Do Men Need Marriage and Fatherhood for Success?

Families, communities, states, and nations are stronger when men take their rightful of positions as husbands and fathers. “America’s men are not OK,” according to a growing consensus of progressives and conservatives. According to an article by Brad Wilcox and Maria Baer published in The Deseret News, men are moving rightward politically to correct their situation. This direction was shown by the numbers of Black and Latino men who moved into the Republican camp during the 2024 presidential campaign. 

This isn’t exactly a political phenomenon – although men are changing politically, too. Last summer, economist Tyler Cowen detected a “vibe shift” in American culture, noting people were drifting rightward. Among his 19 reasons for the shift, Cowen noted the falling fortunes of males were driving men, including Black and Latino men, “into the Republican camp.” ….

Changing political preferences isn’t necessarily a sign of crisis. But the fact that a growing number of American men are clearly dissatisfied with the male status quo has forced some otherwise progressive thinkers to admit something’s changing….

Until very recently, it may have been considered sexist – or at least politically tone-deaf – to suggest American men are suffering….

But the data paint a different picture; and it’s getting much harder to ignore.

In his landmark 2022 book “Of Boys and Men,” Richard Reeves chronicled the falling fortunes of America’s young men. He found that men aren’t attending college at the same rate as women – higher ed is now about 60% female. In elementary and high school, boys make up two-thirds of the worst-performing students. And we know that 1 in 4 men without college degrees are not employed full-time.

Most importantly, men are between two and three times as likely as women to suffer “deaths of despair” – death by alcohol, drug use or suicide. Hundreds of thousands of men have died from deaths of despair in the past two decades.

Half a century ago, anthropologist Margaret Mead memorably argued that a healthy nation must have a place for its men…. Men need a mission. When they can’t find it in family life, societies flounder.

This couldn’t be more visible for our kids. Our research at the Institute for Family Studies has demonstrated the catastrophic social consequences of absentee fatherhood and family breakdown. When children are raised outside of an intact family, those children are markedly more likely to struggle in school, to tangle with the law and to struggle in the workforce. The data show a clear “two-parent advantage” for kids, especially boys. Our most striking finding is that boys raised outside of an intact family with two biological parents are more likely to go to prison or jail than they are to graduate from college. By contrast, boys raised by their two married, biological parents are about twice as likely to graduate from college as they are to land in prison.

But there’s another surprising discovery in the data. Stable marriages don’t just benefit kids. Married fatherhood greatly benefits the men in those marriages, too.

First, the obligations of family life motivate men to work harder and smarter; fathers literally make more money when they have kids, provided that they are married to the mother of their children. But the benefits of marriage and family life transcend economics. The data suggest being a married family man also protects men from self-destruction. Deaths of despair, for instance, are markedly lower in places where more men (and women) are married, economist Jonathan Rothwell at Gallup recently found….

Protecting and providing for a wife and children exacts a high cost from men. When married dads rise to the occasion, they no doubt value their own lives more highly than they might otherwise. Men need to feel needed, and our country needs more men who know that they are on a mission to serve their families. In fact, the anthropologist Nicholas Townsend has observed that, for most men, “marriage, work, and fatherhood” go together as a “package deal.” …

Heavenly Father has a plan for the eternal happiness of His children. His plan includes marriage between one man and one woman and their children living and loving together. Strong biological families are best for fathers, mothers, and children, and strong families strengthen their communities, states, and nations.