WASHINGTON — Americans aren’t getting married or having children the way they once were.
Identifying the causes and how to remedy the issue were at the center of Friday’s discussion at the release of the 11th American Family Survey, hosted by the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C.
The report intends to generate thought and discussion about American families and “how it is impacted by politics and how it impacts politics,” said Jeremy C. Pope, report co-author and political science professor at Brigham Young University.
Is America unaffordable?
A major theme of Friday’s panel discussion, moderated by E.J. Dionne of the Brookings Institution, was affordability. Family life has changed over the years, but more Americans today cite affordability as a major concern about raising children.
This year’s survey finds more than 7 in 10 Americans say it’s unaffordable, which is an increase of 13 percentage points since 2024.
The issue of affordability isn’t a partisan one. Both Democrats and Republicans are concerned about the cost of raising children, report co-author and political science professor at Brigham Young University Christopher K. Karpowitz noted.
The bipartisan agreement that it’s become unaffordable to raise children in the U.S. is also seen in the nearly half of all respondents who said the government should assist families, either through paying money directly to parents or putting money into programs and institutions.
Brookings senior fellow Vanessa Williamson noted that there was “quite a lot of agreement” across political parties that the government has a role in bringing down costs. The COVID-19 pandemic-era child tax credit aided families and is a tested method of cutting costs, “and yet we don’t have it now,” she said.
“I think that really speaks fundamentally to the political dysfunction, that we can’t get even bipartisan priorities across the finish line in a consistent way, at least when it comes to things that are approved by partisans at a mass level,” Williamson said. “There’s a problem at the top that we really ought to be talking about.”
In today’s political climate, it would be hard to get bipartisan support at the federal level to have affordability legislation cross the finish line, Williamson said, but it may be easier at the state level. For example, Utah Gov. Spencer Cox, a Republican, has stated that one of his top priorities is reducing the cost of housing.
Brad Wilcox, a senior fellow at the Institute for Family Studies, argued that the areas that have hiked up costs include housing, health care and education. If those prices come down, Americans wouldn’t be so stressed about the high price tag of raising children, he said.
“If it’s a priority to make marriage easier, to make having children easier, you have to address these fundamental questions about, what do we do to make it so that you’re not looking at vast losses in income in order to have children?” Williamson echoed.
The nationally representative survey was conducted Aug. 16-18 by YouGov for Brigham Young University’s Wheatley Institute, BYU’s Center for the Study of Elections and Democracy, and Deseret News. The survey has a margin of error of plus or minus 2.1 percentage points.
Not only are Americans more likely to say having kids is unaffordable, but many are not considering it for their future.
Single adults and the perception of marriage
According to the survey, Americans increasingly express lower levels of support for the ideas that marriage is needed to create a strong family and to make people better off financially, and that society is better off with more married people. Respondents aren’t becoming hostile to the concept of marriage, but rather indifferent to it, the report found.
It could be that women are putting off marriage and children in the pursuit of a career. It could also be that women bear the economic, mental and physical burden of being a homemaker and a mother. Women tend to feel like they have to “do it all,” while they don’t feel like their partners do, Allison Pond, the editor of the American Family Survey, said.
There’s a sort of cost-benefit analysis going on, where women are asking themselves “what are the benefits?” of creating a relationship with someone, she said.
Daniel Cox, the director of the American Enterprise Institute’s Survey Center on American Life, said that Americans have shifted the way they view institutions to ask, “What am I getting out of this deal, as opposed to what can I help build?”
Wilcox, who teaches at the University of Virginia, said he sees concerns among his female students about finding a partner who helps promote gender equality in the family, as well as the “lack of male marriageability.”
“I think one of the challenges that we have to wrestle with going forward is can we … culturally build out a new model of masculinity that I think is distinctive for young men and compelling to them,” he said. “Which may not translate into kind of a complete 50/50 model when it comes to family life, but that does kind of give them a greater sense of agency, purpose and direction.”
Wilcox added, “Are we creating a culture where men can really embrace the responsibilities when it comes to education, work and family life?”
As for women, the panelists argued that high-achieving professional women, particularly on the left, need to advocate to other women that getting married and having children is rewarding and improves quality of life.
While the panelists highlighted that the survey data provides many different paths forward, they admitted it was concerning that the country is trending to see less marriages for a myriad of reasons.
Cox noted that one of those reasons is that people have increasingly held a “perception” about marriage as an institution.
“You can have all the data you want, sort of say these are all the financial and social and emotional benefits of marriage, but if the people you’re talking to don’t believe you, that’s a real problem,” Cox said.
Pond agreed, also noting that people’s perceptions of marriage differ and are influenced by the messaging they see about it.
“Where are the ideas coming from and how can we kind of get more into what we think marriage and family are supposed to be, and how we’re supposed to get there?” Pond said.
About the survey
The 2025 American Family Survey was the 11th edition of nationally representative data about how Americans view families and children.
It examines how families live, their beliefs on topics like social media use, artificial intelligence and immigration. This edition examined the affordability crisis threatening marriage, technology use in the family and moderation of online pornography.
The survey report can be found here:
The panel discussion can be found here: