Why Stick with Marriage?

My latest column on National Review is a response to two recent books by major family scholars Andrew Cherlin, and Isabel Sawhill–both of whom suggest we should give up on promoting marriage per se and promote stable committed relationships: I explain why that is not a practical suggestion:

“In Generation Unbound, the Brookings Institution’s Isabel Sawhill regretfully says she no longer believes reviving marriage is possible for the less-educated two-thirds of America. The old marriage norm should be replaced with a new social script: It is wrong to have children that are unplanned. “The old norm was ‘don’t have a child outside of marriage.’ The new norm should be ‘don’t have a child before you want one and are ready to parent.’” How would a young adult know whether he or she is “ready”? Like Cherlin, Sawhill retreats to the idea of “commitment”: “For most people it means completing their education, having a steady job, and having a committed partner.”

Here’s my problem with this nice-sounding new script: I think the majority of young people who have children outside marriage are already doing that, to the best of their limited youthful abilities.

Sixty percent of births to unwed mothers, as Sawhill notes, are to cohabiting women. Most of the recent increase in single motherhood has come from increasing births to women who are cohabiting, not solo moms.

The problem with retreating from marriage as a bright line is that, in practical terms, young women in love are not very good at figuring out whether or not they are in a committed relationship.

A 2008 study by Kathryn Kost and colleagues, found that . . . .cohabitation is one of the most serious risk factors for contraceptive “failure.” In 2002, one out of five cohabiting women reported contraceptive “failure,” double the risk for married women. Compared with never-married or divorced single women, only cohabiting women had a significantly higher risk of contraceptive failure than married women.”

Retreating from marriage to “stable relationships” doesn’t work because cohabiting women believe they are in stable loving relationships, that is one reason they aren’t that motivated to prevent birth. I end with a modest proposal: “[T]he truth is we simply haven’t tried to do very much to encourage marital childbearing in this country. Before we give up completely, may I suggest one idea that would cost virtually no money at all and would involve no new government program?”

It’s still the best arrangement for kids — and parents

The news about marriage is not very good. A Pew Center analysis of American Community Survey data, released a few weeks ago, found that less than half of American children live with a married couple who are both in their first marriage — the intact, nuclear, married family — down from 61 percent as recently as 1980. Meanwhile the proportion of children who live with an unmarried parent (or parents) nearly doubled, from 19 percent to 34 percent.

(Of course, some of the 15 percent of children who live with parents who have remarried are the product of those new marital unions, and so they are also living in an intact married family. But while it may not be quite as bad as the Pew analysis suggest, it’s bad enough, with little or no sign of getting better.)

Two major family scholars, Andrew Cherlin and Isabel Sawhill, have recently released books tracing the decline of marriage.

Both books are morally as well as intellectually serious; both resist false dichotomies, recognizing that economics and cultural norms both play a role in the decline of marriage; both are generous to conservative thinkers on marriage with whom they only partly agree; and, most important, each scholar acknowledges the powerful scientific evidence that the decline of marriage has hurt children.

Yet each, in his or her way, is urging us to give up on the marriage line as no longer possible to defend or promote. Each wishes us to adapt to the collapse of marriage for the two-thirds of the population that is not college-educated by redrawing social norms of commitment at a different place than marriage.

In Labor’s Love Lost, Professor Andrew Cherlin beats the softer retreat:

We need to find ways to support stable partnerships without returning to the gender imbalances of the past. Stable partnerships do not necessarily involve marriage, but in the United States . . . cohabitation remains largely a short-term arrangement. So while supporting stable long-term cohabiting relationships should be part of any effort to stabilize working-class families, in practice much of what we may choose to do will consist of strengthening marriage among those who want it.

focus public efforts on a message that is distinct from encouraging marriage per se: urging young adults to wait to have their first child until they are confident that they are in a committed lasting partnership, either marital or cohabiting.

In Generation Unbound, the Brookings Institution’s Isabel Sawhill regretfully says she no longer believes reviving marriage is possible for the less-educated two-thirds of America. The old marriage norm should be replaced with a new social script: It is wrong to have children that are unplanned. “The old norm was ‘don’t have a child outside of marriage.’ The new norm should be ‘don’t have a child before you want one and are ready to parent.’” How would a young adult know whether he or she is “ready”? Like Cherlin, Sawhill retreats to the idea of “commitment”: “For most people it means completing their education, having a steady job, and having a committed partner.”

The problem with retreating from marriage as a bright line is that, in practical terms, young women in love are not very good at figuring out whether or not they are in a committed relationship.

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared in National Review. Featured image courtesy of NRO and Dreamstime.