From the Desk of Laura Bunker:
Some of the most powerful voices for marriage and family are young adults — the “millennials.” That is why we enthusiastically post articles written by our UFI Interns and other college students on our UFI Blog and Facebook page, along with pieces of interest from other media outlets.
Just a few days ago, we posted a fabulous article by a widely quoted pro-family millennial, Ashley McGuire. To our amazement, it has quickly become the most-viewed-post on our Facebook page. Most. Views. Ever.
Ashley writes that “it is mystifying” to her why her peers are having children, but rejecting marriage. Her spot-on article states, “what millennials just don’t seem to grasp is that being a good parent is having a successful marriage. It is absolutely the most important and determinant factor for children: whether or not their parents are married.”
We invite you to read Ashley’s convincing piece, below, and share it with a millennial you know and love.
Go Ashley. Go millennials. Go for marriage.
Best Regards,
Laura Bunker
United Families International, President
“Millennial madness – kids without marriage”
by Ashley Maguire
Originally published in Acculturated magazine, Republished in New York Post.
The other day, something came across my newsfeed about Kourtney Kardashian’s pregnancy style.
I’ll hand it to her; she’s a stylish pregnant lady. And we know this for certain now, because this is her third pregnancy with boyfriend Scott Disick.
But that’s just it. Boyfriend.
It’s head-scratching to me why a couple would have multiple children — all “planned” — but refuse to tie the knot. It seems to me, if you’re building a family together, why not make it official? Yet keeping it unofficial is becoming the new norm.
As Brad Wilcox put it in a piece for The Wall Street Journal about the parallel mysteries of falling teen pregnancy rates but soaring single-motherhood numbers for women in the next age bracket, “If 30 is the new 20, today’s unmarried 20-somethings are the new teen moms.”
Naomi Riley had an excellent piece on this phenomenon last month in The Post, “Generation Screwed.”
Millennials, my generation, have been given this nickname because we are getting slammed with record high tuition rates, a terrible job market, out-of-control entitlements, and so on. She writes:
“So you’d think that if research shows there is something that could be a surefire way of improving their economic lot, they would grab hold of it like a life preserver. Well, you’d be wrong.
“In fact, research has shown marriage to be responsible for the significant creation of wealth — yet millennials don’t seem interested. The average age of a first marriage for men is 29 and for women it’s 27.
“Many are simply not marrying at all. Almost half of children born to women under 30 are out-of-wedlock births now, according to a recent study by Child Trends, a Washington-based research group.”
It is mystifying.
While it’s easy enough to see how a generation thoroughly steeped in relativism might shrug off the moral arguments for marriage, it’s plain bizarre the way millennials seem to be outright rejecting the evidence that marriage favors them and their progeny economically.
Riley gives a litany of data that shows the way couples who marry start to quickly pass their unmarried peers when it comes to financial stability.
This data only compliments all the data that paints a crystal with a capital “C” clear picture of how important marriage is in determining the outcomes of children.
My favorite stat? Marriage drops a child’s odds of. . . (Click here to read more)