It’s “A sad state for a state to be in” said Evita Peron or so she is attributed saying, but while the Argentine First Lady wasn’t talking about marriages we can say the same thing about the state of marriage in our country today. Weddings are down and the cause is due a number of concerns: a poor economy, lots of college debt on not-so-new graduates, as well as the decline of the American family evidenced in our culture and seen in music, television, movies and politics. Marriages are down nationwide: Census data cited in a 2014 Pew Research Study and which appeared in a February 6, 2015 New York Times article noted that in 1960 72.2% of all households were married in the United States and in 2012, the number drops to 50.5%.

This trend will not be “good for the country in a round-about-way” (again, Eva Peron!) as the impact on the family will be felt as well as on certain financial aspects nationally: For most of the latter-half of the twentieth century, divorce posed the greatest threat to child well-being and the institution of marriage. Today, that is not the case. New research – made available for the first time in this third edition of "Why Marriage Matters" – suggests that the rise of cohabiting households with children is the largest unrecognized threat to the quality and stability of children's lives in today's families. (Institute for American Values, NY, NY). Further research illustrates that children born to parents married tend to live in stronger financial situations and healthier homes. Marriage also, according the US government, provides for greater access to healthcare for the couple and children, greater health outcomes for those in a marriage, and better adult-health for children of marriage couples.

My unofficial research last week found four sitcoms in a row one night which were comprised of either a divorced household, a same-sex couple household, or two heterosexual girlfriends living together and proclaiming how they would never marry; in order to find a family comprised of a mother and father, children and sitting down to dinner together with grace prayed before the meal—I had to watch the Walton’s. Today’s television image of the “typical” American family could leave one sad as well as thoroughly bored.