Marriage on the Rocks: Economic and Social Consequences for Kids
In this op-ed Ron Haskins, co-director of the Brookings Center on Children and Families summarizes the massive changes to marriage, childbearing, and family formation over the last 40 years. These changes are associated with some positive developments for adults—more jobs and higher wages for women, more engagement with family and household responsibilities for men—but the results for children are troublesome. Haskins argues that as long as we know that children with married parents are more likely to succeed on a number of education, health, and social measures, we should not abandon efforts to increase marriage and reduce nonmarital childbearing. However, the trend toward more children being reared by single mothers, and the fact that this trend is now in its fifth decade, suggests that more and more of the nation’s children will be reared by single mothers in the future. It follows that we must continue to develop policies that increase the financial security of the mother-child household as well as of single fathers.
