How Important to Children Is a Two-Parent Home?

Families, communities, and nations are stronger when individuals understand the importance of getting married and staying married. In a recent week, I wrote about the Success Sequence, which was discovered by social scientists. Through numerous studies, researchers discovered a correlation between a certain formula and the chances of reaching the middle class or higher.

The Success Sequence includes the following: get an education (at least graduate from high school), work full time, and get married before having children. To be successful, steps must be taken in the correct order: education, a full-time job, and marriage before children.

I recently listened to a presentation given by Melissa S. Kearney, a self-described “hardheaded – albeit softhearted – MIT-trained economist.” I liked her talk so much that I ordered her book titled The Two-Parent Privilege: How Americans Stopped Getting Married and Started Falling Behind. Her message is the same message given by the Success Sequence: marriage is important to success. Here is a sample of information found in her book:

Some might argue that placing marriage at the center of a conversation about children is antiquated and unhelpful: marriage is in many ways less fashionable than it was four decades ago. Marriage rates have fallen significantly in the US, including among adults who have children. It’s important to recognize that these changes in marriage patterns are not without consequence for how children are being raised. Data show conclusively that parents are not cohabitating without marriage in a way that remotely accounts for the decrease in two-parent married households. These kids are more often living with one parent. What’s more, data show that these trends are highly correlated with the parent’s education: The share of children living in two-parent homes is 71% when the mother has only a high school degree and 70% when she does not have a high school degree. A much higher share, 88%, of children of mothers with a four-year college degree live in a two-parent home.

Why does this issue matter for kids’ outcomes? Because children who grow up without two parents in their home are at a substantial disadvantage relative to kids who do. That is not to say that children who are raised by a single mother can’t go on to achieve great things. Of course they can, and many do! But there are also mounds of social science evidence that shows how the odds of graduating high school, getting a college degree, and having high earnings in adulthood are substantially lower for children who grow up in a single-mother home. The odds of becoming a single parent are also substantially higher for children who grow up with a single mother, again illustrating the compounding nature of inequality. It is not only that lacking two parents makes it harder for some kids to go to college and lead a comfortable life; in the aggregate, it also undermines social mobility and perpetuates inequality across generations.

The forces that drive inequality are contributing to these demographic changes at the household level. Meanwhile, these household changes are exacerbating inequality. It is a vicious cycle. It has become increasingly difficult, for example, for someone without a high level of education or skill to achieve economic security and success in the US. Adults who have lower levels of education and earnings are less likely to get married and raise their children in two-parent homes. Their kids grow up with fewer resources and opportunities, and they don’t do as well in school as their peers from married, higher-income families. Boys from disadvantaged homes are more likely to get in trouble in school and with the criminal justice system; girls from disadvantaged homes are more likely to become young, unmarried mothers. These children grow up to have children who are more likely to be born into disadvantaged situations. Social mobility is undermined, and inequality persists across generations. It is an economic imperative for the United States to break this cycle, and doing so will require coming at the problem from all dimensions.

This book draws heavily on data and empirical research, including the economic interpretation of statistics from public sources. The thesis of the book and the conclusions I draw are solidly grounded in evidence and in my professional expertise, which is analyzing and interpreting data. My training as an economist also leads me to approach data and evidence with a particular theoretical framework, one that thinks in terms of resources and the cause-and-effect relationships between factors and outcomes. In this book, I apply that approach to the complex issues of marriage, childbearing, and raising children. (pages 8-10)

Kearney indicated that breaking the inequality cycle will take effort from several directions. However, it is obvious from the Success Sequence and Kearney’s book that getting married before having children and staying married is a crucial step to ending inequality and lack of success. Marriage is ordained of God because it blesses His children. Marriage before having children will strengthen families, communities, and nations.