Studies show that marriage plays a powerful role in adult well-being; married people live longer and healthier lives, and exhibit fewer signs of mental illness. Marriage is also a productive economic relationship, a powerful generator of human and social capital. Married people earn more money than otherwise similar single individuals, and build more wealth than singles with similar incomes. Married workers (especially married men) are more productive and motivated, on average, than otherwise similar single employees. Married people experience less economic hardship than singles with similar incomes.
The failure to marry taxes society as a whole. Children whose parents do not get married or do not stay married, for example, are more likely to drop out of high school, commit crimes and display other conduct disorders, experience more infant mortality, childhood illnesses and disease, and suffer from mental illness. As adults, they achieve less academically and occupy lower-status jobs, on average, than children whose parents were able to forge a good-enough marriage bond, even after accounting for race and family background.
There is no scientific evidence to support the recent idea that domestic partnerships are the functional equivalent of marriage. Adults who merely live together more closely resemble singles than married people. Children who live with cohabiting parents do no better than children of solo moms.
Giving cohabiters the same benefits in law and policy as married couples does not therefore represent justice or fairness. By offering the social rewards of marriage but without its public responsibilities, domestic partnership benefits discourage marriage. Why marry the mother of your new baby if the society says living together is just as good--and may even increase the government subsidies available to your family?
Likewise, a same-sex domestic partner [or “marriage”] benefits send a confusing signal, giving the appearance of providing an appropriate context for having and raising children, when the social science evidence supports the idea that children benefit from having both a mother and a father.
Confining benefits to spouses is one way that the law, pubic policy and society point out to the next generation the unique importance of marriage. Extending marital benefits to other intimate couplings sends a message that is dangerously untrue. Living together and being married are just not the same, for children or their parents.
Maggie Gallagher, “Why Supporting Marriage Makes Business Sense.” Corporate Research Council paper.
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