- Marriage rates are rising slightly and divorce rates declining, with more children growing up in two-parent homes.
- Couples with college degrees, more wealth and who are religious are more inclined to get married.
- Around one-third of young adults are predicted never to marry; a quarter will never have children.
What has become a common view of marriage, divorce and family formation may be due for a makeover.
A new report published by the Institute for Family Studies by scholars Brad Wilcox, Grant Bailey, Lyman Stone and Wendy Wang finds marriage rates rising slightly and divorce rates going down.
Meanwhile, more children are growing up in two-parent homes.
“Marriage has become increasingly the pattern for families with kids in America,” said Wilcox, a sociologist and professor who directs the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia.
The “massive decline of divorce since the 1970s, the early 1980s — it’s truly remarkable,” said Bailey, an institute research associate, “and we see divorce rates continue to fall.”
The report said marriage had been in “free fall” for close to 60 years, while divorce and single parenthood more than doubled. The view that is still the status quo seems firmly top of mind for the majority of Americans, based on several recent surveys that show a gloomy view of marriage, divorce and family structure.
Instead, the four write that “major shifts in family behavior are underway that indicate marriage is strengthening as the primary anchor of family life. Divorce is down, as is single parenthood, and the share of kids being raised in stable married families is ticking up.”
Marriage seems to be gaining strength as a foundation for raising children.
Divorce hits low
The divorce rate is lower than at any other point in half a century, per the report, declining since the 1980s across all segments of society. While half of baby boomers who married in the 1970s and ‘80s will divorce, the news is not the same for those marrying today. More of them will likely go the distance together.
The difference is largely a matter of who is choosing to marry. Couples with college degrees, more money and who are religious are more apt to marry than the general population. Consequently, marriage and family life have become more stable.
But that’s not the whole story, said Wilcox, who said the “growth in single parenthood has halted and reversed. Really, divorce is down and all that stuff because the kinds of people who are getting married and having families today are more likely to have the kinds of commitments and resources that make family life either more attractive or more accessible to them” — across a racial and economic spectrum.
It’s possible some of the small gains in marriage numbers since the pandemic could be a “catch-up pattern when people were going ahead with the wedding that they put off during COVID,” said Wilcox, who is also a regular Deseret News contributor.
He said time will tell if it’s a trend or a blip.
But the slight shift toward marriage among Black and low-income families is clearer. Marriage had, for those groups, lost considerable ground over the decades. Wilcox called it “striking” that divorce in those groups has fallen, while family stability has increased.
“The percent of children in lower-income families with married parents rose from 38% in 2012 to 42% in 2024, even as the share of Black children in such families rose from 33% in 2012 to 39% in 2024. This increase in family stability among lower-income and Black Americans is especially noteworthy because the nation’s retreat from marriage has been most consequential for these two groups since the 1960s,” per the report.
The report’s authors say that roughly 47% of couples who married in the 1990s will divorce, but the risk is lower for those who married in the 2000s, at about 44%. And if current patterns hold true, those marrying for the first time now have a 60% chance their marriage will last, though divorce among older, long-married couples is a wild card.
The report notes that University of Virginia sociologist Yifeng Wan used a different method to reach a similar estimate. In an article titled “No Longer a Coin Toss,” Wan predicted about 42% of new first-time marriages will end in divorce.
But the new numbers don’t seem to promise a return to the 1950s and that era’s widespread views that marriage is both good and for life — “all the stuff that goes into that sort of Rockwellian picture of the 1950s,” Bailey said. “We see, instead, selection effects going on here. We see a division in how Americans are leading their lives and we also see that people are getting married later in life. We think it’s a combination of these factors that contributes to the new picture of marriage that we’re getting today.”
In a separate article, Bailey, Stone and Wilcox noted data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation that found new marriages are now stronger than in every decade since the 1950s. “If later-year divorce rates look more like the 1960s, then we should see about 40% of these marriages end in divorce. But if marriages trend toward further stability, then we see under 40% of first marriages ending in divorce.”
Good news for kids
The report notes that nonmarital childbearing has decreased slightly, to roughly 40%, after increasing for decades. “This matters for family stability because children born out of wedlock are significantly more likely to see their parents break up,” per the report.
That, combined with an increase in marriage and fewer divorces, indicates greater stability for children.
All those gains are small, but could indicate a long-term trend is changing, Wilcox and Bailey told Deseret News.
In 2012, the share of kids raised in married-parent families was 64%. Today, it stands at 66%. Meanwhile, the share of kids raised in a single-parent family has fallen by 2 percentage points over the last decade, while the share in an intact biological two-parent family was 54% in 2024, compared to about half in 2014.
“These reversals mean that marriage is back as the cornerstone of American family life,” the report said. “Stable marriage is increasingly the way that most men and women are raising children.”
But it’s not an equal situation. While 87% of children whose parents are educated, affluent, religious and conservative are probably in two-parent married families, the number is just 42% in lower-income families.
If young adults say ‘I don’t’
The institute predicts that a sizable share — one-third — of young adults will not ever marry. One-fourth of today’s young adults will never have children.
Marriage now attracts those with resources and what the report calls a “cultural commitment to succeed at family life,” which makes that family life more stable for kids. But it’s also likely that more young adults than ever before will not form families at all.
And the report notes that prime-aged men and women — those 25-55 — are not seeing an increase in how many wed. They’re not part of any marriage “comeback,” the report said.
The authors wrote that the institute isn’t sure what the future of marriage is among those prime-age adults. And they’re needed if there’s to be a “marriage renaissance.”
Will it happen? The authors reported that “we are not sure about the trajectory of the institution for adults. On the one hand, political polarization between the sexes, the falling fortunes of men, and the digital revolution’s degradation of social skills and dating opportunities among young adults leave us worried about the future fortunes of marriage.”
Reasons to marry
Research suggests that those who find the most meaning and happiness are married parents, per the 2023 General Social Survey. And research by Princeton University and Brookings Institution found that children being raised by stably married parents are more apt to thrive than others.
Bailey said children living with their married biological parents have lower rates of depression. They have higher grades. “They go on and do better in life, and they tend to go form more stable families themselves. And this isn’t merely a selection.”
He quotes research co-written by Andrew C. Johnston, an associate economics professor at the University of Texas, that notes negative impact of divorce on children, including more depression, less time with dad, more time traveling between homes and more incarceration later.
The General Social Survey in 2024 found married men and women are at least twice as likely to be “very happy” as their unmarried peers. Wilcox wrote recently on the topic for The Atlantic: “Married people — men and women both — live longer, are more financially secure and build more wealth than single Americans."
Married men work harder, are more successful at work and drink less, as well, he said.