Nov. 19--Most Americans are satisfied with their own marriages, even as they believe the institution is crumbling around them, according to fascinating new American Family Survey data.
Conducted by Brigham Young University's Center for the Study of Elections and Democracy and Salt Lake City's Deseret News, the survey asked 3,000 nationally representative adults a series of questions about marriage and family.
Asked about their own marriage, 43 percent of respondents said it's stronger than it was two years ago, while 6 percent said it's weaker. But when asked about marriage in general, just 5 percent said it's stronger than two years ago, and 43 percent said it's weaker.
Richard Reeves, co-director of the Center on Children and Families at the Brookings Institution and a consultant on the survey, chalked up the discrepancy to an "atmospheric effect," something he said social scientists often observe during research.
"'The school system is terrible, but my school's fine.' 'The health care system's collapsing, but I like my doctor.' Both can't be true," Reeves said in the report. "It suggests that the sort of cultural story that's being told around this just doesn't fit that closely with people's actual experience. I bet if you asked about the marriages in their family or among their immediate neighbors and friends, you'd get (similarly high) results. I doubt people would say 'all our friends' and family's marriages are collapsing.'"
The University of Virginia's National Marriage Project director Bradford Wilcox, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and the Institute for Family Studies, also consulted on the survey.
He said the "I'm-OK-you're-not-OK" answers could indicate respondents are failing to look past the pop culture stereotypes of lousy marriages -- or they're failing to consider the weaknesses within their own unions.
"There are two possibilities," Wilcox said in the report. "The perception of the outside world is too dark, and they understand the reality of their own life well. Or they understand the outside world but don't see the challenges in their own immediate context."
Regardless, the survey results indicate most people hold marriage in high regard.
Just 3 percent of people agreed with the statement "Marriage is old-fashioned and out of date," while 40 percent "strongly" disagreed, and another 21 percent simply disagreed.
More than half (nearly 53 percent) of respondents agreed that "society is better off when more people are married," while 15 percent disagreed. (Thirty-three percent neither agreed nor disagreed.)
A strong majority (nearly 60 percent) agreed that "marriage makes families and kids better off financially," while 16 percent disagreed, and 25 percent neither agreed nor disagreed.
They're interesting questions, which I imagine will be interpreted differently depending on your politics.
As a strong proponent of marriage equality, I think the survey results make a case for closing, once and for all, the sad chapter of discriminating against same-sex couples who want to marry.
But June's 5-4 Supreme Court ruling that states must recognize same-sex marriage hasn't stopped most of the GOP presidential candidates from vowing to yank marriage back into the domain of heterosexuals and heterosexuals alone.
Four of the candidates even pledged to support a federal constitutional amendment defining marriage as a union between one man and one woman back in August (though Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, one of the signers, has since dropped out of the race). Mike Huckabee, meanwhile, still contends same-sex marriage is illegal.
Society is better off when more people are married, the survey says. Marriage makes families and kids better off financially, it also says.
Old-fashioned and out of date? Nope, not yet. Let's do our best to keep it that way.
hstevens@tribpub.com
