Despite the Left’s continued systemic attack on the institution of marriage, a recent report suggests that new marriages are stronger than in past decades. According to the Family Studies Institute, new marriages — those begun in the 2010s — have proved more resilient than those from every decade since the 1950s.
Although the cultural revolution of the 1960s and 1970s radically damaged the stability of American marriages, to the point that roughly 50 percent of marriages formed in the 1970s and 1980s have ended in divorce, that trend has reversed to some extent in recent decades. Since the end of the 1970s, marriages have slowly become less likely to end in divorce.
Thus far, marriages formed in the 2010s have continued that trajectory. The report analyzed first marriages and estimates that 18 percent of those marriages were divorced after 10 years. In contrast, marriages formed in the 1970s saw a 30 percent divorce rate after 10 years, and those from the 1980s were at 27 percent.
The Family Studies Institute projects that around 40 percent of 2010s marriages will eventually end in divorce, which is still alarmingly high, but lower than the marriages of every decade since the 1950s.
Brad Wilcox, an author of the report, commented in the Atlantic, “The idea that marriage will end in failure half the time or more — well entrenched in many American minds — is out-of-date. The proportion of first marriages expected to end in divorce has fallen to about 40 percent in recent years.”
Nonetheless, divorce continues to devastate the children of dissolved marriages not only in emotional ways that “scar children for life,” but also in terms of their tangible long-term outcomes.
As a recent study highlights, “parental divorce reduces children’s adult earnings and college residence while increasing incarceration, mortality, and teen births.” The study also confirmed that these negative impacts on children’s adult outcomes can only be partially accounted for by the direct economic effects of divorce — such as the parents having lowered household income and neighborhood quality.
While divorce rates still remain alarmingly high, the fact that divorce is in decline contradicts many people’s fears that marriage is becoming less stable. In 2019, for example, a survey found that 88 percent of people incorrectly thought that the divorce rate was increasing.
Another common assumption is that marriage has become more stable only among America’s most affluent. In reality, recent marriages have actually strengthened the most among working-class and black families.
Another fruit of divorce’s decline is that the share of children being raised in married families is rising. The share of children raised in married families bottomed out in 2012 at 64 percent, but since then, it has risen to 66 percent. According to the Brookings Institution, studies report that “children raised by married parents do better at school, develop stronger cognitive and non-cognitive skills, are more likely to go to college, earn more, and are more likely to go on to form stable marriages themselves.”
Americans can only hope that these new trends continue.
Although the Left’s long-term assault on the institution of marriage has even led supposedly right-wing movements to become pessimistic about marriage, conservatives shouldn’t become disheartened. Although there is still plenty of work left to do, it appears that America’s marriages have started to move in the right direction.
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