By Betsy Mayer
When God created marriage and told Adam and Eve to be fruitful and multiply, He set up a stream of blessings for parents, children, and the communities they would build. Only in the last few decades have researchers fully comprehended just how important the institution of marriage is in raising emotionally healthy, productive, and resilient children. In fact, no one single factor can be more helpful to a child’s success in life and to our collective social future than the honest-to-goodness traditional family.
The research shared here reflects the reality of many American families. Trends that affect children negatively in America undoubtedly are felt in other places of the world as well.
NFL star Cam Newton of the NFC Carolina Panthers is a father to eight children—six of his own and two adopted.1 A popular mentor for kids’ sports camps, Cam also
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“Who are Cam Newton’s Kids? Meet Chosen, Sovereign Dior, Camidas, Cashmere and Shakira.,” Sportskeeda, Mar. 8, 2024,
“Parenting in America,” Pew Research Center, www.pewsocialtrends.org, Dec. 17, 2015,
Ibid.
David C. Ribar, “Why Marriage Matters for Child Wellbeing,” The Future of Children, Fall 2015, p. 12.
Glen T. Stanton, “The Research Proves The No. 1 Social Justice Imperative Is Marriage,” The Federalist, Nov. 3, 2017.
Ibid.
“Births to Unmarried Women,” Child Trends, www.childtrends.org, Dec. 2015.
Ibid.
“Fourth National Incidence Study of Child Abuse and Neglect (NIS-4): Report to Congress,” US Dept. of Health and Human Services, Jan. 15, 2010.
Charles Murray, “What To Do About Welfare,” Commentary Magazine, Dec. 1994.
Spaced-out Scientist, “Single Parents Worldwide: Statistics and Trends,” The Spaced-out Scientist, July 18, 2017,
Jennifer Betts, “US Divorce Rates Over Time and What the Numbers Really Mean,” LoveToKnow, June 5, 2023,
Jennifer S. Barber, Jennifer Eckerman Yarger, and Heather H. Gatny, “Black-White Differences in Attitudes Related to Pregnancy among Young Women,” Demography 52 no. 3 (May 12, 2015): 751–86,
Nicholas Wolfinger, Understanding the Divorce Cycle: The Children of Divorce in Their Own Marriages (Cambridge University Press, 2005).
Sara McLanahan, Laura Tach, and Daniel Schneider, “The Causal Effects of Father Absence,” Annual Review of Sociology 39 no. 1 (July 30, 2013): 399–427,
W. Bradford Wilcox, “Why Marriage Matters,” The National Marriage Project, Aug. 16, 2011.
Ibid.
Alysse ElHage, “For Kids, Parental Cohabitation and Marriage Are Not Interchangeable,” Institute for Family Studies, May 7, 2015,
Wendy Wang and W. Bradford Wilcox, “The millennial success sequence: marriage, kids, and the ‘success sequence’ among young adults,” (working paper, American Enterprise Institute, June 14, 2017).
George A. Akerlof, “Men Without Children,” The Economic Journal 108 no. 447 (1998): 287–309,
See note 4.
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Betsy Mayer is the managing editor of Last Generation magazine.