We Broke the American Marriage

You will be happy to know that we Americans are leading the world in one thing. We have more single parent households than any nation in the world. We have effectively broken marriage. 

In fact, we are so embroiled in the controversy about abortion that we have failed to recognize that procreative sex normally has a place within a marriage. And that it should aim at producing a stable family life for children.

So, we have broken marriage and we have broken the family. We should consider it a dubious achievement, one that will certainly haunt us for decades to come. If we want society to cohere, family instability is a bad thing. 

But, without moralizing too much, I offer the latest from the Pew Research Center:

For decades, the share of U.S. children living with a single parent has been rising, accompanied by a decline in marriage rates and a rise in births outside of marriage. A new Pew Research Center study of 130 countries and territories shows that the U.S. has the world’s highest rate of children living in single-parent households.

Almost a quarter of U.S. children under the age of 18 live with one parent and no other adults (23%), more than three times the share of children around the world who do so (7%). The study, which analyzed how people’s living arrangements differ by religion, also found that U.S. children from Christian and religiously unaffiliated families are about equally likely to live in this type of arrangement.

In comparison, 3% of children in China, 4% of children in Nigeria and 5% of children in India live in single-parent households. In neighboring Canada, the share is 15%.

It looks like Canada has some catching up to do. It also looks like many of our international competitors have not bought our anti-family cultural attitudes. The difference is not just a rounding error.