Marriage's decline in blue collar America

Glenn T. Stanton
Sep 6, 2011

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (BP) -- There are two seismic -- yet under-the-radar -- trends happening in marriage and family today, but too few have taken note of them. The evangelical church would be wise to appreciate them, as we seek to minister in this area.

The first is the continued and growing alienation of men from family life. This alienation can be attributed to many things: the male's own choosing, women and culture's growing negative and unrealistic attitudes about men, artificial reproductive technology among single women as well as the push for parenting and adoption rights by same-sex couples. I have written about these previously.

The second is discussed here: The growing marginalization of marriage in blue collar America while it's doing better among the more educated classes. This has important consequences for the greater cementing of class divides.

A unique and important report has just been released by the Brookings Institute, co-authored by two of the world's leading marriage scholars: The more socially conservative W. Bradford Wilcox, director of the National Marriage Project and associate professor of sociology at the University of Virginia, and the socially liberal Andrew J. Cherlin, professor of sociology and public policy at Johns Hopkins University.

Both scholars are concerned about the marked decline of marriage among those who have graduated from high school, but who have no college degree. This encompasses a full 58 percent of the adult U.S. population. the rest