The Movement to Strengthen Marriage and Families

by Lynn D. Wardle

There is a quietly growing grassroots movement in the United States to reform laws and government policies to strengthen marriage. Evidence is mounting that a profound shift in social values in favor of “traditional” marriage and families is quietly emerging throughout the country.

For example, respondents to a recent survey who answered that divorce should be harder to get outnumbered those thinking it should be easier nearly three-to-one, and outnumbered those thinking it should be the same or easier nearly two-to-one -- the highest percentage to say they thought divorce is too easy in 30 years. Another survey in 1999 reported that fifty percent of those surveyed agreed that “it should be harder than it is now for married couples to get a divorce,” while 61% agreed that it should “be harder than it now is for couples with young children to get a divorce,” and 64% agreed that people “should be required to take a marriage-education course before they can get a marriage license.” Many people believe that the current high rate of divorce is harmful to the rising generation, hurts children, and causes a host of social problems. The generation of the children of no-fault divorce, especially, seem to want to strengthen marriages and discourage divorce.

Legislation is reflecting this social trend. In 1997, Louisiana enacted its landmark “covenant marriage” law allowing couples to choose to reject no-fault grounds for divorce and requiring pre-marital and pre-divorce counseling. The following year Arizona followed suit, and his year Arkansas has enacted covenant marriage. Approximately half of the state legislatures have had similar bills introduced. A variety of other proposals to strengthen marriage and reduce divorce have been introduced, including marriage education, premarital counseling, marital conciliation, precommitment (contract) proposals, stricter divorce grounds, and procedural restrictions.

However, simultaneously, we are also experiencing contradictory social trends such as a dramatic increase in nonmarital cohabitation, increased experimentation with other “alternative-to-traditional-marriage” relations, an unprecedented ratio of children being born out of wedlock, to mention just three equally significant but opposing social developments. For example, “[t]here was a 71 percent increase in the number of unmarried partners living together between 1990 and 2000, the latest census finds. It dwarfed the growth in married-couple households, up [only] 7 percent the past decade.” Nonmarital cohabitation now accounts for about 5 percent [5 million] of all households in America, up from the 3 percent reported just ten years ago. Recent surveys report that nearly 50% of young adults cohabit nonmaritally. “Premarital childbearing is on the rise not only among teenage women but also among older women.” A recent government report verified that “53 percent of first births between 1990 and 1994 to women 15 to 29 years old were either born out-of-wedlock (40 percent) or conceived before the woman's first marriage (13 percent). About 60 years ago, only one out six births (18 percent) was born or conceived before marriage.”

In other words, a significant separation is occurring in American society concerning family formation, structure, relations and policy. For the individual that means that there are more family lifestyle choices today, more tolerance of a wider range of choices, and the socially acceptable choices are clearer (more diametrical) than they have been before. For families, it means there is more diversity in relationship models, circumstances, and needs; more social support for some (alternative) forms and less support for others (traditional); more stress, more centrifugal pressures to cope with, and less common experience. For society, it means that there is more conflict in policy values and less social homogeneity. People who wish to turn the family policy ship of state are paddling furiously, with more (and more different) paddles than ever before, on both sides of the boat.

It truly is the best of times and the worst of times for marriages and families. Today people with common values who support traditional family values must find each other and work together to defend their common ground. Every voice and vote and effort matters. Cooperation and unity in the pursuit of common goals to protect the institution and values of the family are essential if the movement to strengthen families is to succeed.

Lynn D. Wardle is a Professor of Law at Brigham Young University School of Law and an expert on Family Law, Constitutional Family Law, and Comparative and International Family Law.

1. Lynn D. Wardle, Divorce Reform at the Turn of the Millennium: Certainties and Possibilities, 33 Family Law Quarterly 783 (1999).

2. Washington Post/Kaiser/Harvard Survey Project American Values: 1998 National Survey of Americans on Values at p. 7, Q12 (asked whether divorce should be easier, harder or same as it is response was: Easier 22, Harder 62, Same 11). <http://www.kff.org/archive/media/projects/values/values.pdf> (searched Aug 3, 1999).