“Marriage in Middle America in Trouble”
New York, NY – December 6, 2010: Drawing on the latest national data, the 2010 issue of The State of Our Unions, When Marriage Disappears: The Retreat from Marriage in Middle America, concludes that in Middle America, marriage is in trouble.
New data indicate that trends in nonmarital childbearing, divorce, and marital quality in Middle America increasingly resemble those of the poor, where marriage is fragile and weak. However, among the highly educated and affluent, marriage is stable and appears to be getting even stronger. "When Marriage Disappears" is the first report to address the causes of the retreat from marriage in Middle America; it finds that shifts in marriage attitudes, increases in unemployment, and declines in religious attendance are among the trends driving the retreat from marriage in Middle America. And in a striking reversal of historic trends, highly educated Americans are moving to embrace a pro-marriage mindset even as Middle Americans are losing faith in marriage. These are the main findings of the new report released today by the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia and the Center for Marriage and Families at the Institute for American Values.
