The Family Unit and Marriage

"A 2018 survey of 1,520 Canadians by the Angus Reid Institute asked 'When two people plan to spend the rest of their lives together, how important is it to you that they legally marry, meaning exchange vows in a public ceremony, whether civil or religious?' Fifty-three per cent said it wasn’t important. According to the pollster, this means a majority of Canadians now think 'marriage is simply not necessary'."
"Evidence that the institution of marriage is in decline hardly counts as news anymore. Marriage rates have been sliding for decades. In 1981, over 60 per cent of Canadians above the age of 15 were married; today that’s fallen to 45 per cent as cohabitating couples and lone parent households rise in step. The fact a majority of Canadians now think legal marriage is obsolete looks to be the logical conclusion of this long-term trend."

"In the U.S., where the relative success of racial groups is an area of intense focus, research by the Brookings Institution points to the 'success sequence' as a key factor in avoiding poverty. This refers to a multi-stage process of finishing high school, getting a job, getting married and then having children. Do these steps in this order and your chances of entering the middle class or higher rise dramatically, regardless of race."
"Recent work by the Institute for Family Studies shows that among Americans aged 28 to 34 who failed to complete the sequence in order, 53 per cent were poor. By comparison, those who followed the traditional path to adulthood had a 90 per cent change of being middle class or above. Marriage is the central aspect of this sequence; and as a defense against poverty it is an option available to all in a way that a college education – another indicator of future success – may not be. (Although children from married homes are more likely to graduate college.) Being married combines 'sex, parenthood, economic cooperation and emotional intimacy into a permanent union', observes Bradford Wilcox, a University of Virginia sociologist and co-author of the above report. It also makes you happy."
Peter Shawn Taylor, Macleans Magazine

A new poll suggests nearly half of Canadians aren't interested in getting married.  Getty Images

So there's all of that information, data, speculation on marriage, and why the younger generation shrugs its collective shoulder at the venerable institution of marriage, the marriage vows and the marriage covenant as irrelevant to their personal, intimate lives which value more casual relationships or intimate relationships unburdened by society's and religions' compacts and strictures on sexual intimacy and partnerships.

It is not only generational differences that will predict how people will react to the institution of traditional marriage, versus simply living together as in common-law relationships.

Recently, the Institute for Family Studies launched a study and its conclusion, perhaps unsurprisingly, is that conservatives and liberals regard the institution of marriage and all its traditions differently, with 62 percent of conservatives taking marriage vows, while 29 percent of liberals feel it necessary to, along with 46 percent of 'moderates', neither conservative nor liberal, but somewhere in between. Conservatives were observed to be likelier to marry, even controlling for factors such as age.

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Social scientists have long pointed out the equally obvious, that sharing life with someone else has its bonuses. People managing to live together in harmony, sharing common values and priorities find greater pleasure in life. Within a stable marriage people are generally healthier, and certainly more satisfied with life. That, apart from the fact that with a shared partnership, raising children is easier with two people to share the burden, responsibility and happiness that is generated within an intact family group.

And then there is the purely practical "social insurance" of being able to rely on someone emotionally close to you, when you're depressed, feeling ill, facing poor health outcomes, lose employment, even the elemental sharing of child-centered tasks when one parent is called away, leaving the other to take sole charge temporarily. There is no over-estimating the emotional security in knowing that someone is deeply concerned about your welfare, and is there to prop you up when needed by circumstances. The comfort inherent in knowing love and returning it makes for a happier person.

Conservatives, according to the IFS study simply value marriage more than do moderates or liberals to the point where 80 percent feel marriage is critical to the creation of strong families, whereas among liberals the figure descends to 33 percent who feel similarly. Greater numbers of conservatives commit to marriage simply because they feel marriage is an important part of one's life, and all the more so before children are born.

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This results in 52 percent of conservatives claiming to be completely satisfied with their family lives in comparison to 41 percent of liberals and moderates. The social sciences tend to agree with this generalized conservative tendency to value marriage and practise what they value in greater numbers than their liberal counterparts. Marriage is recognized as vitally critical to individual and societal health altogether. Research has verified that married people tend to live longer, happier and more prosperous lives.

Benefits to children within a family situation where two parents are equally engaged in child care and support, are innumerable and irreplaceable. With the attention of two parents focusing attention and emotional and practical resources on a child's needs, a more structured, healthier situation results, both for the parents and for their offspring. A study of economic mobility concluded that one of the most reliable predictors of income mobility was to grow up within a neighbourhood of majority two-parent families, irrespective of a child being raised by a single parent.

In light of which, the fact that an estimated 40 percent of children are born in the current generation outside marriage to parents who largely feel that it is preferential to bypass marriage, when studies and actual outcomes reflect otherwise, is troubling.

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