Mini-book review: Get Married

Brad Wilcox, a sociologist at the University of Virginia, starts his book, Get Married, by documenting the dramatic decline in the US marriage rate. During the pandemic, for the first time in US history, there are more adults who are “single with no children” than “married with children.” This trend will only accelerate as young people are the most disaffected about marriage.

This will have a profound impact on society. Marriage is the foundational institution for well-being: marriage strongly correlates with higher income, with emotional well-being and happiness, and children growing up in an intact home are the least likely to be abused and the most likely to flourish.

Brad Wilcox includes several interesting statistics:

   • conservatives are more likely to get married than liberals

   • conservatives are significantly happier than liberals -- largely due to differing marriage rates

   • Asians are the most pro-marriage ethnic group in America; and not unrelated, they are also the wealthiest

   • sharing bank accounts and last names significantly lowers the odds of divorce

   • regular church attendance lowers the divorce rate by about half

And finally, I thought the most interesting statistic was the fact that divorce is contagious in social groups. According to a study done by the NIH, if your friend gets divorced, that more than doubles your odds of getting divorced. Even one degree removed, if a friend of your friend gets divorced, that increases your odds of divorce by 33%. In other words, divorce happens in social clusters. This makes sense. God is a social being, and human beings are created in his image. The data on marriage and happiness is another indicator that human beings were meant for deep relationships, the deepest of which is marriage.