Marriage used to be a foundation of families and communities. More and more these days, people, especially white liberals, see it as a simple, bilateral agreement for the good of man and wife and as not necessarily anybody else’s business.
The latest evidence: On the basic question of whether two people should marry if they have a child together, a growing number of people said it doesn’t matter. A shrinking number said it does. By more than a 2-to-1 margin in 2006, more people in the United States (49%) said it was “very important” for parents to marry than said it was not important (23%) in Gallup surveys. In 2020, though, the “not important” crowd is 40% of the population, while those who say it is very important make up only 29%. About 26% to 31% have remained in the middle on this question.
It’s not everyone who believes marriage and parenting are perfectly separable. The view is most commonly found among single, college-educated, secular, white liberals. The old-fashioned view, that it is “very important” that parents marry, is more common among married (33%), nonwhites (33%), conservatives (41%), and weekly church attendees (45%).
So what is marriage for if not for raising a family? Bilateral commitment.
“When a couple plans to spend the rest of their lives together, how important is it to you that they legally marry?” Gallup also asked. While the perceived importance is dropping here as well, many more people said that marriage is very important for this purpose than for raising children (38% compared to 29%).
This happens as marriage rates drop in the U.S., particularly among the working class. At the same time, the folks getting married and wishing their close friends and family get married — that is, the college-educated, generally wealthy elites — are loath to preach what they practice. The numbers reflect two things: the deinstitutionalization of working-class life combined with laissez-faire moral attitudes that become either neglect or nihilistic.
But marriage, of course, is good. It’s good for men, good for women, good for communities, and extremely good for children, even if it’s old-fashioned to say so.
—By Timothy P. Carney
