Is Marriage Dying?

In The Boston Globe, Jeff Jacoby debunks the New York Times' front-page headline that 51% of American women are living without husbands.  (HT: Family Scholars Blog)  Apparently, the Times counted high school girls as "women living without husbands" as well as the millions of women whose husbands are in the military, working out of town, or institutionalized.  In reality, marriage is not on its way out.  Jacoby cites data from a new book by David Blankenhorn:

Divorce rates are declining modestly.

Teen pregnancy rates are dramatically lower.

Rates of reported marital happiness, after a long slide, appear to be rising. And a substantial majority of American children, 67 percent, are being raised by married parents.

By even wider margins, young Americans look forward to being married: 70 percent of 12th-grade boys and 82 percent of 12th-grade girls describe having a good marriage and family life as "extremely important" to them. Even higher percentages say that they expect to marry.

The '60s, the sexual revolution, no-fault divorce, the rise of single motherhood -- there is no question that marriage has been through a wringer. Yet our most important social insitution remains a social ideal. Boys and girls still aspire to become husbands and wives.