Love and Marriage: For Individuals and Society to Thrive, You Can’t Have One Without the Other

Perhaps those young people who are now choosing to wait until they are married to have children have realized that love and marriage are important after all.

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Commentary

Back in 1955, Frank Sinatra introduced the song “Love and Marriage.” The opening lyrics went like this: “Love and marriage, love and marriage / They go together like a horse and carriage. / This I tell you, brother / You can’t have one without the other.”

That song came to mind as I read about a new study that only 75 percent of high school seniors think they will get married one day, potentially missing out on a lifetime love and all the benefits that it will bring—not only for them, but for our culture as well. The study also found that of those who thought they would marry, only 61 percent thought they would make a good spouse.

Another recent study discovered that 52 percent of millennial and Gen Z women (individuals between the ages of roughly 16 and 35) and 41 percent of millennial and Gen Z men now perceive marriage as an “outdated institution,” with one in six saying they have no plans to get married at all.

These numbers, which are basically the same as those in 1976, show a decline from the numbers of the early 2000s, meaning that after several years of good news of rising marriage rates, we are now heading back in the wrong direction of nearly 50 years ago.

This would not be surprising, as Gen Z, as well as younger millennials in particular, consume more media via their smartphones and other devices than any generation before them—media that often tells them to seek “self-fulfillment,” which fuels left-wing sentiment and inevitably leads to loneliness, cynicism, and despair, as no device can replace authentic human interaction.

However, while I was reading about these studies, I came across another one that offers some encouragement. This study found, in the words of Patrick Brown, a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, that “the great decoupling of marriage and parenthood that exploded in the second half of the 20th century is starting to be rolled back.” He goes on to state that while Americans are having fewer babies, those having children are doing so in married homes.

Thus, while we need to be concerned about the drop in young people who think they will be married someday as well as our continually dropping fertility rate, there is a silver lining. The birth rates among unmarried women have now dropped to their lowest level since 1987. Perhaps America’s crisis of single parenthood is beginning to ebb.

Mr. Brown writes, “America’s fertility crisis ... may end up helping bring our outlier status of being the nation with the most kids raised in single-parent homes back in line with international norms.”

He concludes: “Like it or not, Americans will be having fewer babies for the foreseeable future. This brings with it real concerns—economically, socially, and politically. Yet we should be provisionally grateful that our low fertility future seems likely to be the version that treats becoming a parent as something worth being undertaken prudently, rather than one that seeks to further divorce parenthood from marriage.”

So let’s go back to the study about the attitudes of current-day high school students toward marriage.

It would seem to me that if we can reverse the downward trend of young people who believe they will get married, then they will get married sooner and consequently be likely to have more children, thus making a major dent in our current fertility decline. And those children who are born will be raised in stable, two-parent homes.

In addition, as another study done by the Institute for Family Studies documented, couples who get married earlier in life, rather than later, experience greater romantic satisfaction and better communication—in other words, the true authenticity that Gen Z and millennials crave, as a number of commentators have noted.

That authenticity is going to come through marriage and family, which will then have positive ramifications for our society as a whole. Perhaps those young people who are now choosing to wait until they are married to have children have realized that love and marriage are important after all.

To slightly modify Sinatra’s lyrics, “they go together with a baby carriage.” It is my hope that those presently in high school will awaken to that same realization and find that fulfillment comes through rejecting the current culture that tells them the opposite.

That would be a win-win-win, for individuals, children, and society—bringing with it the benefits needed for all to flourish and thrive.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.