The Changing Face of Marriage

In the United States today, society is rapidly moving to a time when all people, regardless of sexual orientation, will have equal opportunity under the law to get married. At present, same-sex marriage is legal in seventeen states and the District of Columbia.  Same sex marriage in Utah, which was the eighteenth state to legalize such unions, has been halted by the Supreme Court and is currently under appeal.**

The face of marriage has been transforming over the past four decades. When abortion became legal in the 1970s and women were granted the legal right to choose to have children, childbirth became separated from the fundamental design of marriage. Cohabiting couples, single parent families and married couples choosing not to have children have increased. Many individuals wanted to find a life partner with whom they could create a marriage focused on self-expression and fulfillment. Raising children became one choice, among many, that a couple could make.

Some marriage experts have been concerned that the institution of traditional marriage between a man and a woman has grown more fragile. In addition to the efforts to legalize same-sex marriage, many people base their concern on the continuing high divorce rate, the declining marriage rate and the numbers of people in alternative lifestyles. Their concern is that these social trends have significant consequences for the stability of the family and for the well-being of children.

In 2011, a panel of renowned social scientists and marriage experts made 30 specific conclusions around the importance of marriage in American society (Wilcox, 2011). Their report said that, among other things, children are more likely to thrive, enjoy greater family stability and have better relationships when they grow up in a married family with both their father and their mother. Also, the likelihood of these children failing at marriage later in their own lives decreases. There is also evidence that adolescents who grow up in stable lesbian partnerships do as well as those children who grow up in stable heterosexual families (van Gelderen, L., Bos H. & Gartrell N., et al., 2012). In fifty years, it will be interesting to study the well-being of children raised in stable homes of couples in legal same-sex marriages of either sex compared to stable homes of couples in heterosexual marriages.

The 2011 panel also found that children of married couples have greater economic advantages because married couples build more wealth than either cohabiting couples or single parent homes. Children who live in two parent families tend to enjoy better physical health on average, than do children who grow up in other family lifestyles. One wonders what role partnership in long-term marriage plays in fostering happy healthy children, independent of the genetics, the sex or the sexual orientation of the both parents. My vision is that children will be nurtured, feel loved and grow to their greatest potential in healthy and vibrant families of both heterosexual and same-sex married couples where partnership is a way of relating to each other and a way of living.

 References

van Gelderen, L., Bos H., Gartrell N., et al. (2012) Quality of life of adolescents raised from birth by lesbian mothers. Journal of Developmental & Behavioral Pediatrics. 33(1), 1-7.

Wilcox, W.B. (2011). Why marriage matters, third edition: Thirty Conclusions from the social sciences. New York, N.Y.: The Institute for American Values.

**Same-sex marriage became legal in the United States on June 26, 2015, when the Supreme Court struck down all state bans on same-sex marriage in all fifty states.  The Supreme Court also required all states to honor out-of-state same-sex marriages.

Posted in Partnership Marriage