Vow-to books: liberals and conservatives now agree that the institution of marriage needs help. But neither side knows what to do about it

Washington Monthly, July-August, 2002 by Lynda McDonnell

ON THE AUGUST DAY WHEN MY husband and I were married, the priest's homily clashed with the careful harmony of an ode set to Beethoven and bridesmaids in patchwork skirts. He cited statistics on the chances of divorce: low if you were Catholic and active in your church, higher if you believed in God but slept in on Sundays, off the charts if you were an atheist who lived in California.

I wondered then if he was slyly placing odds on the durability of our new-made marriage. More likely, he was warning us. It was 1975, when the notions of open marriage and no-fault divorce looked ominous, and for a priest in small-town Minnesota, California seemed like the epicenter of apostasy and new twists on sin.

None of us had yet seen the dreary consequences of treating fidelity as passe and marriage as a pact that could be traded like a used car when it started riding rough. We know better now. Pick your indicator: One-third of U.S. births are to unmarried women (it's nearly 70 percent among African Americans), and the rates continue to climb. The assorted damage inflicted upon children by poor, neglectful, and abusive families--all of which are more common in single-parent homes--is well documented.

Meanwhile, the young adults whose parents married in the 1970s are cohabiting more and marrying later, if at all. True, the divorce rate for first marriages has fallen to about 43 percent from 50 percent. But analysts believe the decline has more to do with rising rates of cohabitation, which takes the worst risks out of the marriage pool, and a growing incidence of divorce later in life, than more hopeful developments. For second marriages, the divorce rate remains at about 60 percent.

Many young men and women want the affection and security of marriage but can't seem to find the right partner or are themselves unwilling to commit. As essayist Anne Roiphe writes in her new book, Married: A Fine Predicament: "There is abroad in the land an acute anxiety about marriage." While President Bush wants poor people to get married, various social critics urge middle-class Americans to stay married.

A crop of new books assesses why our collective hopes for marital bliss have soured and what might be done about it. Viewed together, they reflect a surprising consensus that has emerged of late between liberals and conservatives over the virtues of, if not the road to, holy matrimony. It's a consensus that's been largely overshadowed by recent partisan debates over whether the government should be getting involved in such private decisions as to whether poor people ought to get married. But this new development represents something of a detente in the 30-year culture war over gender roles, family values, and the meaning of tying the knot.

Among the authors to take on the subject recently are Roiphe, criminologist James Q. Wilson, and E. Mavis Hetherington, an emeritus psychology professor at the University of Virginia who has studied families for decades. Roiphe and Wilson are the yin and yang of the marriage debate--a liberal feminist focused on the marriage gap for middle-class women of her daughters' generation, and a conservative criminologist concerned about out-of-wedlock births among poor, inner-city minorities.

But both are partners in long and happy marriages, and they share a deep concern about the erosion of marriage and families. They agree on several fundamentals: Marriage is valuable to society and individuals, particularly children; living together is not the same as marriage--it's generally short-term, shallow-rooted, and emotionally bruising; the value our society places on personal freedom conflicts with the compromise and support needed for marriage; many people expect too much and give too little in marriage.

But their paths to this common ground could hardly be more divergent. Roiphe writes in lyrical terms from the emotional heart of marriage, drawing from the miserable marriage of her parents, her own unhappy first marriage, and then her present happy one, which has endured for 34 years. Her tone is wryly maternal; one pretext for writing the book was to persuade her unmarried daughters that, despite its obvious risks, marriage is worth the plunge.

Wilson's The Marriage Problem, meanwhile, probes marriage in a more detached fashion. He scans anthropological reports, sociological studies, and historical accounts for the causes and effects of the breakdown in marriage and suggests possible remedies. While Roiphe focuses on what happens in private, between husband and wife, Wilson looks to welfare policy, the history of the Enlightenment, and the legacy of slavery.

Both writers face a fundamental dilemma. Marriage is clearly a good thing for society. It promotes social stability, the well-being of children, better health, higher incomes, and more family support during illness and life's other travails. Being loved and honored in an enduring relationship is good for people. The long and contentedly married even have better and more frequent sex. (Take that, Hugh Hefner.)