The family is the building block of society. It is the organism through which the very life of a nation is nurtured and passed on to future generations. Without stable marriages as the basis of the family unit, this organism is weakened, and children are the most seriously affected. Thus, future generations of Americans will bear the brunt of the family's weakness today.

The effects, however, go beyond the family. When marriages and families are healthy, communities thrive; when marriages break down, communities break down. And the more this happens, the more government is asked to step in to address this collateral damage--even though its record at solving the social problems that arise from broken families has been poor.

FACT: The environment that allows children to thrive the most is provided by the natural family.

A natural family is one in which mother and father live together to care for the children they bring into existence. Married family life is associated in research studies with better health and longer life spans. Married couples have consistently lower death rates from disease and suicide. Divorce causes reductions in household income and wealth, often forcing single mothers onto the poverty rolls.

In households with children, the drop in household income immediately following a divorce may be as high as 42 percent. Frequent housing moves often follow, disrupting both learning and friendships. Divorce is tied to higher rates of crime, abuse, neglect, and drug use. In fact, divorce increases the juvenile crime rate by up to 12 times.

Other than the widowed family, all other forms of the family unit--aside from the natural family--involve some form of personal rejection, whether between the mother and father (in divorce and some out-of-wedlock births) or in the form of an ambivalence of affection and commitment (in most out-of-wedlock births and cohabitation). An analysis of available data shows that nearly one-third of all children conceived today will be aborted; one-third of those that are not will be born out-of-wedlock; and 40 percent of those born to married parents will experience the divorce of their parents before age 18.

FACT: The safest place for children is living in an intact married family; the most dangerous is a home where the mother lives with a boyfriend.

Children raised outside of the always-intact married family are at greater risk of serious child abuse--six times more likely in a step family; 13 times more likely in the single-mother-living-alone family; 20 times more likely in the cohabiting-natural-parent family; and 33 times more likely when the mother lives with a boyfriend. Abuse resulting in death is 73 times more likely when a mother lives with a boyfriend.

FACT: The safest relationship for women is marriage; the most dangerous is cohabitation.

Federal survey data found domestic violence against women to be almost three times higher among cohabiting couples than among couples who have ever been married (that is, married, separated, and/or divorced), and almost five times higher than among currently married couples.

FACT: The intact married family is the best mental health, school preparation, and drug prevention "program" there is.

Children born or raised outside of marriage are more likely to suffer mental health problems; they suffer depression and commit suicide more often. Children whose parents were not married have showed an increased likelihood of having lower verbal IQ, lower school performance, and lower school attendance, all leading to lower job attainment and lower income.

Teenagers whose parents have divorced have used cocaine almost twice as much as children in intact married families, and children in single-parent families have used cocaine almost three times as much.

FACT: One-third of all children are born out of wedlock, and much more often to adult women than to teens.

The out-of-wedlock birth rate has leveled off at around 33 percent of all births for the past five years, but this is the result of two opposing trends: a decrease in teenage out-of-wedlock births and a continued rise in the number of older adults giving birth out of wedlock.

Recent survey data from the Fragile Families Survey conducted by Princeton and Columbia Universities show that the majority of the fathers and mothers of children born out of wedlock are romantically involved. Most of these couples also reported a 50-50 chance of getting married. One major obstacle: federal welfare and tax policy.

FACT: Divorce affects about 1 million children each year.

Following the "no fault" change in divorce laws in the 1970s, the number of children suffering the divorce of their parents peaked at 1.2 million per year in the early 1980s. Today, the picture is more complex: Children see their married parents split, but so do the children of cohabiting parents. Good data on the latter are not available. Thus, the number of children affected by the breakup of their parents is still likely to be around 1.2 million per year.

FACT: One generation of broken marriages feeds the next generation of broken marriages.

Social research shows that, among the children of broken marriages, there are more out-of-wedlock births, more cohabitation, and more divorce. Social scientist Deborah Dawson has described it this way: "Women who spend part of their childhood in single parent families are more likely to marry and bear children early; to give birth before marriage; and to have their own marriages break up."

FACT: The rate of divorce among couples who have lived together before they marry is twice the rate of divorce among those who have not lived together before marriage.

Cohabitation is a fragile living arrangement. Not only are couples more likely to divorce if they live together first, but those who cohabit, split, and then marry someone else eventually divorce at four times the rate of those who do not cohabit before marriage.

FACT: Children in broken families are more likely to commit juvenile crime.

When it comes to juvenile crime rates, marriage matters a lot. For instance, in Wisconsin--the only government entity to have published family background data--teenagers of always-single-parent families are 22 times more likely to end up in jail than are those from two-parent families.

The huge differences in rates of crime among black and white teenagers virtually vanish when one controls for family background. In other words, black teenagers and white teenagers from broken families have similar rates of juvenile crime: They are high. Black teenagers and white teenagers from intact married parents also have similar rates of juvenile crime: They are low.

Finally, fairly recent findings from a U.S. longitudinal study of more than 6,400 boys conducted over 20 years show that children who grow up without their biological father in the home are roughly three times more likely to commit crimes that lead to incarceration than are children from intact families. Other studies have found that children of divorced parents are up to six times more likely to be delinquent than are children from intact families.

FACT: A child is 50 percent more likely to die during infancy if born out of wedlock.

Children born outside of marriage have 1.5 times the risk of low birthweight; and low birthweight increases their susceptibility to neonatal illnesses, which make a baby significantly more likely to die in infancy.

FACT: Marriage also provides the safest environment for a child before birth. Both national surveys conducted by the Alan Guttmacher Institute, the research institute used by Planned Parenthood, show that being conceived outside of marriage quadruples the chances of a child being aborted.

FACT: Civic and church leaders now know how to do a better job of preparing people for marriage.

Over the past two decades, marriage research experts have contributed to an increase in the knowledge of precisely which skills and habits build better marriages, as well as assessment tools and proven preparation courses. Engaged couples enrolled in marriage preparation courses are better able to identify the difficulties that lie ahead for them; many, in fact, decide not to marry.

Cities that have instituted a "marriage-savers" policy have seen their divorce rates drop over the past decade. Marriage Savers, a faith-based, non-denominational movement, has spread to over 180 cities across the country. Its presence is linked to decreased divorce rates citywide in 32 cities. Modesto, California, for example, has had a 47.6 percent drop in divorces, while its marriage rate has risen by 13.1 percent. Between 1995 and 1999, Kansas City, Kansas, and its suburbs saw divorces decrease by 44 percent on this program.

There is even one pilot program in which 50 percent of those already in divorce court seeking a divorce will turn around to rebuild their marriages successfully if given the chance to take "Focused Thinking Mediation."

FACT: Churches that offer a full range of marriage resources virtually eliminate divorce.

Part of the reason for this is that up to 20 percent of couples who take the course decide to part before marriage. The rates of divorce in areas near these churches appear to have fallen significantly. Clearly, many people would save themselves and their children the grief of divorce by approaching marriage more cautiously and deliberately. When church and government cooperate in offering a mixture of faith-based and secular approaches to strengthening marriage, the rebuilding of a culture of marriage follows.

FACT: Abstinence programs are working--especially among teenagers.

Overall, teen abortion rates are down, teen out-of-wedlock birth rates are down, 37 and teenage virginity is rising significantly again. But out-of-wedlock birth rates continue to climb among those in their late twenties and thirties.

FACT: Regular worship increases health, wealth, and happiness.

Children from inner-city poor families who worship weekly are most likely to reach the middle class as adults. Adults who worship weekly are more likely to have happy intact marriages, live longer, be happier, be healthier, and earn more money throughout their lifetime. Families that worship weekly are most likely to raise children who do better at school, commit fewer crimes, have fewer out-of-wedlock births, and marry more often.

FACT: Poverty is predominantly a phenomenon of the broken family.

Children living in always-single-parent families are six times more likely to live in poverty than are children in married families. Of all black children in America, only 3 percent live with married parents and are in poverty. The two-parent family puts much more into the marketplace and gets much more out of it.

FACT: Government welfare programs still penalize poor parents for marrying and spur the growth of poor single-parent families.

Despite welfare reform, when a single mother marries a poor working man, the federal and state governments will penalize them by reducing their total income resources by as much as 22 percent. Eugene Steuerle of the Urban Institute reports that if a single working man who earns $8 per hour were to marry a single mother of one child, and if she also earns the minimum wage, they will lose $7,500 in income transfers, or roughly 22 percent of their combined income. An equivalent penalty in loss in annual income for a middle-class couple earning $30,000 each per annum who decide to marry would be about $13,000.

The proportion of single-parent families has grown continually in the past few decades. In 2000, 80 percent of children in the bottom quintile of income lived in single-parent families. In 1990, it was 72 percent; in 1980, it was 62 percent. That is a growth of 30 percent in just two decades.

FACT: The federal government will penalize more and more middle-class families with children by gradually undoing recently enacted family-friendly tax provisions.

Recent reforms in the federal tax code, especially the child tax credit, seem like a boon to families; but Congress devised a way to take it all back. The alternative minimum tax (AMT) year by year takes back more and more of the tax relief offered to middle-class families raising children.

This strategy is a replay of the congressional bracket-creep tax strategy of the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s that financed the expansion of the welfare state from the mid-1960s. Initially designed to ensure that wealthy individuals could not avoid paying income taxes, the AMT is now used as a tax cudgel against ordinary families with children.

Since inflation will likely increase the effect of the AMT by itself, this current tax policy is a way to undo the reform the federal government appeared to give families in the child tax credit. Even with this credit, the family is still enjoys far less protection from taxes to raise children than it received in the 1950s.

FACT: Congress still spends more on programs that promote sex outside of marriage than it spends on those that promote sex within marriage.

Congress spends about $145 million more on programs that promote sex outside of marriage (such as Title X of the Public Services Health Act and related programs) than it spends on those that promote abstinence until marriage (such as Section 510, Title V, of the Social Security Act and related programs).

Both strategies require investments of time, education, and resources to shape people's values, habits, and skills, especially young people's attitudes toward marriage. Given the social problems associated with broken families, Congress should choose to fund programs that promote marriage and families.

FACT: The welfare state spends virtually nothing on restoring marriage among the poor.

The welfare reform act of 1996 mandated that states use a portion of their federal Temporary Assistance to Needy Families funds to promote marriage. With only a few exceptions, however, the states have not done so. In 2000, the states budgeted only 0.16 percent of the $7.3 billion surplus TANF money that had accumulated nationally.

FACT: The United States, for good reasons, has not ratified two U.N. treaties that are hostile to the natural family.

The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child and the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), despite their many good goals, set forth a number of objectives that undermine the role of parents and the strength of families. They, for example, seek to have laws enacted in every country that would guarantee a child's right to privacy in all matters, to full freedom of expression whether at home or at school, to an abortion without regard to age, and to legal mechanisms that allow the child to challenge his parent's authority.

Source from: http://www.heritage.org/research/features/issues/Family/