Category: Marriage/Family

This country’s public policies — especially our tax and welfare policies — often penalize marriage, locking couples out of marriage and trapping too many people in poverty.

America just doesn’t grow like it used to. Real GDP has increased by a sluggish 1% per year on average since 2000, a substantial decline from the 2% annual average throughout the 20th century. Similarly slow median wage growth, and a series of “jobless” economic recoveries have compounded to produce less wealth, especially for younger people.

This stagnation has substantial implications for family life. Forming a family is not free, and slower growth makes it harder for adults to become an attractive mate or afford kids. Among couples who cohabit, majorities cite finances as their main reason for not tying the knot; the ever-growing population of men not in the labor force is particularly unlikely to be married

For many couples who make it through this pandemic together, their marriages will likely emerge stronger and more stable.

The study, using data from 250 couples over almost 20 years, showed that couples who fought regularly early in their marriage were likely to continue that pattern over time. Partners who argued frequently were more likely to feel lonely. And the researchers found that those arguments from earlier in the marriage could have a lasting effect on how lonely partners felt more than a decade later.

Dr. John M. Gottman, the world-renowned therapist and relationship expert, devised the 5:1 ratio after years of research and identified it as a key aspect of healthy relationships. It goes like this: for every one negative interaction, you need to engage in five positive ones.

In a recent television appearance, I discussed my appointment to a presidential commission called “The Social Status of Black Men and Black Boys.”

I called fatherless households America’s top domestic problem, a particularly severe phenomenon in the black community where nearly 70% of kids begin their lives in households with unmarried mothers.

In all of these places, young Christians still view marriage as something more than cohabitation—a stronger bond, a more serious commitment. Yet “the intrusion of a market mentality into our homes, marriages, and bedrooms” has reduced the transcendental to the transactional and contributed to a global monoculture that spreads from the West elsewhere.