Marriage Matters. - Review - book review

National Review, Oct 9, 2000 by James Q. Wilson

The Case for Marriage: Why Married People Are Happier, Healthier, and Better Off Financially, by Linda J. Waite and Maggie Gallagher (Doubleday, 260 pp., $24.95)

The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce, by Judith S. Wallerstein, Julia M. Lewis, and Sandra Blakeslee (Hyperion, 347 pp. $24.95)

Neither of these books could have been published forty years ago because then we did not have the facts on which they are based. But neither would have been published because nobody needed to be told that marriage is a good idea and divorce a bad one. Facts, and the times, have changed. And in our present culture, it is not yet clear that the message of either book will prove persuasive. As Linda Waite and Maggie Gallagher write on the first page of their book, over the last few decades we have managed to transform marriage, "the most basic and universal of human institutions, into something controversial." And as any academic expert reading Judith Wallerstein's book on divorce will know, a lot of scholars do not think divorce is such a bad idea.

Reviewing these books cannot be separated from reviewing a culture that has made what my parents thought was common sense into grounds for contention. The argument, of course, is not on the surface of things. Almost every American thinks having a happy marriage is a good idea and only a tiny minority believe that remaining single is an important goal. But what is true in theory is not true in practice. A lot of children are born to unwed mothers, many women getting married have to apologize for apparently giving up their "freedom," and divorce ends roughly half of all marriages. As sociologist Norval Glenn has shown, the proportion of people who are happy in their marriages has gone down since the early 1970s.

Waite and Gallagher set out to show that marriage is in fact very good for people in countless practical ways. Waite is a professor of sociology at the University of Chicago and former president of the Population Association; Gallagher directs the Marriage Project at the Institute for American Values in New York City. Both are well equipped to display the evidence, and it is extraordinarily persuasive.

Married people live longer than unmarried ones, and while they are alive have better sex lives than their unmarried counterparts. Being married helps them accumulate more wealth than single people and to live more cheaply than two individuals. Two cannot live more cheaply than one, but they can live more cheaply than two people who date each other but live apart. Married men are much less likely than bachelors to be criminals, alcoholics, or drug addicts, and this helps explain why they live longer. A wife tells them to settle down and stay away from nights at the barroom or the street corner, and most men respond. As a result their mortality rate is lower.

An obvious rejoinder to these facts is self-selection: Men who get money, avoid drugs, and stay away from crime are also the men who are likely to marry (and to find a woman who will marry them). Being married, therefore, explains nothing; it simply identifies people who know how to survive.

That argument cannot be entirely rebutted without a controlled experiment in which men are randomly assigned to marriage or bachelorhood; happily, social scientists can't do that. But the evidence strongly suggests that self-selection is not the key factor. No matter how men become unmarried-by being bachelors, becoming separated or divorced, or becoming widowers-they lose ground in terms of health.

Though marriage helps men's health and earnings, it is not true, as some suppose, that women are net losers. Married women acquire more wealth, their mental health improves, and their happiness increases. Raising children can, of course, put a lot of stress on women, but those who raise them single are psychologically worse off than those who are married. And for most women, having children is vastly more beneficial than whatever it costs in midnight feedings and endless chores.

Since marriage has so many benefits, especially for men, it is astonishing that it should be in so much trouble. If men on average are going to live longer, be happier, and earn more money when they marry, why do so many men reject it? A few have no interest in marriage because they are gay or confirmed bachelors, but for many decades an increasing number have also rejected marriage to women whom they have impregnated. It is as if something good were offered to people and, preoccupied with what is in their immediate interest, they reject it in favor of the pleasures of unmarried sex, brief cohabitations, unmarried parenthood, and frequent divorce. A bachelor may notice other men who are happily married, but he does not link their happiness to marriage. Instead, he repeats the tired jokes about not being "tied down" to the "old lady" when he could be "partying" with "babes." What babes? Sex for single men is less frequent and less enjoyable than for married ones. Men who choose to remain single spend most of their evenings at home, eating Cheez Dip and watching wrestling on television.