Faith

1
Faith Family at the Margins?Religion,
Marriage, Young Adulthood

• W. Bradford Wilcox
• National Marriage Project
• University of Virginia

2
Education/Jobs gt Faith Family

• Shifting social landscape where some aspects of
  young adults lives are less institutionalized
• Religion
• Marriage and family life
• But greater focus on education work
• College enrollment is up
• Young adult employment is up
• Concentrated among young women

3
The Deinstitutionalization of Young Adult Religion
4
Married at Age 30 ()
MARRIAGE AND COHABITATION
Source Calculations based on tables in On the
Frontier of Adulthood, pp. 60-71 (2005) BILL
GALSTON SLIDE
5
College Enrolled, 1980-2003, by Gender
EDUCATION
Source U.S. Department of Commerce, Census
Bureau, Current Population Surveys (CPS),
October, various years, unpub tabulations.
6
Labor Force Participation Rate, Ages 25 to 35
EMPLOYMENT AND EARNINGS
Source Emily Roussel, The Brookings Institution,
analysis of CPS data
7
Why Might this Be Cause for Concern?

• Religion and marriage play an important role in
  orienting the lives of young adults

8
Hair et al. Study

• Religious families and religious young adults
• Less drugs, drinking, smoking
• Religion provides
• Norms that guide behavior
• Networks that steer young adults in positive
  directions lend social support to them
• Nomos that gives their world meaning deal
  constructively with the stresses that can
  otherwise lead to substance abuse

9
Whats the Problem?

• Secularization of young adulthood may make young
  adults
• more vulnerable to substance abuse

10
Academic Excursus

• Consider religious dissensus in the family
• New research on the sanctification of the home
• Classification of religious trends
• Recategorize unsafe sex into 2 or 3 outcomes
• Contraceptive, unmarried sex
• Married sex abstinence

11
Regnerus Study

• Young adults are increasingly preoccupied with
• Education Schooling
• Hedonism
• Fun, freedom, travel
• Serial, short-term relationships that fit this
  new lifestyle
• Deinstitutionalization of courtship marriage

12
Whats the Problem?

• The deinstitutionalization of courtship the
  delay of marriage is associated with
• Nonmarital childbearing
• Serial relationships
• Lowered odds of marital success

13
The Real Pregnancy Problem

• Most unwed pregnancies are NOT to teens
• 60 of unwed pregnancies are to 20-somethings

14
Serial Relationships

• Sex with multiple partners is associated with an
  increased divorce risk
• 2 or more Partners
• 48-109 increased risk of divorce
• Sources Laumann et al. 1994 Lichter Qian
  2008 Teachman 2003

15
Dont Put Off Marriage

• Young adults are having trouble
• launching
• In 2007, mean age at marriage for men was
• 28 for women was 26 it is still rising
• But the happiest marriages are
• made between ages 23 and 27
• Mature
• But not too settled in their ways
• Also havent had as much opportunity to move in
  and out of a series of sexually intimate
  relationships
• Source Glenn et. al. 2009

16
Faith Family at the Margins

• For a range of reasons, young adults are now more
  likely to put faith and family to the margins of
  their lives
• But a good deal of social scientific evidence
  suggests that faith family provide them with
• norms, networks, nomos
• that lend an important measure of direction,
  purpose, and order to their lives