"Urban mothers who believe that marriage is good for children and better than cohabitation are 123 percent more likely to be married at the time of birth and 97 percent more likely to marry within a year of a nonmarital birth, compared to urban mothers who do not hold these beliefs."

(Source:  W. Bradford Wilcox, Then Comes Marriage?  Religion, Race and Marriage in Urban America, Center for Research on Religion and Urban Civil Society, University of Pennsylvania, 2002.) 

"There's a shift in the winds in our inner cities. On the heels of a fatherhood movement (which, incidentally, also had conservative roots), more and more young couples are considering marriage. A long-term study of 5,000 low-income couples has found that eight of 10 who have a child together have plans to marry. ...there is now growing consensus among social scientists that, all things being equal, two parents are best for children. It would seem to follow that two-parent families are also best for a community. It may take a village to raise a child, but it takes families to build a village."

(Source: Alex Kotlowitz, "It Takes a Wedding," The New York Times, November 13, 2002; http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/13/opinion/13KOTL.html.)

Among Americans who married in the 1950's, the risk of divorce ran far higher among blacks than among whites.  Among Americans who married in the 1980's, the racial gap in divorce rates has narrowed dramatically.  So reports sociologist Jay D. Teachman of Western Washington University in an intergenerational study of divorce recently published in Demography. 

Using data from five rounds of the National Survey of Family Growth, Teachman sought to determine whether "divorce risk factors" have changed between 1950 and 1984, a period in which "rates of divorce varied substantially."  Careful scrutiny of the data suggested that while divorce rates have themselves changed over time, the effect of most "basic sociodemographic variables" in predicting divorce have not.  Thus, for example, being Catholic depresses the likelihood of marital dissolution for all periods studied, just as a premarital conception or birth drives the risk of divorce up for all periods.  For all periods studied, divorce is especially likely among couples in which the wife's parents have divorced, and for all periods studied, divorce is less likely among couples in which the husband is well-educated.  Even cohabitation-virtually unknown in the 1950's-has been remarkably stable over the period in its effects (that of driving up the likelihood of divorce by "about 35%" among those who engage in it before making wedding vows).

What has changed in a remarkable way during the period in question is the relationship between race and divorce.  Although the divorce rate has run higher among blacks than among whites throughout the study period, Teachman limns "a convergence over time in the risk of marital dissolution rates between whites and blacks."  Among Americans married between 1950 and 1954, Teachman calculates that "the risk of divorce for blacks is 83% greater" than that for whites.  However, among Americans married between 1980 and 1984, he calculates that "the risk of marital dissolution for blacks is only 19% higher" than that found among whites.  The narrowing of the racial gap in divorce dates does not, however, reflect a drop during the period in the divorce rate among blacks.  Rather, the narrowing of the gap during this period "results from the fact that the risk of marital dissolution increases more slowly (by a factor of .93) for blacks than for whites." Put another way, "the risk of marital dissolution rose more rapidly for whites than for blacks."

Why have divorce rates risen more slowly in recent decades among blacks than among whites?  Curiously, an "overall retreat from marriage by blacks" apparently helps to account for the flattening out of the black divorce rate.  In a surprising "reversal of historical patterns," marriage has become less common among blacks than among whites.  Whereas "before 1950, blacks married earlier than whites and were more likely to have ever married," since 1950 "blacks have delayed marriage more than whites, yielding higher percentages who never marry."  Teachman explains that "the declining economic position of many blacks and their less favorable marriage-market conditions, when combined with the growth of alternatives to marriage and greater acceptance and prevalence of out-of-wedlock childbearing and cohabitation, means that blacks who marry are an increasingly select subgroup of all blacks."  Because of the sharp decline in wedlock among blacks, blacks who do marry are very likely to be "individuals who are committed to marriage and therefore are less likely to divorce."  The consequence has naturally been "a somewhat slower increase in the risk of marital dissolution" among blacks than among whites.

(Source: Jay D. Teachman, "Stability Across Cohorts in Divorce Risk Factors," Demography 39[2002]: 331-351.)