You can’t fix civil society without fixing marriage
Conn Carroll
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The Social Capital Campaign, a nonpartisan think tank devoted to the promotion of the institutions that make up civil society, released a report Thursday that documents the historically low levels of trust Americans have in all of our institutions, including the media, big business, science, and organized religion.
It is an alarming report yet also hopeful in that it identifies a policy agenda that might be able to turn some of these trends around. You should read it.
HOW BLUE STATES DISCRIMINATE AGAINST MOST FAMILIES
But I do worry that the report leaves out the foundational institution that civil society is built on: marriage.
The report begins by quoting Alexis de Tocqueville from Democracy in America: “Americans of all ages, all conditions, all minds constantly unite. … Everywhere that, at the head of a new undertaking, you see the government in France and a great lord in England, count on it that you perceive an association in the United States.”
And it is true. Tocqueville was impressed with the propensity of Americans to come together voluntarily to accomplish projects and provide services often left to central governments in other countries.
But Tocqueville also identified the source of America’s unique commitment to the institutions of civil society. “Of the world’s countries, America is surely the one where the bond of marriage is most respected and where they have conceived the highest and most just idea of conjugal happiness,” Tocqueville wrote. “The American draws from his home the love of order, which he afterwards brings into affairs of state.”
The second president of the United States, John Adams, echoed this sentiment in his diary. “The foundations of national morality must be laid in private families. In vain are schools, academies, and universities instituted if loose principles and licentious habits are impressed upon children in their earliest years.”
If we want to fix the ailing institutions of civil society, we first have to start by fixing marriage. For the first 180 years of our nation’s history, the percentage of households led by a married couple hovered between 75%-80%. That declined slightly in the 1960s, started falling steadily in the 1970s, and has never recovered. In 2008, for the first time ever, a majority of households contained no married couple. That percentage has only continued to fall in the time since. As a direct result, the U.S. now leads the world in single-parent households.
Until marriage returns to being the “most respected” bond, a bond that binds the vast majority of households, our nation and its civil society will continue to suffer.