Why married couples are happier
Cohabitation flourishes even though it is an inferior living arrangement compared to marriage. And yet couples increasingly cohabitate and defer marriage even though the happiness quotient is higher with married couples.
Pulse Life Advocates is concerned with the issue, as the incidence of abortion sky rockets with unmarried couples.
According to the Guttmacher Institute, 19% of all pregnancies in the U.S. (excluding spontaneous miscarriages) ended in abortion in 2019. But the number plummets to 4% among married women compared to 28% for unmarried women.
Moving beyond abortion, Pew Research conducted comprehensive research on the subject of marriage. They discovered the happiness quotient is significantly higher among married couples compared to cohabitating ones as you can see the in the chart below:
The Wall Street Journal ran an interesting piece on Saturday, “Too Risky to Wed in Your 20s? Not If You Avoid Cohabitating First.”
The piece pointed out that today’s couples get married later than in decades past, and explains why:
“The thinking goes that, if you wait until 30 or later to marry, you’re much more likely to have the maturity required both to make a good choice and to be a good spouse. The fact that the median age at first marriage for American women is now almost 29 (it’s 30 for men)—and higher still among those with at least a college degree—suggests that this view is widely held.”
Some research shows that the likelihood of divorce drops if couples wait until 30 to get married, with this exception:
“As we recently discovered, however, there is an interesting exception to the idea that waiting until 30 is best. In analyzing reports of marriage and divorce from more than 50,000 women in the U.S. government’s National Survey of Family Growth (NFSG), we found that there is a group of women for whom marriage before 30 is not risky: women who married directly, without ever cohabiting prior to marriage. In fact, women who married between 22 and 30, without first living together, had some of the lowest rates of divorce in the NSFG.”
Let’s face it, divorce reduces the happiness quotient for everyone: the couple, their kids, their extended families, everyone (other than the attorneys!).
Twenty something couples who opt for marriage over cohabitation begin enjoying all the benefits inherit in relationships built upon commitment, beginning with a higher happiness quotient. And if the couple have a shared faith life and create ‘holy families,’ the happiness quotient is off the charts.
As we’ve discussed before, children enjoy better outcomes raised within a framework of marriage.
So the upside to living within not just a marriage, but of creating a holy family, is so off the charts, that we’ve created a free 4-part webinar beginning March 6th promoting it. How do you watch? Simply register today and learn more!
The Holy Family is the ‘soul’ solution for a wounded world.