Based on what, exactly? I think you have cause and effect inverted.
Picture two scenarios:
1. A loving unmarried couple, regardless of gender, sexual orientation, or child bearing, lives in an affluent neighbourhood, in a rich country, have steady incomes, and decide to have a child. After ten years they decide “I love you so much. I don’t need a piece of paper to prove that, but let’s get married. It’ll be a great opportunity to connect our friends and family, and it’ll give us some legal and financial protection when one of us dies”.
2. In a poor neighbourhood, a woman who was mistreated all her life marries her high school sweetheart, who turn out to be abusive. He not only beats her, he rapes her regularly. Like too many victims of domestic violence, she’s afraid to move away. Eventually she becomes pregnant and has the child against her will.
Which of those do would produce the better outcome?
Being fatherless isn’t in itself the issue, but everything which came before to reach that point might be. There is a huge difference between not having a father because he abandoned you, or because he died, or because your mother as a single affluent woman with the means to do so decided to do in-vitro fertilisation.
I highly recommend “New Family Values”, by Andrew Solomon, to get a feeling for the different types of families which work. It goes way beyond “one mother, one father, married”.
https://andrewsolomon.com/books/new-family-values-audiobook/
Statement: Statistically, seatbelts reduce the chances you’ll die in a car accident.
You: But, what if your car crashes into a lake and you get trapped underwater?
Quantifying something doesn't explain it, it just... Quantifies it, deeper inspection is needed to understand what the statistics says.
You are prescribing what needs to be done based on something that is, ultimately, descriptive.
That's why I'm saying you have cause and effect in the wrong order: children issues are tied to one or both parents not caring about them, and a symptom of that was having children before marriage, when marriage was "the only way" to a family. Nowadays things are different, and you can totally be a functional family without signing any contract on paper.
If we ignore almost all of human history save for the past 50 years, then yes. If we redefine marriage to not mean what most humans that have ever used the word meant by it, then yes.
But why would we do these things? If you call all relations between two human beings marriage, you gain nothing, you just lose a word.
Marriage is a covenant between two people, a man and a woman, with God, and incidentally, this covenant, not a piece of paper, it's also a precondition for two people to live together and in harmony. It's a commitment by both people to focus not on themselves, but on the family unit and the wellbeing of that family unit.
> You can do so without being married and having children, and it's everyday more common.
Children of married parents still have better outcomes, and the lower income people are, the bigger the advantage of having married parents are.
I'd think they would be the poster children for the two-week marriages that Hollywood is notorious for, but they aren't.
Even in the most barren wastelands, flowers can grow.
If a couple lives together in harmony and have children together, they are married.
but is the modern way better??? or people just don't want to be held accountable if things go south in traditional way????
