Sara Russo

     Of all the traditional social institutions that have suffered at the hands of progressives during the last half-century, perhaps none has been so rapidly dismantled as marriage. Once considered the cornerstone of a stable society, the prestige of marriage has rapidly diminished, as it is increasingly viewed as merely one more "lifestyle." Many on the left argue that marriage actually causes significant harm, formalizing patriarchal dominance while subjugating women, and endangering their physical and mental well-being.

     Does marriage really deserve this dismal reputation? Absolutely not, say Maggie Gallagher and Linda J. Waite, authors of the newly-released work, The Case for Marriage: Why Married People Are Happier, Healthier, and Better Off Financially. Instead, as the title of their book suggests, Gallagher and Waite use extensive scientific data along with illustrative anecdotes to demonstrate that the traditional "'til death do us part" vow of matrimony creates a unique relationship that enriches the husband and wife in every observable way.

     Gallagher and Waite begin by examining what they term "postmarriage myths"—popular beliefs such as "marriage is mostly about children; if you don't have kids it doesn't matter whether you cohabit or marry or stay single," and "Marriage is essentially a private matter, an affair of the heart between two adults, in which no outsider, not even the children of the marriage, should be allowed to interfere"—and demonstrate that these widely-held viewpoints have no basis in science or fact.

     Marriage is not merely a "private matter" or a "slip of paper," the authors argue, because the act of getting married changes a great deal with regard to the way that couples behave and interact with one another, plan for the future, and experience fulfillment. This transformation, they claim, has immense ramifications for our society. As Gallagher and Waite put it, "Getting married doesn't merely certify a preexisting love relationship. Marriage actually changes people's goals and behavior in ways that are profoundly and powerfully life enhancing."

     The benefits of marriage are most observable within the measurable realms of health, wealth, and (self-reported) sexual fulfillment. In each of these categories, married couples experience immense advantages that cohabitating couples, or individuals who remain single, do not.

     With regard to health, Gallagher and Waite attest that marriage "can literally save your life." The authors quote a 1990 article in the Journal of Marriage and the Family that concludes, "Compared to married people, the nonmarried ... have higher rates of mortality than the married: about 50% higher among women and 250% higher among men."

     Lest one argue that the health advantages married people enjoy are due to their superior physical condition before entering into marriage, the authors point out that "men in poor health actually tend to marry (or remarry) sooner than healthier men do, undercutting the idea that married men are healthier only because healthy men are more likely to marry." Furthermore, lifestyle studies show that people take actions to improve their health upon getting married, or even getting engaged, demonstrating that marriage itself improves individuals' health.

     For young men who tend to act in ways that seriously endanger their health, marriage adds several years to statistical life expectancy. As Gallagher and Waite whimsically put it, "The day a man says ‘I do' (or indeed merely sets a wedding date), he holds the Grim Reaper at bay."

     Cohabitation, by contrast, does not offer the same health advantages as marriage. The authors state, "If marriage were just a piece of paper, then cohabitating couples who share a home and bed should behave just like married couples.... But research also shows that cohabitation itself is a different institution than marriage, with different expectations and effects on the individual. For both of these reasons, cohabitation does not confer the same kind of health benefits to either men or women as does marriage."

     Measures of mental health and of happiness also demonstrate a sharp distinction between the married and cohabitating couples. According to Waite and Gallagher, the latest data show that 40% of married people say they are very happy with their life in general, compared with less than 25% of single or cohabitating individuals.

     Married couples also experience significant monetary advantages over single individuals or cohabitating couples. Not only are married couples much more likely to save for the future, their view of their marriage as permanent allows them to "specialize" in ways cohabitators find risky. Current research also shows that married men earn 10-40% more income than single or cohabitating men. Since their wages rise faster after marriage, the wage premium is not just a case of wealthier men being more likely to marry.

     In stark contrast to the commonly held view that marriage stifles sexual satisfaction, Gallagher and Waite also found that married couples report much greater sexual fulfillment than cohabitating or dating couples.

     Even more startling, given feminist view on sexual liberation, the authors found that "after researchers controlled for age, gender, and other demographic factors, the factor most strongly related to sexual satisfaction among married couples was not age or gender or work status but traditional attitudes toward sexual morality."

     Waite and Gallagher write that the clear advantages of marriage over cohabitation prove most sociologists have been classifying marriage incorrectly. The authors state: "The tendency among social scientists has been to conceptualize marriage as an external, structural category and to look beneath the piece of paper for the ‘real' reasons married people appear healthier and happier. But in American society, marriage is not just a label, it remains a transformative act—marriage not only names a relationship but it creates a relationship between two people, one that is acknowledged, not just by the couple itself, but by the couple's kin, friends, religious community, and larger society."

     The flip-side of marriage being more than a private act, is that divorce, too, is not private. Having shown that marriage provides unique and exclusive benefits, Gallagher and Waite examine the effects and long-term consequences of divorce.

     Their findings demonstrate that much of the contemporary literature on divorce, describing it as liberating and ultimately beneficial to children, is dead wrong. Instead of being a remedy to an unhappy situation, the authors show that divorce is a vast societal problem that leaves individuals poorer, less healthy, and, especially in the case of children, at much greater risk for abuse.

     Far from being a boon to children, Waite and Gallagher conclude that divorce benefits children only when the marriage being ended can be classified as "high-conflict," involving open fighting between parents in the presence of children. Researchers have found that only 30% of divorces end "high-conflict" marriages. Thus, Gallagher and Waite conclude, "Only a minority of divorces in this country are taking place in families where children are likely to benefit in any way from their parents' separation."

     Contrary to the popular wisdom that being "stuck" in an unhappy marriage is a sentence to permanent misery, Gallagher and Waite found that an astonishing 86% of unhappily married couples who stick it out have happier marriages five years later, and nearly 60% said that their marriage was now "very happy" or "quite happy."

     The Case for Marriage combines extensive research and common-sense reasoning to produce a convincing assault against the view that marriage doesn't matter. It is clear from Waite and Gallagher's research that marriage acts as a stabilizing force in our increasingly fragmented society, building bonds of kinship and trust in relationships and forging new pathways to physical and psychological well-being.

     The only thing that seems to be missing from The Case for Marriage is a discussion of what gay marriage would look like, and whether it would produce benefits similar to those accrued by marriage between a man and a woman. It is only in the last few pages of the book that we are told why gay marriage has not been mentioned throughout: it is a subject about which little research has been done, and it is also a topic on which the authors disagree.

     It is also evident from Gallagher and Waite's examples how deeply entrenched the view of marriage as a harmful manifestation of patriarchy has become in the academy and the psychological profession. Despite evidence to the contrary, one college textbook the authors quote refers to a man's belief "in the traditional home, family and gender-role stereotypes" as being among the characteristics of a batterer. The authors also mention that in several states, legislators have proposed, and even passed, legislation affixing warning labels about domestic violence to marriage licenses, despite studies showing that such violence is much less likely to occur within marriage. Hillary Clinton is also critical of the traditional meaning of marriage. The first lady once claimed, "I learned a long time ago that the only two people who count in any marriage are the two who are in it."

     In an ironic addendum to this theme, The Case for Marriage which was originally set to be published by Harvard University Press was spiked due to the intervention of a special committee. Even the publishing house's spokesman admitted that it is "rare" for a book to be refused after having been accepted by two scholars.

     Perhaps the most resounding point made in The Case for Marriage is how much our perceptions of marriage have changed in only a few short decades. As Gallagher and Waite put it, "In America over the last thirty years, we've done something unprecedented. We have managed to transform marriage, the most basic and universal of human institutions, into something controversial."