Marriage – Family Council

Research Reminds Us Marriage Still Matters

Mar 4, 2026Jerry CoxMarriageChurch Ambassador Network, Marriage

A recent study from Barna reveals that fewer Americans are getting married today, but most still believe marriage is important and they want to get married someday.

According to Barna, only 46% of U.S. adults are currently married, down from two-thirds in 1950. The decline largely seems to be due to people waiting longer to marry. The average age for first marriage has risen since 1950. Men now marry at 30, on average, and women marry at age 28 – 29.

The good news is most unmarried adults still want to get married. Among Gen Z, 81% say they value marriage, and 78% hope to marry someday. So while cultural attitudes may be changing, marriage is a deeply desired goal for most Americans.

Barna also found that divorce rates have remained steady, with about 18% of adults reporting they’ve been divorced and more than half of divorced adults reporting that they have remarried.

One concerning trend is the growing acceptance of cohabitation. Barna noted that 58% of all adults—including 42% of practicing Christians—now say it’s “wise” to live together before marriage.

That’s troubling, because cohabitation creates relationships that are less happy and less healthy, and children with a married mother and father are less likely to live in poverty.

Married couples, on the other hand, report more satisfaction across the board than cohabiting couples, and marriage is also broadly connected with better health and wellbeing. 

Family Council has written repeatedly about the rising percentage of Arkansans who have “never married.”

The U.S. Census Bureau’s 2010 American Community Survey found that 17% of men and 12.6% of women ages 35-44 had never married. By 2024, those percentages had increased to 25.6% of men and 18.7% of women.

Overall, married Arkansans dropped from 51% of the population in 2010 to 49.8% in 2024.

Cohabitation could be one explanation for the rising percentage of Arkansans who have never married, but the data isn’t clear.

Despite cultural changes, Americans—including young people—still believe marriage matters. That’s good news for Arkansas’ families and churches who understand that strong marriages are the key to building strong communities.

Articles appearing on this website are written with the aid of Family Council’s researchers and writers.

Initiative Launched to Directly Confront Obergefell SCOTUS Ruling

Feb 13, 2026Erin HoganMarriageGreater Than, Marriage, Same-Sex Marriage

Many people remember the dark day of the Obergefell v. Hodges ruling from the Supreme Court of the United States and the dramatic effects it had on America and the world.

God’s design for marriage, a fundamental staple of society, had been blatantly devalued by the highest court in the land.

Advocates for traditional marriage were left wondering what implications this ruling would have on society. Unfortunately, many of those fears came to pass.

County clerks have been expected to issue same-sex marriage licenses, while marriage and parenthood have been dramatically redefined.

Human life has been devalued through commercial surrogacy to provide children for homosexual couples.

Children’s greater good has been put second to adults’ feelings, wants, and desires.

The deeper roots of the ruling have reached levels many never dreamed of. Same-sex marriage has given way to transgenderism, which has caused many children to question their gender identity.

Obergefell and its tragic effects have hurt society, but it has also created permanent victims in the law and culture — namely, children.

Family Council along with countless other organizations, individuals, elected officials, and parent advocates have consistently spoken the truth about Obergefell and its consequences.

In 2021, Arkansas passed the first law protecting children from puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and sex-change surgeries. As of today, at least twenty-five other states have passed a similar law protecting kids!

Arkansas lawmakers have also passed laws protecting women’s safety in showers, locker rooms, changing rooms, restrooms, and sleeping quarters in schools, government buildings, jails, and shelters. They have also protected fairness in women’s sports and clarified the meaning of “sex,” “male,” and “female” in state code. These legislative and cultural wins have been huge victories for the side of truth and common sense!

There is a new initiative that launched just last month that will directly confront Obergefell. It is called the Greater Than Movement and according to their website, this is “A coalition of parents, students, researchers, think tanks, influencers, and citizens who are willing to state the self-evident but costly truth: children need, deserve, and have a right to their mother and father. Marriage is and always has been the most effective tool to secure that right.”

This new coalition is a direct response to the tragedies that Obergefell has left on society. Family Council is grateful to be a part of this growing movement.

As Christians, we know God, in the creation order, made male and female to represent his beauty in the earth. As image bearers it is our responsibility to do our best to defend, protect, and preserve it. And that includes protecting the next generation. Will you join us?

Children Are Greater Than Our Desires: Guest Column

Feb 6, 2026John StonestreetMarriageChild Welfare, Children, Commercial Surrogacy, Marriage, Same-Sex Marriage, Surrogacy

“Babies aren’t a tool for adult validation,” and other messages society seems primed to hear.

Recently, singer Meghan Trainor posted a picture of herself in a hospital bed, teary-eyed, and holding a newborn for skin-to-skin contact. The woman who carried and birthed the child, however, was nowhere in sight. Trainor and her husband used a surrogate.

Of course, as images go these days, this one is preferable to men pretending to be postpartum, having just bought a child via the surrogacy market. But that just shows how disordered our society is about marriage, sex, and babies.

Many people, including many Christians, consider surrogacy a harmless and helpful technological advancement. People want babies, and more babies are good, the thinking goes. All the while, a blind eye is turned to the severe moral problems inherent in the mechanics of surrogacy, including the commodification of children and the desecration of the maternal bond. Not to mention, the system is so underregulated, pedophiles and child abusers have been able to acquire victims.

Thankfully, more are learning the truth about this practice and this industry. As Katy Faust of Them Before Us put it in response to Trainor’s post:

Thousands are finally speaking up against surrogacy. The tide is turning. We’re grateful your baby is here, alive, and loved. But we won’t pretend the method was harmless. No child should be created through a system that turns women into means and babies into products.

That system is enabled and protected by the 2015 Obergefell Supreme Court decision. Severing marriage in law from the intrinsically biological realities of male and female also severed the connection between children and those whose union creates them. Marriage is presumed now, both in culture and in law, to be an institution of adult feelings. Kids are accessories.

As Faust told The Colson Center:

Across the globe 38 countries have legalized gay marriage. Exactly 0 of them have simultaneously strengthened children’s claim to their own mother and father. All of them have either abolished or significantly weakened the idea that children belong to the two people responsible for their existence.

This week, Faust announced the formation of a coalition of leaders and organizations called Greater Than. Advocates of same-sex “marriage” campaigned on the promise of marriage equality, posting memes of equal signs across social media. Greater Than proclaims the hard truth that children are treated as less than when they are deprived of mom and dad. As Faust described,

Greater Than is a coalition of pastors, parents, influencers, policy makers, theologians, lawyers, students, and normie Americans who are all speaking with one voice. What are we saying? “Don’t touch the kids.” Marriage does not exist as a tool for adult validation. It is God’s Plan A for child protection, and we intend to retake it on their behalf.

Rather than seeing kids as truly equal and deserving adult protection, the dangerous combination of abortion, surrogacy, and redefining marriage reduces them to one option among many, as a means to fulfill adult desires. Legally, just as Roe v. Wade deprived preborn children of their right to life, Obergefell is depriving children of their right to their mom and dad. Just as a culture of death enables the holocaust of abortion, a culture of sexual autonomy enables the commodification of children. As pro-lifers have done for decades now on the issue of abortion, so the Greater Than coalition is committed to the legal and cultural work necessary to protect children.

The Colson Center is proud to join this list of 43 (and growing!) organizations and leaders. The Greater Than website features answers to difficult questions, opportunities to get involved, and the latest news and information about this pressing problem.

Join the movement. As the Greater Than website puts it:

The line has been crossed. The cost is our kids. It’s time to fight back—with truth, courage, and conviction. It is our responsibility to give kids their identity, security, and childhood back.