Item from the Smart Marriages Archive, reproduced in the Divorce Statistics Collection
Desert News
Tuesday, September 21, 1999

Decline of Marriage called threat to U.S.

Americans are less inclined to marry than ever before

By Will Dunham Reuters News Service

WASHINGTON Americans are less inclined to get married than at any time
in U.S. history, posing social and public-policy dilemmas and threatening
to dissolve the "glue" that connects fathers to their children, experts
say.

A report released by the National Marriage Project at Rutgers University
found "a substantial weakening of the institution of marriage" in
America. The researchers said the U.S. marriage rate has never been
lower, births to unmarried women have skyrocketed, the divorce rate
remains high and Americans' marriages are less happy than in the past.

"There is no known society that has gotten along without marriage and has
done a decent job in rearing and sponsoring the next generation," said
Barbara Dafoe Whitehead, National Marriage Project co-director.

The crumbling of the institution of marriage should not be viewed as a
benign social trend with no costs to society at large, added the
project's other co-director, David Popenoe.

"Marriage is a fundamental social institution," the National Marriage
Project report says. "It is central to the nurture and raising of
children. It is the 'social glue' that reliably attaches fathers to
children. It contributes to the physical, emotional and economic health
of men, women and children, and thus to the nation as a whole."

The problem has worried policymakers at the highest levels of the U.S.
government. "To the extent that the collapse of marriage is behind larger
social problems, the government has to deal with it where it can," Bruce
Reed, President Clinton's chief domestic policy adviser, said in an
interview.

The Clinton administration has embraced the idea that strong marriages
and two-parent families are in the national interest, Reed said. "That
was a controversial notion when political leaders in both parties stepped
forward in the early '90s and started talking about it," he added.

"It's not so controversial now, but I think it's not a moral judgment,
it's just simply an analytical fact that if you can increase the ratio of
kids who grow up with two parents you're going to reduce a number of
social problems associated with (children in single-parent homes). It
makes sense."

Studies have concluded that children growing up without their biological
father present are more likely to commit crime, abuse drugs and alcohol,
drop out of school, commit suicide, live in poverty and become pregnant
as a teen than children living with their married parents.

Four decades of crisis

U.S. government statistics cited in the Rutgers report detail a crisis in
marriage whose origins can be traced back about 40 years. The report,
citing census data, said the marriage rate has plummeted by a third since
1960. It said there were about 73 marriages per 1,000 unmarried women
aged 15 and up in 1960. In 1996, the last year for which such figures
were available, the rate was about 49 per 1,000.

Popenoe said the U.S. marriage rate now has dropped below a previous
historic low recorded at the turn of the century. He said several factors
have contributed to the trend. One is that Americans are postponing
marriage until they are older.

In 1960, the median age for first marriages was 20 for women and 23 for
men. In 1997, with many college-educated Americans delaying marriage
until their 30s, the median age for marriage rose to 25 for women and 27
for men, the report said.

"The later the marriage, by and large, the lower the (overall) marriage
rate in the long run. In other words, people delay too long and then they
decide not to marry after a while," Popenoe said.

In addition, many American women, particularly black women, are giving
birth and raising children without getting married. In 1960, 5.3 percent
of all U.S. babies were born to unwed mothers, according to government
statistics.

In 1997, 32 percent of all babies were born to unmarried womenãand a
startling 69 percent of black babies had unwed mothers.

The percentage of U.S. children living without their father present also
has ballooned. In 1960 9 percent of children lived in a single-parent
household. Last year 28 percent of all children and 55 percent of black
children lived with a single parent. Children in single-parent households
overwhelmingly live with their mothers, with fathers absent, experts said.

Missing fathers add to social ills

Those trends generally are borne out even if a stepfather is present,
Popenoe said.

He and Whitehead said other factors affecting the marriage rate since
1960 are a huge jump in cohabiting partnerships; an explosion of sex
outside marriage; the movement of women into the labor market, making
many less reliant on a husband for economic reasons; an increase in
individualism among Americans; and a popular culture and mass media that
often are hostile to the institution of marriage.

The U.S. divorce rate now is twice what it was in 1960, although it has
declined moderately since its peak in the early 1980s. The number of
divorces ballooned from 9.2 per 1,000 married women in 1960 to 19.5 in
1998, the report said.

"We're world leaders in marital volatility and disruption," said Don
Browning, director of the Religion, Culture and Family Project at the
University of Chicago. "This is a form of social difficulty that we are
facing that is very, very large and it will cost everybody a lot."

Experts said the U.S. government has contributed to the problem in the
past 40 years with policies that have served as disincentives to
marriage, such as welfare programs that encouraged unwed motherhood and
the "marriage penalty" under which married Americans pay higher taxes
than singles.

"Government can't wave a magic wand and raise the marriage rate, even
assuming there's a social agreement that raising the marriage rate would
be a good thing," William Galston, director of the University of Maryland
Institute for Philosophy and Public Policy and a former Clinton domestic
policy adviser, said. "But government can certainly eliminate the
obstacles and inequities and ought to think about doing so very
seriously."

Administration officials point to several steps taken in recent years to
address the issue including: eliminating a welfare rule that limited the
number of hours a married couple could work and still receive benefits;
enacting a law that allows Americans to take time off from work to tend
to family and medical needs, and proposing a number of tax law changes.

Reed, who heads the White House Domestic Policy Council, said: "As to
what government can do to affect the decision of 'to marry or not to
marry' and 'to divorce or not divorce,' those are hard questions. But I
do think ... it's worth looking at everything government does to make
sure that it's not contributing to the problem."


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