"Marriages and two-parent families are on the rise, especially in low-income and minority communities. From 1995 to 2000, the proportion of black children in two-parent homes rose 11.8%. The percentage of Hispanic children living with two married parents has also risen. Theories for the shift include the economic boom, shifting welfare rules, and stricter enforcement of child support."

(Source: San Antonio Express-News, June 14, 2001; quoted at www.youthspecialties.com.)

"A pro-family policy must be built firmly on the basis of the right of children to grow up in intact families.  The secular humanist, libertarian social experiment of the Cultural Revolution forgot the irreducible needs of children-for the love, security and stability that only parents can provide, and which cannot be provided by institutions."

(Source: Peter Westmore, "Well-being of families and nation intertwined," News Weekly [Australia], No. 2617: September 22, 2001, p. 16-18.)

The older generation apparently knew things about how to make a marriage successful and happy which the younger generation has never learned.  Evidence for the older generation's superior understanding of marital success showed up quite unexpectedly in a study recently completed by scholars from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and Pennsylvania State University.  In going over pervious research "suggest[ing] a U-shaped pattern of marital happiness over the life course, with happiness declining in the early years of marriage and rising in the later years," the Nebraska and Pennsylvania scholars unexpectedly stumbled over indications that the previous finding was a mere "artifact" of flawed statistical methods.  More careful parsing of the data revealed that "the apparent U-shaped association between marital duration and marital happiness is due to older marriage cohorts experiencing higher levels of marital happiness than younger marriage cohorts."

But why did couples in the older generations achieve greater happiness in their unions than do those in the younger generations?   The authors of the new study reason that the older couples were happier because they were "married at a time when people held more pragmatic views about marriage, support for marriage was stronger, and couples were more committed to the norm of lifelong marriage."  In other words, these older couples "may have strengths that allow them to maintain high levels of marital happiness over the long haul."  Regrettably, younger couples have not typically cultivated such strengths.

(Source: John VanLaningham, David R. Johnson, and Paul Amato, "Marital Happiness, Marital Duration, and the U-Shaped Curve: Evidence from a Five-Wave Panel Study," Social Forces 78[2001]: 1313-1341.)