Media Spotlight Welcome On ‘Retreat from Marriage’

Ken McIntyre / December 08, 2010

In a pleasant surprise, a startling new report on the “disappearance of marriage” is getting serious attention from liberal media outlets. It’s a good day for the American family when NPR, CNN and The New York Times all take note of a study warning that divorce, childbearing outside marriage and single parenthood have become the norm—imperiling not only the wellbeing of children but the American Dream itself.

The most dramatic finding of the report released Monday is that, since the 1970s, marriage has declined most sharply among “moderately educated” Americans. Study author W. Bradford Wilcox defines this group as those with a high school education and perhaps some college; they make up the biggest number of adults today.

We’re facing a widening “marriage gap,” Wilcox writes in “When Marriage Disappears: The Retreat from Marriage in Middle America”: If you’re a college graduate, you’re more likely to marry, have children and remain happily married than is someone with a high school diploma who didn’t finish college. (more…)