Pew released a poll this week showing, “Young adults in the U.S. are reaching key life milestones later than in the past.”
Among those milestones measured by Pew were “full-time work,” “financial independence,” “home independent of parents,” “marriage,” and “child in household.”
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Guess which milestone fell the furthest for 25-year-olds between 1980 and now?
It isn’t full-time work, which only fell 7 points, from 73% to 66%.
It isn’t financial independence, which only fell 3 points, from 63% to 60%.
It isn’t home independent of parents, which fell a more substantial 16 points, from 84% to 68%.
And it isn’t child in the household, which fell from 39% to 17%, a substantial 22 points.
No, the biggest life change for 25-year-olds between 1980 and today is marriage.
In 1980, 63% of 25-year-olds were married. Today, just 22% of them are. That’s a 41-point gap. We went from married 25-year-olds being a solid norm to a tiny minority.
Are today’s 25-year-olds better for it? What about the rest of society? Is society better off now that marriage has gone from a norm to a curiosity?
I’ll admit it. I am biased. I got married at 25. In fact, Wednesday is my 20th wedding anniversary. And it was the best decision I ever made. If anything, I should have asked my wife to marry me sooner.
But I think what evidence we do have points to the same conclusion. Married people are healthier than single people. They have more and better sex. They are more likely to be employed, they make more money, and they are more likely to save their money.
They drink less, gamble less, and commit fewer crimes. They are less likely to call their mothers and siblings, but they are more likely to volunteer in their communities and do a favor for a neighbor.
Communities with more married families have less crime, and the children who grow up in those communities are less likely to commit crimes when they grow up.
Sure, there are some selection effects going on here. But there is magic behind the institution of marriage that changes people as well. Marriage is a public commitment to a widely shared set of expectations. It mobilizes a community to expect a higher standard of how two people treat each other. It also binds two people into a common project of care for each other and whatever children they might have. It induces planning and communication about a shared vision for the future.
No other institution does this. Marriage is the foundational unit of civil society, and no one understood this better than the founders of our nation.
As Joseph Story, a justice of the United States Supreme Court in the early 1800s, wrote, “Marriage is an institution which may properly be deemed to arise from the law of nature. It promotes the private comfort of both parties, and especially of the female sex. It tends to the procreation of the greatest number of healthy citizens, and to their property maintenance and education. It secures the peace of society, by cutting off a great source of contention, by assigning to one man the exclusive right to one woman. It promotes the cause of sound morals, by cultivating domestic affections and virtues. It distributes the whole of society into families, and creates a permanent union of interests, and a mutual guardianship of the same. It binds children by indissoluble ties, and adds new securities to the good order of society, by connecting the happiness of the whole family with the good behavior of all. It furnishes additional motives for honest industry and economy in private life, and for a deeper love of the country of our birth.”
But Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC) doesn’t seem to care about any of this. It’s not that he has chosen a life of celibacy — he hasn’t — he just has chosen to ignore the institution of marriage entirely.
I think this is a mistake. And I think it makes his candidacy a nonstarter.