Why You Should Care About the Growing Positive Power of Marriage

Leading marriage sociologist Brad Wilcox, the Jefferson Scholars Foundation Professor at the University of Virginia, has written an important new report for the Heritage Foundation on how marriage serves as an irreplaceable cornerstone for society.

Leading sociologists, economists and medical researchers of various political and ideological stripes have highlighted the profound financial, social, physical and emotional benefits of marriage. This is the case for children, women, men and society at large. Wilcox adds, “Many of these effects appear to have a causal dimension” — meaning marriage influences such benefits directly.

This is a very important conclusion, given that while scholars have long admitted married adults and children with married parents tend to outperform their single, divorced and cohabiting peers in essentially all measures of human well-being. Scholars have long debated whether the healthy are simply selected into marriage because they are more desirable mates, or does marriage actually have a beneficial impact on those who live under it’s promises and protections.

Wilcox persuasively demonstrates that the decades-long scholarly debate appears to be landing in favor of marriage causing the life-long benefits recorded by scholars.

We highlight that important conclusion below.

Just as substantial and groundbreaking, Professor Wilcox admits, is the “evidence that marriage may matter more than ever for the well-being of children and adults, at least on some outcomes.”

He continues in the report,

Scholars, journalists, professionals, and policymakers should not only take note of marriage’s rising value, but they should also act to make sure that more men, women, and children benefit from our nation’s most fundamental institution.

New data indeed reveals that the beneficial influence of marriage is growing stronger. The Daily Citizen has documented a few examples of this phenomenon here, here, here, here, here and here, as just a few examples.

Wilcox also provides a very helpful – and deeply informed, but brief – summary of the emergence of the leading social science discoveries on the health and well-being benefits of marriage since the early 1970s. This data originates from leading academic institutions such as Vanderbilt University, UCLA, University of Chicago and Princeton.

Wilcox’s conclusion is worth noting in full:

So, more than 50 years of social science and medical research generally demonstrate that married men and women live longer, have healthier lives, earn and save more money, recover more quickly and successfully from illness, steer clear of trouble with the law, are less likely to attempt and commit suicide, and are more likely to be happy. Indeed, on most measures of financial, physical, social, and emotional well-being, men, women, and children in stable married homes do better.

Wilcox then goes onto survey some of the best academic investigations into what scholars have long called the “selection or protection/support” debate. This is essentially the significant question of “Does marriage tend to select healthier people into the institution, or does the clarity and commitment of marriage effectively change people for the better?

By studying the larger body of data investigating this question, Wilcox concludes,

Marriage is not simply an institution that collects relatively hardworking, socially adept, and happy people. It is also an institution that transforms people, bonding men and women to a particular person, to a whole way of life. In doing so…it endows their lives, day in and day out, with more meaning, prosperity, stability, and solidarity, all of which typically boost the sense of satisfaction that men and women take from their lives after they enter our civilization’s most fundamental institution. In other words, the effect of marriage on human happiness…is also causal.

You can read the persuasive body of research Wilcox cites for this conclusion on pages six through nine of his new Heritage Foundation report. Doing so is an important exercise and benefit for all serious students of the family.

Scripture teaches us in Hebrews 13:4: “Let marriage be held in honor among all.”

Good, honest scholars, working from leading academic institutions, are giving us more reasons to honor and celebrate the joys and riches that God, in His profound wisdom and care, have given us in the valuable institution of marriage. It is important that Christians learn of these benefits by dutifully reading from both of the book of Holy Scripture and the Book of Nature so we can see how both inform one another. After all, God is the Author of both.

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