Reports And Briefings

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.

Introduction

Since the Great Recession, there has been a massive change in the American housing market: more new housing is in the form of apartment buildings instead of single-family homes. In 2024, over one-third of new housing units were in buildings with 20 or more units; the first time since 1974 that such a high share has been reached.

If people want to live in apartments, that is their prerogative. But the rise in apartment construction is worrisome because prior IFS research has shown that very few Americans ideally want to live in apartments. More importantly, when most Americans think about starting a family, they overwhelmingly prefer not to live in an apartment. And yet, apartments keep being built. There are many reasons for this increase: delayed fertility and marriage have created a bigger market for small housing units; slower asset accumulation for younger generations has limited their housing options; apartment buildings yield more marketable floor area compared to the cost of land for developers; and the increasing bind of urban growth barriers and other limits to expansion have nudged developers to pursue more density inside cities rather than building entire new neighborhoods.

These factors are not going to disappear overnight. At the city, state, and federal levels, bi-partisan politicians are passing bills with the specific intent to open up more land for apartments. Multiple cities have passed laws eliminating parking minimums. The states of Texas and California have both passed multiple laws this year to specifically open up more land to build apartment buildings. The “One Big Beautiful Bill” included a re-authorization and expansion of the Opportunity Zone program, which only funds the construction of rental housing and predominantly includes apartments. 

As a result, we should expect apartment construction to be a significant, if not an increasing, percentage of new US housing stock. As such, for those who care about helping American families reach their fertility goals, it’s important to ask: could we make this wave of apartment construction more family friendly? Although we know that Americans generally do not prefer apartments when it comes to family life, are there some apartment designs that are less obstructive to family formation? What about apartments for specific types of families, like a newlywed couple living in their first home together? Or what about a family with only one child?

To answer these questions, we fielded a survey of over 6,000 Americans ages 18 to 54, providing them with a range of questions about family and housing, and asking them to rate specific buildable floorplans, architectural renderings, and apartment building amenities. What we found is striking: among apartments with a similar square footage, some apartment layouts are systematically better for family life than others. More open floorplans with fewer rooms per square footage had lower ratings from Americans interested in starting a family than identical-square-footage apartments with more division into rooms, and those ratings translate into a willingness to pay higher rent for more bedrooms. 

Family-friendly apartments are in short supply around the country, not least because almost none are being built. But we do not believe this is due to market efficiencies: family-friendly apartments have low vacancy rates, pointing to high demand, low turnover, and an undersupply that may arguably come from a mixture of regulatory barriers and genuine market perception failure among builders and investors. The takeaway is clear: if obstacles to family-friendly apartments can be removed, more such apartments will be built, and as a result, more young couples could have their first or second child earlier in life, raising fertility rates nationwide. Besides changes in private-sector practices, policymakers could especially consider ensuring that parking rules are per-unit rather than per-bedroom, and that public housing trusts have a mandate to produce family-friendly units.

Key Findings

1. People who live in small apartments are less likely to have children. Building more family-friendly apartments would likely increase birth rates for young Americans.
2. Apartments are a growing share of new housing but are getting less family friendly: smaller, with fewer bedrooms.
3. Americans are willing to pay more per square foot for an apartment with more bedrooms, and these units with more bedrooms are strongly associated with more openness to having children.
4. Family-friendly units are more cost-effective than developers and investors realize. One reason these units are underprovided is that developers use erroneous assumptions about vacancy rates that ignore the fact that smaller units have higher vacancy rates, higher turnover, and higher rates of budget-constrained residents who may miss payments. 
5. Exempting family-friendly units from floor area ratios, setting parking requirements per-unit instead of per-bedroom, accelerating permitting time for small projects, mandating that public housing trusts provide family-friendly units, and expanding Opportunity Zone-like rules for development could all increase the number of family-friendly apartments on the market.

The Rise of Apartments

There has been an explosion in apartment and condominium construction in recent years. The figure below shows the share of new housing units in America that are in apartment buildings with 20 or more units. After the subprime mortgage collapse of 2007-2008, apartments rocketed upwards as a share of home construction.

Figure 1. Share of completed housing units that are apartment buildings with 20+ units

The main reason for this was that single-family housing construction cratered. In 2006, 1.65 million single-family homes were completed, according to Census Bureau data. In 2009, just 520,000 were. But it was not only a decline in single-family homes. In 2006, 185,000 apartments in large buildings were completed. In 2009, 213,000 were completed. By 2019, there were 293,000 apartments finished even as single-family housing completions remained below a million. In 2024, 548,000 apartments were completed in large buildings, while single-family completions languished at just a million. 

This boom in apartment construction has many sources beyond the scope of this paper, and it is not our goal to disparage or discourage apartment living or apartment building. Both authors of this brief started their families while living in apartments in big cities, and one of the authors (Bobby) has spent his career as a developer putting up apartment buildings during the very wave of construction we are discussing here. 

But in the long run, the American people don’t want to raise their families in apartments. Prior research by the Institute for Family Studies found that about two-thirds of people in every state prefer detached single-family homes, and most of the remainder prefer townhouses or other options, not apartments. We also found that when it comes to raising a family, Americans reject apartments (vs. single-family homes) almost as much as they reject the idea of an extra hour of commuting, or hundreds of dollars of housing cost increases.

Thus, the future for American families will not be found in widespread apartment construction. Even so, young Americans are spending more of their lives in apartments. Whereas in 1960, under 3% of Americans ages 20 to 40 lived in apartments, today that share is over 10 percent. The huge runup is fairly recent, occurring mostly since 2010.

Figure 2. Share of 20- to 40-year-olds living in apartment buildings with 20+ units

Given that Americans are spending more of their prime years for family formation living in apartments, even though most Americans don’t envision raising a family in an apartment in the long run, it is important to make apartments as family friendly as possible. The fact is that large shares of Americans will spend their young adult years in an apartment, and maybe even get married while living in one, and may still be in an apartment when they have their first child. And since apartments are a large share of new construction, a lot of young Americans ultimately have no other option: either an apartment—or mom and dad’s basement.

Apartments are also getting smaller over time and less suitable for families. Sizes of new multifamily housing peaked in 2007 at 1,300 square feet on average—a figure which has fallen to 1,043 as of 2024, a 20% decline in under 20 years.

Figure 3. Average square footage of newly-built apartments

The number of bedrooms in new apartments has fallen as well. Apartments built since the 2010s are far likelier to be studios and one-bedrooms than two+ bedroom units that are more suitable for family life. Whereas three+ bedroom units represented 7-11% of construction in the 1990s and 2000s, they are just 5% today. On the other hand, studio apartments were just 10-12% of construction in the 1990s and 2000s, but account for over 15% today. There has been a similar shift away from two-bedroom units in favor of one-bedroom units. 

Thus, there is an ongoing seismic shift in American housing. Apartment-dwelling for younger Americans has continued to increase, even as the apartments they live in have gotten smaller. Moreover, a growing share of that reduced square footage is devoted, not to common areas, dens, or offices, but bathrooms—the ratio of bathrooms to bedrooms in apartments is rising steadily over time. As a result, young Americans today are vastly more likely to be living in housing environments they themselves see as unsuitable for family formation, and probably designed for roommates rather than a family, according to their own survey responses.

Figure 4. Share of occupied apartments in buildings with 20+ units as of 2023, by decade of unit construction

Previous work at IFS outlined how America could unleash more construction of the starter-homes young families need. But in the meantime, apartments are still going to be built. This report explores how to make those apartments more family friendly and specifically explores whether there is any reason to think young Americans would actually pay the rent on family-friendly apartments. While there may be hard-to-change economic reasons why apartment construction is booming, it seems reasonable to think that the average size of new apartments could be nudged back upwards, or that bedrooms-per-unit could be pushed back nearer 1.5 vs. the current 1.3. These changes would help more young families get started having that first child, even if they may still eventually move to a single-family home as their kids get older.

Data & Methods

In May 2025, the Institute for Family Studies, in partnership with Demographic Intelligence, completed the Multifamily Housing Survey of 6,288 Americans ages 18 to 54 on the survey platform Alchemer. 

We aimed to sample 6,000 respondents; ultimately, to achieve specified quotas for representativeness by age and marital status, 6,288 completed responses were collected. To get these 6,288 completions, 13,200 respondents were recruited to begin the survey. Of these, 5,660 were disqualified due to age, geography, or failure of basic attentional screeners. An additional 1,236 failed to complete the survey. Finally, 738 completions were disqualified due to failing speed checks or checks for straight lining of responses. Of the remaining 6,288 responses, 5,117 passed all quality-control benchmarks related to illogical question responses, response timing, and open-text responses, per quality-control advice articulated by the Pew Research Center. Respondents were sampled to ensure approximate representativeness for the United States population by age, sex, and marital status. Respondents were then weighted by age, sex, race, marital status, number of children in the home, geographic region, employment status, and education, to ensure a close fit to the April 2024 Annual Social and Economic Supplement to the Current Population Survey.

Within the survey, respondents faced several questions asking them to identify which of several apartment floorplans they preferred. Apartment floorplans and 3-D renders were provided by The American Housing Corporation.

Houses Americans Value

Different people naturally want different things from a house. We started out by simply asking respondents if a range of features of a house were “Very important,” “Somewhat important,” or “Not important,” and then we converted these answers to an index from 0 (not important) to 2 (very important). This gives us a baseline of what people want. We then segmented those responses into four groups by parenting status: childless people who don’t want any kids, childless people who want kids, people with kids who don’t want any more, and people with kids who want more. This figure shows how valuations of specific features varied across parenting status.

Figure 5. Average importance ranking of household trait

For some features, there are not big differences across groups: all groups placed a fairly low value on home offices and proximity to family or friends. Likewise, all groups valued a short commute. But for some features, there are large differences. The most important feature for families with kids is that a house has at least three bedrooms. For childless respondents who do not want kids, the most important feature is a short commute. In general, the biggest gaps are observed for bedrooms, yard size, bathrooms, kitchen size, fireplaces, and walk-in closet space. This all makes sense—families need space.

However, it is worth asking if this is true for young Americans. Maybe younger generations have different values and therefore do not really care about the same things. The figure below shows the same figures, but now just for Americans under age 30.

Figure 6. Average importance ranking of household trait for respondents under 30

When it comes to younger Americans, the gaps seem just as large. Those who want more kids value bedrooms, large kitchens, more bathrooms, and fireplaces. This all supports the notion that the decline in apartment size and bedroom count probably matters a lot for shaping family life.

How Americans Rank Apartments

To better understand how Americans think about starting a family in an apartment, we provided them with a range of comparisons of apartments. To begin with, respondents were given six apartments to rank: two were 750 square feet, two were 1,100 square feet, and two were 1,200 square feet. Within each size band, apartments varied by number of rooms: one bedroom with a large common area vs. one bedroom with a normal common area, and a separate den at 750 square feet; two bedrooms and large common area vs. two bedrooms and a spare den at 1,100 square feet; and two bedrooms vs. three bedrooms at 1,200 square feet. Respondents also saw floorplans of the six apartments to help them visualize the choice.

We then asked respondents to rank the six apartments from the one that would make them feel most comfortable having a(nother) child, to the one that would make them least comfortable. For each of the four parenting categories, we were interested in how they would rate subdividing the fixed square footage into more rooms. Do most people want a few rooms and a big open layout? Or is slicing an apartment up into more bedrooms better? 

The figure below shows the difference in average rating (1-6) between the “extra room” version of each apartment size vs. the “no extra room” version.

Figure 7. Difference in ranked value between extra room vs. no extra room 

In every case, the “no kids, don’t want” respondents have a clear preference for the more open layout. Yet also in every case, people with kids have a clear preference for more bedrooms. 

The fact that people who do not have kids but want them do not have such a preference probably attests to two facts: first, the base case of a two-bedroom apartment at 1,100 or 1,200 square feet probably is enough for many people to feel confident having a first baby; second, once you actually have kids, you may realize they take up more space than you realized, or that you’d really like another bedroom for family to come and visit and help with your child. Regardless, it is clear that the shift towards more open apartment layouts is uniquely tailored for the interests of childless people who don’t want kids.

Floorplans Americans Choose

Ranking a lot of options, however, may not be the best way to capture preferences, especially since it’s hard for respondents to keep a mental picture of six different apartments at once. So, to further illuminate differences, we next showed each respondent a random pair of two floor plans alongside a furnished rendering of the common area of the apartment. All apartment renders had similar furnishings and lighting to the extent possible. Respondents were asked to rate which of the two apartments would make them feel most confident about having a(nother) baby. The next figure shows the relative “win percentages” for each apartment pairing, among respondents who ever wanted any (more) children.

For simplicity, we show just the head-to-head selection rates for apartments of the same square footage. When asked to choose between a 750 square foot unit with one bedroom vs. a bedroom and a separated den, 47% chose the one-bedroom, while 53% chose the room with the den. These effects are not enormous, but their persistence across unit sizes, and the fact that these effects are observed even in a survey question where we did not explicitly highlight that units varied only on bedroom count suggest that Americans interested in having children really do want and need more rooms, not just more square footage.

Figure 8. Share of respondents who chose given floorplan and apartment render vs. alternative

Focusing just on the 1,200-square-foot apartment comparison, it’s worth seeing how preferences shake out by parenting status: preferences for more bedrooms scale directly with actual or desired family size. Among the childless, there is a net preference for fewer bedrooms—but among those who have children, there is a net preference for more bedrooms. Bedroom counts simply are the sine qua non of family-friendly housing.

Figure 9. Share of each parenting status group who preferred a 3-bedroom over a 2-bedroom layout for a 1200-square-foot apartment

Tradeoffs Americans Will Make

It’s clear that Americans value more bedrooms in apartments: but will they pay for it? What tradeoffs will Americans actually make? To assess this, we used a conjoint framework, where respondents were asked to choose between two different apartments and select the one that would make them feel more confident in having a(nother) child. 

But in this case, the apartments varied across several traits: apartments were randomly assigned a floor/degree of access, a number of bedrooms, a square footage, a monthly rent, a description of neighborhood amenities, and a description of apartment building amenities. The next figure essentially presents the extent to which seeing a given trait altered the odds that respondents selected the apartment scenario containing that trait value. Positive values indicate that a trait was appealing to respondents; negative values show that it was unappealing. 

By far, the most important feature of an apartment is the number of bedrooms in a unit. The difference between two and four bedrooms is about as influential for respondents in their apartment selection as a difference of 600-900 square feet or an extra $1,500 in monthly rent.

The way conjoint surveys work, this does not literally mean that respondents would pay $1,500 more for two extra bedrooms: they may not have that much money available. Rather, it means that at a given budget constraint, extra bedrooms would give them as much expected value as that kind of change in rent. 

Other features matter too, of course. Respondents vigorously reject 10th-floor walkups, for obvious reasons. They also prefer ground-floor units. Plenty of other features of the neighborhood matter, but nothing matters quite like bedrooms. The fact that bedrooms matter so much more than square footage is consistent with the previous results: at a given square footage, Americans would prefer more bedrooms. There is more variance in bedroom count preferences than square footage preferences.

Figure 10. Conjoint survey results on apartment preferences, all respondents

But, of course, apartment builders are not marketing apartments to “Americans generally.” Below, we re-estimate the same conjoint model, but this time, we limit it to Americans under age 40 who reported living in urban areas.

Figure 11. Conjoint survey results on apartment preferences, urban respondents under 40

Next, we compare how a willingness to make tradeoffs varies across the parenting statuses used throughout this report. For ease of reading and because effect sizes are small, we do not present results for apartment amenities and neighborhood traits in the figure below.

Figure 12. Conjoint survey results on apartment preferences, by parenting status

The exact same pattern is clear: bedrooms are more salient than virtually any other feature of an apartment, even for younger, more urban respondents who are the target market.

By and large, across parenting statuses, Americans have similar pricing constraints, preferences around building access, and square footage preferences. But when it comes to bedrooms, there are large differences. For the childless-by-choice, there is little difference between two, three, or four bedrooms. But for those with children who want more, there is an enormous difference: more bedrooms make all the difference.

Figure 13. Vacancy rates by bedroom count in apartments in buildings with 20+ units

Some three- or four-bedroom apartments are indeed unoccupied, but their rent is still being paid—these larger vacant apartments tend to be seasonal use for snowbirds, vacation properties, beach condos for rental, timeshares, or units under contract but not yet occupied. As far as a builder is concerned, that kind of vacancy is no problem, since the unit is being paid for. But it should be noted that for society on the whole, large numbers of seasonally vacant units that could house families may not be a highly desirable outcome. Other vacancies, largely due to property abandonment, are similar across unit types.

Two facts immediately emerge from the figure. First, it really is the case that family-friendly units are in demand. Vacancy rates for these units are about 40% lower than for studio apartments, and about 20% lower than one-bedroom apartments. Because vacancies are lost money for landlords, that means that smaller apartments would need to rent for appreciably more per square foot to compete with family-sized apartments. Increased turnover leading to vacancy also meaningfully increases the operating expenses of the property: carpets are replaced, walls are repainted, and marketing dollars and staff time are spent on finding new tenants.

The second fact that emerges is that many family-sized apartments are sitting unoccupied. But rather than proving these units are not in demand, this actually shows that these units are in demand: the fact that nearly 13% of four-bedroom apartments in America have absentee residents paying rent, of which 7% are specifically for vacation usage, tells us that these units are so valuable that people will buy or rent them—even if they can’t actually live in them. For many people, “vacation” ends up meaning a three- or four-bedroom apartment (perhaps by a beach or near the ski slopes)—and yet these clearly highly desirable units are rarely built for living. Again, it should be noted that “seasonal use vacancy” is not a vacancy at all from a builder’s perspective: seasonal use vacancies still pay rent. Instead, seasonal use vacancies reveal what kind of apartments people see as highly desirable. And those seasonal use vacancies are overwhelmingly big apartments.

Do Family-Friendly Apartments Boost Fertility?

Finally, it must be asked: are fertility rates higher when families have access to larger apartments? The figure below, showing marital total fertility rates (to control for the fact that women in small apartments might simply not be partnered), answers that question in the affirmative. While fertility rates are low for married women in smaller apartments, they are high in larger apartments—in fact, married women in two- or three-bedroom apartments have somewhat higher birth rates than married women in two- or three-bedroom single-family homes.

Figure 14. Marital total fertility rates for U.S. apartment-residing women by bedroom count

Moreover, when we asked respondents in the survey to select the floorplan images that would make them feel most confident having another child, we also asked why they selected those images. Of respondents who selected the apartment floorplan with more bedrooms, the figure below shows the reasons they reported.

Figure 15. Share of respondents who said the reason they selected the floorplan they identified as making them most confident having a(nother) child because of the reason given, by apartment size selection, among respondents who have or want to have children

Among family-minded respondents who prefer the floorplan with more bedrooms, almost 50% say that the additional bedrooms are in fact the reason they selected that floorplan. Our respondents explicitly identified higher-bedroom-count apartments as making them likelier to have children and then re-affirmed in a follow-up question that the bedroom counts were the motivating factor for their apartment-floorplan selection. 

Respondents who chose the lower-bedroom-count floorplans are far less likely to say bedroom counts were their motivation. On the other hand, lower-bedroom-count floorplans overperformed in respondents’ aesthetic judgments, probably because their common spaces were larger, and the images provided to respondents focused on common spaces.

Moreover, while our survey did not ask respondents about the number of bedrooms in their current home, we did ask the kind of home they live in. We also asked if housing costs had recently influenced their fertility decisions. The figure below shows the share of respondents who said housing had influenced their family plans, among respondents whose ideal family size exceeded their current child numbers (i.e., among respondents who might be considering more children).

Figure 16. Share of respondents reporting that housing costs influenced their fertility decisions, among respondents whose ideal family size exceeds current family size

And finally, we asked respondents about the ideal type of home they would prefer. Then, among those who did not yet live in their ideal home (mostly respondents living in apartments), we asked why that gap exists. The figure below shows that Americans not living in their ideal home type are uniquely likely to say the reason for this gap is a lack of suitable home options if they are childless but want kids. Lack of diversity in home types is a particular barrier to people just starting out on family life: these people disproportionately need modest starter homes, as we have previously written, or, failing that, more family-friendly apartments.

Figure 17. Share of respondents reporting that a lack of houses of the kind they want to live in is a reason they do not live in their ideal type of house, by parenting status

Fertility rates are low for couples who live in small apartments—but not for couples who live in family-friendly apartments. That correlation probably isn’t spurious: across numerous question types, our respondents repeatedly articulated that more bedrooms would make them more willing to have desired children, and respondents in predominantly small apartments are far more likely to report housing-related constraints on fertility. There may be many reasons for this, but the obvious jump in birth rates at two-bedrooms strongly suggests that the main driver is simply the desire for a child to have their own nursery or room, a desire that is widespread in American society. 

Therefore, the dearth of family-friendly apartments amidst a massive boom in apartment construction is a significant headwind for American family formation. If builders built more family-sized apartments, it is very likely that more Americans would have children.

Why Haven’t Developers Delivered More Family-Friendly Apartments?

As shown above, new supply of family-sized apartments has not kept up with the wider apartment boom: just 5% of recent apartment construction is for three+ bedroom units, versus over 15% for studio apartments. This presents a conundrum: if family-sized units are as in demand as these findings suggest, why aren’t developers building them?

One key reason is that large-scale housing investments represent a uniquely cautious industry focused on delivering risk-adjusted returns. These projects are almost always financed by investors who want a demonstration that units are leasable and can achieve a market rent. Builders can save on design and construction costs by building the same or similar structures multiple times across multiple projects, and investors can see that similar projects are widely available for comparison elsewhere to establish expectations about rents. 

This being the case, builders, buyers, and lenders all have strong incentives to repeatedly build highly similar projects and, in particular, to repeatedly build any kind of structure that has already been shown to satisfy common building code rules and deliver minimally satisfactory profits. That a different building design might increase profits 1% is less important to developers than the fact that an untested building design could result in a massive, virtually unrecoverable loss. 

Construction of speculative new configurations of units would, therefore, be confined to small structures—but very few small apartment structures are actually built. Of the 4.5 million occupied, rented apartment units built since 2010 in buildings with five or more units and estimated in the 2023 American Community Survey, 51% were in buildings with 50 or more units, and another 19% in buildings with 20 to 49 units. Moreover, even if buildings have under 50 units, a housing development may have multiple buildings: a recent report suggested that the average apartment-building project has over 230 units. 

Apartment developments tend to be large investments, and thus unsuitable for risky bets on new housing configurations. Developments may require hundreds of units or more to procure cost-competitive insurance, and a single site may need well over 100 and as much as 200 units for an on-site property manager to be cost-effective. Large institutional investors may prefer not to purchase large numbers of small ($5-$30 million) apartment buildings due to the costs associated with managing numerous properties, and thus small projects can be starved of investors. 

Finally, developers and investors are mostly backward-looking in terms of demographics rather than forward-looking. Enormous investments in apartment-style housing have been based on the assumption that younger generations prefer to live in apartments. Yet, apartment-dwelling is a life-cycle phenomenon, and the large “Millennial” cohort born around 1980-1990 is now aging out of its likely years of peak apartment-dwelling. 

The figure below shows, for individuals born in the given year, what share lived in apartments at their various ages.

Figure 18. Share of birth cohort living in buildings with 10+ units by age

Developers have rightly sensed growing demand for apartments—but are likely not correctly anticipating the incoming life-cycle effect. As birth rates fall, each cohort is smaller, and thus while each cohort may have greater preference for apartments, that preference will increasingly be offset by larger, older cohorts aging out of peak-apartment ages. Apartment developments will likely face oversupply and vacancy issues within the next decade due to these effects, especially apartment developments that are incompatible with the life cycle factors that drive this dynamic: marriage and childbearing. In fact, family-friendly apartments really are less sensitive to these life cycle effects: whereas people in three+ bedroom units represent under 10% of all apartment-dwellers ages 25-34, they represent almost 15% of 40-year-olds. As apartment-dwellers age, they need more bedrooms for their kids, and as such, family-friendly units are better positioned to absorb ongoing cohort changes than other units. Failure to account for this ongoing demographic change likely accounts for some undersupply of family-friendly units.

Thus, the market segment (known as the “Missing Middle”), which might be expected to innovate in providing more family-friendly housing, simply does not operate at a scale to provide much housing at all. Infamously, the construction industry has seen a decline in the marginal productivity per worker over the past half century, due to increased regulations, and a lack of technological innovation relative to other industries. This effect is magnified in smaller projects where even the builder’s administrative efficiencies vanish. Despite the fragmentation of the housing development industry, each individual player in it operates at a scale and with a risk-management strategy that makes it hard to justify building anything other than the kinds of buildings that have been built a thousand times already.

Why Don’t Developers Add Family Units to Large Developments?

The second main reason family friendly units are not being built relates to why they represent such a low share of even larger projects. Developers could add a few more three-bedroom units in large projects yet often do not. Why?

To begin, smaller apartments do command a higher contract rent per square foot, and builders anticipate selling the development at a calculation conducted per rentable square foot. While smaller apartments can be more expensive to construct per square foot due to higher prevalence of bathrooms and kitchens, the reality is that land, overhead, planning, financing, and regulatory costs are such an enormous share of apartment construction costs that this kind of variance might not change cost factors as much as might be expected. Moreover, whereas in the past, a three-bedroom apartment might have just one bathroom, today even many families who want to rent a three-bedroom unit may prefer two or even three bathrooms. Thus, builders and managers buy and sell apartment buildings at rent-per-square foot.

In most cases, buildings are priced and sold on fairly conventional assumptions about vacancy rates, rates of rental nonpayment, and costs to find tenants. Individual builders and property managers may vary in their assumptions, but industry experts suggest that builders and managers do not generally assume that vacancy rates and credit collection losses systematically or dramatically vary by bedroom count. Yet as we showed above, vacancy rates do vary across bedroom types. Smaller units spend more time unrented: studios spend 12% of their time unowned and unrented, one-bedrooms 8%, two-bedrooms 7%, and three-bedrooms 6%. 

But it turns out that payment risks vary, too. Residents of studio apartments pay an average of 32% of their income in rents vs. 25-26% for residents of larger apartments. Moreover, tenant tenure varies: in the 2023 ACS—again just looking at units rented in large apartment buildings and built since 2010—the average tenant had lived in their unit for 23.5 months for studio apartments vs. 29.2 months for three-bedroom apartments. All of this adds up to very real cost differences as buildings with more studio and one-bedroom units will have more vacant time without rent being paid, more costs repainting and relisting apartments due to turnover, and a larger share of tenants missing their rent because they are budget-constrained. Buildings full of small apartments are more expensive to operate.

To demonstrate this, we calculated effective rents for different bedroom counts using realistic data. In July 2025, Zillow estimated that asking rates were $1,429 for an average studio apartment, $1,333 for a one-bedroom, $1,555 for a two-bedroom, and $1,976 for a three-bedroom. In 2023, the ACS found values of $1,795, $1,800, $2,172, and $2,139, respectively. Thus, according to Zillow, three-bedroom apartments rented for 38% more than studios, and 48% more than one-bedrooms, while according to the ACS, they rented for 19% more in both cases.

But accounting for differential vacancies and losses, the story changes considerably: using the Zillow data, three-bedrooms have a true net rental return of 50% higher than studios, and 52% higher than one-bedrooms, while using the ACS data, it is 29% and 22%, respectively. To the extent builders adopt “industry standard” assumptions about stable vacancy rates (i.e., to the extent buildings are priced on contract rent per square foot), builders are leaving money on the table.

Additionally, as we demonstrated in the survey above, a large cohort of American renters value the extra bedroom for an apartment given the same square footage. A simple solution to builders thus directly presents itself: to build apartments with three bedrooms in apartments that they currently only designed for two bedrooms, which is likely to increase the demand—and therefore the rent—of those units.

It may not seem obvious why builders are fixated on rents per square foot: the whole point of building an apartment building is that additional square footage can be added by building additional stories. Square footage should not be the primary constraint on such structures, yet it is, for reasons we elaborate on below.

What Can Be Done?

The real estate industry is not about to reinvent itself overnight, shedding a wide range of structural characteristics that make it hard to build family-friendly apartments. But there are areas where changes could be made. We divide those changes into two categories: private sector practices and government policies. 

Private Sector Practices

1. Incorporate evidence provided from the survey in this report on pent-up demand and willingness to pay for family-friendly units by adding more such units to large projects: specifically, by increasing the total number of bedrooms in their buildings
2. Lenders, builders, buyers, and managers alike should insist that   investment return metrics incorporate variable vacancy rates, nonpayment rates, and tenant turnover rates appropriate for units of the given bedroom count, thus implicitly assuming higher occupancy and higher payment rates for buildings with more two- and three-bedroom units. Buildings with lower ratios of bedrooms to units should be seen as having systematically higher operating costs.
3. Invest in innovation in technology or construction techniques, which can reduce the construction cost for small- and medium-scale buildings, making it more likely for builders to take risks on family-friendly projects.

Government Policies

1. Accelerate the pace at which permits are issued for building projects in general, but especially for projects with under 50 units. Smaller projects have less community impact and should benefit from expedited permitting to enable builders to experiment with new building configurations in a more cost-effective manner.
2. Ensure that any parking requirements for buildings are set per unit, not per bedroom. Because land costs for parking (or, alternatively, underground parking) are a significant share of development costs, builders have strong incentives to design apartments in such a way as to minimize parking required. As a result, per-bedroom parking rules directly discourage multi-bedroom units and favor studio apartments.
3. Allow single-stair buildings up to four stories. Single-stair layouts are more amenable to multi-bedroom apartment floorplans, and allowing single-stair for smaller buildings will further open new avenues for small multifamily developments and, thus, for more experimentation in form and function.
4. Housing trust funds that finance or build apartments at public expense, whether state, federal, or local, should be given explicit, statutory guidance to prioritize housing the largest number of people, and producing the largest possible number of bedrooms, not simply the largest possible number of units. 

Conclusion

Apartment-building is booming in America, and that’s not likely to change in the near future. This boom is both cause and a consequence of declining family formation in America. Yet, there are places where market players such as builders and investors could possibly make more money building more family-friendly apartments. Sometimes, the barriers to doing this are institutional or informational—but government policy matters as well. As long as apartments make up such a large share of new housing, it behooves policymakers, developers, and the public at large to take every possible measure to build apartments that are more functional for families. 

Comment

Docket ID ED-2025-OS-0118

20 August 2025

Secretary Linda McMahon

U.S. Department of Education

400 Maryland Ave SW

Washington, DC 20202

Re: “Proposed Priority and Definitions—Secretary’s Supplemental Priority and Definitions on Advancing Artificial Intelligence in Education

Dear Secretary McMahon,

This comment is submitted in response to the Department of Education's proposed priority to integrate artificial intelligence (A.I.) into US K-12 and higher education.¹ 

The Department’s proposed priority seeks to “support efforts that expand student understanding of AI and its real-world applications.”2 It also requests public input for the Department’s efforts at establishing “the appropriate integration of AI into education, providing AI training for educators, and fostering early exposure to AI concepts and technology to develop an AI-ready workforce and the next generation of American AI innovators.”3 

Generally, we agree with the Secretary that in a world where A.I. is “rapidly reshaping the future of education, work, learning, and daily life…it is increasingly important for students to develop AI literacy.”⁴ Sharing this concern, we support provisions (a)(i), (a)(vi), and (a)(vii) of the proposed priority, as they mark commonsense steps toward equipping the next generation of teachers and students with the skills they need to master this important new technology. That is, we support these provisions because they approach A.I. in education as a subject matter to be studied, like a computer laboratory, rather than a technology to be brought into every classroom, such as with ed tech, which has made computer technology the very basis of American education.

We also applaud the Department’s commitment to prioritize grantmaking for responsible or “appropriate methods” of A.I. integration that supports, rather than substitutes, the work of educators and classroom engagement.⁵  To this end, we are generally supportive of provision (a)(x) of the proposed priority, which aims to “[b]uild evidence of appropriate methods of integrating AI into education.”⁶  However, “appropriate” integration necessarily assumes the possibility of “inappropriate” integration. We encourage the Department to define inappropriate integration as not providing meaningful parental choice in how A.I. is used in the classroom, and, again, failing to focus A.I. in American education as a discrete subject. (More on both of these topics below.)

However, as written, the Department’s proposed priority undermines its own principles by implementing what is a top-down imposition that would foist untested and untrusted technologies upon our country’s educational institutions and, consequently, American children and families. If carried out as described, the Secretary’s grantmaking priorities will subvert the rights of parents and states to determine what is best for their families, place students in harm’s way, and, based on existing research and experience, undermine rather than advance learning outcomes. We respectfully urge the Secretary to direct the Department to prioritize research and acquire input from parents, educators, and communities to determine “appropriate methods” for integrating A.I. in education before funding the incorporation of A.I. technologies into the classroom. We believe that such an approach will be necessary to responsibly integrate A.I. in American education as well as earn the public’s trust and secure the flourishing of students.

A.I. Education vs. Educational A.I. Technology

The Secretary’s proposed priority is divided into two parts. Section (a) deals with expanding the “understanding of artificial intelligence” by incorporating A.I. education into existing curricula. Section (b) deals with expanding the “appropriate use of artificial intelligence technology in education.” Generally, the first is aimed at incorporating a new kind of “technological education” (i.e., education about technology) into American schools and the second is aimed at incorporating new technologies into American schools.

This distinction between “tech ed” and “ed tech” is critical in the comment that follows. As noted above, technological education in A.I. tools will be critical in a world where A.I. is “rapidly reshaping the future of education, work, learning, and daily life.” Accomplishing this, however, does not require all or most of education to be mediated by A.I. technologies, whether marketed as educational or otherwise. Put simply, learning about A.I. is not the same thing as learning by A.I., and it certainly does not necessitate the active incorporation of A.I. technologies into every classroom, every subject, every assignment, and every school-issued device.

In the past, America has circumscribed technological education to physical classrooms where certain technologies can be accessed, used, and learned for specific purposes. Historically, shop class, home economics, and computer learning were all incorporated into education in this manner. This simultaneously facilitated knowledge of these technical arts, while preserving the cognitive primacy of the oral and written word as mediated by hand-written or printed texts. Such an approach recognizes that all tools—from hammers to sewing machines to computers—are designed to assist humans with a specific task or set of tasks, and, furthermore, to allow them into subjects where they are inappropriate is to undermine those subjects.

This “focused” approach to technological education is especially important when it comes to incorporating new technologies into the classroom, as our experience with “ed tech,” i.e., the mandatory issuance of personal computers to students, underscores. This was a fundamental transition away from a liberal arts education, in which every subject had its own place in a larger curriculum along with its own way of doing things, toward one in which computers became the very basis of learning, childhood personality, and even in-school sociality. This paradigm has been a disaster,⁷ and incorporating A.I. under these conditions will inevitably result in it becoming the very basis of all the cognitive activity of American schooling. As American economist Oren Cass has helpfully put it: “the existence of the Computer Lab reflected the importance of learning how to use a computer, not the importance of using a computer to learn anything else.”⁸ The same should apply to A.I. in the classroom. That it is important for American students to learn how to use A.I. does not necessitate that A.I. technologies must be used to learn everything else. In fact, as we will discuss, there are reasons for it not to be used in this way. To that end, we are supportive of a “focused” approach to A.I. education that is reflected in provisions (a)(i), (a)(vi), and (a)(vii) of the proposed priority, and we encourage the Department to prioritize the integration of A.I. education in this manner.

Human Flourishing Eschewed Again

In his January 23, 2025, Executive Order, “Removing Barriers to American Leadership in Artificial Intelligence,” President Trump stated that his administration would work to develop policy that would “sustain and enhance America’s global AI dominance in order to promote human flourishing, economic competitiveness, and national security.”⁹

On its face, such language indicated a commitment by the Administration to curb libertarian impulses if and where these threaten the well-being of American families, workers, and children. But, to the surprise of many, the Administration has subsequently deemphasized this critical dimension of A.I. policy.

In fact, despite the President’s express commitment to pursue A.I. policy that promotes human flourishing, the Administration has largely remained silent on how it aims to achieve this goal or balance it with its other goals. For example, in its July 2025 A.I. Action Plan—by far the most comprehensive A.I. policy proposal published by the Administration—the White House excluded human flourishing from the three pillars of its plan, and all but one mention of it was made.¹⁰

The Department’s proposal is similarly silent on this critical dimension of education, which, if nothing else, is a process by which human beings are formed to be free, good, excellent, and happy—that is, flourishing. Questions and concerns regarding A.I.’s effects on student and teacher well-being have been eschewed in pursuit of economic and national security priorities. As written, the Secretary’s proposal assumes, without evidence and against experience, that A.I. technologies (to be distinguished from A.I. education) will improve learning outcomes for all students—whether they be advanced, below grade level, or experience disabilities.

What makes the current proposal concerning is not that A.I. technologies are intrinsically opposed to human flourishing as such, or that A.I. education should be excluded from a school’s curriculum altogether. Rather, the problem is the Department’s move to accelerate the integration of A.I. technologies in the classroom without the requisite public participation, and without evidence that doing so will improve learning outcomes and a vision for what flourishing even means for an American child. Left unchanged, such a proposal will be inimical to securing public trust and evidence-based education standards, not to mention the success of the project itself, all of which are vital for purely humanistic reasons, as well to accomplish the Administration’s stated goal of America leading well in the age of A.I.

During the president’s first term, the Administration—while optimistic about A.I. and generally discouraging of regulatory actions that would “needlessly hamper AI innovation and growth”—understood that A.I. regulation on a federal level needed to adhere to various principles “when formulating regulatory and non-regulatory approaches to the design, development, deployment, and operation of AI applications.”¹¹ In the Administration’s own words, a principled approach was crucial “to sustain and enhance the scientific, technological, and economic leadership position of the United States in AI.”  Developed under the supervision of then-White House Chief Technology Officer Michael Kratsios, such principles included, amongst others: (1) securing public trust in A.I., (2) allowing for public participation in all stages of the rule-making process, and (3) making policy decisions based on science (i.e. research evidence).¹²  While we do not believe that the third principle is sufficient in and of itself in this context (i.e., education is a perennial human endeavor and the weight of wisdom, history, and experience are also important to account for), we, nonetheless, agree that an evidence-based incorporation of A.I. into American schools is vastly superior to what we are currently entertaining: namely, incorporation of A.I. without evidence. We urge the Secretary, along with the rest of the Administration, to therefore pursue priorities and policies that adhere to these stated principles.

I. The Problem of Public Trust

Today, public trust remains arguably the greatest hurdle to integrating A.I. into society. From the workforce to education and beyond, the lack of public trust in A.I., in Big Tech companies in general, and in the Administration’s close relationship with technological interests dramatically undermines this effort. According to our research, the majority of lower-income adults today (52% of those who make $40,000-$99,000; 60% of those who make $40,000 or less) are concerned that A.I. is a threat.¹³ Likewise, we also found that less than a quarter of Trump voters were supportive of a federal A.I. moratorium that would restrict states’ abilities to regulate A.I.¹⁴ In fact, the majority of voters were opposed to the A.I. moratorium, with the highest opposition from younger generations (70% of 18-34 year olds).¹⁵ Moreover, with regards to education, other findings show that the majority of parents do not want A.I. in their children’s classrooms.¹⁶ 

It is absolutely critical that any integration of A.I. into education be evidence-based if public trust is to be secured. Therefore, we urge the Secretary (1) to offer greater clarity on “appropriate methods of integrating AI into education” by defining or issuing guidance on what “appropriate methods” involve, and (2) to prioritize research efforts to develop evidence-based “appropriate methods” for A.I. integration before embedding A.I. technologies into any K-12 classroom, teacher training, or other education-related activities and environments, as outlined under section (b) of the proposal.

II. The Problem of Public Participation

A. States Rights

In its first set of proposed grantmaking priorities, the Department included a proposal for “Returning Education to the States.”¹⁷ Through this priority, the Department seeks to empower States, Tribes, and local communities to “take the lead in formulating, developing, and implementing policies that best serve students, families, and educators.” The Department’s justification for the priority was simple:

One-size-fits-all mandates from the federal government create obstacles, limiting the ability of State, Tribal, local, and institutional leaders to make decisions in the best interest of their students and their workforce.¹⁸

We could not agree more. However, the Department’s latest proposed priority to integrate A.I. into schools threatens to repeat the very errors it seeks to avoid. Issuing guidance and proposed priorities designed to integrate A.I. technologies (not just A.I. education) into every institution of K-12 and higher education is a top-down mandate that does the opposite of “empowering States and Tribes to take the lead in formulating, developing, and implementing policies that best serve students, families, and educators within their communities.”

Clarification will be needed on how the Department’s proposed priority on integrating A.I. in education compliments its priority to empower State, Tribal, local, and institutional leaders to make decisions in the best interest of their students and their workforce.

B. Parental Rights

“Families deserve an education system that reflects the unique needs of the communities in which they live,” the Department wrote in its first set of proposed priorities.¹⁹ The input of parents and legal guardians is key to determining the unique educational needs of the families in each community. In seeking to prioritize integration of A.I. in education, the Department must ensure that it respects the rights and duties of parents and legal guardians as the primary caretakers of children.

As Georgetown University’s Dr. Meg Leta Jones has argued, existing administrative guidance regarding the integration of technology in education undermines parental rights and thus children’s safety.²⁰ In July 2020, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) released guidance on the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), stating that “schools may act as the parent’s agent and can consent under COPPA to the collection of kids’ information on the parent’s behalf.”²¹ The guidance limited the ability of schools to consent on behalf of parents to “the educational context – where an operator collects personal information from students for the use and benefit of the school, and for no other commercial purpose.”²²  Likewise, the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) has undergone expansive administrative interpretations to allow ed tech companies to access student’s records without parental consent. As passed by Congress, FERPA narrowly permitted educators and other school personnel to access records for “legitimate educational interests.”²³ As Leta Jones notes, today, “[e]ducational technology companies now routinely qualify as ‘school officials,’ despite FERPA’s requirements.”²⁴ Regardless of formal complaints regarding FERPA violations, the Department under the Biden administration refused to enforce them.

Unsurprisingly, violations of the data privacy of kids are systematic in America’s schools. According to its 2022 K-12 EdTech Safety Benchmark report (published in 2024), Internet Safety Labs found that of “the technology recommended and used by U.S. educational institutions,”

Nearly all apps (96%) share children’s personal information with third parties, 78% of the time with advertising and monetization entities, typically without the knowledge or consent of the users or the schools, making them unsafe.²⁵ 

It’s no wonder then, that, according to one survey, 91% of parents do not want their children using or interacting with A.I. technology in the classroom.²⁶ Before A.I. technology is integrated into any school, the Department should issue rules and guidance that reassert the original intent of FERPA and COPPA by outlining strict safety standards regarding the access of students’ data, eliminating the ability of educational technology companies to use and access student data without explicit parental consent, enforcing violations of COPPA and FERPA, and requiring parental consent for the integration of new technologies in the classroom. Put simply, the prior generation of ed tech transformed American education into a field for data enrichment and children as objects of extraction. A.I. cannot be safely incorporated into American education in any manner unless this systematic practice is corrected and curtailed.

III. The Problem of Evidence-Based Policy

A. Learning Outcomes

As noted above, the Department’s proposal presupposes that A.I. technologies improve learning outcomes. Generally, however, existing research shows that more technology in classrooms does not produce better academic performance. According to a landmark study by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, students who used computers “very frequently” at school had worse learning outcomes than those who used them moderately or less frequently.²⁷ And a 2019 review of existing research found that “[i]nitiatives that expand access to computers… do not improve K-12 grades and test-scores.”²⁸ In fact, as screens have become more ubiquitous in schools as well as American society, global test scores in reading, math, and science have been steadily dropping,²⁹ reaching their lowest in half a century in 2022.³⁰ Despite these and other findings, the US continues to spend $30 billion annually on integrating ed tech into schools.³¹

Though new, A.I. technologies will build upon the existing ed tech platforms and threaten to accelerate these effects. In a groundbreaking study this year by the MIT media lab, individuals who used large language models like ChatGPT to write essays over a four-month period “consistently underperformed at neural, linguistic, and behavioral levels” than their counterparts who did not do so.³² To be sure, the integration of A.I. technologies extend well beyond the use of applications like ChatGPT. But at the very least, these findings should deter the Department from funding the integration of A.I. technologies into the classroom until further research can be performed to determine the effects of these technologies on learning outcomes. To this end, we again underscore our support for provision (a)(x) of the proposed priority and other research-focused priorities by the Secretary.

B. Known Harms to Minors

Today, it is well known that ed tech—specifically digital devices and applications—exposes students to various harms. As already mentioned, almost all the ed tech apps used or recommended by schools share children’s personal data.³³ And laptops like Google’s Chromebook have long had poor content filters and overly complicated parental controls, making it easy for minors to access age-inappropriate content like pornography.³⁴

Current A.I. technologies, including those being marketed as ed tech, expose students to similar harms. A.I. teaching assistants and tutors are fundamentally social in nature, interacting with students in ways that mimic human conversation. Today, three-quarters of teens have interacted with A.I. chatbots, and a third of those users have reported being made to feel uncomfortable by something the A.I. has said or done.³⁵ A Common Sense Media report published this year concluded that A.I. chatbots “pose significant risks to teens and children under 18.”³⁶ Such risks include “encouraging harmful behaviors, providing inappropriate content, and potentially exacerbating mental health conditions.”³⁷ 

These risks already exist with Big Tech and ed tech products alike. Companies like Meta and X have chatbots that will engage in sexual conversation with users it knows are minors. Recently, X released an A.I. companion, accessible to minors, that engages users in a sexual and romantic manner.³⁸

Similarly, according to a Wall Street Journal exposé, Meta has made “multiple internal decisions to loosen the guardrails around the bots to make them as engaging as possible.”³⁹ This included removing explicit content bans when engaging in romantic or sexual discourse, even when the chatbot is engaging with minors.⁴⁰ Sadly, A.I. products developed by ed tech companies are not much more “age appropriate.” For example, ed tech company KnowUnity’s “School GPT,” has given users recipes for fentanyl and encouraged harmful eating behaviors.⁴¹ Other ed tech A.I. applications like CourseHero have even given instructions for synthesizing date rape drugs.⁴² 

This is to say nothing of the problems of A.I.-generated “deepfake” nude pictures. Already schools are having to discipline students that use A.I. to generate child sexual abuse material mimicking the personages of other students.⁴³

Some students have even disseminated such content to harass or extort their peers. Sadly, this is a growing problem. According to research published earlier this year, around 1 in 8 teens aged 13 to 17 personally know someone who has been a victim of deepfake.⁴⁴

Parents and schools have already been struggling for years to reign in these and other collateral harms of educational technologies. However, as currently written, the Department’s proposal threatens to expose American youth to sustained harms by supporting the integration of A.I. technologies in the classroom to assist students, including the use of A.I.-driven “virtual teaching assistants” and “tutoring.”⁴⁵ Given that A.I. companies are already using their technologies to prey on kids, the Department should instead be wary about allowing this industry to access children in general, much less without first delineating robust safeguards and guidelines to ensure their protection.

Conclusion

If the Department wishes to prioritize A.I. education and the integration of A.I. technology into classrooms, it should first define “appropriate methods” and develop robust guidelines to ensure that students and families will flourish. This, of course, will require research, which is why we commend provision (a)(x) of the proposed priority. But it will also require input from parents, educators, advocates, and technologists. We strongly urge the Secretary to prioritize research to determine what methods and uses of A.I. education and technology best serve students, and to seek public input to develop safeguards and guidelines to protect students before putting the weight of the federal government behind accelerating A.I. preeminence in the classroom.

Respectfully,

Michael Toscano

Director, Family First Technology Initiative

The Institute for Family Studies

Jared Hayden

Policy Analyst, Family First Technology Initiative

The Institute for Family Studies

References

1. U.S. Department of Education, “Proposed Priority and Definitions—Secretary's Supplemental Priority and Definitions on Advancing Artificial Intelligence in Education,” July 21, 2025, 90 FR 34203, Docket ID ED-2025-OS-0118.
2. Ibid
3. Ibid
4. Ibid
5. Ibid. See also: Linda McMahon, “Guidance on the Use of Federal Funds to improve Education Outcomes Using Artificial Intelligence (AI),” Department of Education, July 22, 2025, https://www.ed.gov/media/document/opepd-ai-dear-colleague-letter-7222025-110427.pdf.
6. Op. Cit., Dept. of Ed., “Advancing Artificial Intelligence in Education.”
7. Jared Cooney Horvath, “The EdTech Revolution Has Failed,” After Babel, Nov. 12, 2024, https://www.afterbabel.com/p/the-edtech-revolution-has-failed
8. Oren Cass, “Bring Back the Computer Lab,” Commonplace, July 21, 2025, https://www.commonplace.org/p/bring-back-the-computer-lab.
9. President Donald Trump, “Executive Order No. 14179: Removing Barriers to American Leadership in Artificial Intelligence,” January 23, 2025, 90 FR8741
10. President Donald Trump, “Winning the Race: America’s AI Action Plan,” July 2025, https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Americas-AI-Action-Plan.pdf.
11. Office of Management and Budget (OMB), “Draft Memo: Guidance for Regulation of Artificial Intelligence Applications,” Jan. 1, 2019, https://bidenwhitehouse.archives.gov/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/Draft-OMB-Memo-on-Regulation-of-AI-1-7-19.pdf. See also: Office of Management and Budget, Request for Comments on a Draft Memorandum to the Heads of Executive Departments and Agencies, “Guidance for Regulation of Artificial Intelligence Applications,” Jan. 13, 2020, 85 FR 1825.
12. Op. Cit., OMB, “Draft Memo.”
13. Grant Bailey and Michael Toscano, “AI Lovers Are Coming, But We Don’t Have to Accept Them,” The Institute for Family Studies, Aug. 13, 2025, https://ifstudies.org/blog/ai-lovers-are-coming-but-we-dont-have-to-accept-them.
14. Michael Toscano and Grant Bailey, “Americans Oppose the AI Regulation Moratorium By a 3-to-1 Margin,” The Institute for Family Studies, June 25, 2025, https://ifstudies.org/blog/americans-oppose-the-ai-regulation-moratorium-by-a-3-to-1-margin.
15. Ibid
16. Scrolling2Death, “What Parents Really Think About Tech in Schools: Survey Results,” July 22, 2025, https://www.scrolling2death.com/post/what-parents-really-think-about-tech-in-schools-survey-results.
17. Dept. of Ed., “Proposed Priorities and Definitions—Secretary’s Supplemental Priorities and Definitions on Evidence-Based Literacy, Education Choice, and Returning Education to the States,” May 21, 2025, 90 FR 21710, Docket ID ED-2025-OS-0020.
18. Ibid
19. Ibid
20. Meg Leta Jones, “AI is the Latest Threat to Parental Rights in Education,” The Institute for Family Studies, July 30, 2025, https://ifstudies.org/blog/ai-is-the-latest-threat-to-parental-rights-in-education.
21. Federal Trade Commission (FTC), “Complying with COPPA: Frequently Asked Questions,” July 2020, https://www.ftc.gov/business-guidance/resources/complying-coppa-frequently-asked-questions.
22. Ibid.
23. 34 CFR § 99.31(a)(1)(i)(A).
24. Op. Cit., Leta Jones, “Parental Rights.”
25. Internet Safety Labs, “2022 K-12 EdTech Safety Benchmark: National Findings – Part 1,” Dec. 13, 2022, https://internetsafetylabs.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/2022-k12-edtech-safety-benchmark-national-findings-part-1.pdf.
26. Op. Cit., Scrolling2Death, “What Parents Really Think About Tech In Schools: Survey Results.”
27. Organization of Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), “Students, Computers and Learning: Making the Connection,” Sept. 15, 2015, https://www.oecd.org/en/publications/students-computers-and-learning_9789264239555-en.html.
28. Sophie Shank, “Will Technology Transform Education for the Better?” J-PAL Evidence Review, Jan. 1, 2019, https://www.povertyactionlab.org/publication/will-technology-transform-education-better.
29. OECD, “PISA 2022 Results (Volume I): The State of Learning and Equity in Education,” Dec. 5, 2023 https://www.oecd.org/en/publications/pisa-2022-results-volume-i_53f23881-en/full-report.html.
30. Oluwafemi J. Sunday, et al., “The effects of smartphone addiction on learning: A meta-analysis,” Computers in Human Behavior Reports Vol. 4 (2021), https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chbr.2021.100114.
31. Brad Littlejohn and Jared Hayden, “The Dangers and Possibilities of AI in Schools,” Commonplace, May 27, 2025, https://www.commonplace.org/p/the-dangers-and-possibilities-of-ai-in-schools.
32. Nataliya Kosmyna et al., “Your Brain on ChatGPT: Accumulation of Cognitive Debt when Using an AI Assistant for Essay Writing Task,” MIT Media Lab, June 10, 2025, https://www.media.mit.edu/publications/your-brain-on-chatgpt/.
33. Op. Cit., Internet Safety Labs, “2022 K-12 EdTech Safety Benchmark."
34. National Center on Sexual Exploitation, “Chromebooks,” June 2021, https://endsexualexploitation.org/chromebooks/.
35. Common Sense Media, “Talk, Trust, and Trade-Offs: How and Why Teens Use AI Companions,” July 16, 2025, https://www.commonsensemedia.org/sites/default/files/research/report/talk-trust-and-trade-offs_2025_web.pdf.
36. Common Sense Media, “AI Risk Assessment: Social AI Companions,” April 10, 2025, https://www.commonsensemedia.org/sites/default/files/pug/csm-ai-risk-assessment-social-ai-companions_final.pdf.
37. Ibid.
38. Amanda Silberling, “Elon Musk’s Grok is Making AI Companions, Including a Goth Anime Girl,” TechCrunch, July 14, 2025, https://techcrunch.com/2025/07/14/elon-musks-grok-is-making-ai-companions-including-a-goth-anime-girl/. According to X’s own guidelines, children above the age of 13 are permitted to use its AI companions: X, “xAI Consumer FAQs,” May 12, 2025, https://x.ai/legal/faq.
39. Jeff Horwitz, “Meta’s ‘Digital Companions’ Will Talk Sex With Users—Even Children,” Wall Street Journal, April 26, 2025, https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/meta-ai-chatbots-sex a25311bf?gaa_at=eafs&gaa_n=ASWzDAgqAVDBHIu874OLUMt5iUpObs1HTZlTp_CSAKuF0wzmTDCFOI72EmZLMDMcD-o%3D&gaa_ts=68a5ef22&gaa_sig=n29kNw70Fmngx6G1qqtR1MVno-bP-uJMuOAmxzLWbzerP-4PYP5CD-ERyijrKFmM0SYe-5IR90fMBH7TjyWUYw%3D%3D.
40. Ibid.
41. Emily Baker-White, “These AI Tutors for Kids Gave Fentanyl Recipes and Dangerous Diet Advice,” Forbes, May 12, 2025, https://www.forbes.com/sites/emilybaker-white/2025/05/12/these-ai-tutors-for-kids-gave-fentanyl-recipes-and-dangerous-diet-advice/.
42. Ibid.
43. Natasha Singer, “Teen Girls Confront an Epidemic of Deepfake Nudes in Schools,” New York Times, April 8, 2024, https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/08/technology/deepfake-ai-nudes-westfield-high-school.html. See also: Op. Cit., Littlejohn and Hayden, “The Dangers and Possibilities of AI in Schools.”
44. Thorn, “Deepfake Nudes & Young People: Navigating a New Frontier in Technology-Facilitated Nonconsensual Sexual Abuse and Exploitation,” March 3, 2025, https://info.thorn.org/hubfs/Research/Thorn_DeepfakeNudes&YoungPeople_Mar2025.pdf.
45. Op. Cit., Dept. of Ed., “Advancing Artificial Intelligence in Education,” (b)(iv).

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Happiness

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

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

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

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

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

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

Social Connection

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

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

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

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

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

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

Physical Touch

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Meaning and Purpose

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

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

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

Motherhood Challenges

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

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

Conclusion

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

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

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

Endnotes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Author Bios

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

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

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

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

Introduction

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

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

Key Findings

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

Protect the Child Tax Credit

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

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

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

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

Increase Work Incentives

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Reduce Family Discrimination

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

These three fixes would transform the CDCTC in important ways. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

America Can Afford to Fix Family Policy

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

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

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

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

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

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

Abstract

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

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

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