Marriage & Family Life

An Orthodox Equation for Marriage: 1 Man + 1 Woman + 1 God

Recent research from the US Census has consistently found:

The retreat from marriage since the 1960's is tightly linked to the rise in social problems especially child poverty & welfare dependence

Half of the pregnancies outside of marriage end in abortion compared to 11% of abortions by married women

Non-married women account for 80% of all abortions

Out-of-wedlock births have risen to a third of all births

A child born outside of marriage will spend 51% of his childhod in poverty compared to 7% for child in a intact marriage

Less than half 44% of all teenagers live with their married biological parents 25% live iwth stepparents, 24% live with a single parent; 7% live with a cohabiting parent & unmarried boy/girlfriend

Serious child abuse is 14 times more likely in a single parent family; 33 times more likely when a mother cohabits with a male who is not the parent of the children

A child from a divorced family is twice as likely to be expelled from school compared to their intact marriage peers; children of single, never married parents are 4 times the risk

Children raised in single, divorced and stepparent families are twice as likely to repeat a grade in school

Children of single-parent families have significantly more developmental and behavior problems; they are twice as likely to be in the lower half of their class and have twice the emotional and behavioral problems

Adolescents from divorced families have twice the drug use compared to their peers in married households. They are 3 times more likely to carry weapons

An adult raised by a single mother is twice as likely to spend time in jail, 3 times more likely if raised by a stepfather and 4 times more likely if raised by a father and stepmother

6 million US grandparents now live with their minor grandchildren and 42% are primary caretakers.  Grandparent households are more likely to be poor 19% below poverty level.  Substance abuse is the most common reason parents lose custody

$200 Billion each year is spent for low-income families; 75% are single parent households

Divorced and separated adults are more than 2 and a half times more likely to commit suicide

Couples that participate in any marriage preparation or enhancement program have better relationships than two-thirds of couples who do not participate in a program

Relationship Enhancement and Couple Communication programs had results of 83% improvement over non-participating couples

The effectiveness of Pre-Marital inventories was documented at more than a 52% increase of relationship satisfaction

Married Families have higher incomes. 

Married mothers are half as likely to be happy

Adolescents in married families are less than half as likely to be depressed s those raised by a single parent

They are also twice as healthythan those in single parent households

They are least likely to be sexually active

They are least likely to consider having a child outside of marriage