The New Jersey Family Policy Council extends our prayers to Senate Majority Leader Bernard Kenny and his family. Senator Kenny remains hospitalized after a Wednesday jogging accident that caused multiple injuries, including several broken bones and a dislocated shoulder. The cause of the injuries was originally attributed to a fall while jogging, but because of the nature and extent of the injuries, officials have not ruled out the possibility of a hit-and-run. We pray for a speedy and full recovery for the Senator.

Study Confirms Marriage Is in Trouble
Posted July 20, 2007

Yesterday, the National Marriage Project at Rutgers University released The State of Our Unions 2007: The Social Health of Marriage in America . [For full .PDF document, please visit the National Marriage Project link above.]

And the diagnosis isn’t good.

According to the report, marriage in America is in trouble, and co-director of the National Marriage Project David Popenoe writes, “There can be no doubt that the institution of marriage has continued to weaken in recent years.”

The study found that Americans in recent decades have become less likely to marry but warned that this does not mean that individuals are shying away from living with a sexual partner. On the contrary, the report points to a “rapidly” rising “incidence of unmarried cohabitation…[in which] marriage is giving ground to unwed union.”

Consider the following finding from the report:

Whereas marriage was once the dominant and single acceptable form of living arrangement for couples and children, it is no longer. Today, there is more "family diversity:" Fewer adults are married, more are divorced or remaining single, and more are living together outside of marriage or living alone….Today, more children are born out-of-wedlock (now almost four out of ten), and more are living in stepfamilies, with cohabiting but unmarried adults, or with a single parent. This means that more children each year are not living in families that include their own married, biological parents, which by all available empirical evidence is the gold standard for insuring optimal outcomes in a child’s development.

Additionally, Popenoe writes of the emergence of a surprising “marriage gap” between educated and uneducated social sectors. College-educated individuals tend to have both higher marriage rates and lower divorce rates than less educated individuals. Popenoe also highlights a gap between the United States and other western nations when it comes to mother-only families, qualified as families in which the father is not present – neither as married member of the family unit nor as an unwed cohabitate. In this category, our nation unfortunately leads the way.

On the state level, the study found that New Jersey ranks third among states with the lowest marriage rates. The Star Ledger reports, however, that the divorce rate in New Jersey is also among the lowest.

Interestingly albeit not surprisingly, the trends across the nation follow a distinct Red State/Blue State pattern, with Red states having both higher marriage rates, higher divorce rates, and higher out-of-wedlock birth rates. Blue states (such as New Jersey), on the other hand, might have lower marriage and divorce rates, but they also have higher rates of cohabitation as well as lower fertility rates.

What do all these findings have to do with Statehouse proceedings? In short, a whole lot. Popenoe writes that “[t]o reverse this trend of marriage and family decline would take a cultural transformation of some kind.” While he indicates (and we agree) that the “best prospects for cultural change … rest on … a change of heart,” he notes that “[a]s a first step, the institution of marriage needs to be promoted by all levels of society, particularly the families, the schools, the churches, the non-profit sector, and the government.”

Yet, in the face of compelling evidence that marriage is in trouble, New Jersey legislators continue to undermine the value of the traditional family structure as the cornerstone of society. As civil union advocates press for same-sex marriage in New Jersey, our elected officials turn a blind eye towards the destruction of our cultural and society stability in favor of pushing their leftist agenda.

If our legislators are sincere in wanting to serve the people they are elected to represent, then they would do well to take to heart the findings of this important study and work to restore rather than raze the institution of traditional marriage in New Jersey.

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