What Are Teens Saying About Marriage and Family?

Families, communities, states, and nations are stronger when individuals understand the value of marriage and children. Lois M. Collins, a long-time Deseret News reporter on special projects and family issues, reported on a recent Pew survey. “The online survey of 1,391 teens ages 13 to 17 was conducted Sept. 18 to Oct. 10, 2024, by Ipsos.” 

One of Collins’ key points in her article was that teens do not consider marriage and children as “a huge aspiration.” A second key point is, “Boys and girls see different routes to a happy, prosperous adult future.”

They survey asked teens what they want to do after high school and found they have a lot of aspirations in common, said Parker, who with Kiley Hurst cowrote the report. As adults, they hope to have jobs they really like, lots of friends and plenty of money.

Marriage and becoming parents did not move the desire needle nearly as much, she said, adding that adults seem to have prioritized those two things less in surveys, too, over time. Among the teens in this survey, those who are Republican or lean that way prioritize marriage and kids more than do Democrats and those who lean more to the left.

But the routes these young people expect to follow after high school are different: More girls than boys plan to pursue a four-year college degree (60% vs. 46%). Boys with different plans than college say they’ll attend vocational school (11% compared to 7% of girls), work full-time (9% vs. 3% of girls) or join the military (5% vs. 1% of girls).

The survey and Collins’ article covered other subjects, but they do not apply to strengthening families. Therefore, I am not including them. However, the lack of desire for marriage and family is troubling. The number of foreign-born people living in the United States is steadily increasing, while the birthrate of America-born people has fallen below the replacement rate of 2.1. The following information comes from the Center for Immigration Studies. 

The government’s January 2025 Current Population Survey (CPS) shows the foreign-born or immigrant population (legal and illegal together) hit 53.3 million and 15.8 percent of the total U.S. population in January 2025 – both new record highs. The January CPS is the first government survey to be adjusted to better reflect the recent surge in illegal immigrants. Unlike border statistics, the CPS measures the number of immigrants in the country, which is what actually determines their impact on society.

Without adjusting for those missed by the survey, we estimate illegal immigrants accounted for 5.4 million or two-thirds of the 8.3 million growth in the foreign-born population since President Biden took office in January 2021. America has entered uncharted territory on immigration, with significant implications for taxpayers, the labor market, and our ability to assimilate so many people.

The survey contained much interesting information, but I will include only the highlights from the January 2025 data.

·         At 15.8 percent of the total U.S. population, the foreign-born share is higher now than at the prior peaks reached in 1890 and 1910. No U.S. government survey or census has ever shown such a large foreign-born population.

·         The current numbers have rendered Census Bureau projections obsolete. Just two years ago, the Bureau projected the foreign-born share would not reach 15.8 percent until 2042.

·         The 53.3 million foreign-born residents are the largest number ever in U.S. history; and the 8.3 million increase in the last four years is larger than the growth in the preceding 12 years.

·         The above figures represent net growth. New arrivals are offset by outmigration and deaths in the existing immigrant population. Our best estimate is that 11.5 to 12.5 million legal and illegal immigrants settled in the country in the last four years.

·         Although some immigrants are missed by government surveys, our preliminary estimate is that there are 15.4 million legal immigrants in the January 2025 CPS, an increase of more than 50 percent (5.4 million) over the last four years in the survey.

·         In the last four years, Latin America accounted for 58 percent (4.9 million) of the increase in the foreign-born, India 12 percent (958,000), the Middle East 8 percent (690,000), and China 7 percent (621,000).

·         Of all immigrants, 60 percent are employed. As in any human population some work, but others are caregivers, disabled, children, elderly, or have no desire to work.

·         Since 2000 the number of immigrants working has increased 83 percent and stood at 31.7 million in January 2025 – 19.6 percent of all workers.

·         We estimate that 10.8 million illegal immigrants worked in the January 2025 data, accounting for some 6.7 percent of all workers. Illegal immigrants in particular are heavily concentrated in lower-skilled, lower-paid jobs, typically done by those without a bachelor’s degree.

·         The rapid rise in immigrant workers has coincided with a significant increase in the share of U.S.-born (ages 16 to 64) men without a bachelor’s degree not in the labor force – neither working nor looking for work – from 20.3 percent in 2000 to 28.2 percent today.

The bottom line as I see it is that Americans need to have more babies to offset the increasing numbers of foreign-born people coming to our nation. We want people in our nation who love America and who have American values. When foreign-born people come into our nation and gather in their enclaves, continue to speak their foreign language, and hate American values, the United States of America becomes weaker. People who marry and have children will strengthen their families, communities, states, and nations in many different ways.