May
1

The Public Benefits of Marriage

As promised, this week we continue the argument — as presented by Gergis, Anderson, and George in What Is Marriage? (2012/2020) — against the libertarian position that the institution of marriage should be privatized and the state (i.e., government) keep its nose out of the marriage business.

— — —

“Let us take a closer look at the social benefits. common sense and reliable evidence both attest to the facts that marriage benefits children, benefits spouses, helps create wealth, helps the poor especially, and checks state power.
First, as we have seen by reflection that procreation uniquely extends and perfects marriage (see chapter 2), so the best available social science suggests that children tend to do best when reared by their married mother and father. Studies that control for other factors, including poverty and even genetics, suggest that children reared in intact homes do best on the following indices:
Educational achievement: literacy and graduation rates
Emotional health: rates of anxiety, depression, substance abuse, and suicide
Familial and sexual development: strong sense of identity, timing of onset of puberty, rates of teen and out-of-wedlock pregnancy, and rates of sexual abuse
Child and adult behavior: rates of aggression, attention deficit disorder, delinquency, and incarceration
Consider the conclusions of the left-leaning research institution Child Trends:
‘Research clearly demonstrates that family structure matters for children, and the family structure that helps children the most is a family headed by two biological parents in a low-conflict marriage. Children in single-parent families, children born to unmarried mothers, and children in stepfamilies or cohabiting relationships face higher risks of poor outcomes…. There is thus value for children in promoting strong, stable marriages between biological parents…. [I]t is not simply the presence of two parents,… but the presence of two biological parents that seems to support children’s development.’
According to another study, in the Journal of Marriage and Family, “[t]he advantage of marriage appears to exist primarily when the child is the biological offspring of both parents.” Recent literature reviews conducted by the Brookings Institution, the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University, the Center for Law and Social Policy, and the Institute for American Values corroborate the importance of intact households for children.

Single-motherhood, cohabitation, joint custody after divorce, and stepparenting have all been reliably studied, and the result is clear: Children tend to fare worse under every one of these alternatives to married biological parenting. To make marriages more stable is to give more children the best chance to become upright and productive members of society. Note the importance of the link between marriage and children in both stages of our argument: just as it provides a powerful reason to hold the conjugal view of marriage, so it provides the central reason to make marriage a matter of public concern….
A second public benefit of marriage is that it tends to help spouses financially, emotionally, physically, and socially. As the late University of Virginia sociologist Steven Nock showed, it is not that people who are better off are most likely to marry, but that marriage makes people better off. More than signal maturity, marriage can promote it. Thus men, after their wedding, tend to spend more time at work, less time at bars, more time at religious gatherings, less time in jail, and more time with family.
The shape of marriage as a permanent and exclusive union ordered to family life helps explain these benefits. Permanently committed to a relationship whose norms are shaped by its aptness for family life, husbands and wives gain emotional insurance against life’s temporary setbacks. Exclusively committed, they leave the sexual marketplace and thus escape its heightened risks. Dedicated to their children and each other, they enjoy the benefits of a sharpened sense of purpose. More vigorously sowing in work, they reap more abundantly its fruits. So the state’s interest in productivity and social order creates an interest in marriage.
Third, these two benefits of marriage — child and spousal well-being — support the conclusion of a study led by Professor W. Bradford Wilcox as part of the University of Virginia’s National Marriage Project: “The core message… is that the wealth of nations depends in no small part on the health of the family.” The same study suggests that marriage and fertility trends “play an underappreciated and important role in fostering long-term economic growth, the viability of the welfare state, the size and quality of the workforce, and the health of large sectors of the modern economy.” These are legitimate state interests if anything is; so too, then, is marriage.

Fourth, given its economic benefits, it is no surprise that the decline of marriage most hurts the least well-off. As Kay Hymowit argues in Marriage and Caste in America, the decline of the marriage culture has hurt lower-income communities and African Americans the most. In fact, a leading indicator of whether someone will know poverty or prosperity is whether she knew growing up the love and security of her married mother and father.
Finally, since a strong marriage culture is good for children, spouses, indeed our whole economy, and especially the poor, it also serves the cause of limited government. Most obviously, where marriages never form or easily break down, the state expands to fill the domestic vacuum by lawsuits to determine paternity, visitation rights, child support, and alimony.
But the less immediate effects are even more extensive. As absentee fathers and out-of-wedlock births become common, a train of social pathologies follows, and with it greater demand for policing and state-provided social services. Sociologists David Popenoe and Alan Wolfe’s research on Scandinavian countries shows that as marriage culture declines, the size and scope of state power and spending grow. [The authors then briefly discuss a few studies that looked at welfare expenditures and social ills like teen pregnancy, poverty, crime, drug abuse, and health problems.]
Thus, although some libertarians would give marriage no more legal status than we give baptisms and bar mitzvahs, privatizing marriage would be a catastrophe for limited government. Almost every human interest that might justify state action — health, security, educational development, social order — would also justify legally regulating marriage. A state that will not support marriage is like a doctor who will not encourage a healthy diet and exercise. Each passes over what is basic and paramount in a misplaced zeal for supplements and remedies.”

— — —

So, in summary, “Traditional, conjugal marriage benefits all members of the family, which in turn benefits the community and society as a whole. What is truly good for society is good for limited government.” It’s a cogent argument, backed by real-world evidence. Perhaps the libertarian-minded should rethink their view on this….