It is a staggering statistic. At first glance it would appear that traditional marriage is collapsing. Perhaps it is. The fastest growth in children born to unmarried women in the last 20 years has occurred among white women in their 20s who have some college education but no four-year degree, according to Child Trends, a Washington research group that analyzed government data. However, taking all age groups into account three years ago, 60 percent of children were born to married women.
In an age of abortion, it is of credit to unwed mothers that they have chosen to have their children. However, the new normal is unsettling.
According the NYT’s article, one group still largely resists the trend: college graduates, who overwhelmingly marry before having children. Reasons for that vary.
Not too many years ago, my wife and I gave a pre-marriage seminar to about a dozen couples who planned to have a traditional church wedding. Halfway through the day, I mentioned our faith’s teaching that cohabitation before marriage was a no-no. Come to find out, a number of couples were known to be living that lifestyle.
What are the reasons for the upswing in cohabiting unmarried heterosexual couples? What are the reasons for the new normal of children born to unwed mothers? What is happening to the institution of traditional marriage?
This new “marriage gap” in the United States is increasingly aligned with a growing income gap. Where people stand on the various changes in marriage and family life depends to some degree on who they are and how they live.
The decline of the influence of religious teaching factors in. Hollywood’s overt love affair with its own superstars’ lifestyles, plot-lines which embrace the sexual revolution, and the deeply influential “everyone’s doing it” mantra, all weaken traditional marriage. State and federal laws are passing more and more legislation, attempting to legitimize same-sex unions. This leads to a path of more blurring of the value of the traditional marriage.
However, the decline of marriage has not knocked family life off its pedestal. According to a study done by the Pew Research Center, three-quarters of all adults say their family is the most important element of their life; three-quarters say they are “very satisfied” with their family life, and more than eight in 10 say the family they live in now is as close as (45%) or closer than (40%) the family in which they grew up. However, on all of these questions, married adults give more positive responses than do unmarried adults.
