Debate Desk
Is Marriage Just a Piece of Paper That Changes Nothing for a Family?
Marriage is associated with lower poverty, more stable homes and better outcomes for children; research does not support the idea it changes nothing.
The claim
Many say that what matters is love and commitment, not a license, that cohabiting couples raise children as well as married ones and that holding marriage up as an ideal stigmatizes single parents and unmarried couples.
The answer in three points
- Marriage is a public promise made before family and community, and promises shape behavior. Couples who marry have made a commitment that is harder to walk away from, and the law gives them a framework for property, children and care in illness. That is more than paper.
- Research on family stability points the same way. Children raised by married parents are, on average, less likely to live in poverty, to be suspended from school or to see their parents separate than those raised in cohabiting households. Correlation is not causation, and researchers control for income and education, yet the gap persists in many studies.
- This is not a judgment on any single parent, who often does heroic work. It is a claim about what a society should encourage and what policy should not penalize. Public programs should not punish marriage, and the culture should speak about it with respect.
Marriage is a public good as well as a private one, and a society that supports it supports its children.
The numbers
- The Census Bureau's America's Families and Living Arrangements reports show that children in married-couple families have markedly lower poverty rates than those in single-parent families.
- The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's National Center for Health Statistics has found that cohabiting unions break up at higher rates than marriages, according to its National Survey of Family Growth.
- The success sequence, finishing school, working full time and marrying before having children, has been found by scholars at the Brookings Institution and the Institute for Family Studies to be strongly associated with avoiding poverty.
What they will say next
"Selection explains it. Stable people marry." Partly true, and studies that account for selection still find an association. Marriage may also make people more stable.
"Many married couples are unhappy." Some are, and divorce is sometimes necessary. The question is about the average and about what we encourage.
"Government should stay out of it." It already has a role, for example in tax law and in benefits. The task is to make sure the rules do not penalize marriage.
"Pushing marriage blames single mothers." It need not. Honoring marriage and supporting single parents are compatible, and a fair culture does both.
A society that values children values the institution that does the most for them.
"Same-sex couples show marriage is about commitment." The broader point is that marriage is a public commitment that changes behavior, and the law has tried to preserve that for all couples who choose it. The argument here concerns the value of a public promise.