Notes to The Marriage Problem

1. David Popenoe and Barbara Dafoe Whitehead, The State of Our Unions 2002 (Piscataway, New Jersey: The National Marriage Project of Rutgers University, June 2002): 18-20.

2. The United States has the world's highest divorce rate. Although the incidence of divorce in the United States has declined modestly since its historic peak in the early 1980s, the U.S. refined divorce rate (divorces per 1,000 married women age fifteen or older) was about 19.5 in 1998, compared to 9.2 in 1960. Of all Americans age fifteen or older in 2000, about 8.3 percent were divorced, more than four times the 1.8 percent in 1960. Of all recent first marriages in the United States, between 40 and 45 percent are likely to end in divorce. See: United Nations Statistical Yearbook (New York: United Nations Department of Economic and Social Information and Policy Analysis, 1995). Daphne Spain and Suzanne M. Bianchi, Balancing Act: Motherhood, Marriage, and Employment Among American Women (New York: Russell Sage, 1996), 47. (Some evidence suggests that Russian divorce rates may now be roughly equivalent to U.S. rates.) See also David Blankenhorn, "Knowing Full Well," Propositions 9 (New York: Institute for American Values, summer 2000): 4-5.

3. In 2000, about 33.2 percent of all U.S. births occurred to unmarried women. See Joyce A. Martin, et al., "Births: Final Data for 2000," National Vital Statistics Reports 50, no. 5 (Hyattsville, Md: National Center for Health Statistics, February 12, 2002).

4. Before they reach the age of eighteen, more than half of all American children are likely to spend at least a significant part of their childhood living in a one-parent home, usually a father-absent home. About half of all father absence in the United States stems from unmarried childbearing, and about half from divorce.

5. U.S. Bureau of the Census, Report WP/98, World Population Profile: 1998 (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1999).

6. Brigitte Berger, The Family in the Modern Age (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2002), esp. chapter 5; Linda J. Waite and Maggie Gallagher, The Case for Marriage (New York: Doubleday, 2000); James Q. Wilson, The Marriage Problem (New York: Harper Collins, 2002; and Tom W. Smith, The Emerging 21st Century American Family (Chicago: National Opinion Research Center, 1999).

7. Remarks at the Annual Symposium of the Institute for American Values in Washington, DC, February 12, 2002.

8. Roland C. Warren, testimony to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Non-Governmental Listening Session, November 26, 2001 (Gaithersburg, Maryland: National Fatherhood Initiative, 2001). David Popenoe, Life Without Father (New York: The Free Press, 1996): 19-51. David Blankenhorn, Fatherless America (New York: Basic Books, 1995): 1-5.

9. Suzanne M. Bianchi, Lekha Subaiya, and Joan R. Kahn, "The Gender Gap in the Economic Well-Being of Nonresident Fathers and Custodial Mothers," Demography 35, no. 2 (May 1999): 195-203.

10. See, William J. Goode, World Changes in Divorce Patterns (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993); and Don S. Browning, Marriage and Modernization (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, forthcoming).

11. Wade F. Horn, David Blankenhorn, and Mitchell B. Pearlstein (eds.), The Fatherhood Movement (Lanham, Md: Lexington Books, 1999).

12. The Marriage Movement: A Statement of Principles (New York: Institute for American Values, 2000).

13. Marriage in America: A Report to the Nation (1995); A Call to Fatherhood (1996); A Call to Civil Society: Why Democracy Needs Moral Truths (1998); Turning the Corner on Father Absence in Black America (1999); A Call to Family-Supportive Tax Reform (1999); The Marriage Movement: A Statement of Principles (2000); Why Marriage Matters: Twenty-One Conclusions from the Social Sciences (2002).

14. Norval Glenn, Closed Hearts, Closed Minds: The Textbook Story of Marriage (1997); Paul C. Vitz, The Course of True Love: Marriage in High School Textbooks (1998); Maggie Gallagher, The Age of Unwed Mothers: Is Teen Pregnancy the Problem? (1999); Dan Cere, The Experts' Story of Courtship (2000); Dana Mack, Hungry Hearts: Evaluating the New Curricula for Teens on Marriage and Relationships (2000); Norval Glenn and Elizabeth Marquardt, Hooking Up, Hanging Out, and Hoping for Mr. Right: College Women on Dating and Mating Today (2001); and Linda Waite, et al., Does Divorce Make People Happy? Findings from a Study of Unhappy Marriages (2002).

15. David Blankenhorn, Steven Bayme, and Jean Bethke Elshtain (eds.), Rebuilding the Nest (1990); Barbara Dafoe Whitehead, "Dan Qualye Was Right," The Atlantic (1993); David Blankenhorn, Fatherless America (1995); Maggie Gallagher, The Abolition of Marriage (1996); David Popenoe, Jean Bethke Elshtain, and David Blankenhorn (eds.), Promises to Keep (1996); Dana Mack, The Assault on Parenthood (1997); Wade Horn, David Blankenhorn, and Mitchell B. Pearlstein (eds.), The Fatherhood Movement (1999); Linda Waite and Maggie Gallagher, The Case for Marriage (2000); Dana Mack and David Blankenhorn (eds.), The Book of Marriage (2001).

16. For example, our national consultation on covenant marriage, held in August of 1998, was one of the first times-it may have been the first time-that marriage leaders gathered together to discuss the possibility and theme of a "marriage movement."  Our marriage consultation held in January 2000 led directly to the public appeal, The Marriage Movement: A Statement of Principles, which introduced the term and idea of "marriage movement" in the public debate.

17. Our Council on Families, convened in 1991, constituted the first time in more than three decades that a national group of prominent scholars came together for interdisciplinary deliberation, collaborative research, and public education on the status and future of marriage. The institute also helped to give birth to, and David Blankenhorn served as the founding chairman of, the National Fatherhood Initiative (founded in 1995).

18. Alex Kotlowitz, "It Takes a Wedding," New York Times, November 13, 2002.

19. Jane Eisner, "After 35 years, marriage found its spot on society's center stage," St. Paul Pioneer Press, post date January 2, 2003.

20. Judith Stacey, "Family Values Forever," The Nation, July 9, 2001.

21. Maureen Freely, The Observer (London), November 19, 2001, p. 1.

22. Jennifer McKim, "Jumping the Relationship," Orange County Register, August 6, 2002.

23. Blain Hardin, "2-Parent Families Rise After Change in Welfare Laws," New York Times, August 12, 2001.

24. For a summary of the evidence see the special symposium on "Marriage and Children," American Experiment Quarterly 4, no. 2 (Minneapolis: Center of the American Experiment, summer 2001).

25. U.S. Census Bureau, "Families, by Presence of Own Children Under 18: 1950 to Present," Internet Table FM-1 (Internet Release date: June 29, 2001); and "Living Arrangements of Children Under 18 Years Old: 1960 to Present," Internet Table CH-1 (Internet Release date: June 29, 2001). Allen Dupree and Wendell Primus, Declining Share of Children Lived With Single Mothers in the Late 1990s (Washington, DC: Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, June 15, 2001). Sharon Vandivere, Kristen Anderson Moore, and Martha Zaslow, Children's Family Environments: Findings from the National Survey of America's Families (Washington, DC: Urban Institute, 2001).

26. See Isabel V. Sawhill, "From Welfare to Work," Brookings Review 19, no. 3 (Summer 2001): 4-7. Discussing the recent demographic data, the journalist and respected welfare-reform author Mickey Kaus ("The Good Big News," kausfiles.com, post date June 20, 2001) writes: "Did something conspicuous happen between 1995 and 2000 that might have caused this positive shift? Yes-or at least something happened that was supposed to cause the shift, namely, the 1996 welfare reform."

27. See David Blankenhorn, "Pursuing Happiness," Propositions 5 (Summer 1999): 8-9.

28. See Sharon Lerner, "Good and Bad Marriage, Boon and Bane to Health," New York Times, October 22, 2002.

29. Waite and Gallagher, The Case for Marriage, chapter 12.

30. Jesse Bernard, The Future of Marriage (New York: Bantam, 1972)