Mona Charen has a fine column, "Social Pressure to Marry is Dead." She makes this strong claim:
"The collapse of marriage among the lower and lower-middle classes is rapidly tapping our national strength."
I agree. In fact, I believe this is the number one domestic problem in our country. If the poorer classes married and stayed married, child poverty would nearly disappear, crime of all kinds would decline, drug use would decline, household poverty would go way down, home ownership would stabilize, and general happiness would rise.
I think in general that things are getting better in the world. This includes the marriage rate among the educated classes, which is rising.
But one thing that is getting worse is the marriage rate among the bottom classes. And this is dragging everything else down.
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I suspect that if child poverty disappeared, crime declined, drug use declined, household poverty went down, and home ownership stabilized, more people in the lower classes would marry.
Rebuilding poor families will reduce the social problems that they create. Trying to reduce the symptoms, without reducing the cause, seems to me to require magic.
Marriage in todays society is difficult, however, marriage between two people starts out with love and commitment and needs to grow as the marriage matures, wether its lower class or upper class. Couples have gotten lazy in working on there marriage, to many activities out there that take away from the marriage. A strong marriage dose take work but it has its rewards. Couples forget the marriage vows. Review them, remember what you said to each other. My wife and I have been through ever type of misfortune from illness to finances and our love is stronger now after 38 years of marriage. If all married couples would do this, all the items in this article would stabilize and improve in all classes.
I suspect that if ... household poverty went down, and home ownership stabilized, more people in the lower classes would marry.
Agreed, since with less household poverty and more home ownership they likely wouldn't be "lower class" anymore.
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