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A happy, healthy marriage remains a top goal for most Americans. Most eventually want to
marry and want those marriages to last. Americans realize that children do best when they grow
up living with their own married parents. A growing body of social science evidence confirms
just how much difference a healthy marriage makes: to children, to adults, and to society.
Marriage Matters for Children
Marriage provides an amazing list of benefits for children. In fact, researchers say that children
that live with their own two married parents do better than children that don't, on almost anything
they can find to measure. Children that grow up with their own two married parents are more
likely to succeed in school and in social situations. They are also more likely to marry and to
succeed at their own marriages.
While not all children raised outside of a healthy married family do poorly, their chances of
succeeding are lower. Children that live in divorced, never-married, or remarried families are
more likely to live in poverty, abuse drugs or alcohol, experience school failure, get in trouble
with the law, engage in a variety of risky behaviors, become teen parents, or have behavior or
emotional problems. And, if and when they marry, their marriages are less likely to succeed than
the marriages of children that grow up with their own two married parents.
Marriage Matters for Adults
A long-lasting, stable, healthy marriage also provides many benefits for adults. Compared to
their single or cohabiting neighbors, research shows that, on average, married men and women
live longer, have better mental and physical health, report being happier, have higher incomes
and build more wealth. Even in marriages that couples say are only "good-enough", the adults
and their children do better than their neighbors that live without the benefits of marriage.
Building a healthy marriage takes work; the benefits of having a healthy marriage clearly make it
worth the effort.
Marriage Matters for Communities
Strong, healthy marriages also benefit the community. Healthy marriages are the building blocks
of healthy families. Healthy families are the foundations for strong, healthy communities.
Marriage helps couples save money and build wealth. Married parents form a team and are better
able to raise their children — to share the work, and to supervise, educate and nurture them. When
marriages fail, the community (the taxpayers) must pick up the pieces and bear the burden of the
social and financial costs of caring for those families.
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