Leading Think Tank Launches Important ‘Get Married Initiative’
Across the world, marriage is every single society’s most foundational and important human institution. No nation, in the long history of the world, has ever found a way to maintain a growing, thriving, and safe society, particularly for women and children, without marriage. And specifically, monogamous marriage. This is because monogamy settles men down and empowers women by equalizing sexuality and domestic life.
Yet, fewer people are marrying today, and those that do, are doing so later in life.
The median age of first marriage for U.S. men is 30.8 and 28.4 for women, and those numbers just continue to grow higher on average since the early 1970s. The trendlines look like this:
And the number of men aged 20 to 39 presently not married is exploding as well. In 2000, the gap between married and unmarried men in that age range was only 2.5 million. Today that gap is a massive 15 million! Marriage decline trendlines for unmarried men look like this:
And marriage rates for women today are 59% lower than they were in 1970. These numbers make for a terribly concerning cultural indicator.
Brad Wilcox, a sociologist at the University of Virginia and co-founder of the Institute for Family Studies (IFS), is doing something about this. He has launched the “Get Married Initiative” a new project of IFS targeted at young adults. Professor Wilcox explains, “We aim to help young people understand the growing value of marriage, how to date more successfully with an eye towards marriage, and advance policies and civic efforts to help them marry.” The initiative does this by presenting world-class sociological research showing the rich benefits marriage provides for men, women, children and society at large.
Some of the richest benefits of marriage are improved health and overall life happiness for men and women. Married mothers and fathers also provide a rich array of benefits for children as well.
The “Get Married Initiative” has created a tool that tracks the percentage of recently married adults, age 22 to 39, in state-by-state regions across the United States. There is a great deal of marriage rate diversity across the nation. The work of the “Get Married Initiative” is also established on a rich collection of in-depth research reports from IFS, including investigations into the importance of the Success Sequence, the growing epidemic of demoralized men, the very serious problem of the growing “dating recession,” and the ways that marriage and motherhood enrich women’s overall happiness and well-being. Research like this is essential for local communities as they seek to make a compelling case for why marriage improves individual and societal well-being and how to improve its prevalence.
Efforts to boost marriage in America and the rest of the world are essential. University of Chicago data from the gold-standard General Social Survey recently reported on a serious and consistent marital happiness premium of 30 points above those who are single and 20 points above cohabitors. Few things rival marriage for improving lives.
Focus on the Family wishes IFS’s “Get Married Initiative” profound success. Marriage advocates across the world need all the help they can get in this essential work of marriage promotion.
Related Articles and Resources:
New Research: What Men and Women Are Looking For in a Spouse
Marriage and the Pursuit of Happiness
The American Dating Drought and Hope for Fixing It
Young Person Explains Why Young People Aren’t Getting Married
Research Shows Marriage Changes People for the Better in Newlywed Years
Who Falls in Love Faster, Men or Women?
Make Dating for Marriage Great Again
Don’t Believe the Modern Myth. Marriage Remains Good for Men
Important New Research on How Married Parents Improve Child Well-Being
How Marriage Fights Against Deaths of Despair
New Research: Marriage Still Provides Major Happiness Premium
Harvard Evolutionary Biologist Brilliantly Explains Necessity of Monogamous Marriage
