A Call for a New Conversation on Marriage
An Appeal from Seventy-Five American Leaders
It’s time for a new conversation on marriage.
Why marriage?
Because families are the seedbeds of civil society, and marriage is the basis of the family. Marriage creates kin. Marriage is a wealth-producing institution. And because marriage is the main institution governing the link between the spousal association and the parent-child association, marriage is society’s most pro-child institution.
Marriage is fracturing in America. While the nation’s attention is riveted by a debate about whether a small proportion of our fellow citizens (gays and lesbians) should be allowed to marry, marriage is rapidly dividing along class lines, splitting the country that it used to unite. While marriage is stable or strengthening among our college-educated elites, much larger numbers of Americans, particularly in middle and working-class America, are abandoning the institution entirely, with harmful social and personal consequences.
This hollowing out of marriage in mainstream America is among the most consequential social facts of our era. It’s contributing to the growth of inequality, harming countless children, and weakening, perhaps fatally, our formerly strong middle class. And amazingly, if you listen to political leaders of both parties and opinion leaders from both the left and right, you’ll discover that very few of them appear even to have noticed what’s happening.
Why a new conversation?
Because the current conversation is at a dead end. And because we won’t renew marriage without fundamentally reforming the way we discuss marriage.
Let us tell you the differences between the dead-end conversation of today and the new conversation we propose.
1.The current conversation is almost entirely a culture war over gay marriage, pitting traditionalists opposed to gay rights against gay rights leaders and their allies.
We propose a new conversation that brings together gays and lesbians who want to strengthen marriage with straight people who want to do the same. The new conversation does not presuppose or require agreement on gay marriage, but it does ask a new question. The current question is, Should gays marry? The new question is, Who among us, gay or straight, wants to strengthen marriage?
2.The current conversation treats marriage decline as primarily a problem of the poor and minorities.
We propose a new conversation on marriage decline, focusing on the startling fact that marriage trends in middle America, particularly among the nearly 60 percent of Americans who’ve graduated from high school but do not have a four-year college degree, are more and more resembling the historic marriage trends in poor and low-income America.
In short, in the current conversation, marriage policy is mostly seen as a welfare topic. In the new conversation, marriage policy is an inequality topic.
3.The current conversation on heterosexual marriage focuses largely on the young, especially on teenagers at risk of getting pregnant and on parents of young children.
We propose a new conversation involving all Americans on marriage across the life cycle. If unwed child bearing is not good for teens, is it good for twenty-somethings? Thirty-somethings with good jobs? As the huge Baby Boom generation (the generation that led the divorce revolution) heads toward retirement and old age, does marriage matter for older and empty-nest Americans, and if so, why?
4.The current conversation on middle-class marriage is largely therapeutic and psychological, focusing on gender roles and on “soul mate” issues.
In the wake of the Great Recession and in the midst of severe and possibly long-lasting economic challenges to our society, we propose a new conversation that re-establishes the link between marriage and money, the nest and the nest-egg. What economic policies strengthen marriage? What marriage policies create wealth? In the new conversation, marriage and thrift, the two great engines of the American middle class since the nation’s founding, stand best when they stand together.
In short, the current conversation on middle-class marriage presupposes affluence. In the new conversation, marriage helps to rebuild affluence.
5.Finally, and possibly most importantly, the current conversation on marriage decline is rooted in the belief that nothing can be done.
The conventional wisdom seems to be that marriage – except possibly for gay marriage – is something that can’t be fixed. It’s about personal choices. People are voting with their feet. Nothing can be done to stop or reverse the trend. The only thing we can do is ignore the problem, change the subject, or passively wring our hands in sadness.
The new conversation rejects this premise entirely. This is an American conversation. Like our forebears, we assume that what happens in the future will be the result of our ideas and choices today. No trend in our society, including the marriage trend, is preordained, or immune from human decision-making, and no problem we face – this is America, after all – is so large that we must become passive and servile in its face.
The current conversation is at a dead end.
But the new conversation is just getting started.
To this new conversation, we pledge our time, money, and best ideas. We are eager to face the challenge. We invite you to join us.
SIGNED,
Joanna M. Adams
Morningside Presbyterian Church (Pastor Emerita)
John Atlas
National Housing Institute
Robert N. Bellah
University of California, Berkeley (Emeritus)
Jay Belsky
University of California, Davis
Elizabeth Berger
George Washington University School of Medicine
David Blankenhorn
Institute for American Values
Margaret Brinig
University of Notre Dame Law School
Jill Brooke
Huffington Post
Jason Byassee
Boone United Methodist Church
Dale Carpenter
University of Minnesota Law School
Obie Clayton
University of Georgia
Bill Coffin
Healthy Marriage Consultant
John Corvino
Wayne State University
Reid Cramer
New America Foundation
John Crouch
Coalition for Divorce Reform
Family Law Attorney
John Culhane
Widener University School of Law
John Demos
Yale University
William J. Doherty
University of Minnesota
Susan Dutton
Smart Relationships
Lanny Ebenstein
California Center for Public Policy
David Eggebeen
Pennsylvania State University
Jean Bethke Elshtain
University of Chicago Divinity School
Robert E. Emery
University of Virginia
Martha Erickson
University of Minnesota (Emerita)
Caitlin Flanagan
Author
Robert Michael Franklin
President Emeritus of Morehouse College
President Emeritus of the Interdenominational Theological Seminary
Stanford University
Francis Fukuyama
Stanford University
William A. Galston
The Brookings Institution
Claire L. Gaudiani
New York University
Neil Gilbert
University of California, Berkeley
David Gray
New America Foundation
Jonathan Haidt
New York University
Ron Haskins
The Brookings Institution
Alan J. Hawkins
Brigham Young University
Kay Hymowitz
Manhattan Institute
Michael Ignatieff
Harvard University Kennedy School of Government
University of Toronto
Kathleen A. Kovner Kline
University of Pennsylvania
Alicia La Hoz
Family Bridges
Robert I. Lerman
The Urban Institute
Charles Lipson
University of Chicago
Glenn C. Loury
Brown University
Linda Malone-Colón
Hampton University
Howard J. Markman
University of Denver
Elizabeth Marquardt
Institute for American Values
Will Marshall
Progressive Policy Institute
Daniel H. Martins
Bishop of Springfield (Episcopal Church)
Lawrence M. Mead
New York University
Richard J. Mouw
President of Fuller Theological Seminary
David G. Myers
Hope College
Ted Ownby
University of Mississippi
Mitch Pearlstein
Center of the American Experiment
Marline Pearson
Madison Area Technical College
John Podhoretz
Editor of Commentary Magazine
David Popenoe
Rutgers University (Emeritus)
Stephen Post
Stony Brook University
Jonathan Rauch
The Brookings Institution
Kay Reed
The Dibble Institute for Marriage Education
Allan N. Schore
University of California at Los Angeles School of Medicine
Leah Ward Sears
Former Chief Justice of the Georgia Supreme Court
Schiff Hardin, LLP
Claudia Ayanna Sharygin
The Urban Institute
Peter Skerry
Boston College
John R. Snarey
Emory University
Diane Sollee
Smart Marriages
Max L. Stackhouse
Princeton Theological Seminary
Peter Steinfels
Fordham University
Peter Uhlenberg
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Linda J. Waite
University of Chicago
Amy L. Wax
University of Pennsylvania Law School
William (Beau) Weston
Centre College
Barbara Dafoe Whitehead
Institute for American Values
William F. Winter
Former Governor of Mississippi
Nicholas H. Wolfinger
University of Utah
Andrew Yarrow
Oxfam America
American University
Amy Ziettlow
Institute for American Values
Jonathan Zimmerman
New York University
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