Unless some fundamental changes are made to family law, (legal) marriage will continue to lose popularity for one fundamental reason: it is financially disadvantageous for most people of prime marrying age. Although we’ve spilled plenty of ink on the topic of divorce and its costs to men, one fact that is often overlooked is that marriage itself is not a financially sound decision for many young people, including women, for a variety of reasons.
It was the black American community that first began to reject marriage, and for a practical reason: married mothers received less state support than those who remained unwed. As soon as providing welfare to unwed mothers became the norm, black women began to see having children out of wedlock as a better alternative to the traditional family. In many cases, married black families were poorer than those who avoided marriage, because women with husbands were not eligible to receive state aid. This prompted great numbers of black women to leave their husbands, and eventually led to the contemporary state of the black family, in which only a minority of black parents ever bother getting married.
The same process eventually filtered into the white working class, and now it is beginning to affect young whites from middle-class families, as youth employment and wages have dropped precipitously over the past couple decades, and companies no longer provide the same level of benefits they once did.
The result is that younger people are avoiding marriage in order to take advantage of the tax breaks and benefits afforded to single mothers, or avoiding parenthood altogether. A poor young couple can qualify for state subsidies for healthcare, but a two-income household usually cannot, and the majority of young women now work just like the men. However, if a woman can claim to be a single mother and show only half the household income she’d have if married, she and the children will be eligible for much more support, thereby removing a significant burden from the family.
This also applies to student aid. A young couple in which one partner is contemplating going back to school for another degree or some training would be well-advised to avoid marriage, because the other partner’s income will be used against the prospective student, and grants/student aid will be much less generous. Additionally, before having children there is no tax benefit to being married.
We often discuss the drawbacks of marriage for men, but it’s clear that women – particularly young women, including mothers – also have financial incentives to remain single, especially if they won’t be able to reap a windfall through divorce, and when young they usually can’t.
Given the state assault on the institution, what is truly astonishing is that marriage survives at all today. Perhaps this is evidence that marriage is actually rooted in human nature, and will survive in one form or another despite feminist and government depredations.
