Why You Should Get Married Before Having Kids

Are you living with your partner and have you recently started discussing adding a baby to your family? Before you get all excited about ovulation calendars, folic acid and tiny socks, you may want to consider getting married first. Read on to discover why marriage is still important in modern society.

Isn't Living Together Essentially The Same As Marriage?

Forty-two percent of American children will now live in cohabiting households, meaing homes in which their parents are living together but are not married. This is almost double the 12 percent of children who will have divorced parents. This figure is hardly surprising. Marriage rates have been dropping, and most couples will live together before tying the knot, with many continuing to live together indefinitely without ever getting married.

Couples who are living together but are not married are just as likely to have kids — the result of either planned or surprise pregnancies — as married couples. Cohabitation appears to have become the new “marriage”. Living together is, for most people, just as respectable as being married. The social stigma of not being married has most definitely disappeared from most communities over the last few decades. 

It is easy to think that this means that living together is the equivalent of marriage, and that it does not matter whether you are cohabiting or married. Most children who aren't born to married parents will still have both parents in their lives. These kids are the 42 percent who will live in cohabiting households. What does it matter if they get recorded as being born to “unwed parents” in 2013, as long as mom and dad are both active, involved parents who are living together?

Unfortunately, it is not this simple. Cohabiting parents are much more likely to break up than married parents — they have about twice the break-up rate of married parents before their kids turn 12, in fact!

This could be partly due to the fact that leaving a cohabiting household when the going gets tough is much easier than getting a divorce. It is also possible that some cohabiting partners believe that living together is not as permanent a commitment as being married, and that they view themselves as being separate people rather than as part of a permanent unit.

When you see cohabitation as a transitional and temporary state, it is hardly surprising that a family enjoys less stability. Some men may agree to cohabitation for the very reason that they would like to avoid getting married, for example, and some couples begin informally living together when they are expecting a baby, without ever making a permanent commitment. Other couples agree not to get married “in case they get divorced later”.

Holding off on getting married makes a lot of sense to those couples who are not quite sure that "happily ever after" is going to be a part of their story. Those couples should keep in mind that children are just as big a commitment as marriage, if not an even bigger one — and that unlike marriage, children are absolutely permanent.

No matter what the reasons, cohabiting isn't all that it seems to be. Not only do cohabiting partners break up more easily and frequently than married couples, children growing up in such households are more likely to suffer from various forms of abuse. Kids in cohabiting households have a significantly higher risk of experiencing physical, emotional and sexual abuse than both children living with their own two married parents, and those who are being raised in single-parent households.

Scary But Statistically True: Kids With Married Parents Still Do Better

The Institute For American Values, an organization that aims to strengthen civil society in the United States, regularly publishes interesting reports about the shape of families in America. Along with that, they come up with policy proposals that would help increase marriage rates again. This is an organization that doesn't hide its agenda. You may not agree with them, but the federal data they use does not lie.

Those people who are interested in reading more should start by looking at the report Why Marriage Matters, and the State Of Our Unions reports that the Institute For American Values produces on a semi-annual basis.

The Why Marriage Matters Report included the following scary statistical conclusions that every cohabiting couple considering having kids without getting married should see:

• Children living with their married parents are healthier than children living in other family situations, and have a much lower risk of infant mortality. Married adults are also healthier than non-married adults, and married people have longer life expectancies than singles.

• Cohabitation does not offer the same benefits as marriage and is associated with some risks that single-parent households are not exposed to as much.

• Married couples tend to accumulate more wealth and earn better wages than either single people or cohabiting couples.

• Children of cohabiting, non-married parents are less likely than children of married parents to do well in school.

• Cohabitation is associated with a higher risk of psychological problems in children.

What if you made a conscious choice to live with your partner without getting married, but you are very sure that you are just as committed to each other as any married couple — and perhaps even more so? What if you have an ideological objection to marriage? What if getting married would mean the loss of certain benefits, like government-sponsored healthcare?

Statistics do not lie, but every individual family can work to avoid becoming “a statistic”. Examining these facts, and thinking about the way in which they impact you or may influence your future family (if you don't have any children yet) is one useful way in which you may dodge the figures.

Marriage As A Mere Piece Of Paper

There are, of course, couples who see marriage as a mere piece of paper — meaningless to them. The Institute For American Values points out that hardly anyone sees a college degree as a mere piece of paper, and also reminds us that marriage is an almost universal institution that has been a part of virtually every society in history. Marriage is not a mere piece of paper for the many gay and lesbian groups who have spent decades seeking the right to get married, either. 

The statistics we looked at show that marriage — or the lack thereof — has a great impact on both society and individual families. Marriage is too important to be brushed of as a personal preference that some people engage in, while others do not. 

Getting married is an act that can have an enormously positive influence on your life, and that of your children. Even if you, personally, do not see the value in getting married, do you have a reason not to get married? If uncertainty about the future of your relationship is the reason behind your reluctance to get married, then there is a very good reason not to have children within that relationship.

If you are, on the other hand, very committed to your partner and you are both sure that you want to spend your lives together, getting married offers some immediate practical benefits that may convince you that tying the knot is the right thing to do. For couples having children, marriage makes it simple for both parents to be recognized as legal parents. It enables a spouse to receive benefits granted to their marital partner in some cases, and makes inheriting from your other half in the event of a death much easier.

Being married also means you are your soul mate's next of kin, and that allows you to make medical decisions on their behalf when they are not able to. This is an especially important consideration for couples who would like to have children. Labor and birth is still the single most dangerous act a woman is likely to go through. Do you want your partner to have to wait for your parents to turn up if something happens?

As an update, newer research does show that, as the acceptance of cohabitation inreases and being unmarried is no longer seen as a stigma, the benefits children gain from being raised in a household with married parents is also slowly disapearing. It will be interesting to see what the future brings.