Americans value marriage more for romance than child rearing, and the result is less stability for children, according to a recent study by Rutgers University.
“Though most adults continue to prize marriage and to seek it for themselves, children are less able to count on their parents’ marriage as the secure foundation for their family lives,” the report said.
The report, part of an annual initiative from the National Marriage Project, found that increases in divorce rates, out-of-wedlock births and unmarried cohabitation have contributed to high percentages of children growing up in volatile families.
An estimated 40 percent of children today will live in a cohabiting household sometime during their developing years, the Rutgers study said.
In a recent international comparison, 70 percent of Americans disagreed with the statement that “the main purpose of marriage is having children,” while 51 percent of Norwegians and 45 percent of Italians said the same.
Among Americans ages 20–29, the numbers reached almost 80 percent.
According to the study, titled “The Social Health of Marriage in America,” the decline of attention to children in a marriage has contributed to the weakening of the institution of marriage in the nation as a whole.
Whereas people used to look for a potential spouse who displayed qualities conducive to future parenting, now single adults tend to evaluate partners based on more exacting, emotional requirements than parenting.
The report said the dichotomy between adult desires for intimacy and privacy with their “soul mate” and the children’s needs for security and attention causes tension in the marriage and can lead to high levels of discord.
Values gone wrong
Researchers found that while teens, especially boys, desire a long-term marriage, both boys and girls have become more accepting of marriage alternatives. Perhaps this trend is the result of their attempt to lessen the likelihood of discord and eventual divorce in their own lives.
Many young people have chosen to forego the decision to marry altogether, opting either to remain single or to choose unmarried cohabitation.
Since 1960, the number of cohabiting couples with children has increased by 850 percent, and roughly half of unmarried women ages 25–29 have lived or currently live with a partner.
“The belief is that living together before marriage is a useful way to ‘find out whether you really get along,’” the report said.
“In fact, a substantial body of evidence indicates that those who live together before marriage are more likely to break up after marriage.”
David Popenoe, codirector of the project, said homes with two married parents provide the best environment for children.
“If you look at studies and compare child outcomes from a single-parent family to those with a two-parent family, the children in the second group have lower levels of emotional distress and anxiety,” Popenoe said.
Indeed, the report found that children who lived in separated families had more than twice the risk of social and behavioral problems than those who lived in two-parent families.
It also said children in single-parent families have negative life outcomes at two-to-three times the rate of children in two-parent families.
A spark of hope
Despite what critics call an “unnecessarily gloomy” report, Popenoe and codirector Barbara Dafoe Whitehead found declines in the statistics of child poverty and teen pregnancy and a slight increase — from 68 percent to 69 percent since 1990 — in the number of children living with two married parents.
Popenoe credits lower divorce rates, trends toward marrying at an older age and a slight values change with the increase in married-parent homes. (ABP)
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