In 2000, Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan was asked to identify the biggest change he had seen in his 40-year political career. Moynihan, a man of unusual sagacity, experience, and perspective, responded this way: “The biggest change, in my judgment, is that the family structure has come apart all over the North Atlantic world.” This change has occurred in “an historical instant,” Moynihan said. “Something that was not imaginable 40 years ago has happened.”
I thought about Senator Moynihan’s observation after reading “The President’s Marriage Agenda for the Forgotten Sixty Percent,” which is the centerpiece of the latest State of Our Unions report. This study focused on the nearly 60 percent of Americans who have completed high school but do not have a four-year college degree.
What we’re seeing is a rapid hollowing out of marriage in Middle America–with 44 percent of the children of moderately-educated mothers born outside of marriage. “We’re at a tipping point with Middle America,” W. Bradford Wilcox, a leading scholar on marriage, told National Review Online’s Kathryn Jean Lopez, “insofar as Middle Americans are on the verge of losing their connection to marriage.”
We are “witnessing a striking exodus from marriage,” according to the study.
More than 40 percent of children are born out of wedlock, while more than half of births (53 percent) among all women under 30 now occur outside of marriage. Between 1970 and 2012, the annual number of marriages per 1,000 unmarried adults decreased by more than 50 percent. The divorce rate today is about twice that of 1960, though it’s declined since hitting its highest point in our history in the early 1980s. For the average couple marrying for the first time in recent years, the lifetime probability of divorce or separation now falls between 40 and 50 percent. Today more than a quarter of all children live in single-parent families, compared to only 9 percent in 1960. And the number of unmarried couples has increased seventeen-fold in the last 50 years.
All of this has profoundly negative implications–for the emotional and mental well-being of children; for America’s social fabric and “civil society”; for social mobility and the gap in income inequality; and for dependency on government and costs to the state (family breakdown costs the taxpayers billions every year). The collapse of marriage in America, then, has enormous human and social ramifications. And whatever one thinks about same-sex marriage, this collapse has occurred long before any state approved marriage between gays.
The report offers a range of recommendations to reverse this trend, including eliminating marriage penalties and disincentives for the poor and for unwed mothers, tripling the child tax credit, providing marriage education and evaluating marriage programs, engaging Hollywood to help shape positive attitudes toward marriage and parenting, launching social media campaigns, and presidential leadership on this issue.
These recommendations may be fruitful, and the scholars who authored the marriage agenda have an admirable unwillingness to accept the collapse of marriage and the American family as irreversible. We are not, after all, by-standers in what is unfolding. We are the central actors.
Still, we shouldn’t kid ourselves about the difficulty of the challenge we face. “The scale of marital breakdown in the West since 1960 has no historical precedent and seems unique,” the distinguished historian Lawrence Stone said a few years ago. “At no time in history, with the possible exception of Imperial Rome, has the institution of marriage been more problematic than it is today.”
This is a deeply worrisome turn of events. And unless we find a way to repair the damage and the institution–unless we reshape our public and private attitudes toward marriage, family and children; toward commitment, self-giving, and love itself–there will be much human wreckage.
Progressives will say that marriage itself is an archaicism that we do well to jettison as human society continues its upward spiral toward utopia. Without marriage we have no more insidious "gender roles" and the goal of a fully-employed female population is in sight. Children should be reared in collectives, not in families. No more worries about malnourished kids, abused kids, unloved and unmotivated kids, repressed children. Better still, in the government's tender care, kids could all be properly reared in the values of secular liberalism. Think of it: in a single generation we could eradicate racism, homophobia, religious intolerance (heck, religion all together), political differences, etc. That a two-income couple can live better than a single-wage earner is an intolerable example of social injustice and must be stamped out by redistributive math. In fact, the decision to have children – all this fuss over contraception and abortions – shouldn't be left to individuals. The state can calculate how many workers it needs to "output" every year using scientific models rather than wishy-washy sentimentality. It can finally get human population to be "sustainable." It also can decide which sperm and which ova should mingle. As for health care, the state can decide, using demographic models, when the cost of keeping a citizen alive exceeds his value as a worker. n nExcuse me if it sounds like a plot summary of "Brave New World." At least let's not pretend Huxley didn't warn us.
anachronism?
Mr. Wehner’s interjection effectively dismissing homosexual and lesbian marriage, ignores that both appear as a symptom of marriage decline and will likely sustain or increase that decline. Liberals like Wehner, who fail to understand life-long commitment to rearing children – bear most of the blame for the decline in marriage. n nWehner appears not to understand that. “eliminating marriage penalties and disincentives for the poor and for unwed mothers (and) tripling the child tax credit.” will serve as incentives for more teenage girls to conceive repeated children with available boys, who accept sex without responsibility. Is Mr. Wehner unaware of the effectiveness of Broken Windows policies in decreasing teen illegitimacy and consequent immiseration of children? n nWehner offers no criticism of feminist jurisprudence, which assures any angry mother of seizure of the family home, assets, ex-husband’s income, all founded in an over 92% likelihood of mother custody of their children. Few responsible men are likely to conceive children whom they are likely to see only on weekends, in their one-room apartments. n nJeffrey Asher
Yes, our society is unraveling and the explanation is apparent, but we refuse to recognize that reason. n nIt is our misapplied tolerance. n nSupporting same sex marriage is the current example. It is being promoted as an act of tolerance. We sympathize with homosexuals and their desire to be "normal" and fully integrated and accepted into society. If gay marriage will help do this, and it might, why not? n nThat currently overrides the illogical of gay marriage. That gays don't generally have children and marriage's central purpose is to give children the best chance to become successful adults, inside two parent families, is overlooked. n nIt is overlooked out of kindness, generosity, a sense of guilt, and a new found sympathy for homosexuals. n nThose are the same well meaning feelings that rebelled against Victorian intolerance for unwed mothers and the stigmatizing of children without fathers. Those attitudes seemed cruel and unjust, and they were. But they also served to advance marriage, to discourage out of wedlock children, and to keep the nuclear family strong. They made for a healthy society. n nEverything has costs. One should not pull down fences without first understanding why they were erected. We can't have our cake and eat it too. All those bromides apply. n n A wave of enormously satisfying tolerance has produced a flood of ruined lives. They fill our penitentiaries and our mental institutions. Our sidewalks abound with people huddled inside cartons. Our hospitals tend the wounds of the victims of those victims. Is this pain and suffering really an advance over the injustice and cruelty of Victorian narrow-mindedness? n nIn the push for gay marriage this trend continues. Our determination to be tolerant, and the satisfaction that affords us, is further undermining the family and deepening our social problems. Nowhere more so than in the inner cities, whose ills radiate from the rarity of stable two parent families. There marriage is now becoming, a "gay thing".
So called "gay marriage" is dishonest. Any adults can live together, with or without sexual relations (except for incest); they can make whatever financial relations they want. So homosexuals can do these things. Why make it "marriage"? They should not have the benefits of marriage, including the right to adopt children. Marriage is a venerable institution, as old as the human race, between man and woman, for raising children. The birds on my balcony mate and raise young – always male and female as do all sexually reproducing animals.
If you want to fix this, fix American women. Start with the abolition of feminism and stop the #WarOnMen.
Amen! n nSell the feminists to the Arabs as concubines. If the Arabs are stupid enough to take them.
the epitome of the feminist movement: in-out, in-out, in-out
The culprit is Darwinism, the unquestioned foundation of life as we know it. Even the religious are cowering before this great One, readjusting their truth to fit 'the truth'. So when we have been told for a couple generations now that there is no God and we are all just randomly mutated animals, really no different that a chicken, why bother with responsibility or morals or, well, really anything but survival of the fittest and enjoying yourself. Certainly marriage is hard, raising kids is hard, so why do it? We all end up worm food in a couple years, grab what you can. Hedonism and narcissism rooted in utter meaninglessness of it all. That's the root of the matter imo, everything else just ramifications of the big E. _Don't believe it's a lie, don't receive it don't you even try.
It's strictly a thing 20 something thing to do. At that age they are too dumb to know any better.
The unintended consequences of the sexual revolution.
What real benefits do men get from marriage today?r nr nI do not know of any real benefits today.r nOnly benefits are if they want to have children, and the benefits are only for the children, not for the man.r nr nWhat are the detractors of marriage todayr n- 50% chance that your marriage will end in divorcer n- 80-90% chance that your wife will file divorcer n- You will lose most of the property gained during the marriager n- You will lose daily access to your children (90% of primary-caregivers are mothers)r n- You will pay tax on your child support that is tax-free for your ex-wife. No accountability on where the money is spent.r n- You have a 10-20% chance of being cuckolded and being financially responsible for your wives infidelities.r nr nThese are a few reasons men are rejecting marriage. Now that women can unilaterally leave marriage and still receive the benefits of marriage, and get parting prizes and gifts, why would a sane person enter this agreement.
Broken down society is the result of liberalism. Have a kid. get money. have another kid different father get more money. It cyles on from there generation to generation. Liberals say that because working middle class have less kids that we need these welfare kids to take care of us in our old age. How can they take care of us when the system is set up where we take care of them. Marriage only cuts their paycheck. The insane left almost outnumber us now. Sad
I have one word to say: feminism! n nIt was a feminist project, announced years ago, to to put an end to marriage and family as traditionally known. These institutions had to be swept away because they "oppressed women". Well, the sweeping away seems to have been successful.
To fix this, just eliminate the income tax penalty for being married. The penalty is huge and increases with higher incomes, with more children, with everything we want in society. How ironic that Obama claims to seek an agenda that favors marriage, when his latest round of tax increases fall most heavily on married couples: they pay the top rate at $450,000 while two singles don't pay it until they earn $800,000. n nThe only marriage tax break is reserved for same sex couples in community property states – they get to divide their income 50/50 and file two single or single-head-of-household returns, always saving a bundle.
My sons tell me that they fear that if the marriage goes bad their life will be over. "Taken to the cleaners by a grasping woman" is how one of my boys put it (I have a daughter too). n nNo fault divorce? Fine. If it is also no financial obligation divorce.