Does Marriage Matter?

This work would like to argue that demographers have an opportunity and an obligation to tell people what their decisions about marriage and family potentially mean for them as individuals and to tell them what that decision may mean for themselves as individuals.

Abstract

The last several years have witnessed an active-sometimes acrimonious-debate, occasionally joined by demographers, over the state of the family.Some, like David Popenoe (1993), decry what they see as a dangerous erosion of the family as an institution, with dire consequences for society.Others, like Judith Stacey (1993), see the traditional family, balanced on the monogamous couple, as fundamentally incompatible with women's well-being.Although these two positions seem extreme, both have numerous adherents and are held by serious scholars.When politicians point to the high social costs and taxpayer burden imposed by disintegrating "family values," they overlook the fact that individuals do not simply make the decisions that lead to unwed parenthood, marriage, or divorce on the basis of what is good for society.They weigh the costs and benefits of each of these choices to themselves-and sometimes their children.But how much do individuals know about these costs and benefits?I think that we as demographers have something to contribute here.As individual researchers we investigate the relationship between marriage and longevity, wealth, earnings, or children's achievements, but we rarely try to pull all this evidence together.I would like to argue that we have an opportunity and an obligation to do that, and to tell people what their decisions about marriage and family potentially mean for them as individuals.That is my objective here.