Marriage has Almost Become a Luxury Item

Numbers Fall for Marrieds with Kids
Blaine Harden
Washington Post
Mar. 7, 2007 12:00 AM

PORTLAND, Ore. - Punctuating a fundamental change in American family life, married couples with children now occupy less than one in every four households, a share that has been slashed in half since 1960 and is the lowest ever recorded by the census.

As marriage with children becomes an exception rather than the norm, social scientists say it is also becoming the self-selected province of the college-educated and the affluent. The working class and the poor, meanwhile, increasingly steer away from marriage, while living together and bearing children out of wedlock.

"The culture is shifting, and marriage has almost become a luxury item, one that only the well-educated and well-paid are interested in," said Isabel V. Sawhill, an expert on marriage and a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.

Marriage has declined across all income groups, but it has declined far less among couples who make the most money and have the best education. Many demographers peg the rise of a class-based marriage gap to the erosion since 1970 of the broad-based economic prosperity that followed World War II.

"We seem to be reverting to a much older pattern, when elites marry and a great many others live together and have kids," said Peter Francese, demographic trends analyst for Ogilvy & Mather, an ad firm.

In recent years, the marrying kind have been empowered by college degrees and bankrolled by dual incomes. College-educated men and women are increasingly less likely to "marry down," that is, to choose mates who have less education and professional standing than they do.

Married couples living with their own children younger than 18 are also helping to drive a well-documented increase in income inequality. Compared with all households, they are twice as likely to be in the top 20 percent of income. Their income has increased 59 percent in the past three decades, compared with 44 percent for all households, according to the census.

Hat tip to David R.
The following commentary is by David R.:

This is a national tragedy that will be played out in the political spectrum over the next decades. Children are being raised in unstable environments with no strong figures to depend on. Rather, they depend on Government. Do you believe this is not engineered? Do you believe that the US Tax code, which punishes married couples, is an accident? Do you believe that the welfare system, which punishes married couples by combining their income to calculate benefits, is an accident? Do you believe that the process of providing more money per child out of wedlock is incidental? Do you believe that the decision the poor to not marry, but live together and still have children is unrelated to financial rewards/penalties?

If you do, you are a fool.

This process is well understood. Its parameters were laid out in the early parts of the twentieth century. Government increases its power and control by undermining the family connection. It increases its influence by becoming the de-facto parent, providing resources and sustenance through programs, raising the children in "crèches" which we now call "day care". There the children are taught the values of an approved government agenda, rather than the values of their parents. When the children become older they go to government schools where they are indoctrinated in the government’s agenda. Even this article tries to cover up the story by claiming people to be “reverting to a much older pattern." Really? It seems to me that marriage is the single oldest pattern in human history. The most primitive tribes conduct marriage ceremonies regardless of what culture or part of the world we find them in. They do this without the help or involvement of government.

On the contrary, this is something entirely new. This is social engineering on an unprecedented scale, as bureaucracy and governments implement the crazy social theories (e.g., income redistribution, repudiating private property rights, institutionalized discrimination, taxpayer financed abortion as birth control, disavowing constitutional limitations of power, contravening the Bill of Rights, facilitating transnational sovereignty in a borderless empire, selective application of the Rule of Law, etc. – emphasis added by the editor) of the toxic totalitarian theorists of the twentieth century. They aim to fulfill Aristotle’s prophesy that democracy becomes the dictatorship of the manipulated masses.

Posted March 11, 2007 09:07 PM
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