackets share similar views.

Our analyses indicate that a one-size-fits all policy approach will not effectively address the needs of mothers. Mothers ranked paid parental leave (85%), flexible work arrangements (83%), and child tax credits (80%) as their top three policy priorities to better support families. Yet, further analysis by income shows that mothers in the middle- or higher-income brackets are more likely than lower-income moms to say paid parental leave and flexible work are vital for parents today. On the other hand, child tax credits are favored over flexible work among lower-income moms. 

Figure 12: Percentages of mothers ages 25-55 with children under age 18 at home who reported that a given policy would be helpful. 
Source: IFS/Wheatley Institute, Women’s Well-Being survey, March 2025.

Flexible work arrangements are especially appealing to college-educated mothers. Some 86% say that flexible work arrangements (including remote work and part-time options) are either extremely or very helpful to parents, compared with 81% of mothers without a college degree. In fact, a flexible work schedule is seen as the top policy priority for college-educated mothers, slightly ahead of paid family leave at 85% (see Appendix for more details). These preferences likely reflect the higher opportunity costs they face when stepping back from work, suggesting that mothers’ policy priorities can be shaped by work opportunities and constraints.

Compared with paid parental leave and flexible work arrangements, government-subsidized childcare is viewed as a relatively lower priority by mothers when considering what helps parents most. College-educated mothers are more likely than their less-educated counterparts to say that “government-subsidized childcare programs to provide high-quality, affordable, and accessible childcare for working parents” are extremely or very helpful (79% vs. 75%), yet they still favor flexible work arrangements over childcare support. Similarly, higher-income mothers are more likely than those with lower incomes to rate such programs as extremely or very helpful (79% vs. 73%), but this option still does not rank among the top three priorities for higher-income mothers.

Figure 13: Percentage of mothers, by family income level, who predict that a particular policy would be helpful. 
Source: IFS/Wheatley Institute, Women’s Well-Being survey, March 2025. 

These findings are consistent with survey data gathered in the months after the pandemic subsided. More than half of parents said that they preferred working from home at least half of the time, flexibility that emerged as a result of the pandemic. Work flexibility plays an important role in facilitating the type of childcare arrangement mothers say they prefer. In the same post-Covid survey, 37% of mothers with young children identified “both parents work flexible hours and shared childcare” as the best arrangement for families with pre-school age children. In contrast, only 8% viewed center-based childcare as the best arrangement. 

In fact, flexible work arrangements are common among female workers these days. In the IFS/Wheatley survey, about 50% of women with children under age 18 who work full time or part time report that they have at least one day a week that they work remotely, and a slightly lower share (47%) of women who do not have children under age 18 at home say they work remotely at least one day a week.

College-educated mothers are much more likely to have jobs with flexibility. Among mothers who are working full or part time, 58% of college-educated mothers with children under age 18 say they work at least one day remotely, compared to 41% for mothers without a college education, according to the same survey.

It Takes a Village to Raise a Child, But Families Do the Lion's Share

Raising children involves some of the most rewarding, yet exhausting work. Time diary research shows that parents find caring for their children to be much more exhausting than their paid work. That’s why having a strong support network is essential, not just for parents, but also for children’s development.  

However, the support network parents experience on a day-to-day basis today appears to be much smaller than in previous generations. For most mothers with children under age 18 at home, their spouse or the father of their children is the main source of help: about half of mothers (53%) say they have received a lot of help from their spouse or father of their children, and 21% say they have received some help. Marital status also matters. Married mothers are about twice as likely to report receiving a lot of help from their spouses compared to unmarried mothers (63% vs. 31%).

Extended families rank as the second most common source of support for mothers raising children. One in three mothers (31%) say their extended family, which includes grandparents or siblings, have provided a lot of help, and one-third say they received some help, but an equal share of mothers (35%) say they received little or no support at all from their extended families. Married and unmarried mothers are equally likely to receive help from extended families, but since unmarried mothers get less help from their partner or father of their child, extended families often become a primary source of support. 

Mothers also get help from paid childcare as well as friends, but the two sources are much less important than extended family. Only 17% of mothers suggest paid childcare played an important role in helping them raise children, and 13% said the same about their friends. Overall, fewer than half of mothers in the survey report receiving either a lot or some help from these sources.  

Neighbors, once a vital part of the “village” that helped raise children, now rank at the bottom among key sources of support for mothers. They are even less helpful to mothers than online communities or forums. Just a quarter of mothers (26%) report receiving at least some help from neighbors, while more than half of mothers (54%) say they have received no help at all. Similarly, local communities, including churches, play a limited role in supporting mothers. Half of mothers say they’ve received no help at all from their local communities, while only 28% report receiving at least some help.

Figure 14: Amount of help mothers have reported receiving from various resources.
Source: IFS/Wheatley Institute, Women’s Well-Being survey, March 2025. 

A separate analysis of mothers with children under age 5 at home suggests a similar pattern. These mothers also rely heavily on their spouse/partner (80%) or extended families (71%) for help. They receive comparable levels of support from paid childcare (42%) and friends (44%), though more report receiving a lot of help from paid childcare (22%) than from friends (12%). Once again, local communities and neighbors play a limited role in supporting mothers of young children—similar to the level of support from online communities.

No Single Policy Solution

Being married and having children appear to be less important in shaping the employment patterns of women today. Recent decades have seen an increase in full-time employment of married mothers with children under age 5, the group that was previously least likely to be employed. During the same period, unmarried mothers of young children have experienced a drop in employment rates. Some of the increase in married mothers’ employment is the result of economic pressure, especially post-Covid inflation, and an increased cost of living. Nearly three-quarters of Americans report being worried about the cost of living, and over half feel that their expenses are rising faster than their incomes. Economic anxiety is undoubtedly shaping mothers’ employment preferences and desires.  

This change in employment patterns among married mothers of young children also reflects a demographic shift. Today’s married mothers of young children are predominantly Millennial women, who are highly educated and surpass men by a widening margin in the attainment of bachelor’s degrees. As of 2025, 58% of married mothers of young children are college educated, compared with 20% of their unmarried counterparts.

Married mothers of young children with a college degree are much more likely to identify full-time employment as their ideal (48%), compared with their counterparts without a college degree (28%), and far less likely to prefer no employment at all (13% vs. 31%). A college degree appears to significantly shape women’s orientation toward full-time employment across their life course, including during the years when they have young children. For these women, not working may be “more expensive” than working, even if it means paying for childcare. 

Many of these mothers need greater support as they navigate the complexities of work and family life. For college-educated mothers, flexibility in where and when they work is a key support, enabling them to respond to family needs while meeting the demands of work. A substantial body of research confirms the powerful role of flexibility in reducing conflict between work and family life.

In contrast, lower-income mothers and mothers without a college degree view direct financial support, such as child tax credits, as more helpful for families, enabling one parent to stay at home to care for children, while the other is employed. Given the work options available to them, these women may not feel the same pull to participate in the work force, as job flexibility may not be possible. 

When it comes to what helps parents the most, government-subsidized childcare is viewed as a relatively lower priority by mothers. Higher-income and college-educated mothers are more likely than others to favor childcare assistance, yet even among these moms, it ranks behind paid family leave and flexible work arrangements. This pattern reflects mothers’ strong desire to provide care for their own children while they are young—and to find solutions for balancing work and family life.  

The distinctions we found here between different groups of mothers confirm that no single policy solution fits all. The best policies are those that strengthen mothers’ capacity to do what they feel is best for their families—whether that involves increased work flexibility and paid family leave, or direct financial assistance to enable a mother to work less. Mothers are empowered when they have more options to choose from. 

The persistent decline in the fertility rate highlights the critical need for family-friendly policies today. Mothers and families need support. Children are our future. Empowering and supporting women in their role as mothers is not only vital to their well-being, but also one of most important and meaningful ways to invest in the next generation.

Note: Download the full report for the Appendix

End Notes

1. For year-to-year comparisons, we focused on usual hours worked per week during the previous calendar year. Additional analyses were conducted among full-time, year-around workers as well as those working full time in the previous week; similar trends were observed across multiple measures.

2. During the same period, the share of married mothers who work part time declined from 22% to 16%

3. Alternative inflation measures suggest that real wage for American workers have modestly increased since the 1970s. See: Scott Winship, “Introducing the more accurate consumer price index,” AEI Center on Opportunity and Social Mobility, November 2024.