Marriages now are minority events

Wednesday, June 8, 2011

We were surprised, and saddened, at a Sunday news story by the Associated Press. For the first time in history, more households are occupied by unmarried people rather than married people, according to the Census Bureau.
Some of the decline is to be expected.
Our population is aging. Without immigration, our population would be falling.
Older people tend to be more stable in their attitudes toward marriage. But a goodly number of people who have been married, and then become divorced, do not remarry. Others remain single after the death of a spouse.
On the other end of the spectrum, increasing numbers of young adults view marriage as something to be done later in life - or not at all.
The matter affects our future stability as a nation.
Marriage is a stabilizing influence among people, just as are child-rearing and steady employment with hope of increased prosperity.
The absence of those factors tends to promote a "live for today" attitude that is destabilizing to society (think "robberies," etc.) and to governance (think "vote for those who promise things, rather than those who will govern responsibly.")
But we have little or no relevant experience of large, complex societies such as ours in which married households are in the minority. Anthropologists cite some tribal antecedents, but hunter-gatherer mentalities are hardly instructive with compared with 21st Century America.
So this is something new.
We can see some negative consequences, but we have no frame of reference for foreseeing consequences that could be either neutral or positive with respect to preserving our society and form of government.
We do know that we cannot continue to subsidize lifestyles by tax-supported entitlements and still remain a free country.
But we don't yet know, and haven't seen data, suggesting whether the entitlements of Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and public welfare actually work against the institution of marriage, or work toward promoting it, or are neutral. Our suspicion is that governmental policies have subsidized unmarried parenthood to the point where remaining unmarried becomes a lifestyle choice - subsidized by taxpayers.
A fundamental change in marriage takes us further and further from the America that was the dream of the Founding Fathers, and from the framework of government designed to preserve our freedoms.