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Experts speculate on why marriage is declining — and what to do about it

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Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Jul 25, 2023 / 11:24 am (CNA).

Support for marriage and marriage rates themselves have sharply declined among young people in recent years, leading experts to offer various explanations for the troubling trends as well as potential solutions to reverse them.

Data has long pointed toward a sustained drop in marriage rates for every age cohort following the “Silent Generation,” the group of Americans born roughly between the two World Wars. A recent Pew survey found that just 30% of marriage-age Millennials live with a spouse and a child, compared with 70% of those from the Silent Generation.

A survey in June from the Thriving Center of Psychology, meanwhile, found that about 40% of Millennials and GenZers believe marriage is an “outdated tradition,” with 85% responding that marriage “is [not] necessary to have a fulfilled and committed relationship.”

Speaking on the statistics, W. Bradford Wilcox, the director of the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia, said bluntly: “It’s bad.”

Wilcox, who for years has been ringing alarm bells about the decline of marriage rates in the U.S, said collapsing marriage numbers are worrisome in no small part because of the economic fallout that can result.

“Marriage is a wealth-generating institution,” he told CNA. “Having kids outside of marriage puts you at risk of family instability and accumulating kids with more than one partner. That starts you up for men, for child support; for women, single parenthood. Both of which are financially exceedingly difficult to navigate.”

“But I’m more concerned about the social and emotional side to all of this,” he continued. “And what we see in the data are that Americans today who are not married are markedly more likely to report that they’re lonely, adrift in terms of meaning, and about half as likely to be very happy with their lives compared [with] their fellow [married] citizens.”

Wilcox said when he began his research into marriage and family stability, his largest concern was for children affected by the changing family demographics.

“As I see the marriage rate tick lower and lower and lower, I’ve become more concerned about adults,” he said. “A lot of adults, more than one-third of young adults today in their 20s, will never marry. This is record demographic territory we’re heading into.”

Mary-Rose Verret, who with her husband, Ryan, founded the marriage renewal and preparation initiative Witness to Love, told CNA that the problem is nearly as acute among Catholics as it is among non-Catholics.

“The number of sacramental marriages in the United States is in freefall and has been in freefall since the 1970s,” she said. “It doesn’t seem to make a difference if they’re Catholic or not Catholic, they’re not getting married or staying married. The Catholic marriage at the five-year mark is only 2% different from the national average.”

Verret said Witness to Love has focused its efforts on a “catechumenal model of marriage formation” that offers a “full-circle” approach to promoting strong marriages in order to counteract the tidal wave of collapsing marriage numbers.

“[We can’t] just be talking about marriage six months before the wedding date,” she said. “What are we doing starting from birth?”

Witness to Love is attempting to answer basic questions about U.S. marriage culture, she said, namely: “Why are people not getting married? Staying married? Going to church with their families?”

“It’s because they’re not seeing holy, healthy, happy marriages being lived out,” she said. “We need to talk more about marriage as a sacrament. What’s difficult about marriage? What’s amazing about marriage? You really need to give them the full picture.”

Wilcox said part of the decline could be attributed to the diminishing prospects of marriage-age men, many of whom are increasingly foregoing higher education and who are seeing fewer job opportunities and lower incomes.

Marsha Garrison, a professor at Brooklyn Law School who has been studying marriage and family structures for decades, offered a similar analysis. “In the United States, marriage and child-bearing behavior are strongly correlated with education,” she told CNA, noting that “most young adults see stable employment as a precondition to marriage.”

Garrison suggested lawmakers could play a role in reversing these declines. “Encouraging education and policies which create stable, well-paying blue collar jobs … could have some impact on marriage rates,” she said, though she argued that “we are unlikely to ever return to the old world in which marriage is near-universal.”

Wilcox also argued that the government could play a role in promoting marriage among working-class couples, including with child-care subsidies that could help ease the economic costs of child-rearing.

Wilcox said the Church could also make a more proactive effort in promoting marriage among faithful Catholics.

“If you’d like to live a life that is meaningful, and reasonably happy, getting married, investing in your spouse and any kids that you have, it’s incredibly important,” he said. “That’s a message that the Church could be much more forceful in bringing to people sitting in the pews.”

Verret also argued that the Church is not doing enough to inculcate a marriage culture among Catholics. The “secular culture,” she said, is broadcasting messages about marriage loudly and often, while the Church is delivering its own message “in such a quiet voice, or is making it so hard to find.”

“If you’re not super-volunteered, going to extra formation, you’re just not going to get it,” she said. Above all, she argued, the Church needs to be discussing marriage at every step of life in order to make it a normalized part of a Catholic upbringing.

“We’re not going to have healthy families if we wait six months before the wedding date to talk about marriages,” she said.am


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15 Comments

  1. I was visiting my friend. While browsing the pictures on the wall, I exclaimed, “That sure looks like a Catholic Church!”. My friend said, “Oh yes, my brother got all his three marriages annulled and she got all her three marriages annulled, and they got married in the Catholic Church. My brother was pretty upset with the Church though, because it took a year or so. Mom didn’t like them living together before marriage, so he wanted to get married in the Catholic Church for mom. It isn’t like my brother goes to Church or anything.

    Once I read an article in a Catholic Magazine. A wife of twenty years, raising her five Catholic children, had written in desperately begging for help. Her marriage was under attack! A friend of hers had told her that her husband had filed for an annulment. Her Archdiocese refused to talk to her about it. They told her it was none of her business. Her husband of twenty years had decided to go live with his, twenty years younger, secretary. The wife had been praying to God that God guide her prodigal husband back home to put their Catholic family back together. The priest, whom I always liked, replied to her, “That is correct, it was none of her business.” I was overwhelmingly shocked!

    It is the Catholic Church who is destroying Holy Matrimony through annulments. The Catholic Church focuses too much on that “1.3 billion Catholics” big number, rather than aiding our much smaller number of True Disciple Catholics.

    Wisdom 14:22
    Then it was not enough for them to err in their knowledge of God; but even though they lived in a great war of ignorance, they called such evils peace. For while they celebrate either childslaying sacrifices or clandestine mysteries, or frenzied carousals in unheard of rites, They no longer safeguard either lives or pure wedlock; but each either waylays and kills his neighbor, or aggrieves him by adultery. And all is confusion– blood and murder, theft and guile, corruption, faithlessness, turmoil, perjury,…

    • “Mom didn’t like them living together before marriage, so he wanted to get married in the Catholic Church for mom. It isn’t like my brother goes to Church or anything.”
      .
      My son and his wife had a civil marriage at the height Covid. (I didn’t appreciate them getting cohabitating either, but there seemed no way around it since they already knew they were getting married and were in a location pretty much by themselves with no family or friends, etd–and it was Covid). Even assuming a Church was willing to host, and a priest willing to officiate, I would have opposed them getting married in a Catholic Church because even though both were baptized/confirmed Catholics, neither had any intention as living that way–going to Mass, being involved in a parish, etc
      .
      They “saved” nearly $30,000 in unnecessary wedding debt.
      .
      The Church needs much, much higher standards for those who may have a “Catholic” wedding (and who is truly eligible for an annulment once the wedding happens and marriage falls apart). If that cuts the wedding rates down even further, so be it.

      • The circumstances were a bit unusual but our Catholic wedding cost us $20. for the marriage license. Period.
        The refreshments & flowers were donated & everything was “something old, something new, something borrowed, & something blue”. Really.
        🙂
        That’s an extreme example perhaps but the current wedding-industry is absolutely ridiculous. Between student loans & wedding debt young couples start off marriage with the odds stacked against them. Financial troubles are one of the biggest sources of stress for couples & causes for divorce.
        If engaged couples would spend just half as much time discussing their ideas on budgeting, child rearing, & faith as they do on wedding photos & reception planning, we might see better results.

        • Agreed
          .
          DIL’s parents were (reportedly) willing to shell out $30K on a wedding…but not her college debt. No way would I have agreed to such a sum. We did send them a nice little sum as a gift. I think some of it went to college debt.

  2. Much here to meditate upon, thanks.
    It would be interesting to see a chart of the correlation between contraception use and marriage. It will likely resemble stocks and bonds. If the value of one goes up, the other decreases.

  3. I heard a podcast in which the interviewee (sorry, can’t remember who he was but it was someone of some stature) said that the trend is that cohabiting is less and less a precursor to marriage. I don’t see much discussion on why non-marital cohabitation is today widely considered to be no big deal.

    • I can’t count how many women I’ve heard of recently who have shacked up with a man for years & years & then he decides to move on when she’s in her mid-late 30’s & approaching the end of her fertility. He can begin a new relationship & father children almost indefinitely but women’s opportunities for that are much more finite.
      It’s so sad. I think women keep hoping for commitments that never come.

  4. Marriage is declining because a greater number of young people do not have a correct understanding of love and of thinking about other. Probably to due their family dysfunction. When the young adults meet others one or the other, or both, are selfish and cannot get out of themselves. Without these basics, the other reasons will not matter. Young adults that turn inward do not are not able to connect enough and get discuouraged or hurt in not finding someone who is capable of love.

  5. Love REQUIRES commitment. We don’t have a problem with Marriage, per se. We have a LOVE problem. For too many generations dating back to the early 1980’s at least, “latch-key” kids were being pampered, doted on, served, adored and spoiled. They bring that same self-centered, self-esteem into relationships and when they fail, which they most certainly will, they can’t imagine themselves stepping over the abyss of a “life long” commitment in marriage. Let’s face it, they can get the gravy of sexual satisfaction now without having to pay to put the meat and potatoes on the plate. Make no mistake about it – we’re not going to win back hearts, minds and souls to a self-LESS love, a self-LESS life until, en masse (IN MASS) we see what real love looks like, i.e. the King of Kings hanging on the cross above the High Altar and given the glory He rightly deserves for the self-LESS, ALL-IN Love that yearns for self-effacement and lives FOR THE SAKE of the well-being of the other. It’s good to keep in mind that the very nature of the sacramental element of Marriage relies on appreciating the love that Christ shows for His bride the church and her love for Him. My wife and I would have had 8 children all together – some we lost to natural causes in the womb; but, we raised 5 wonderful souls with God’s grace and mercy. You don’t mind having multiple copies of your spouse surrounding you at the dinner table when love forms the essence of your commitment to one another. Sadly, all the catechetical programs, polished videos, live streams and podcasts are not going to be enough to promote the kind of love required to make life-long commitments. What is needed has to come FROM THE MASS and FROM THE AMBO. We need our priests to feed us AT THE MASS. In turn, we need to trust the priests who (God willing) live chaste celibate lives to provide us the spiritual nourishment that we can use to build commitments satisfying to God. I don’t with to pontificate here; but, after 33 years of marriage and raising (home schooling) 5 souls, I have the modicum of confidence needed to speak with some authority on the blessing of Catholic Marriage. Deo Gratias!

  6. Perhaps we should prepare for the possibility that soon marriage will become illegal. It may well be considered immoral to be faithful to one exclusively. Wouldn’t that be selfish in depriving others? There is no end to the unraveling of morality. Great persecution ahead. Read the Bible! But -I am an optimist because I know the end of the story.

  7. ““Marriage is a wealth-generating institution,” he told CNA. “Having kids outside of marriage puts you at risk of family instability and accumulating kids with more than one partner. That starts you up for men, for child support; for women, single parenthood. Both of which are financially exceedingly difficult to navigate.””

    So people start getting a bigger paycheck once they marry? There certainly is a relationship, but it likely isn’t a matter of causation. It is more likely that economic issues are causing people to believe that it is necessary to “hold off” to marry.

    Why the need to speculate about this? Why not ask people?

    “Garrison suggested lawmakers could play a role in reversing these declines. “Encouraging education and policies which create stable, well-paying blue collar jobs … could have some impact on marriage rates,” she said …”

    It pretty much always comes down to law.

    If we didn’t allow for the attempted “dissolving” of marriage by the state through divorce which started with the Protestant Revolution then people would know that marriage is permanent.

    If we outlawed fornication or otherwise created laws which worked against it, then things would change. In one state it was a CRIME to “cohabit in a state of fornication” until 1974 (repealed in 1972).

    The fact is that a job needs to be closely tied to family life. The Catholic Church teaches that it is the needs of the family of the husband which ought to determine income.

    The “free market ideology” is one of the worst errors. It “survives” due to the greed and evil of those in business, corrupt judges, and those who know or should know better, but, despite their duty to teach/preach, are silent.

    We need guaranteed employment at a just wage relative to the needs of the family. It isn’t impossible, just “heretical.” A likely good book would be helpful in this regard is “The Ends of Freedom: Reclaiming America’s Lost Promise of Economic Rights.” (Also, watch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJD-o6Htr4k .) Technically, refusal to employ with just terms is a form of (attempted) MURDER.

    Marriage must not be seen as a luxury/option to people who are “living as spouses” or who are fornicating and the government can’t totally regulate it. Marriage is a Catholic sacrament, so laws – applicable to the baptized – surrounding it come from the Catholic Church, not the government.

    I am not married because I haven’t been able to find a good spouse who shares my religious beliefs, and it looks to me like I might remain unemployed for a long time for the foreseeable future.

    I know what my personal issues are, but the “justice” system is EVIL – a true INjustice system.

  8. My grandfather got remarried in the 1950s after Grandma passed on. The questionnaire the priest gave him asked if he realized the main reason to get married was to have children, and he replied “no,” possibly because they both had raised families.

    Raising children is not the reason these days, and I agree the annulment on demand, almost, has ruined a lot. I remember when those rules were loosened in the 70’s several of our staid families in our parish left the church. Maybe we live too long these days.

  9. This is crass, but I’m gonna come out and say it: Why buy the cow if you can get the milk for free? Artificial contraception has removed the need for marriage. You can just have the benefits (sex) and there’s no responsibility necessary. Men love it, it keeps them in an adolescent smorgasbord, women agree to it in hopes the man will commit to her someday and grow up. While she pursues her career. The thinking is, why bother with marriage?

    • Wow. I was going to say the same but you beat me to it. Yes, why buy the cow? Once you have free sex I would wager a lot of men’s interest in marriage drops. Its all the fun with no responsibility. I have also seen women wait around for years for a commitment which then never comes. And finally, I place much of the blame on the church and the local pastors. They dont talk about a marriage commitment or chastity because they are afraid of alienating more people. Or afraid of complaints about them to the Bishop ( who is sadly apt to be yet another “free thinker”) I have NEVER heard my priests talk about this subject. And they are certainly aware the couples are living together but again I would wager say nothing to them when they come to arrange a wedding. Maybe confession would be a suggestion to make in that circumstance, along with an obviously needed explanation about why they are in a state of sin. If they “leave” the church, so what? They have already made the decision to remain outside the church by virtue of their choices. I also agree that annulment has become much too available, too much of an automatic OK. That has created a scandal and some smug non-church goers have delighted to throw that in my face as an example of church hypocrisy. We need to stop the tyranny of “nice” and get back to teaching morality, no matter WHO is offended.

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