With the recently released numbers regarding poverty levels in America, public concern is heightened, in particular, regarding the plight of America’s impoverished children. This concern should generate a focus on what might empower them to rise up from poverty—and, in turn, what factors promote stable marriages. Research clearly indicates that one of the most important factors in a child’s welfare is whether she is born to married parents. Children raised by single parents are seven times more likely to live in poverty than peers in families with two married parents. …
A new report -The 2009 “State of our Unions”- out of the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia and the Institute for American Values, reports that divorce fell during the first full year of the Great Recession, the first annual dip since 2005. “Tough times foster real family solidarity and encourage many couples to stick together,” says UVA sociology professor W. Bradford Wilcox, director of the National Marriage Project. “Many couples are rediscovering the longstanding sociological truth that marriage is one of society’s best social insurance plans.”
