Written by Patience Griswold

A recent Gallup survey found that just 29 percent of Americans believe it is very important for a couple who has children together to be married, down from 49 percent in 2006. The survey also found that only 38 percent of Americans said that it is very important for a couple that plans to stay together for the rest of their lives to be married — a disparity that indicates a shift in how Americans think about marriage and family, with fewer Americans seeing the two as going hand in hand.

Several commentators have pointed out that while marriage rates have been dropping for some time, and our culture increasingly minimizes the importance of marriage in forming stable families, Gallup’s research shows a significant and alarming decline in support for marriage among groups that have traditionally been pro-marriage and family, including conservatives, Americans over the age of 55, and people who attend church weekly. While 67 percent of weekly church attendees said that it is very important for a couple who plans to stay together for the rest of their lives to be married, only 45 percent of weekly church attendees said that it is very important for a couple who has children together to be married. Even in the church, a shrinking number of people recognize how important it is for couples who have children together to be married.

Another subgroup that surprisingly did not place a higher value on parents being married was respondents with children under the age of 18. Gallup reports,

Parents of minor children (30 percent) are not significantly more likely than nonparents (27 percent) to view marriage as critical. Those who are currently married (33 percent) are slightly more likely than those who are not married (25 percent) to say it is important, though the current eight-percentage-point gap between these two groups has narrowed from 16 points in 2006.

Cohabitation is not the same as marriage, and the difference is clear when looking at the data for how children fare when raised by cohabiting versus married parents. Additionally, two out of every three unmarried couples who have children together split up by the time their child is 12 years old, meaning that children cohabitating couples are more likely to face the very real loss of fatherlessness or motherlessness than not.

Children do best when they are raised by their married mom and dad because no mother can fill the role of a father, and no father can fill the role of a mother. Children who are raised by their married parents are less likely to experience poverty, less likely to be incarcerated, and more likely to graduate from college, and mere financial support does not fill the void left by an absent parent.

Family stability matters for children, and cohabitation undermines that. Even when cohabiting couples choose to marry, marriages that begin with cohabitation are more likely to end in divorce. Unfortunately, over half of America’s young adults believe that the opposite is true, saying that living together before marriage increases the likelihood of a successful marriage.

Currently, only half of the children in the U.S. are raised by their married mother and father. This is a real loss that comes with significant harm to children, adults, and entire communities. Marriage and family are the bedrock of society and we need to be investing in building strong marriages and families and pursuing policies that encourage the formation of strong families, rather than penalizing them. Coming alongside children and families affected by family breakdown is also vital — children who have experienced family breakdown but are raised in communities with strong families fare better than children who experience family breakdown and are not surrounded by families with stable marriages at their core.

Despite popular opinion, it is very important that couples who have children together be married, and the church needs to lead the way in recognizing this fact by encouraging and strengthening marriages and families. Marriage and family are designed to go hand in hand, and everyone benefits when both are valued.

This article was originally published by the Minnesota Family Council.