Thank you for posting this. I spent the past hour reading this site. Very interesting read.
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Yes, it’s a very good one.
This is more statistical than individual advice, but it shows that marriage as an institution leads to much better outcomes for raising children (even compared to divorced and remarried families, cohabiting but unmarried families, etc). With kids not in the picture, marriage probably matters a lot less.
Educated, middle-class mothers tend to be dedicated to what I have called The Mission, the careful nurturing of their children’s cognitive, emotional, and social development, which, if all goes according to plan, will lead to the honor roll and a spot on the high school debate team, which will in turn lead to a good college, then perhaps a graduate or professional degree, which will all lead eventually to a fulfilling career, a big house in a posh suburb, and a sense of meaningful accomplishment. It’s common sense, backed up by plenty of research, that you’ll have a better chance of fully “developing” your children—that is, of fulfilling The Mission—if you have a husband around. Children of single mothers have lower grades and educational attainment than kids who grow up with married parents, even after controlling for race, family background, and IQ…
This all points to a deeply worrying conclusion: the Marriage Gap—and the inequality to which it is tied—is self-perpetuating. A low-income single mother, unprepared to carry out The Mission, is more likely to raise children who will become low-income single parents, who will pass that legacy on to their children, and so on down the line. Married parents are more likely to be visiting their married children and their grandchildren in their comfortable suburban homes, and those married children will in turn be sending their offspring off to good colleges, superior jobs, and wedding parties. Instead of an opportunity-rich country for all, the Marriage Gap threatens us with a rigid caste society.
So what is it about the nuclear family that makes it work so well for children decades after Americans have declared it optional?
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Kelly Raley, Megan Sweeney, and Danielle Wondra begin by reviewing common explanations for these differences, which first gained momentum in the 1960s (though patterns of marital instability diverged earlier than patterns of marriage formation). Structural factors—for example, declining employment prospects and rising incarceration rates for unskilled black men—clearly play a role, the authors write, but such factors don’t fully explain the divergence in marriage patterns. In particular, they don’t tell us why we see racial and ethnic differences in marriage across all levels of education, and not just among the unskilled.
Which of course begs the question of why they are unskilled. I have not read the paper but an interesting issue that should be covered is differences between black immigrants from, for example, Nigeria and Jamaica and black US citizens.
Did they study long term committed couples that were unmarried too? Or is that too rare to count? I suspect it’s the two active parent component that gets the better outcomes, and not due to the fact that they were legally married.
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I started this thread nearly 7 years ago. Oh, how things have changed since. No longer with the same girl that I was with 7 years ago. And guess what? I’m married, for 2 years.
- I got a prenup prior to getting married. This was a huge ordeal immediately before getting married. My wife still hates the prenup and hates me for making her sign it.
- We keep mostly separate finances, but we do own a home together, which consumes a large portion of our take-home pay. There’s my money, her money and our money. We contribute to our money as a percentage of our income.
- Net worth in 7 years has increased 2.6x
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I’m sorry to hear this. Generally speaking a prenup should be a discussion between soon-to-be-partners of what they think would be a fair way to divide assets under different conditions that might transpire in the future. Getting on the same page for fairness is usually a good thing, and if that turns out to be intractable, can be a red flag for the marriage.
Or, as a divorce lawyer I know says, “you’ve already got a prenup, it’s the weird rules of state X where you live, but if you don’t like all of those, we can make it whatever you’d like.”
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That made sense to me to get one as well. DH had financial assets before marriage, I had very little but I was earning more (still am). 26 years later now, that prenup seems a bit silly since these assets in question are now less than 1% of our net worth.
Could we have done the same not being married? Probably but it did simplify a ton of things legally and in everyday life especially with respect to our 3 kids.
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I’ll add one thing to the list of benefits of marriage. Residency for a foreign spouse. Realistically we had no choice.
I will also say it doesn’t have to be expensive. We were doing it as a necessary step in staying together, not to have a big event. Total spending was about $300 plus whatever her parents spent on her dress, we were never told the price. It probably wasn’t all that expensive given that it was purchased in her country.
Gold bands, no diamonds. A good thing as we found out her hands are utterly unsuited to doing things while wearing a ring. 36 years, still together.
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Yeah really doesn’t. The basics are not expensive. What costs you is all the trimmings hyped by consumerist interests. The higher spending actually seems to negatively correlate with outcomes.
We splurged and spent $800 combined on our rings (small diamond ring for me, gold band for DH). I didn’t wear a special dress. Went in front of a judge with just two witnesses (since our families were overseas). Then as sort of honeymoon was our annual trip back to our families at our next vacation where they organized a 2-families reunion + a few close friends but was basically just a slightly upgraded family gathering with people pitching in side dishes/wine. No band, no limo, no rented venue, no invitations, no photographers, no DJ, no gift registry, and very little hassle for us. But with a very nice 3-level cake 
and some slightly better food/drinks than usual. Never saw the bill but couldn’t have been much more than $1-2k or so for around 60 guests.
I’ve recommended it to our kids. Especially since they know I sure am not paying through the nose for fancy wedding BS expenses. 
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Yup, totally basic for us except for her dress. Not even a cake. My parents (there was no way her parents could come–I didn’t even get to meet them until years later because of the visa situation), one friend before a justice of the peace. Didn’t tell anyone else, just showed up for work with the ring on my finger. Went out to eat afterwards.
My parents, likewise, were just Justice of the Peace. A bit of special arranging as they had adjacent birthdays and wanted to be married at the midnight between. (And if I had been born half an hour later I would have had an adjacent birthday with my mother.)
And I most definitely agree with the negative correlation. I know of a 7 figure wedding. Lasted two years. I think that is at least in part because the people that have the fancy weddings are people used to the power that money brings–and if you try to bring that power into a relationship you’ll have problems.
We chose the child-free path, if we had kids I most definitely agree, we would not be paying for a wedding. In our lives we don’t spend money on fancy, why should we spend any more on others? (We will spend money that actually buys useful quality, but not money that buys names or fancy.) Beyond our rings the only actual jewelry-type things we have is a couple of things she inherited–and has never worn.
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