How Does Natural Marriage Strengthen Families?

Individuals are stronger when they are part of healthy families, and stronger and healthy families strengthen their communities, states, and nations. Twenty-five years ago on September 23, 1995, a new document titled “The Family: A Proclamation to the World” was introduced to the world.

This proclamation on the family begins with these words: 

We, the First Presidency and the Council of the Twelve Apostles of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, solemnly proclaim that marriage between a man and a woman is ordained of God and that the family is central to the Creator’s plan for the eternal destiny of his children.

The counsel contained in this proclamation has strengthened millions of families, inside and outside of the Church of Jesus Christ. The document ends with a warning and an urgent message:

We warn that individuals who violate covenants of chastity, who abuse spouse or offspring, or who fail to fulfill family responsibilities will one day stand accountable before God. Further, we warn that the disintegration of the family will bring upon individuals, communities, and nations the calamities foretold by ancient and modern prophets.

We call upon responsible citizens and officers of government everywhere to promote those measures designed to maintain and strengthen the family as the fundamental unit of society.

Marriages and families have been falling apart for more than sixty years, according to social scientists as well as personal knowledge. In writing about this topic, this site declared, “Fatherless homes are a growing problem in the United States.” 

The site listed several reasons why children are growing up without the presence of their fathers in their homes. Those reasons included events, such as death, divorce, and separation. Other reasons include incarceration of or abandonment by fathers and marriages that never took place.

Single parents, specifically single mothers, accomplish much without the help of the other parents. The site shared these key statistics:

·         24.7 million children (33%) in the United States live in fatherless homes.

·         Children living in fatherless homes have increased by 25% since 1960.

·         45.6% of Black children lived with their mother only in 2021.

·         85% of children with absent fathers get involved in crime.

·         70% of children in fatherless homes have dropped out of high school.

·         Children living in fatherless homes are 4 times more apt to live in poverty.

·         Girls raised in fatherless homes are 8 times more apt to become a teenage mother.

·         85% of all children living without a father experience behavioral disorder.

·         Teenagers with positive and nurturing fathers are 80% less apt to go to prison.

·         20.2% of fathers are considered absent fathers according to 2019 data.

The Heritage Foundation released a new report last week “stressing that marriage must be the foundation of efforts to revive the black family.” 

The report, released during an event at Heritage Foundation headquarters in Washington, D.C., featured experts and community members who cast the family as a civil rights issue, described how culture shapes relationships, and emphasized the role institutions play in strengthening marriage in Black America.

Delano Squires, a research fellow at Heritage, authored the report and moderated the event. He said he has been thinking about this issue since he was 15, when he witnessed its impact on his own community.

Squires’ call to action: “Black leaders in religion, politics, media, entertainment, education, culture, and industry must be at the forefront of any effort to revive marriage and breathe new life into the black family.” …

Pastors P.M. Smith and Tommy E. Quick opened the event by emphasizing the church’s role in the solution. Their conversation was grounded in the belief that God created the family, and when His design is corrupted, the consequences are catastrophic. Both pastors have dedicated their lives and their ministries to the restoration of the family.

“Family is the basic building unit of every neighborhood and every nation. Family is the smallest unit of government,” said Smith.

Ian Rowe, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, discussed marriage and family success. He described “the success sequence,” a series of decisions that, if followed in order, lead to at least 97% of individuals avoiding poverty and lead to most entering the middle class. The success sequence includes earning at least a high school diploma, securing a job, then marrying and having children.

“These are the decisions within your control,” Rowe said. “You have the ability to execute within your life.”`

A recurring theme throughout the afternoon was that marriage is a cornerstone – not a capstone – of life. Panelists urged attendees to marry, raise children, and model healthy relationships within their communities….

Squires’ report arrives 60 years after the publication of the highly controversial Moynihan Report, which provided an early description of the deterioration of the black family.

Squires highlighted what he says are two indisputable truths: “The family is the foundational institution in every society” and “households built on the foundation of natural marriage – the union of one man and one woman – are the ideal environment for raising children.”

Twenty-five years ago, latter-day prophets and apostles saw the danger coming to families, and now other sources recognize that families are being destroyed to the detriment of children. The “success sequence” of high school diploma, full-time job, marriage, and then children works to keep families out of poverty and even move them to the middle class.

The family proclamation states that the family is “central” to God’s plan for our happiness. Squires called the family “the foundational institution in every society.” I call the family the “core unit” of society.” Whatever the term, we can see that strong families strengthen their communities, states, and nations.

When Is the Best Time to Marry, Have Children, and Retire?

Families, communities, states, and nations are stronger when individuals get married, have children, and retire at the “best age”? Pew Research Center wanted to know what the “best age” is, and Kelsey Dallas reported on the research. 

Pew asked people across 18 mostly middle-income countries for the best age to retire and learned that the magic age is 57.9 years old. Pew reported, “Country averages for the ideal retirement age range from early 50s to early 60s – that is, 52.1 in Columbia to 62.7 in Nigeria.”

Pew also asked about the right age to marry and have children. According to Dallas, “The average answer for the ideal age to get married is 25.9 … and the average answer for having your first child was 26.”

My husband retired at 55 years of age – in the middle of the range. We married earlier – age 22 years – and welcomed our first child later – at age 27 – than the average in the survey.

Pew also asked about the relationship to religion and its affect to people’s answers. “People who say religion is very important in their life tend to suggest marriage and parenthood at a younger age, compared with people who say religion is only somewhat, not too or not at all important to them,” researchers wrote.

You may be interested in how the United States fared in the survey. It was not one of the 18 countries in Pew’s main report, but Pew took “a separate online survey among 3,600 U.S. adults.”

“Anywhere from about a third to half of Americans say there is no best age to achieve these milestones. Among those who say there is a best age, many say it’s idea to get married, have a child and buy a home between the ages of 25 and 34. And 45% of Americans say the best age to retire is in one’s 60s,” Pew found.

I want to remind my readers of posts from this time last year about the success sequence. The success sequence is a formula showing that important life events must be done in a specific order to achieve financial stability and success. That sequence is: (1) obtain at least a high school education, (2) be engaged in higher education or find a full-time job, and (3) wait until marriage to have children. 

Research shows that following the success sequence significantly increases the chances of avoiding poverty. Statistics show that 97% of Millennials who followed the sequence are not poor by their late twenties to early thirties.

The survey and the research show parents should instruct their children about the appropriate time and sequence to get their education, get married, have children, and retire. By doing so, they can strengthen their family, community, state, and nation.

Who Is Promoting Marriage and Families?

Parents who teach the “success sequence” to their children will strengthen their family, community, state, and nation. I introduced the “success sequence” to my readers in October or November, so I was aware of it prior to reading an article by Jonathan Butcher in The Daily Signal recently. Butcher tied the “success sequence” to the national fertility rate. 

The “success sequence” is simple: graduate from high school, get a full-time job (or enter a training program or university), and get married prior to having children. Butcher indicated that Republican Texas State Rep. Matt Shaheen “has introduced a proposal to include the ‘success sequence’ in K-12 schools” in Texas. He hopes that his proposal will provide a solution to the declining birth rate in the United States.

… Social scientists began using the term “success sequence” more than a decade ago to describe three crucial choices that can dramatically improve the likelihood that young adults would avoid poverty and other negative life outcomes: finish high school, enter the workforce or some form of technical or postsecondary education, and get married before having children….

Research shows that among young, working-age Americans today (from the millennial generation), 97% of those who followed the success sequence avoided poverty when they reached adulthood. Such findings remained consistent across demographic and economic cohorts in the literature on the topic.

Furthermore, married parents have higher incomes and lower poverty rates than nonmarried parents. Children raised by married parents are more likely to earn higher grades in school and graduate from college than their peers. At a more basic level, married individuals report higher levels of happiness than unmarried individuals – in fact, married adults are more than twice as likely to report being “very happy” as unmarried adults.

Avoiding poverty is a worthy goal, and so, too, is attaining the high quality-of-life outcomes that accompany the success sequence.

Who is sharing this information with students today?

Butcher indicated that the federal government is not promoting families and neither are interest groups, such as teacher unions. In fact, they are promoting policies and creating lessons that block adults and students from learning the importance of marriage and families.

Parents who wish to help their children to avoid poverty and achieve success should teach them about the success sequence. By doing so, they can strengthen their family, community, state, and nation as they promote marriage and families.

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.

What is the Success Sequence and Why Does It Work?

Families, communities, and nations are stronger when the rising generation follows the success sequence. According to social scientists and reported by Lois M. Collins, the “success sequence” contains some important steps that must be taken in a certain order. She wrote the following in her article published in the Deseret News. 

Millennials can add better mental health to the list of reasons they should hit certain life milestones in a particular order, according to new research from the Institute for Family Studies.

The “success sequence” – three steps that include graduating from high school, getting a job, marrying before having kids, in that order – provides a “huge boost to mental health,” according to Wendy Wang, the institute’s director of research, and Samuel T. Wilkinson, an associate professor of psychiatry at Yale University.

While the sequence has been touted in a lot of research as key to avoiding poverty and reducing the risk of divorce, the study is possibly the first to look at the impact on mental health, Wilkinson, also an associate director of the Yale Depression Research Program, told Deseret News.

Focusing on young adults born between 1980 and 1984, who were surveyed in their mid-30s, Wang said they studied three groups of millennials: those who married before having children, those who had children before or without marrying and those who never married and didn’t have children. Their analysis showed:

·         The vast majority (97%) of millennials who followed the success sequence were not in poverty as adults and 9 out of 10 were at least middle class.

·         Mental distress drops as each sequence step is completed. While 30% of young adults who missed the sequence entirely are distressed, the same is true of just 9% of those who completed the three steps.

The report, “The Success Sequence and Millennial Mental Health,” finds that young adults who are married when they have children enjoy better mental health than those who have a baby outside of or before marriage. They are also happier and have better mental health than those who never married and don’t have children. It says those who are married before having children are not as apt to experience “high emotional distress” by their mid-30s (12%), compared to those who had a baby first (19%). And more of the sequence followers report being healthy (65% vs. 52%) and feeling happy at least most of the time (82% vs. 74%).

“So it looks like the people who had children before marriage or outside marriage, their mental health and physical overall wellbeing is kind of similar to the ones who have never married and are childless. The group that stands out is the one who married before having children,” Wang said.

The report comes in the midst of a mental health and loneliness crisis in the U.S. Per the report, “Suicide, anxiety, depression and drug overdose deaths have all risen to record levels. Younger generations have been hit especially hard during this crisis. Millennial men and women experience increased anxiety and depression compared to previous generations at the same age.”

While acknowledging the impact of financial well-being on mental health, Wang and Wilkinson said that’s certainly not the whole story. They point out that even when they controlled for income, the findings on the success sequence boosting mental health held up. “The sequence remains a significant factor in predicting your adult mental health,” they wrote. The odds of experiencing high emotional distress by their mid-30s are reduced by about 50% for young adults who have completed the three steps of the success sequence, after controlling for their income and a range of background factors including gender, race and family background.” …

Mental distress is significantly higher for women who had children before marriage and are now divorced. One-third of them report mental distress. About 21% of married women who do not have children report high mental distress, as do 23% of never-married childless women. The lowest level of distress is found among mothers who had their children after marrying and who are still married, at 12%.

The study found those who married after having children are about twice as likely to divorce or separate by their mid-30s, compared to those who married first (27% vs. 14%).

They also found a gender gap when it comes to mental health among the millennials. “Women are consistently more likely than men to report experiencing emotional distress,” they wrote. “The gender gap is the largest among millennials who missed all three steps of the success sequence (38% vs. 22%). But even among those who followed all three steps, women are still more likely than men to experience higher emotional distress (12% vs. 7%).”

Wilkinson said the finding showing that “women have more emotional distress is repeated across different cultures and there are likely several factors at play, including hormonal shifts.” Wang and Wilkinson also noted “a racial gap in mental health. White young adults who did things in a different order than the success sequence experience more anxiety and depression than their Black or Hispanic peers, while there’s no statistically significant difference by race for those who get a high school diploma or better, a job, then marry and have kids, as the sequence prescribes.”

Parents and other adults have a responsibility to teach the rising generation about the “success sequence.” We should make sure that they understand that following the “success sequence” will help them to avoid poverty, reduce the risk of divorce, and have better mental health. I know that we can strengthen families, communities, states, and nations by teaching correct principles, and the “success sequence” has been proven to be a correct principle.

What Is the Success Sequence?

Families, communities, and nations are stronger when the rising generation understands what the success sequence is and how it works. In an article published in the Deseret News, Brad Wilcox wrote, “The science could not be clearer.” Wilcox is a professor of sociology at the University of Virginia and the director of the National Marriage Project. 

So, what is the science so clear about? Wilcox wrote, “On average, the children of married parents are more likely to experience happier, healthier and more successful lives.” Wilcox then quoted the words of Melissa Kearney, Brookings Institution scholar, in her book The Two-Parent Privilege: “The decline in the share of U.S. children living in a two-parent family over the past 40 years has not been good – for children, for families, or for the United States.”

If children living with their married biological parents do so much better than other children, what policies should the state and federal government make to advance marriage and families? In the words of Wilcox, “what can [policymakers] do to keep families strong and stable?” Wilcox counseled as follows:

As I have written previously with others, a big step Utah could take is to educate its young people about what is known as the success sequence. This three-pronged sequence encourages young adults to get at least a high school degree, work full time in their 20s, and marry before they have any children. Our recommendations include incorporating the success sequence into public school curricula in Utah, including it in premarital educational information and broadcasting PSAs about it.

According to Wilcox, there are leftist critics like Matt Bruenig, president of the People’s Policy Project, who do not believe that marriage is important – “all that really matters is having a full-time worker in the household – that there is no special magic about marriage when it comes to protecting families from poverty.” Others, like Nicole Sussner Rodgers, the executive director of Family Story, reason that “marriage does not provide any unique advantage for the welfare of children.”

Wilcox wrote that such criticisms are “unmoored from the latest social science.” He claims, “It could scarcely be clearer that marriage per se matters for families’ economic well-being, contra Bruenig, and for the well-being of children, contra Rodgers.” Wilcox then gives some facts.

Money: “Research shows that millennials who follow the success sequence are 60% less likely to experience poverty and have twice the odds of achieving the American dream, even controlling for their work history….”

Child well-being – stability: “We know that kids thrive on stable routines with stable caregivers, and married parents typically provide a much more stable environment than cohabiting or single-parent households….”

Those raised in single-parent households, including this author, can still love and appreciate their own parents and families while recognizing that the data is clear: On average, marriage matters to our kids.

It’s for that reason the best pro-family approach for policymakers in Utah is to continue to figure out ways to reinforce the state’s outstanding record as the state where the married family is strongest. And one of the best ways to achieve that end is by promoting the success sequence. Utah’s youth deserve to know this proven pathway to a better life.

Wilcox clearly showed that the success sequence – high school diploma, work in 20s, and marry before children – is important for the rising generation to understand. The more young people who understand the success sequence, the more strong families, strong communities, and strong nations there will be.

How Does the Success Sequence Help People to Achieve the American Dream?

In the 2007 Parents Involved decision, Chief Justice John Roberts shared a “simple and elegant logic” when he wrote, “The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.”

A recent Supreme Court decision ended discrimination on the basis of race in college admissions. In writing about this topic, Mike Gonzalez discussed why discrimination is not necessary. 

The view that disparities, in educational attainment and elsewhere, are prima facie evidence of something called “systemic racism” – another ide virtually signaled without factual support – stands behind this idea of getting a quick fix on results. It runs counter to the actual data.

What does the data say? According to Gonzalez, there are several “underserved” or “marginalized” groups of Americans who do better than the average American.

·         52% of U.S.-born Venezuelan Americans have at least graduated from a four-year university, a much higher rate than the 23.5% of all Americans.

·         Other “Latinos” … also have high levels of educational attainment.

·         73.5% of U.S.-born Nigerian Americans are college graduates … compared to 32.9% of U.S. whites.

·         Ghanaian and West Indian Americans also do well across a number of indicators

The question we should be asking is, why do some groups of Blacks or Hispanics do better than other groups? Why do some minority groups become “very much represented in colleges and universities” and achieve the American dream, while other groups do not?

Gonzalez shared an idea that may be helpful in bringing better understanding. He suggested that the United States “needs to drop our current monolithic census racial categories.” He used the term synthetic categories to describe “Hispanics” and “Asian Americans” and said that those categories “throw off more heat than light.”

Gonzalez also indicated that lumping all Black Americans into one group is not helpful. He said that there should be cross-referencing with the “nation of origin and family intactness” to better “address the causes of the disparities.”

The bottom line, according to Gonzalez, is to “go back to teaching the success sequence” for school and life in general. The success sequence is to graduate from high school, get a job, get married, have a baby – in that order – and to stay married. The success sequence is a formula that can help Americans of all races to become prosperous and happy.