As more people delay marriage and a growing number of Americans choose never to tie the knot, the federal government is promoting the benefits of the institution with a national media campaign that gets under way this month. The $5 million effort is led by the National Marriage Resource Center.
Mike McManus, president of Marriage Savers, said the initiative is long overdue.
"We’ve had a 50 percent drop in the marriage rate since 1970, when there were 21 million never-married Americans," he said. "In 2006, it tripled to 60 million.”
David Popenoe, founder and director of the National Marriage Project at Rutgers University, said both the government and families could do more to support marriage.
"It’s every parent’s duty to promote marriage for their children and to work with their children to help them to have a lasting, stable marriage," he said.
Popenoe pointed out that married couples benefit society. “They contribute more," he said, "produce more and are less of a drain on the taxpayers."
— Roger Greer
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