(Editor’s note: The following is Part I of a special, three-part series summarizing "The State of Our Unions," a national report by The National Marriage Project which is an analysis of the health of marriage and marital relationships in America. Sponsored by Rutgers University, the study is co-authored by David Popenoe, Ph.D., Rutgers professor and author, and Barbara Dafoe Whitehead, Ph.D., author and social critic.)

Judging from a spate of books, movies, and TV shows in recent years, it seems that marriage is enjoying something of a comeback, albeit with an almost exclusive emphasis on the romantic pursuit and self-indulgent pleasures of matrimony. Popular media, reflecting a growing cultural trend, are far more interested in steamy relationships and lavish weddings than on the binding matrimonial ethic of generations past (i.e. child rearing and parenthood). So even as Americans continue aspiring toward marriage, today’s young adults are more inclined than ever to see the institution as an intimate relationship between adults rather than as a critical social arrangement for rearing children.

David Popenoe and Barbara Whitehead, co-authors of "The State of Our Unions," a report on marriage by The National Marriage Project, agree that the implications of this dramatic cultural shift in recent decades are disturbing and profound. Worse, they have inflicted long-term, damaging impacts on children. Throughout the nation's history and much of the world, marriage has, until recent years, been first and foremost an institution designed to unite men and women in the shared tasks of child rearing. Likewise, the shared role of parents in raising children, specifically, has afforded marriage legal and social status distinct from other intimate partnerships. Yet as ongoing legal, social and cultural changes erode its traditional role, the meaning and purpose of marriage have shifted away from children toward adults, to the considerable detriment of the former.

"Couple" Vs. "Parental" Roles

The widening gap between adults' and children's experience of marriage suggests that, while most adults continue to prize marriage and seek it for themselves, children are less able to count on their parents' marriage as a secure foundation of their family lives. It isn't that marriage is withering away for adults, but that it's withering away for children. The following statistics back this up:

• While marriage used to be the principal pathway into parenthood, today about a third of all children and more than two-thirds of African-American children are born out of wedlock.
• Since 1960 there has been an 850 percent increase in cohabitating couples who live with children. And today, 40 percent of all children will spend some time with a cohabitating couple while growing up.
• Roughly one million children each year experience parental divorce and its aftermath. The result? – only 69 percent of all children now live with two married parents, compared to 85 percent as recently as 1970. (And only 38 percent of black children live with two married parents compared with 58 percent in 1970.)

The shift away from "parent-based" marriages corresponds directly with attitudes among young adults, less than half of whom today agree "it is wrong to have a child outside of marriage." It is also seen in the rising number of unwed births among women -- from 48.2 percent in 1990 to 61.7 percent in 2000.

Marriage As It Was Intended 

Marriage is much more than a romantic expression of love between two people; it is a fundamental social institution, the central force for nurturing and raising children, and the vital "social glue" that attaches fathers to children. Traditional marriage contributes to the physical, emotional and economic health of men, women and children, and thus to the nation as a whole. Even in the face of an unprecedented judicial and gay radical assault, marriage remains the most highly prized of all human relationships and serves as a central life goal of millions of Americans.

• Clearly, a growing host of strong countervailing social and cultural trends threaten marriage as a child-rearing and child-centered institution, i.e., pending judicial rulings aimed at redefining marriage to accommodate the gay agenda, and legal rulings undermining the value of two-parent households.
• Even so, marriage as child-rearing institution offers both good and bad news, the upside reflecting a slight and recent increase in percentage of children in two-married-parent families, the first reversal of a four-decade-long trend.
• The downside: marriage continues to decline as a "status of parenthood." In the past forty years, there has been a sharp increase in cohabiting couples with children. And the percentage of households with children has dropped to less than one-third today compared with one-half in 1960.
• The losers? Children. Amid a society of material abundance, research points to a steady decline in psychosocial well-being of children.

Part II of this report will appear in this space tomorrow. -- Editor