More evidence of the immense importance of marriage and biological parents
by David Quinn, Iona Institute:
Evidence keeps accumulating about the importance of marriage, and the importance of being raised by your biological parents. This should matter to us if we want to live in a society that is truly pro-child and is not in reality organised around the wishes of adults first and foremost.
Three articles have just been published that further point to the importance of marriage and biological parents. The first shows that in Europe, just like in the US, marriage is a lot more stable than cohabitation.
The second shows that children born to single mothers benefit more by having their biological father join them than when another man does so.
The third shows that the declining prevalence of two-parent families is increasing income inequality.
The first article, published by the Brookings Institute, compares cohabitation in countries like France and the US. There is a theory that while cohabitation in the US is a lot more unstable than marriage, it is different in Europe where cohabitation is held to be as stable as marriage.
It turns out this is not the case at all and that holds true at all education levels.
For example, we see that in France, children are about 66 percent more likely to see their parents break up if they are born to a cohabiting couple than to a married couple.
Scandinavia is often held up as a model to us, but in Norway we find that children born to cohabiting parents are about 88 percent more likely to see their parents’ union dissolve.
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