AMERICA’S DECLINING AFFAIR WITH MARRIAGE

(Friday Church News Notes, November 13, 2009, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143)

– The following is excerpted from The Washington Post, Nov. 9, 2009: “The institution of marriage in the United States has steadily declined in strength over the past four decades, according to a report released last month by a panel of scholars and advocates. The U.S. Marriage Index, the brainchild of David Blankenhorn, president of the Institute for American Values, seeks to quantify the health of marriage in the United States in the same way economists use leading indicators to parse the state of the country’s economy. …

The index combined five statistics–the percentage of adults between the ages of 20 and 54 who are married, the percentage of adults who reported being a ‘very happy’ with their marriages, the percentage of first marriages intact, the percentage of births to married parents and the percentage of children living with their own married parents–to reach a composite score illustrating the state of America’s nuptial unions. In 1970, that score totaled 76.2; by 2008 it had dropped to 60.3. Almost 90 percent of children were born to married parents in 1970; last year it was 60 percent. Of adults between ages 20 and 54, 78.6 percent were married in 1970, compared with 57.2 percent in 2008.

The portion of first marriages that remained intact dropped from 77.4 percent in 1970 to 61.2 percent last year. … Blankenhorn points to statistics showing that kids who grow up in homes where their parents are married to each other are, on average, less likely to live in poverty, to have emotional or behavioral problems, to engage in premature sexual activity, to use drugs or commit suicide. ‘Every single pathology or problem or difficulty a child can experience–every single one–growing up outside of a married-couple home elevates the risk,’ he says.”