By India McCarty
Are marriage rates really on the rise? This researcher says yes — and claims divorce rates are falling, too.
“Marriage looks like it’s coming back,” University of Virginia sociology professor Brad Wilcox wrote in a piece for The Atlantic. “Stable marriage is a norm again, and the way that most people rear the rising generation.”
He explained that “after falling for more than 40 years beginning in the late 1960s,” the number of children living in a home with married parents was 64% in 2012. In 2024, that number had risen to 66%.
Wilcox pointed out that a factor for these rising numbers is the decreasing divorce rate.
“Since the early 1980s, the divorce rate has now fallen by almost 40 percent — and about half of that decline has happened in just the past 15 years,” he wrote. “The idea that marriage will end in failure half the time or more (well entrenched in many American minds) — is out of date. The proportion of first marriages expected to end in divorce has fallen to about 40 percent in recent years.”
Marriage is showing new signs of resilience, @BradWilcoxIFS writes. The institution has adapted—and continues to survive. https://t.co/Btg10Xi8AI pic.twitter.com/5nJW4VEB7k
— The Atlantic (@TheAtlantic) August 3, 2025
A new report published by the Institute for Family Studies shared these statistics as well, saying, “These reversals mean that marriage is back as the cornerstone of American family life. Stable marriage is increasingly the way that most men and women are raising children.”
Part of Wilcox’s research was to combat comments made by podcaster Andrew Tate, who told his thousands of followers there is “zero statistical advantage” for young men to get married.
Related: Marriage Rates on the Rise, New Data Shows
“It’s important for teen boys and young men to hear the entirety of this message. Marriage changes men, but not in the nefarious ways Andrew Tate might think,” Wilcox wrote, explaining that men “work harder and find more success at work” after getting married.
He added, “Marriage can channel noble characteristics and behaviors that have classically been identified with masculinity: protection, provision, ambition, stoicism. That’s good for both men and women — and can help young men identify and work toward a model of prosocial masculinity that diverges from the one being peddled by manosphere influencers such as Tate.”
Marriage rates being on the rise also means better lives for children. A 2024 research brief from the Brookings Institution stated, “Marriage still matters…a lot.”
“The finding that children who are born to married parents tend to enjoy better life outcomes is consistent with existing research that has established that children who grow up in two-parent homes are more likely to graduate from college and work and are less likely to have children young, be depressed, be convicted for committing a crime, or end up poor as adults on average,” the brief explained.
Wilcox’s research, as well as the recent report from the Institute for Family Studies, shows that young people are turning the tide when it comes to marriage and divorce numbers.
Read Next: Divorce Rates are Dropping Rapidly… You Might Be Surprised Why
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