Why Australia needs a renewed culture of natural marriage

Thousands of recent research projects in the fields of sociology, psychology, anthropology, and medicine all testify to one truth: children predictably do best when they are born into a married-couple home and raised by their two natural parents. This might be the most unassailable truth in all social science.

Why? According to a recent American Academy of Pediatrics Panel, “Marriage is beneficial in many ways” because “people behave differently when they are married. They have healthier lifestyles, eat better, and mother each others’ health.” The Panel stressed that this advantage is not found in step family households nor in households headed by unmarried cohabitating parents. (Pediatrics, 2003) Another research team found that the advantages given to children by intact marriages extend beyond the individual child: the existence of marriages also predicts the overall health of a school and a neighbourhood, that is, intact families are essential for creating “a social world [that] is ordered in ways that generally favor young persons.” (Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency, 2004.)

This advantage of the natural parent, marriage-based home holds up when compared to sole-parent, step-parent, same-sex, cohabitating, or communal households. Sometimes the advantage is extraordinary. Regarding child abuse, for example, data from Canada showed that preschool-age children living with their natural parents are forty times less likely to become abuse victims than are those living with a step parent. (Ethology and Sociobiology, 1985.)

Now, as a cautionary aside, I note such social science data, not to criticise step-parents - most of whom do wonderful jobs - but to underscore the “rational” societal interest behind encouraging “natural marriage” households.

The children from such homes are also much healthier, in both mind and body than those growing up in any other setting. They achieve, on average, higher grades in school; indeed, family structure is superior to all other competing theoretical explanations for differences in child achievement. (Journal of Early Adolescence, 2000; Social Problems, 2000.)

Natural marriage is for the good of the children.

The second reason Australia needs a renewed culture of natural marriage is because it is good for adults.

Natural marriage gives life. Researchers from Princeton University report that married men and women live longer.

Natural marriage gives health. A French study found that married mothers with children at home enjoyed significant improvement in their health. (Social Science and Medicine, 2000.) Even in Sweden, where lone mothers enjoy generous welfare benefits, they experience important health disadvantages when compared to married mothers. (Social Science and Medicine, 2000.) Indeed, single or lone mothers are three times more likely to have experienced “a major depressive disorder”. (Journal of Marriage and Family, 1997.)

Natural marriage creates greater wealth. Married individuals, compared to the unmarried, gain nearly three times as much wealth over their lifetimes. (Journal of Marriage and Family, 2003 and Journal of Marriage and Family, 2002.)

And natural marriage brings happiness. “Deep depression” is rarest among the married. (Journal of Health and Social Behavior, 2002) A survey of 17 nations found married adults reporting significantly higher levels of personal happiness than their unmarried peers. Contrary to feminist claims that wedlock benefits only men, the study showed that “marriage protects females just as much from unhappiness as it protects males”. (Journal of Marriage and the Family, 1998.)

The third reason that Australia needs a renewed culture of marriage is because it is good for the commonwealth, or the state.