The Two-Parent Privilege – Part 4

Exploring the many beneficial outcomes for parents of two-parent families.

Continuing this essay series on the benefits to children of two-parent families, this essay will explore the many beneficial outcomes for parents in such families. 

There’s evidence that children and marriage can improve parental outcomes as well.  A 2020 paper by Maxim Massenkoff and Evan Rose from the University of California studied birth, marriage, and arrest records for more than a million people in the state of Washington to determine, among other things, what effects childbirth and marriage have on an individual’s likelihood of committing crime.  The researchers found that married individuals are considerably less likely to commit crime than their unmarried counterparts.  In fact, the greatest decrease (nearly 50 percent) in criminal activity among married individuals comes in the months leading up to marriage, and this lower rate sustains throughout the first years of their marriage.  It is likely, then, that married individuals have already taken significant steps to desist from crime before deciding to have children.

And as noted by Joseph Heinrich in The Secret of Our Success:

[G]etting married in a monogamous society lowers a man’s testosterone, reduces his probability of committing a crime, increases his aversion to risk, and may strengthen his ability to defer gratification. In polygamous societies, many poor men cannot get married, because the high-status men attract most of the women as first, second, and third wives, so the crime rates for these unmarried poor men go up, not down. Meanwhile, married men in polygamous societies probably don’t have the drop in testosterone because, unlike married men in monogamous societies, they are still openly and actively on the marriage market and testosterone is linked to the pursuit of female romantic partners. This means that monogamous marriage may act as a kind of society-wide testosterone suppression system. As I mentioned above, the psychological effects created by this unusual package of marriage norms may be precisely the reason for its successful global spread in the last few hundred years.

A recent study of how the composition of families correlates with the economic welfare of people living in the 50 states concludes as follows:

1– Higher levels of marriage, and especially higher levels of married-parent families, are strongly associated with more economic growth, more economic mobility, less child poverty, and higher median family income at the state level in the United States. When we compare states in the top quintile of married-parent families with those in the bottom quintile, we find that being in the top quintile is associated with a $1,451 higher per capita GDP, 10.5 percent greater upward income mobility for children from lower-income families, a 13.2 percent decline in the child poverty rate, and a $3,654 higher median family income. These estimates are based on models that control for a range of factors—from the educational and racial composition of a state to its tax policies and spending on education, and to unchanging characteristics of states—that might otherwise confound the family-economy link at the state level.

2– The share of parents in a state who are married is one of the top predictors of the economic outcomes studied in this report. In fact, this family factor is generally a stronger predictor of economic mobility, child poverty, and median family income in the American states than are the educational, racial, and age compositions of the states.

3– The state-level link between marriage and economic growth is stronger for younger adults (ages 25–35) than for older adults (36–59). This suggests that marriage plays a particularly important role in fostering a positive labor market orientation among young men.

4– Violent crime is much less common in states with larger shares of families headed by married parents, even after controlling for a range of socio-demographic factors at the state level. For instance, the violent crime rate (violent crimes per 100,000 people) sits at 343 on average for states in the top quintile of married parenthood, whereas those in the bottom quintile average a rate of 563. This is noteworthy because high crime rates lower the quality of life and real living standards and are associated with lower levels of economic growth and mobility.

Marriage is associated with lower mortality for the parents themselves.  Researchers have found that “The fact that married people face lower mortality risks than those who are single is a persistent component of the status hierarchy in U.S. families, apparently representing some combination of both positive health selection into marriage and a protective effect of marriage, and this difference has long been greater for men than for women.”

Marriage and parenthood are also associated with a greater sense of well-being for the parents.  As Brad Wilcox and Wendy Wang write:

A viral TikTok video doesn’t pull any punches in depicting the so-called negatives of marriage and motherhood for young women. The video, that has been racking up millions of views, shows a Generation Z woman seeming to accept a marriage proposal before switching to a series of shorts showing the same woman toiling away in domestic drudgery — washing dishes, caring for a newborn baby, and cleaning the house. The clip ends with the woman rejecting the proposal, daunted by the future life of domestic servitude that just flashed before her eyes. This is simply one addition to a long line of recent memes that deride marriage and motherhood, a trend that plays into a popular narrative. But is all this negative coverage of marriage and motherhood — primarily emanating from academics, journalists, and online influencers — an accurate reflection of reality? The answer is no. The truths about marriage and motherhood couldn’t be clearer, or more counter-cultural: married women with children are actually happier than their single and childless counterparts, despite the prevailing narrative to the contrary. Drawing on data from America’s premier social barometer, the 2022 General Social Survey, 40% of married women between the ages of 18 and 55 with children report being “very happy” with their lives, compared to 22% of unmarried women with no children and 17% of single mothers.

What’s more, women with children are better off financially than their childless peers. According to data from the US Census’s American Community Survey, married mothers (18-55) have an average household income of $133,000, compared to $79,000 for their childless, single peers. We also have new research, which finds that marriage is “the most important differentiator” of who is happy in America. Falling marriage rates, meanwhile, are a chief reason why happiness has declined nationally, according to this study.  All of this runs counter to the cultural messaging that is decidedly anti-nuptial and anti-natalist. But the data tells us that married people are happier and more prosperous than their unmarried counterparts. That’s because marriage and family life provide meaning and direction for both men and women, not to mention a sense of solidarity.  Young people deserve to know the truth. A future that includes marriage and children is, on balance, a happier one. It turns out that building a life around your family is linked to dramatically higher rates of happiness for men and women. The idea that the best pathway to happiness in life is to avoid exchanging vows or the baby carriage is a myth persistently championed by many cultural voices — including this latest viral TikTok influencer — but one unfounded in the data.

As Brad Wilcox and Allysse Elhage write:

[A] large body of research shows that money and a career are not the keys to happiness. In fact, the No. 1 predictor of overall life satisfaction is marital quality—how happy people are in their marriage. This pattern comes out in a new book, “The Good Life: Lessons from the World’s Longest Study of Happiness,”based on the Harvard Study of Adult Development. The book reports that social ties, such as those found between family and friends, are better predictors than professional and financial success of our happiness and health over the course of life. A summary of the study’s findings explains: “Those ties protect people from life’s discontents, help to delay mental and physical decline, and are better predictors of long and happy lives than social class, IQ, or even genetics.” This new Harvard study, then, is but one indication that today’s parents’ focus on work and money is misplaced … Much of today’s popular culture tells us that marriage and children are an obstacle to individual happiness, that parents especially are unhappy, and that parenting is just too hard. Yet research continues to show that married people are generally happier than unmarried people. The research on parental happiness is more complex, but we’re seeing more surveys today suggesting parents are reporting happier and more meaningful lives than their childless peers. The Pew study, for example, found that the majority of parents say parenting is rewarding and enjoyable and consider the job as “the most or one of the most important aspects of who they are.” Having children also comes with future benefits, like someone to take care of us in our old age—and perhaps grandchildren. As journalist Jim Dalrymple put it, “Having kids is an investment in less lonely, more secure elder years.”  The Pew report’s findings highlight the unsettling truth that too many parents today do not appreciate how much marriage and family matter to their own children’s future well-being.

For those married readers who feel like they married the wrong person, see this great video by Alain de Bottom, who delivered this presentation at the invitation of Google Zeitgeist:

In the next essay in this series, we’ll explore data on two-parent families as it relates to race.