EXCLUSIVE – The United States is facing a cultural inflection point when it comes to values regarding marriage, childbearing, divorce, cohabitation and abortion, according to a recent report from The Heritage Foundation. Despite the fact that research shows children raised by their married, biological parents have better outcomes, that hasn’t been the trend in American life in recent decades.
Heritage scholars Delano Squires and Rachel Sheffield conducted a deep dive into the state of the American family in their new report titled “Crossroads: American Family Life at the Intersection of Tradition and Modernity.” In the study, they argue through their research, that the nation is at a crossroads, with one path marked by declining marriage, low birth rates, high unwed childbearing, casual divorce and the rejection of biological sex, while the other path promotes marriage, childbearing and the understanding that children do best when raised by their married biological parents.
The report cited data that found Americans are getting married less and later, fewer children are being born, but more are born outside marriage, more couples are cohabitating, marriage and family are no longer priorities and that American singles are faced with a “connection conundrum.”
“A nation that rejects the importance of stable marriages and strong families for its well-being weakens its ability to pass on the blessings of prosperity to future generations,” the report reads. “This is the reality that Americans face today, and the direction they take now will determine the health and survival of the republic.”
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Sheffield told Fox News Digital that, despite technological advances, the U.S. is more disconnected now as a nation because of the decline in family formation and marital stability.
Marriage rates in the U.S. continue to decline, with married couples making up just 47% of households today as compared to 78% in 1950, which was irrespective of race, religion, or socioeconomic status. Now, 40% of children are born outside of marriage and the overall birth rate is at a record low.
“Forty percent of children are born to single mothers today, and nearly two-thirds of births to those single mothers are to women who are cohabiting with a romantic partner (either the child’s father or another romantic partner) at the time of the child’s birth,” the study cites. “Thus, about a quarter of U.S. children live in a cohabiting parent household at some point in their lives.”
Additionally, more adults aged 18 to 44 have cohabited, 59%, than have been married, 50%. Most cohabitation relationships end in a break-up and while they may anticipate marriage in the future, this often does not happen, the report states.
“Approximately half of cohabiting parents who have a child together break up by the time their child turns three, compared to just 13 percent of married parents,” the study continues. “By age 12, two-thirds of cohabiting parents have broken up, compared to one-quarter of married parents.”
For those that do get married, the median age for a first marriage has gone up by about eight years for women and about seven years for men.
“More Americans today have cohabited, so lived together outside of marriage with a romantic partner, than have been married,” Sheffield said. “As we continue to see the rates of the age of first marriage increase and marriage decline, we’ll just have fewer people married.”
In tandem, the total fertility rate has decreased from 3.65 in 1960 to 1.62 in 2023, with many couples simply choosing not to have kids.
Over 40% of respondents aged 18 to 49 said they are unlikely to ever have children, according to a Pew Research Center survey from 2021. Some people said they simply didn’t want to have children, while other reasons included medical issues, finances, no partner and age, as well as “the state of the world” and climate change.
Sheffield said leaders in the lives of children and young adults need to equip them with the skills they need to have healthy marriages.
“Most people still do want to get married, but not knowing how to get there,” she said. “Particularly for those in lower income and working class America, where we’re seeing the most family breakdown, having models of that, having the vision and knowing how to do that has also declined.”
Squires agreed, arguing that a big part of fixing the decline in the value placed on the nuclear family is raising awareness, including getting public officials to see this as something that is worthy of their time and attention, even if it doesn’t mean that a new law is going to be passed.
“The bully pulpit is extremely powerful and very effective as it relates to declaring public virtue and public values,” Squires said. “I think messengers in this area need to promote the belief that marriage is valuable, desirable, accessible, and indispensable for the purpose of starting a family both of this generation and to future generations.”
The decline in marriage is also attributable to what Sheffield and Squires call the “connection conundrum.”
“One of the greatest factors associated with happiness is having a healthy marriage, and we talk about this loneliness epidemic in society and really a lot of that is related to the decline in marriage,” she said.
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Given the ubiquity of smartphones and social media, in theory it should be much easier for people to connect, but Squires said singles are finding it even harder to meet people now than in decades past.
“While there’s the illusion that people are more connected, that online connection is not translating into real-life connection,” he said. “In some ways, I would argue that technology makes it even harder to find a spouse because the apps are not geared towards marriage, they’re geared towards short term relationships, if even that.”
“There’s this notion that we’ve reached sort of the pinnacle of progress, but there’s nothing holding any of the things that we currently see as this progress, in terms of family formation, holding them in their place in perpetuity,” he added.
If America continues on its current trajectory, Squires said family life is going to be more complicated and complex as families will be fractured, fewer kids will grow up with a dad and singles will find it increasingly difficult to meet one another.
“What you’re going to see is family trees that are all jumbled to put it nicely and, eventually, you’re going to have a situation where people are not even going to know who their parents are and if you’re in a large town or a small city, you’re going to have kids who end up dating their half sibling’s, half sibling eventually,” he said. “I don’t think that this is a pretty picture and this is not sort of doom and gloom, but it’s taking an honest assessment of what the data tell us right now.”
Squires stressed the fact that even though conversations around marriage and family are often framed in partisan terms, he and Sheffield see this as a bipartisan issue.
“These are changes that are societal changes and not just unique to one particular party or one particular political ideology,” he said.
