Family Fact: Marriage

Family Quote: Love and Marriage

Family Research Abstract: Sex and the City Moms

In the year 2000, there were 72,025,000 married-couple family households reported to the United States Census Bureau, accounting for 69 percent of all households in he United States, with an average size of 3.26 persons per household.

(Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Current Population Reports, P20-447, and earlier reports, and unpublished data, in U.S. Census Bureau, Statistical Abstract of the United States: 2001 [121st edition], Washington, DC, 2001, p. 48.) 

"Love without marriage can sometimes be very awkward for all concerned; but marriage without love simply removes that institution from the territory of the humanly admissible, to my mind. Love is a state in which one lives who loves, and whoever loves has given himself away; love then, and not marriage, is belonging. Marriage is a public declaration of a man and a woman that they have formed a secret alliance, with the intention to belong to, and share with each other, a mystical estate; mystical exactly in the sense that the real experience cannot be communicated to others, nor explained even to oneself on rational grounds."

(Source: Katherine Anne Porter, "Marriage Is Belonging," Collected Essays and Occasional Writings, Delta [1973]; in Andrews, Robert; Biggs, Mary; and Seidel, Michael, et al., eds., The Columbia World of Quotations. New York: Columbia University Press, 1996. www.bartleby.com/66/. [7 February 2003].) 

Using data obtained from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study, W. Bradford Wilcox of the University of Virginia examines the relationship between religion, race, and marriage in urban America, finding a marked relationship between church attendance, child legitimacy, and marriage: "The present study shows that 42 percent of new urban mothers attend religious services several times a month or more, and that 33 percent of new urban mothers who are not married attend religious services several times a month or more."

Most significantly, "[u]rban mothers who attend church several times a month or more are 100 percent more likely to be married at the time of birth, compared to urban mothers who do not attend church frequently."  Even those mothers who have children born out of wedlock appear to glean a marital benefit from church attendance, as urban mothers who attend church frequently are 90% more likely to marry within one year of the birth of their child compared to those who do not attend frequently.

Furthermore, Wilcox finds a link between strong belief and action, "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."  These beliefs, the author maintains, are instilled primarily in urban churches.

This study illustrates some hopeful trends, but they appear to be exceptions to the rules: "The Fragile Families study indicated that 70 percent of frequently attending urban mothers are married at the time of birth (compared to 56 percent of infrequent or nonattending mothers).  And only 10 percent of the frequent attendees who are unmarried at the time of birth go on to marry within a year (compared to the seven percent of infrequent or nonattending mothers who go on to marry within a year of a nonmarital birth.)"

While religious institutions may be "bulwarks of marriage in urban America," and "foster marriage...by promoting relationship-related beliefs and behaviors that are conducive to marriage," until more mothers-and fathers-attend church at least once-for their wedding-urban America will continue to be troubled.

(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.