EWTN: DENVER, Colo. – Marriage has major benefits for children, adults, and society as a whole, said a marriage scholar this week, and the poor and less educated are suffering most from the widening class divide between those who get married and those who don’t.
“What we’re seeing today in America is that upper middle-class Americans are much more likely to get and stay married compared to less educated, working class Americans – that’s the marriage divide in brief,” Dr. W. Bradford Wilcox, a sociology professor and director of the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia, told CNA April 9.
This divide in family structure is not just a private matter.
“Kids who are born and raised in a stable married family are much more likely to do well in school, to flourish in the labor market later on in life, and themselves to forge strong stable families as adults,” Wilcox said. “Coming from a strong stable family gets kids off to the best start, typically.”
Wilcox spoke on the American marriage divide Tuesday evening at Colorado Christian University in the Denver suburb of Lakewood.
There were “minimal class divides” in American married life 50 years ago, but not today. While 56% of middle- and upper middle-class adults are now married, only 26% of poor adults and 39% of working-class adults are.
The divorce rate has generally decreased since the 1970s, but the most educated married couples tend to divorce the least. Highly educated Americans became much more likely to favor restrictive attitudes towards divorce, while the least educated became much less likely to do so.
“We live in an increasingly segregated country where people tend to live in neighborhoods or communities that mirror their own class, and family makeup,” Wilcox said. Many middle-class Americans live in neighborhoods “dominated” by married families.
By contrast, working-class and poor Americans live in communities with many single people, cohabiting couples and single parent families. From their perspective, “marriage is in much worse shape,” Wilcox said. People in more affluent communities, perhaps without realizing it, “live in a social world where families are pretty stable, most kids are being raised in two-parent families, and everyone benefits from that reality.” more here
The plutocracy, also, believe, with their whole hearts, and what passes for souls, that “Diversity is strength.” (hat tip to Mr. Orwell.)
And, of course, “We must rule you. Because someone bought us titles that say ‘ruling class.’ That makes us better than you. So you should pay us. To rule you. We’re your professional betters. Look, our titles say so.”
They explain (to their children, rather than the proles they, and thence their children, shall rule) that “The economy can only grow if we import indentured servants to do the work we’re disemploying people for.”
And, now (“it’s this year,” since they’ve been saying it as long as they’ve been preying “Diversity is strength”) “Marriage is good for society.” Well, “marriage” as your professional betters enact it. Good for the society your professional betters want to profit from.
I’m sure that last one is just an accident. Not anything like the others.
Fifty years next month, if we make it…
Marriage to some, especially the financially inept, is like getting an electronic tollbooth pass.
Never mind that they have to pay 2x as much to go through the toll with cash. They just can’t part with $40 up front commitment to save money.
Marriage is the same, it takes up front commitment. However, the benefits doing so are enormous. Financially, a married couple will typically be better off than a single person. This benefit pays off over time and compounds as 2 people live more efficiently than one. It hasn’t been easy, but after 25 years, I couldn’t imagine slogging through life by myself.
I was married for 36 years until my wife died 6 yrs. ago, I miss being married. I really don’t like being single but I manage just living day by day with everything good that my life still brings me. I wish my wife could’ve seen and met her 2 granddaughters, another one in July and hopefully a little boy when my daughter has her 2nd child in Sept.
While I agree with the benefits of a good marriage the guy sounds like an over educated elitist. I would put myself in the category of less educated, blue collar worker, and most of my friends are as well. I’ll bet you $100 there isn’t a MAGA hat in his house.
“I’ll bet you $100 there isn’t a MAGA hat in his house.”
Yeah, I’m not so sure. Here is the salient point;
“Kids who are born and raised in a stable married family are much more likely to do well in school, to flourish in the labor market later on in life, and themselves to forge strong stable families as adults,” Wilcox said. “Coming from a strong stable family gets kids off to the best start, typically.”
This is pure unadulterated heresy in the prog world. Their dictum labels heterosexual marriage as patriarchal oppression, where gay couples, transgenders or single parents are just as stable and able to raise normal(?) kids. They do not see any advantage at all in glorifying 2 parent heterosexual unions because it flies in the face of their worship to identity politics. Progressives must move against and abandon traditional anything; unions, norms, morality, conventional-ism, it stifles creativity and individualism.
Another important fact;
“Children raised in intact, married homes are more likely to avoid poverty, prison and teen pregnancy. They have better economic upward mobility than children raised by a single parent. There is less risk of downward mobility. Child poverty would be about 20% lower if marriage rates had remained as high as in the 1970s, Wilcox said”
The reason marriage has been around since man stops dragging his knuckles is because it works, it benefits all; husband, wife, kids, and society.
Two MAGA hats in my house. We have been married 35 years!
@Rich Taylor April 13, 2019 at 1:06 pm
> The reason marriage has been around since man stops dragging his knuckles is because it works, it benefits all; husband, wife, kids, and society.
Until it doesn’t. So, which is more likely? People, after generations and millennia, have become suicidal. Downright gleefully nihilistic. Lusting for their own, as profoundly uncomfortable as can be made, end. Or? The Ministry of Truth has defined (there is no reee-!) “marriage” (along with “education”, “productivity”, “society”) as something other than it was. And people, as always, eventually, pay no mind to the yabbering. And watch the bouncing rubble.
For thousands of years marriage was condoned by
society and required by peer pressure. That is
because for all that time it worked to give
stability and protection to participating individuals
for the price of monogamy.
Once government decides that It and not you rules
your life that’s over. Next stop when it succeeds
is civil disolution. Just look at our major cities.
….No benefits when my soon to be exwife, expends 120% of my earnings!
I’m so proud of all of you in long term marriages. Kudos and thank you! Indeed, society benefits when people stay married. Best, Indi
These days marriage is of great benefit to everyone but the groom, who is an expendable resource and nothing more.