marriage

Erika Kirk to Women: Don’t use the government to put off marriage.

Young women shouldn’t rely on the government to put off getting married, Erika Kirk cautioned at The New York Times’ DealBook Summit this week.

DealBook’s Andrew Ross Sorkin interviewed Kirk in lieu of her late husband, Charlie, who had been scheduled to appear. A gunman assassinated the conservative leader in September.

Sorkin asked Kirk her opinion on New York City mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani, who won 75% of New York voters between 18 and 29 years old last month. Charlie, Sorkin noted, built significant popularity with the same demographic.

Kirk, a former Manhattanite, reflected on struggling to survive alone in the big city.

“I think there’s a tendency, especially when you live in a city like Manhattan, where you are so career driven, [to] look to the government as a form of replacement for certain relationships,” she mused.

“What I don’t want to have happen is young women in the city looking to the government as a solution to put off having a family or marriage because they’re relying on the government to support [them] instead of being united with a husband.”

Kirk’s comments compliment decades of research showing marriage benefits people more than almost any other social institution — including the government.

Married people experience better physical and mental health outcomes than their unmarried counterparts, due, in part, to the way marriage compounds wealth. Married couples tend to live in nicer housing, eat healthier food and have access to better healthcare — the same essentials Mamdani’s campaign promised to make less expensive.

But marriage confers more than mere economic benefit. Between 1975 and 2018, roughly one-third of married people reported feeling happy on the U.S. General Social Survey, compared to just 13% of cohabiting people and 2% of unmarried people.  

The social support married people enjoy over single people could help explain the disparity in happiness between the two groups. A recent study of nearly 5,000 single adults in the U.S. and Japan concluded, “Married Americans reported the most family support, which helped boost their well-being.”

In contrast, the study found single Americans “often feel isolated and unsupported, particularly when it comes to emotional guidance and support.”

Kirk experienced the happiness differential herself. She had been all-in on pursuing a career when she met Charlie.

“Charlie essentially plucked me out of the New York City orbit and was like, ‘No, I have a healthier way of viewing things and looking at life,’” she told Sorkin. “And he was right.”

She continued:

I remember thinking, if I would have stayed on that path I was on, I would have lost out on some of the most beautiful moments of my life — children, having a husband and being able to create and build something so incredible.

Too few single women, particularly on the left, hear experiences like Kirk’s. Professor Brad Wilcox, a sociological expert on marriage and family, believes young liberal men and women do not benefit from the same pro-family messaging young conservatives do.

“Progressive messaging that devalues, denies and deconstructs the value of family life and celebrates solo living in recent years is leaving its mark on the hearts, minds and lives of young liberals,” Wilcox and research fellow Grant Bailey write in the Institute for Family Studies, citing troubling articles like “Married heterosexual motherhood in America … is a game no one wins” (The New York Times) and “Divorce led me to my happily ever after” (The Washington Post).

Popular and liberal media further portray family as uniquely burdensome for women.

“Being free of family encumbrances …  is often held up as an important pathway to living a meaningful and happy life for women,” Wilcox and Bailey explain.

Lies like these steer single women — and men — away from one of their best statistical chances at happiness and fulfillment. The testimonies of women like Erika Kirk help correct the record and encourage family formation over dependence on the government.

All Christians should follow her example.

Additional Articles and Resources

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New Research: Marriage Still Provides Major Happiness Premium

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Don’t Believe the Modern Myth. Marriage Remains Good for Women

Don’t Believe the Modern Myth. Marriage Remains Good for Men.

Yes, Married Mothers Really Are Happier Than Unmarried and Childless Women

Marriage and the Public Good: A New Manifesto of Policy Proposals

Vatican Reaffirms: Marriage is Between One Man and One Woman

The Vatican has reaffirmed, in a new document published on November 25, the biblical truth that marriage is the union of one man and one woman.

The document, “‘Una Caro’ (One Flesh): In praise of monogamy. Doctrinal note on the value of marriage as an exclusive union and mutual belonging,” was released after Pope Leo XIV approved its publication on November 21.

It states clearly that marriage is “the unique and exclusive union between a single woman and a single man.”

Víctor Manuel Cardinal Fernández, prefect of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith (DDF); and Monsignor Armando Matteo, secretary of the doctrinal section of the DDF, authored the document.

The DDF is the Vatican’s primary doctrine department, tasked with helping “the Roman Pontiff and the (Catholic) Bishops to proclaim the Gospel throughout the world by promoting and safeguarding the integrity of Catholic teaching on faith and morals.”

The dicastery said it issued the note in response to requests from Catholic bishops in Africa where polygamy is still common and because “various public forms of non-monogamous unions – sometimes collared ‘polyamory’ – are growing in the West.”

Una Caro reflects on the nature of monogamy through a study of Sacred Scripture, a history of Christian thought, philosophy and even poetry which “push us to choose a unique and exclusive union of love.”

The document quotes from Augustine of Hippo, who reflected on the good of unity within marriage: “Fidelity requires not having sexual relations with another man or woman.”

It also quotes from the great theologian Thomas Aquinas, who described marriage as a “society of man (and) woman.”

Furthermore, Una Caro cites Pope Leo XIV, who said in a homily given for the Jubilee of Families, Grandparents and the Elderly, “Marriage is not an ideal, but the standard of true love between a man and a woman: total, faithful, fruitful love.”

The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches that polygamy “is not in accord with the moral law” (CCC 2387). It adds,

[Conjugal] communion is radically contradicted by polygamy; this, in fact, directly negates the plan of God which was revealed from the beginning, because it is contrary to the equal personal dignity of men and women who in matrimony give themselves with a love that is total and therefore unique and exclusive.

From the very beginning, Scripture teaches that God created marriage to be the exclusive union of one man and one woman.

“And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man. Then the man said, ‘This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.’ Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh” (Genesis 2:22-24, ESV).

This reality was reiterated by Jesus Christ, who taught, “Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate” (Matthew 19: 4-6, ESV).

The Vatican’s reaffirmation comes at an important time when the nature of marriage is being challenged in the Western world – both through “same-sex marriage” and polyamorous relationships.

Earlier this year, three men in a polyamorous relationship purchased a three-year-old girl from the Quebec government.

In 2020, Utah Governor Gary Herbert decriminalized polygamy in his state after near unanimous support from the state’s lawmakers. That year, Somerville, Massachusetts became the first U.S. city to legally recognize polyamorous relationships.

In 2021, two additional cities – Cambridge and Arlington – passed similar ordinances recognizing multi-partner relationships.

Furthermore, studies indicate that about 5% of Americans are currently in polyamorous relationships; only 49% of single Americans list monogamy as their “ideal sexual relationship structure”; and 24% of churchgoers ages 24 to 35 affirm consensual nonmonogamy as morally acceptable, according to sociologist Mark Regnerus.

These statistics should serve as a startlingly wakeup call to all orthodox Christians; the beauty and exclusivity of marriage must be taught and faithfully proclaimed.

Monogamy is important for the well-being of the spouses. Even secular academics have explained the essential societal benefits of monogamous marriage. But it’s also important because the exclusive union of one man and one woman represents a greater reality – that of Christ and His bride, the church.

The Apostle Paul writes in Ephesians 5:31-32, “‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.’ This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church” (ESV).

The late Catholic Archbishop Fulton Sheen said,

America, it is said, is suffering from intolerance — it is not. It is suffering from tolerance. Tolerance of right and wrong, truth and error, virtue and evil, Christ and chaos. Our country is not nearly so overrun with the bigoted as it is overrun with the broadminded.

In an age that is growing increasingly tolerant of polyamorous and alternative relationships, more priests, pastors and parents must boldly teach about the nature of marriage as the union of one man and one woman.

We can be grateful the Vatican has done exactly that.

Related articles and resources:

Counseling Consultation & Referrals

Biblical Perspectives on Polygamy and Polyamory

Understanding Homosexuality

10 Things Everyone Should Know About a Christian View of Homosexuality

Responding to a ‘Gay Christian’ In The Family

Resources: Homosexuality

Openly Gay ABC News Anchor Confirmed at Catholic Church in NYC

U.S. Catholic Bishops Ban ‘Transgender’ Interventions at Catholic Hospitals

African Bishops Unite to Reject Blessings for Same-Sex Couples

Utah Decriminalizes Polygamy with Near Unanimous Support by Legislators

Photo from Getty Images.

Happily Married Men and Women Should Be PR Agents for Marriage

As an institution, the state of marriage is a grim picture – as clearly shown by recent statistics. Fewer people are getting married, and those who do are getting married increasingly later in life.

In fact, since the U.S. Census Bureau began tracking it in 1940, Americans are now less likely to be married than at any other time. In 1949, 78.8% of households were led by a husband and a wife. Today, it’s just 47.1%.

The lack of marriages is a hot topic of conversation and debate in social science circles.  According to Dr. Brad Wilcox, director of the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia and author of Get Married: Why Americans Should Defy the Elites, Forge Strong Families and Save Civilization, it comes down to competing worldviews.

On one side are those, now the majority, who possess the “Midas mindset” – a prioritization of individual desires – wealth, work, and bucket-list pursuits accompanied by this idea that you’re only going to get married when you find the perfect mate. A recent Pew study found that 71% of those surveyed believed a great career was the pathway to a fulfilled life compared to just 23% who believe a happy marriage will bring them the riches the world will never provide.

It’s that latter group who are part of a “family-first” approach. Dr. Wilcox contends this prioritization is supported by what he calls the “5 Cs”:

  1. Communion – A deep emotional and spiritual bond between partners
  2. Children – The role of parenting in building a lasting relationship
  3. Commitment – Unwavering dedication to the partnership
  4. Cash – The financial stability that supports a strong marriage
  5. Community – Support networks that reinforce the relationship

As you might assume, Dr. Wilcox believes marriage should be a “cornerstone” of life and not the “capstone” that’s only laid in place after you check off all the boxes on your to-do list. In other words, getting married should be foundational to everything else.

Academics and scholars such as Brad Wilcox are well-versed in the research and make a compelling intellectual and social case for marriage. Pastors are also well positioned and authorized to advocate and encourage young people to get married. After all, the Bible is clear that marriage is one of God’s best creations. “It is not good for the man to be alone,” said God Himself. “I will make a helper suitable for him” (Gen. 2:18).

The Bible also highlights marriage’s many benefits ranging from companionship to procreation to sexual intimacy to spiritual strength and personal stability. The apostle Paul also points out that marriage reflects the relationship between Christ and the Church (Eph. 5:25-26).

Yet, we should not rely entirely on professors and pastors to make the case for marriage. First in the home and then outside of it, every happily married man and woman should be talking up the institution as a wonderful blessing.

Mothers and fathers should be intentional and deliberate about not only modeling a good marriage but also sharing about why it’s so good. Every child should know how their parents met and how they fell in love. Fathers and mothers should talk with their sons and daughters about dating and discernment. The parents need to help cast a vision and explain how much better life is when you have committed your life to someone and can spend your remaining years with them.

Elderly couples should tout the joys of marriage to the young. Fathers should talk to their sons about finding a wife and mothers to daughters about finding a husband.

The sitcom Seinfeld is considered one of television’s most popular shows of all-time. Known for finding humor in the ordinary, the program nevertheless paid a great disservice to the institution of marriage on a variety of occasions, but never more so than when Jerry’s neighbor, Cosmo Kramer, tries to discourage him from getting married. Consider this exchange:

Kramer: What are you thinking about, Jerry? Marriage? Family?

Jerry: Well …

Kramer: They’re prisons. Man made prisons. You’re doing time. You get up in the morning. She’s there. You go to sleep at night. She’s there. It’s like you gotta ask permission to use the bathroom. Is it all right if I use the bathroom now?

Jerry: Really?

Kramer: Yeah, and you can forget about watching TV while you’re eating.

Jerry: I can?

Kramer: Oh, yeah. You know why? Because it’s dinner time. And you know what you do at dinner?

Jerry: What?

Kramer: You talk about your day. How was your day today? Did you have a good day today or a bad day today? Well, what kind of day was it? Well, I don’t know. How about you? How was your day?

Jerry: Boy.

Kramer: It’s sad, Jerry. It’s a sad state of affairs.

Of course it’s just a fictitious show, but the program had a reputation for taking a nugget of truth and exaggerating it. Many people really believe what Kramer said – which is why fewer and fewer are pledging to stay together till the end. Ironically, the “sad state of affairs” occurs when young people deliberately choose to forgo marriage for selfish or foolish reasons.

As happily married Christian men and women, we shouldn’t be joking about marriage being a prison. We’ve all heard people sarcastically refer to it as a “ball and chain” or some variation thereof. It might get a laugh, but it also plants a poisonous seed with the unmarried.

We read a lot these days about social media influencers. Then there are those who leave product reviews on Amazon. People post about movies and music and rate food recipes all day long.

What if we devoted similar energy, attention and passion to extolling the many wonderful aspects of Christian marriage? Talk up your spouse and why you love being married to them. Enthusiasm for one of God’s greatest creations can be contagious and effective.

New Study: Online Dating Produces Fewer Healthy Relationships

It’s basic law of nature: Young men meet young women, get married and begin building a meaningful life together. It’s how a family starts.

But how couples meet today really matters. By strong margins, most couples now meet online. Unfortunately, very few meet through family or church.

In fact, in 1960, most U.S. couples (24%) met through friends; 19% met through family, while only 6% met through church.

In 2000, friend introductions held strong at 28%, while co-worker introductions and meeting at a bar took second and third place (15% and 13%, respectively). Family introductions took fourth place at 11%.

Only 5% met at church, rivaled by online dating (also 5%).

By 2024, a whopping 61% of couples met online, followed by meeting through friends (14% ) and coworkers (9%). Family was a paltry 4% and church was 2%.

You can see the changing trends in this creative video.


With most couples meeting online, it’s inevitable that relational strength and success will be impacted.

Early research indicated that meeting online had a slight positive effect on marital satisfaction and protecting against separation or divorce.

But later research conducted by the Institute for Family Studies demonstrated that meeting online was the least beneficial source for happy marriages, trailed only by bars. Church-facilitated meetings resulted in the highest levels of being “very happy” in marriage.

A new study by a team of psychologists from Poland’s University of Wroclaw examined this question anew with nationally representative data from 50 internationally diverse countries.

The first line of their study correctly notes, “The Internet has fundamentally reshaped how people meet and form romantic relationships.”

They concluded meeting online is not the best way to build the strongest, happy relationships and marriages.

They report, “On average, participants who met their partners online reported lower relationship satisfaction and lower intensity of experienced love compared to those who met offline, with effect sizes ranging from small to medium.”

Those who met in person tended to have healthier and more satisfactory interactions in intimacy, passion and commitment. The research team reported “these differences were generally small” but “importantly, these differences remained significant even after controlling for a broad set of demographic covariates, including gender, age, relationship length, socioeconomic status, [and] education.”

Why the Difference?

Why do online-introduced couples generally have less fulfilling relationships? Scholars offer three possible reasons:

  1. People who meet through their families, friends, church or work communities tend to have similar values and interests because how they meet selects for these similarities. Sociologists call this homogamy, or similarities in people’s sociological, educational and values background. People have fewer similarities when meeting online.

  2. Although related, having an overabundance of choices is uniquely a problem of online dating. Meeting a potential spouse through family, friends, school, work or one’s own neighborhood are all very powerful sifting mechanisms. One is likely to find like-minded individuals through similar interests and activities or through family and friends who know you well. Online dating, however, opens the door to many more possibilities. People are more likely to compromise in important areas because of the many options out there.

  3. In online dating, people commonly misrepresent themselves and it is difficult to distinguish between reality and fiction. The research team explains, “These inaccuracies are harder to conceal in face-to-face meetings, especially when shared social circles enable easier verification of personal details.”

As online dating becomes the main way people meet a potential spouse today, it is important to realize some ways of meeting a spouse produce healthier relationships and marriages over others.

These scholars conclude the study with this warning, “While online venues offer unprecedented opportunities for connection – especially across geographic and social boundaries – our findings suggest that relationships initiated offline are, on average, characterized by higher satisfaction and more intense feelings of love.”

Just another reason to favor and invest in IRL (in real life) communities of meaning.

Related Articles and Resources

If you or someone you know is struggling with marriage issues, Focus on the Family offers a one-time complimentary consultation with our ministry’s professionally trained counseling staff. The consultation is free due to generous donor support.

To reach Focus on the Family’s counseling service by phone, call 1-855-771-HELP (4357) weekdays 6:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. (Mountain Time). Please be prepared to leave your contact information for a counselor to return a call to you as soon as possible. Alternatively, you can fill out our Counseling Consultation Request Form.

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Image credit: Data is Beautiful / YouTube

Will Taylor Swift’s Engagement to Travis Kelce Ignite a Wedding Boom?

Can marriage be contagious?

The news of Taylor Swift’s engagement to Kansas City Chiefs’ star Travis Kelce on August 26 lit up the internet and various social media platforms. Within the first 24 hours of the announcement, the couple’s joint Instagram post generated 30 million likes. It’s currently north of 36 million, a distinction that makes it one of the site’s most popular posts of all time.

One can be forgiven or sometimes even encouraged to ignore celebrity relationship news or gossip. More than half the time it’s likely wrong, tawdry or downright unproductive. But the paparazzi nevertheless still chase and report – and the public often gobbles it up.

There’s no denying the fact that Taylor Swift is a cultural phenomenon. Born and raised on a Christmas tree farm in Reading, Pennsylvania, her first album debuted when she was in the 9th grade. Her latest “Eras Tour” grossed more than two billion dollars – an industry record.

Travis Kelce broke his silence about the engagement earlier this week on his brother Jason’s podcast, telling the retired NFL player that he’s enjoyed communicating the couple’s plans to marry to family and friends.

“It’s been really fun telling everybody who I’m going to be spending the rest of my life with,” he said. Beyond their initial statement, Taylor Swift hasn’t yet spoken publicly about the engagement.

Emily Rella is an editor for People Magazine. A day after the announcement, she published an essay on the site celebrating the news and included these thoughts:

“As a millennial, our current cultural examples of love — true, soulmate-level, real L love — aren’t exactly a dime a dozen. This notion of yearning and desire and all-or-nothing, consuming passion feels less realistic, with the fairy tale ending seemingly out of reach. It’s not so much that millennials stopped believing in love in some jaded, brooding way … I think it’s more so that we’ve become more comfortable with the idea that it might not happen for us in the way we once dreamed of when we were younger. “

Rella is openly expressing what many academics and counselors have been writing, speaking and sharing for years. Focus on the Family has long cautioned about the fanciful idea of finding one’s perfect “soulmate” and have suggested that fairy tale endings are just that – unrealistic and fictitious tales that are likely to lead to disillusionment, disenchantment and disappointment.

But given the volume and energy behind the “Swiftie” brigade, will this one engagement lead to others? Can romance and marriage be contagious?

Sociologists call this phenomenon a “behavioral contagion” – a tendency for someone to imitate what they observe and experience with others, sometimes even subconsciously. While the term may be relatively new, the trend isn’t. There’s a reason most people used to marry young, have lots of children and usually stay married the rest of their lives. They did so because most of the people in their circle lived like this and so deviating from the norm was, well, abnormal.

One could make the argument that simply getting married just because other people are getting married is a recipe for disaster and eventual divorce. To be sure, couples should prayerfully, deliberately, and thoughtfully pursue marriage. There are many things to consider, and none of them should include trying to copy Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce.

Yet it’s a very good thing when young people, especially, are excited about the prospect of marriage. It’s a good thing for them to see others happily married, to recognize that a stable and steady union is healthy and preferable to the chaos of what is often modeled in popular culture.

It’s unclear where Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce are spiritually or how they may view the institution of marriage in a faith context. But if the excitement they’re generating with young fans opens the opportunity for parents and pastors to talk about God’s beautiful gift of marriage with them, that conversation and trend will be time well spent.