Genesis 2:24 establishes the institution of marriage: “Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.” As Christians, we take this directive to be a part of the cultural mandate and part of what constitutes the “goodness” of the created order—creation as God intended. Importantly, the marriage covenant and formation of a new family is consummated in the one-flesh act of sexual intimacy, establishing soberly an “order of operations” that is humorously conveyed in the schoolyard rhyme, “First comes love, then comes marriage, then comes the baby in the baby carriage!”
Our culture has lost its commitment to the proper “order of operations” as it pertains to family formation. In short, people are having children without getting married to each other first—if at all—subsequently abandoning the wisdom of God in his intention for the created order. Abandoning God’s wisdom has consequences, and in the case of family formation, these consequences impact the most innocent party, namely, the children.
While Melissa S. Kearney does not exactly approach the cultural dynamics of family formation from a biblical worldview, her 2023 book The Two-Parent Privilege investigates the proliferation of non-marital parenting arrangements as well as highlights the range of negative impacts of the decline of marriage in the West, especially the impact on children. Ultimately, while Kearney’s work emphasizes the wisdom of the created order with respect to family formation, her research suggests that the problem is far more complex than simply “just get married,” and it has a range of implications for Christians seeking to live in step with biblical wisdom while influencing our culture to do the same.
Kearney is an economist, so her exploration is primarily concerned with the economic impacts—measured as rates of education, employment, poverty, etc.—on the children who are not recipients of the “two-parent privilege.” Her first chapter, “The Elephant in the Room” purports a relatively simple claim that most people would assume to be true: “Children who grow up without two parents in their home are at a substantial disadvantage to those who do” (9). Kearney, however, notes a key economic factor in the data regarding who these parents actually are. She writes, “Over the past 40 years, there has been a dramatic decline in the share of children living with married parents; this shift has happened largely outside the college-educated class” (7). Kearney’s observation here becomes the seed of two driving questions her book seeks to answer, namely, why are so many parents not getting married, and why are so many dads not living with their children? (16). Answer: education is, perhaps, way more important than we thought.
After determining that the lack of two-parent homes is a problem—and an economic
one—Kearney spends the subsequent two chapters of her book exploring the nature of changing family structures, what is behind these shifts, and how children of these modern structures are affected. Chapter two, “Mother-Only Households,” establishes that the primary form single-parent households take is the form of the single-mother home. Indeed, Kearney notes that “More than one in five children living in the US today live in a home with an unpartnered mother, meaning a mother who is neither married nor cohabitating. A majority of these households do not include another adult, such as a grandparent or other relative” (24). Kearney puts an even finer point on the matter of education: Since the 1980s, “rates of single motherhood increased dramatically among all but the highest-educated women” (37). Chapter three, simply entitled “2 > 1” proves via research the simple claim that two is greater than one—two incomes, two parents, two sets of time, and more. While there is a simplicity to the fact that 2 > 1, Kearney also explores the nuanced factors that make certain two-parent households generate better outcomes for their children than others, factors related to—you guessed it!—education. Particularly, the mother’s level of education.
Chapter four, “Marriageable Men (Or Not),” explores the question, how do the gains to marriage shift in light of the resource context of the father? As discussed previously, “the decline in marriage has been driven by a decline in marriage among those without a college degree” (77), and the lack of college degree is associated with lower earning power. She explains that the current landscape of income for less-educated men is worse than it’s ever been. Not only this, but Kearney exposits several well-designed research studies to show that there is a cause and effect relationship between the decline in male economic power and the decline of marriage.
After her foray into the role of male economic power in the overall rates of marriage, Kearney gets back to discussing the ways in which parental resources manifest into children’s outcomes via parental inputs. Chapter five, “Parenting Is Hard” explores how a larger pool of resources allows parents to be, well, better parents. At least by some definitions. According to Kearney, all children are expensive—both low- and high-income households spend about 10% of their income per year on kids—but higher-income households can afford a larger amount overall, specifically in enrichment-oriented spending. Kearney also shows that more-educated parents spend more time with their children overall, presumably due to more financial resources that allow them to do so (111). Again, it’s intuitive here to assume that parents spending more time with children is better for children’s outcomes, but Kearney gives the data from two compelling studies: The first is a sibling study that showed when children had extra reading time with their mother, they had a “sizeable improvement in standardized reading test scores” (117). The second study linked children’s time spent in educational activities with parents to the “improvements in cognitive skills as measured by test scores” (117).
Continuing her discussion on parental inputs, Kearney addresses in chapter six, “Boys and Dads,” the unique impact of fathers in a household on their sons. Given that Kearney’s analysis emphasizes outcomes of children based on their household’s parenting arrangement, it’s noteworthy that boys and girls have different outcomes even when controlling for the same variables related to family formation (132). Kearney first explains that, when it comes to factors such as educational attainment, boys fall behind girls (131–132). As for the stats, boys are more than twice as likely to be suspended from school than girls (which can impact their ability to complete high school), and young women are 8% more likely to obtain a college degree than young men (131–132). It’s easy to see that boys have more of an uphill battle in succeeding educationally.
But Kearney wants to establish causality between household arrangement and the differences in boys’ and girls’ educational outcomes. Citing a 2013 study, Kearney reveals that “By eighth grade, the gender gap in school suspension was close to 25 percentage points among children raised by single mothers, versus 10 percentage points among children from two-biological-parent families” (134). Put simply, behavioral issues exhibited by boys seem to be a direct result of fatherless households, and these behavioral issues inhibit boys’ ability to achieve the crucial, foundational outcome of completing high school. The state of fatherless boyhood is woeful, but the particularly troubling reality is that these same boys will then go on to be the un-marriageable men from chapter four, who will then raise their own boys more likely to be un-marriageable men. As Kearney puts it, “The challenges facing boys and men are mutually reinforcing” (130).
To round out her analysis, Kearney investigates the data on the birthrate over the last half-century in chapter 7, “Declining Births.” Data surrounding birthrates is widely available, but the most interesting explanation Kearney offers is related to the decline of teen pregnancies, which she connects (with compelling data) to none other than the airing of MTV’s 16 and Pregnant. While teen pregnancy rates have declined, birth rates have risen for women over the age of 30—presumably due to these women attaining education in their 20s—thus resulting in an increase in educational composition among new mothers. New mothers are more likely to be educated, but they are more than twice as likely to be unmarried than 40 years ago. This chapter ultimately emphasizes that the strides made in the reduction of teen pregnancy have not comprehensively resulted in “an increase in childhood resources and economic advantages for children” (167).
Given the myriad problems that result from a declining rate of two-parent households, Kearney’s final chapter, “Family Matters,” offers a few policy suggestions based on her research. She emphasizes that while many have avoided policies that overtly celebrate or fortify the two-biological-parent family structure, this “blind spot”—while potentially well-intentioned—ignores the clear data that certain household formations are more beneficial than others. As a result, Kearney argues that policy discussions need to openly and honestly admit that the ideal family structure is two married biological parents. From there, policies should be designed to support and encourage this structure. Kearney is just as clear to outline what she thinks are not appropriate policy/attitudinal directions, such as simply accepting the decline of the two-parent household or protesting women’s educational attainment or economic independence, among a few other points.
Kearney’s policy discussion directly engages in questions related to cultural attitudes surrounding family and parenthood. While there are myriad economic factors intersecting with the current family formation dynamics in the West, Kearney admits the likelihood that “the social normalization of raising children outside of a two-parent arrangement [has] led to more children being raised in a one-parent household” (172). In other words, while cultural attitudes may not be the primary driver of the two-parent problem, they certainly can reinforce a problem that is already entrenched.
As a result of Kearney’s work, I think there are a few takeaways for Christians in our current cultural climate. First, the decline in marriage and changes to family formation are complex and are not simply explained by a decline in cultural value for sexual purity or marriage in general. There are real economic pressure-points that discourage—though they do not excuse poor choices—family formation in a pattern aligned fully with God’s wisdom. That being said, Christian men and women should relentlessly protect their purity, not only to please God with our bodies, but also so as to not heap consequences on innocent children who—by God’s order—deserve to be brought into a pre-formed, loving family of one father and one mother.
Second, a college education is of incredible importance. This is perhaps the most striking element of Kearney’s work for me. I see some Christian and conservative influencers claiming that many societal problems are due to women delaying marriage and childbearing, especially for educational or economic purposes. Such voices are encouraging men and women—and women in particular—to forgo college precisely in order to form a family and have children sooner. While there can be many reasons why educated people are more likely to get married, stay married, and give their children the best chance at success in life, it seems that foregoing education is a significant risk factor for the outcomes of children. And given that women with college degrees are most likely to have children within the context of marriage, I’m not convinced that getting a college education is the problem here. Women should feel free in their conscience to obtain a college education prior to getting married or having children, and doing so may aid their families in carrying out the cultural mandate according to God’s wisdom.
While women receive certain criticism and directives from the conservative right, men receive a message that is both congruent with and divergent from Kearney’s work, a message to build oneself up to be able to be economically sustainable and a primary breadwinner. This message often casts such an endeavor as ideally achieved through means independent of higher education (the trades, etc.). Men should be encouraged to develop their economic potential in hopes of serving their families best. While I think Kearney shows that men would potentially improve marriage rates if they increased their economic status, based on Kearney’s research on men, male economic potential is exponentially stronger with a college degree. It seems to me that the best way for potential parents—men and women alike—to serve their future children is to obtain a four-year college degree right after graduating high school. Of course, as a professor at a Christian university, it would make sense that I would suggest as much, but Kearney’s data offers a compelling reason—a reason beyond simply making money or advancing economically: to serve your children.
That being said, Kearney’s work seems to leave a bit of an unreconciled conundrum when it comes to the reality of the birthrate and the resources needed for children to have positive outcomes. On the one hand, if the declining birthrate poses an imminent existential crisis for the US and other Western nations, it seems that there should be a push for women to rescind some of their childbearing years from educational attainment and spend them, well, childbearing. On the other hand, Kearney’s work offers an overwhelming amount of data that children are better off with older, more-educated mothers who are married, but these women have fewer children overall. So which factor should be prioritized, increasing the birthrate, or increasing children’s opportunities?
Based on Kearney’s work as well as a biblical approach to family formation, it seems the answer to the above question is the continued refrain: Get married, then have kids. If a woman wants to forego education and spend her childbearing years primarily childbearing—have at it, but get married first. The children of such mothers will be better off, in many senses, than those born to a single, more-educated mother. If a woman wants to pursue educational attainment and have fewer children starting in her 30s—have at it, but get married first. The children of such mothers will be better off, in many senses, than those born to a single mother who sacrificed an education for the sake of the birthrate but heads a fatherless household. There is much in our culture that works against God’s design for the family, and in-house quibbling over when or how many children to have or how much education is appropriate for aspiring parents distracts us from the clear directive of Scripture we can all get behind: get married, then have children.
This is the beauty of Christianity: God offers the wisdom of the proper order of family formation, yet the Scriptures allow significant freedom for families to be formed by those with education and those without, those in blue-collar jobs and those working in white-collar settings, those who are early in their childbearing years and those who are older. The Lord writes many different stories for his children to display his goodness, glory, and authority. Christians’ consciences should not be bound to attain education or to have children as soon as humanly possible once married.
The wisdom of the Lord is simple and refreshing: Get married, then have children. It will go well with you; it will go well with your children. We can trust God’s wisdom for how he designed families as outlined in Genesis 2.
