Few Married-Parent Households for Poor, Uneducated

Four-Fifths of English-Poor Students Are U.S. Natives

One-quarter of U.S. households are traditional married-with-children families, the most recent Census found -- down from half of households in the 1960s.

Post writer Blaine Harden was online Monday, March 5 at 2 p.m. ET to discuss his article about the trend, which has overwhelmingly affected the poor as marriage almost has become -- as one expert put it -- "a luxury item."

Numbers Drop for the Married With Children (Post, March 4)

The transcript follows.

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Blaine Harden: Hi, this is Blaine Harden out in Seattle, delighted to talk about marriage with children.

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Bowie, Md.: Fascinating article. Important question that wasn't clearly addressed: Are there behavioral differences between the married and unmarried parents, aside from income levels?

Blaine Harden: What researchers and demographers have increasingly found since the 1970s is that people who tend to get married also tend to have higher education. They say that with that education comes higher income, better housing, better schools, better knowledge about nutrition and lower rates of divorce and child abuse.

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Gaithersburg, Md.: What is believed to be the root cause for this shift from married-with-children being the norm to less than 25 percent of today's households living in a married-with-children status? The article seems to suggest it a matter of economics -- I'm inclined to believe there is much, much more to it than that...

Blaine Harden: You are right, it is more than a matter of economics. Researchers who have spent hundreds of hours talking with cohabitating young people -- mostly from working-class and lower-middle class backgrounds -- have learned that many of them do not see marriage as an enviable model. They have seen marriages that have ended in divorce or have been soured by endless fighting, and they see upper-middle-class marriage -- as portrayed on TV and in the movies -- as beyond their means. Researchers say that many young people view marriage as a kind of pie-in-the-sky ideal, something they will attain when they pay off their car, get rid of credit card debt or get a promotion. They often are not persuaded by fact-based arguments that point out how marriage has a way of increasing financial stability.

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Marriage Is For White People: That was the name/catch-phrase of an article The Washington Post ran a few months back dealing with the low number of marriages in the black community. I coupled your article with that one and others from the "Being a Black Man" series where the issue of fatherhood was brought up. The fathers in the articles were not married to the children's mother and appeared to be of the uneducated/lower socioeconomic class. They all appeared not to have a flattering outlook/opinion of marriage. As a married black father of two young daughters myself, I am concerned -- did you research find more men, in general terms, than women with such negative outlooks of marriage?

washingtonpost.com: Special Report:Being a Black Man

Blaine Harden: Class, not race, is probably the best filter for guessing who will marry in America. That is the conclusion of most of the researchers who have been studying the data. Because income and education continue to skew higher for whites than blacks, there is a higher marriage rate for whites and a considerably lower rate of out-of-wedlock birth. But as time goes by, the researchers are finding, cohabitation for whites and all other races is becoming a norm for people who don't go to college. The national rate for out-of-wedlock birth is 37 percent. That means that a huge part of the population -- black and white and all races, as well as men and women -- is defining normal behavior much differently than in the years after World War II.

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Washington, D.C.: It seems to me that if marriage is one of the ways one preserves and increases one's wealth, then perhaps those who are choosing instead to live together or reject marriage ought to rethink that choice if they value their economic well-being. In other words, if you want to be wealthy, don't do what poor people do.

Blaine Harden: What you say is logical. A good student of demography and economic well-being would choose marriage for a better life, more money in the bank, better housing and probably better health. But decisions about who you live with and when you have kids are usually not driven by a shrewd understanding of economic/demographic trends -- much more powerful in shaping those decisions is the culture and what peers are doing. As cohabitation and out-of-wedlock births become increasingly common, marriage no longer seems to have the same allure -- that is, of course, except for people with college educations and high income. Researchers find that while the college-educated postpone marriage and often do cohabitate, they continue to see marriage as desirable and valuable for children -- at rates that are much higher than for the population as a whole.

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Laurel, Md.: I realize you're a reporter, not an activist, so you're not going to take a stand on this, but this illustrates to me the outright hypocrisy of the Republican party: They long for a return of the family-orientation of the post-war period (roughly 1950-65) while rejecting the economic leveling that made it possible. The fact that the period experienced a record marriage rate and baby boom is inextricably tied up with its job security. When a sensible person decides whether to start a family, "do I have reasonable expectation of steady income for 20 years" is an important datum, but today's Republican party wants a free-agent economy that discourages family formation and community roots. I strongly suspect their "pro-family" orientation is just a cover for the fact that they know their economic priorities are bad for families and communities, so "if the people had family values, poverty wouldn't cause crime" is how they escape responsibility.

Blaine Harden: Partisan politics aside, I think it is fascinating that marriage with kids became the overwhelming norm in the U.S. after World War II, during a phenomenal time of widespread prosperity -- and that marriage with kids has gone into a long downward slide that roughly coincides with the rise of income inequality. This is a subject that deserves a lot of research. There are some other factors are work, however, in the relative decline in the U.S. of households occupied by parents with kids. Most important are demographic trends -- people living longer (so they raise kids who leave and occupy empty-nester households) and the increasing age at which people marry (from the low 20s to the high 20s).

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U.S.: So young adults now think that marriage is too expensive, causes fighting and divorce is messy -- but they're still having kids with each other. Having kids can be expensive and cause fighting, and I would hope that leaving someone who has your child is messy, not just "see ya." So do we just need to provide Depo Provera to these people -- as their birth control isn't what it should be -- or are they choosing to have kids but not applying the same logic to that choice, which is a much bigger choice? After all, a marriage is entered into by two consenting parties. The kids don't get a choice.

Blaine Harden: Not sure if that is a question. Marriage with kids, of course, can be horrible -- at any income level. Researchers are careful to point out that kids growing up with biological parents in a family where there is domestic violence or chronic psychological abuse usually are better off elsewhere.

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St. Mary's City, Md.: Among young people, is there a difference between genders in attitudes about marriage? Until the 1960s, marriage largely was a patriarchal institution. I suspect that before the women's movement, many married men didn't put much work or thought into being a good husband because they took their "head of household" position for granted. Likewise, many married women may have assumed that it was their lot in life to be saddled with bad husbands. My perception is that today's young women feel more empowered, rightly believing that marriage should be a partnership between equals, but today's young men still may be behind in their attitudes, but in an infantile way where they expect wives to be substitute mommies instead of handmaidens. I'm thinking particularly of the recent phenomenon of many young men living at home until age 30 or so. Is this accurate?

Blaine Harden: This is a great question and I am afraid I don't know enough to give a complete answer. Here's a partial stab at it: For women, rising rates of college education (there are more women in college now than men) has given them economic independence, allowed them to postpone marriage and allowed them to be much pickier when it comes to husbands. By and large, though, these educated, independent women do want to have kids and they tend to see marriage to a suitable partner as the best, most secure way to go about it, according to a wide body of research. As I mentioned in my story, this has helped push a powerful trend in marriage of like-marrying-like. Lawyers do not as frequently marry secretaries or doctors marry nurses -- it is lawyers merging with lawyers and doctors with other doctors. I think this means that these women are finding men who will do more to hold up their end of the bargain when it comes to household chores and child-rearing duties.

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Vienna, Va.: Out-of-wedlock births may be more common, but is that really a good thing? Don't most studies suggest that children born in an intact marriage are more likely to go to college, less likely to commit crime, etc.? But as in your answer earlier, people don't make these decisions based on demographic data.

The story makes me sad -- it clearly is not in anyone's long-term economic interest to live together instead of marry, and especially not to create a child out of that relationship. Yet more people persist in doing so, with none of the social stigma that those decisions used to bring on.

Blaine Harden: It is a sad trend from the perspective of what is best, on average, for children. There are some exceptions, though. Given sufficient income and education levels, raising kids outside of marriage is less likely to have poor results. But of course, the whole point of my story is that it is best-educated and the best-paid who are most likely to see marriage as essential for raising kids.

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New York: In looking at low-income marriage rates 50 years ago versus today, that negates your almost Marxist theory of economics determining marriage trends. Why not look at the cultural shift in the past 35 years of perceptions of marriage, morality, and values? I have tutored young adults in the inner city and any aversion to marriage has nothing to do with economics, but rather a firm belief that is almost the opposite of the values and morals of the previous generations -- not because of economics, but because of a self-centered and openly anti-traditional way of thinking.

Blaine Harden: I can state without fear or favor that I an not Marxist. And you are right that cultural norms play a huge role. I was just pointing out that it is interesting that marriage has declined as economic inequality has risen. But it is also interesting to examine who wants to get married in modern America and who does not. Lots of social science research -- as well as my interviews with married and cohabiting couples -- suggests that people tend to imitate in their own lives what they experience growing up. As marriage becomes the province of the affluent and educated, it is likely that affluent and educated young people will see marriage as valuable. On the other hand, those growing up in a world of cohabitation will tend to see marriage as something for the privileged. Researchers who have conducted interviews over time with hundreds of cohabitating young people often are told that marriage is for doctors and lawyers.

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Kingston, R.I.: What are the trends in number of people per household?

Blaine Harden: The number of people per household has declined pretty steadily since the 1960s. Not much of surprise. Over that time, the percentage of households that are married with kids has been cut in half.

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Bowie, Md.: How much of the rejection of marriage is due to men's fear that "an ex-wife is a luxury I can't afford"?

Blaine Harden: Your question is very insightful. Young people who have witnessed their parents' wrenching divorces -- a father complaining bitterly for years about money -- have good reason to be fearful of marriage. On this point, it is interesting to note that divorce rates are considerably lower among people who have higher-than-average education and incomes. This means that, across the U.S. population, there are going to be relatively more low-income, low-education people with sour images of marriage/divorce. Presumably, these feeds into the trend of marriage becoming a class-based institution.

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Silver Spring, Md.: We know that divorce rates are higher among the lower-educated and less economically secure (on top of the fact that they are less likely to marry). Is there any reason to believe that an increase in marriage would provide more stability for these couples and their children?

Blaine Harden: This is the $64,000 question in the marriage debate. The Bush administration has tried to promote marriage, arguing that is good for kids, for parents and for society as a whole. But there is very little evidence, at least so far, that a desire to marry and stay married can be taught.

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Blaine Harden: Thanks very much for the chat.

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