If you were to form your opinions by relying solely on TikTok influencers, Netflix movies like “Marriage Story” or fashionable cultural commentary — as found in The New York Times or New York Magazine — you could be forgiven for thinking marriage was dreadful and starting a family a death sentence. From “Marriage Story’s” dispiriting depiction of a 21st century marriage spiraling downward to divorce over work-family conflicts and sundry disappointments with spousal failures, to yet another Times op-ed written by a Brooklyn writer offering a litany of complaints regarding married motherhood, the elites who dominate our cultural discourse often paint a dark and dispiriting portrait of marriage and family life. Sadly, for many Americans, this is precisely where their views are formed. Sealed off from reality, young and middle-aged men and women are shaped to think that anything but marriage is where to find fulfillment, happiness and prosperity today.
That is why I felt compelled to write “Get Married: Why Americans Must Defy the Elites, Forge Strong Families, and Save Civilization,” (Harper Collins, $32) because the reality — the truth that exists once you put your screens down and take your AirPods out — is the complete opposite. As a sociologist, I have spent the last 15 years researching data, trends and surveys at the University of Virginia National Marriage Project and through my fellowship at the Institute for Family Studies. The main message of this work, now compiled and presented in “Get Married,” is: “Marriage works.”
The good news about marriage is that married men and women are the most financially secure, least lonely, healthiest and happiest people in America today.
The good news about marriage is that married men and women are the most financially secure, least lonely, healthiest and happiest people in America today. Their children have the best life outcomes compared to their peers whose parents are not married. And marriage works for people from a variety of backgrounds. So why keep this a secret?
The evidence is overwhelming. Marriage is a powerful predictor of:
- the violence in your neighborhood,
- the likelihood of your kid ending up in prison or college,
- the health of your retirement savings account,
- your mental health, and
- your overall health and happiness.
In truth, the evidence that marriage matters is so voluminous that the main task in writing the book was how best to organize the mountain of data while keeping the book to a readable length.
The point is that the reality is much more positive about marriage and family than the tales told to us by our elites.
What’s more infuriating is that so many of the “anything-goes”-opinion-formers who disparage or discount the value of marriage conceal their true beliefs behind closed doors: raising their own children within the context of stable married life. They “talk left, but walk right.” I am talking about academics, think tankers, and Hollywood executives who publicly argue marriage is not important or offer dismal depictions of our most important social institution even as they rely upon its benefits for themselves and their children. So, I wanted to counter their hypocritical messaging with the truth about the real value of family life. If a stable married family life is good enough for our elites, then it should be good enough and available for us all. In the book, I set clear pathways for the young, unmarried and those already wed to make the most out of marriage.
Men, women and the pursuit of happiness
So, let us take a look at some of the data. While the great and the good send signals, such as in “Eat, Pray, Love,” that dumping your spouse and not having a family are an emancipation into self-fulfillment, research shows the opposite is true. The group of women most likely to report that their lives were meaningful “most” or “all of the time” were married mothers. In 2021, 60% of married mothers aged 18-55, compared to only 36% of single, childless women of the same ages were completely or somewhat satisfied with their life.
And this repeats for life satisfaction too. Looking again at women aged 18 to 55 years, this time in 2022, 75% of married mothers reported that they were either “completely” or “somewhat” satisfied with their lives, compared to 54% of single, childless women.
The same is true for men — counter to some of the new voices on the political right, like Andrew Tate, saying men would find happiness by steering clear of marriage.
The odds that men and women are “very happy” with their lives are 151% higher for those who are married, compared to those who are unmarried, according to the “General Social Survey.” What’s more, being married is a better predictor of happiness than other factors that get more attention in today’s culture, from education to work to race and gender.
Not only are married men provided a happiness bonus, but the evidence shows married men enjoy a financial advantage over their non-married or never-married peers.
Having a job only boosts your odds of being happy by 50%. An above-average income only boosts them by 88%. Marriage is associated with a 151% increase in your odds of being happy, compared to being never married.
Not only are married men provided a happiness bonus, but the evidence shows married men enjoy a financial advantage over their non-married or never-married peers.
When we control for household size, age, education, race, ethnicity and the presence of children, married men have 40% more household income than their unmarried peers.
Stably married men heading into their golden years are in a much better position than their peers who have not followed that same path. They have more than 10 times the median assets of their unmarried peers. In 2016, married men in their 50s had median financial assets of $399,300. Their never-married counterparts only $12,800.
Marital quality is, far and away, the top predictor I have run across of life satisfaction in America. The odds that men and women say they are “very happy” with their lives are 545% higher for those who are very happily married compared to their peers who are unmarried or less than “very happy” in their marriages.
Detractors, faced with this barrage of evidence, will try to burst the bubble by saying that happy people tend to get married and make their own happiness, rather than marriage being a factor. But even this fatalistic outlook is countered by the evidence.
For example, economists Shawn Grover and John Helliwell tracked happiness in two groups of adults — some who married and some who did not — over time for a study. They controlled for happiness prior to marriage and still found “a causal effect [on happiness] at all stages of the marriage, from pre-nuptial bliss to marriages of long duration.” In fact, they found the happiness-boosting power of marriage was largest in midlife, when people were in their late 40s and 50s, and adult happiness is at its nadir. Marriage works.
Marriage for the sake of the children
Marriage greatly benefits children, too. Kids raised in a stable, married family do comparatively better at school, graduate from college, steer clear of problems with the law, incarceration and drugs, and are more likely to be happy.
When we look at adolescents more generally, we see that anxiety and depression are more common, and happiness is harder to be had among teens growing up in non-intact families.
To clarify, most teens are not anxious or depressed, nor are they unhappy, regardless of family background. However, girls and boys from fractured families are more likely to report that they are depressed than their peers from stable homes. Just 22% of adolescents raised by their own married parents report that they are sad a lot of the time, compared to 34% from non-intact families. That makes depression about 50% more likely for teens from non-intact families, even after taking into account a range of socioeconomic factors. Here, family structure is more predictive of depression than family income.
The advantages of being raised in a stable married family are not just emotional. There are profound economic impacts too. Harvard economist Raj Chetty and his colleagues found the best community predictor of poor children remaining stuck in poverty as adults was the share of kids in their communities living in a single-parent family. Not income inequality. Not race. Not school quality. Family structure was the biggest factor in predicting poor kids’ odds of realizing the American Dream in communities nationwide.
Harvard economist Raj Chetty and his colleagues found the best community predictor of poor children remaining stuck in poverty as adults was the share of kids in their communities living in a single-parent family.
We can see then the emptiness of the claims made by Andrew Tate, who says marriage has no value for men. Tate, with billions of views on TikTok, was charged in 2023 with rape, human trafficking and forming an organized crime group to sexually exploit women. Sadly, he significantly influences a generation of young men who lap up his mindset.
But his odd views are held by less controversial figures. Molly Smith in Bloomberg assures us that women who stay single and don’t have kids are financially better off than their married-with-children counterparts. The Atlantic, the New York Times, and Time have all run recent features on how steering clear of marriage and children, or dumping your marriage in a divorce, is the new self-love that leads to freedom, fulfillment, wealth and happiness. If these messages are upended by the evidence, what other false claims are there to ignore?
Marriage research reveals surprising diversity
Elites promote diverse family structures — what I call “family diversity theory.” But the evidence is clear. Broken homes hurt kids. Intact homes provide many children with a buffer against abuse and neglect. The research tells us that children who are exposed to high levels of family instability — and especially to unrelated males in the household — are more likely to end up physically, sexually or emotionally abused, and they are more likely to struggle in life.
To be sure, many kids raised outside of an intact family do fine. I was raised by a single mom and turned out “OK.” But as a social scientist, I also have to be clear-eyed about the risks of family instability for kids. The facts. Because they dismantle the stories that we are told repeatedly.
It isn’t diverse family structures that help people, but rather — on average — stable married families. The true diversity is the range of people that can make a success of this simple institution. Who are they?
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The following indicate how much a factor is likely to boost a person’s happiness: 50% — job 88% — above-average income 151% — marriage 22% of adolescents raised by their own married parents report that they are sad a lot of the time, compared to 34% from non-intact families. 84% of husbands who regularly attend religious services with their wives report being “very happy” in their marriage, vs. 68% for those who never or rarely attend religious services or are both nonreligious. |
In “Get Married,” I explore the “Masters of Marriage,” those who have forged the happiest and/or most stable marriages. Contrary to elite opinion, many people arrive at successful marriages — it is not confined to a particular demographic. I show how Asian Americans, conservatives, the faithful from diverse religions, and strivers from different economic backgrounds are the ones who have found stability in marriage with positive outcomes on happiness, health, and life outcomes for themselves and their children.
Religion and diversity
Religion gets bad press, too, as it relates to marriage. The negative messaging that seeps out from elite media and culture is that those who are religious find themselves in loveless, sexless, abusive marriages based on coercion, control and regressive social norms of a bygone era. The New Yorker, for instance, recently depicted Christian men as porn-addled, riddled by guilt and subject to higher divorce risks because their wives are less tolerant of pornography than secular women. The clear takeaway: faith is an obstacle to a flourishing marriage and family life.
This is a distorted view. While it is worth noting that there are always exceptions to the rule, this is not to say the exception becomes the rule. There are hospitals that don’t provide good care. That doesn’t mean that if you require surgery, you do it yourself at home. There are schools that do not perform as well as others, but we don’t tell our children to abandon education. So, in the same way, we all know some Christian marriages don’t work out, some Christian men struggle with pornography, some Christian families experience abuse, and some churches or faith communities are toxic for marriage and families. But we should not flee the institutions of faith and family to accommodate these exceptions. And they are exceptions — the evidence assures us of this.
In general, what the data tell us is that religion is a force for good in family life. In fact, there is great news in this regard, news that should be shouted from the rooftops of churches — and proclaimed from the pulpits — across the land.
Not only are married people the happiest, most financially secure and report the greatest sense of belonging and sense of purpose, but these levels increase for those who are also religious and attend church services regularly.
In general, what the data tell us is that religion is a force for good in family life.
For example, 84% of husbands who regularly attend religious services with their wives report being “very happy” in their marriage. By contrast, this falls to 68% for those who never or rarely attend religious services or are both nonreligious. A similar gap is reported for wives.
Los Angeles. CNS photo/Victor Aleman, Vida Nueva
Religion is also associated with more stable marriages. One Harvard study in my book shows that women who regularly attend church are almost 50% less likely to divorce. “The National Longitudinal Survey of Youth,” which tracked teenagers from the 1990s to their late 30s in 2019, also indicated that regular religious attendance reduced divorce by about 30% among those men and women who had married. So, we see that, statistically, religious people are much happier and enjoy far more stable marriages.
The data also show that these couples, those who attend religious services together regularly, have a much greater life satisfaction than their non- or less-religious counterparts. Fifty-five percent of husbands who attend church services regularly with their wives are “very satisfied” with life, while their wives are 49%.
“See!” the naysayers cry, “not even half of religious wives are very satisfied with life, they’re miserable!” Well to that, I have some hard news.
Only 27% of wives who are nonreligious or barely go to church report being “very satisfied” with life. It’s 28% for husbands. That’s almost three-quarters of married couples who aren’t religious who are not “very satisfied.” More generally, data from the General Social Survey indicate that no group of men and women in America (aged 18-55) is happier with their lives than those who are married and attend church regularly.
Faith and marriage
This fact alone should be a huge encouragement for pastors. Your flock, in all the variety of life they experience — its conflicts and challenges, as well as its delights — are substantially happier and more satisfied than those who aren’t a part of your community. That’s a huge selling point and motivation for getting people into your doors. In other words, you’re doing something right, and the statistical difference is stark.
This is not to minimize the fact that most husbands and wives experience days, weeks, months, or even years when marriage and family life are tough, dispiriting or anger-inducing — including those who are regular churchgoers. On any given Sunday, about 1 in 5 husbands and wives are not very happy in their marriages. (Fathers, it’s worth keeping them in mind when it comes to preaching and teaching about marriage and family life.) And this reality means we should not paint a rose-colored portrait of marriage as day after day of “wedded bliss.” Every married person knows that marriage is often very hard because all of us are human, and none of us are perfect.
But, on average, men and women married with children — for all the slings and arrows they face in and outside their families — are more likely to navigate life successfully, forging financially stable, meaningful and happy lives.
This makes sense. Practically speaking, churches offer networks of support to families. It’s no easy job to raise kids. Having a number of families who can identify with your joys and struggles, who can offer practical help and support, having both pastoral care and practical help (like meal trains at the birth of a child), and being around a community aiming to support you in your aspirations for stable family life, of course, put you at a greater likelihood to be able to achieve it. And then the very notion of “faith” in a higher being and purpose helps individuals and families weather setbacks like illness, unemployment or the loss of a loved one. In my book, I also set out research on how religious couples have better and more regular sex than their non-religious counterparts — something you will never read in The New Yorker.
The evidence is an enormous encouragement to us all, especially those in church leadership, to be confident about the goodness of marriage and creative in their practical support of it: hosting retreats, mentoring couples and organizing young adult socials that create opportunities for young men and women to pair up.
Because the converse is true. Those who listen to and live by the elite’s negative messaging about marriage and family life experience negative outcomes. Unmarrieds are less financially secure, lonelier, less happy and less satisfied. This is obvious to most people, and yet we are so easily cowed by those who dominate the commanding heights of our culture that we doubt the simple truth: It is good to find a spouse and a joy to raise a family, and it is enjoyable to do this in the context of a faith community who you can share the journey of life with together.
This is not rocket science. Rather it is social science. Social science tells us that your marital status is a crucial predictor of a whole host of important economic, emotional, and health outcomes for men and women throughout their adult lives.
“Get Married” is intended as an invitation to help individuals to find the courage to go against mainstream culture and instead participate in mainstream reality.
In the book, I set the record straight. We must defy the elite messaging about marriage and family life. And not least because the elites themselves know what works. While only about 20% of Americans aged 18-55 who are poor are married, that figure jumps to approximately 60% for the upper middle classes and the wealthy. Why? Because they want happiness, financial and emotional security, and to raise their children in the setting that is optimal for them. So, why not ignore what they say, and do as they do? You’ll be happier for it.
Adapted from Brad Wilcox, “Get Married: Why Americans Must Defy the Elites, Forge Strong Families, and Save Civilization,” Harper Collins: New York, 2024 ($32).
