Two recent ads are receiving accolades for their pro-family messaging. The first is a near mini-movie for Volvo, promoting the car’s safety features in protecting a mother with a child in utero. The second commercial for Apple airpods flashes back in time to show us how a new baby became the teenager her father is now watching unwrap the gift of a new guitar. Both present beautiful vignettes speaking to the meaningful adventure that is family. Both give a positive portrayal of men, which is quasi-miraculous today. Both contribute to a culture in which we can watch what we know in our hearts: that family is a major source of meaning for everyone. 

As good as those ads are, and I join the chorus of those applauding them, it remains perfectly possible to watch them and think marriage is peripheral to the unfolding of a stable family life together with a child. But marriage is, in fact, the central organizing institution around which we can best assure that we get the family goods we desire—that we are able to access this adventure of family life; that we can become adults ourselves through the giving up of ourselves for the other.

The cultural confusion around the function of marriage in society is why I co-authored the new book, I …Do? Why Marriage Still Matters.

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The loss of the logic and language of marriage in our culture is a complex story. But as we’ve lived through the sexual revolution for longer than the Israelites wandered the desert, we can see the corrosive impact the sexual revolution has had. And importantly, we can acknowledge there are indeed trade-offs. Not all aspects of the sexual revolution are wholesale bad, but neither have all changes to family proven helpful. 

For the purposes of this short column, we’ll say the sexual revolution began in 1960 with FDA approval of the birth control pill. We began to make more and more family trade-offs, specifically in marriage, through laws and policies. For example, when Ronald Reagan, then governor of California, legalized no-fault divorce, the trade-off seemed reasonable. Everyone (including Reagan, whose first marriage ended) would be able to get out of a marriage without needing to point a legal finger (“find fault”). With that, the divorce revolution took root, resulting in a re-branding. No more would divorce be painful, instead it offered new life, a rebirth into finding one’s true self. Making it easier to exit harmful marriages, likewise made marriage less permanent for all.

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Adding to that, second wave feminism railed against marriage as an oppressive and patriarchal shackle.  Faculty lounge logic infiltrated movies and music, and became a cultural norm. Even more common was the idea that marriage is simply unnecessary. Living together as a precursor to marriage or even a replacement for marriage is now completely normal. A natural result is that fewer people today are getting married at all. 

If the two ad spots reveal anything, it is that people still desire healthy, stable relationships and family life. The problem is that we have no idea how to achieve it.  This is something we unpack more fully in the book.  

Family is deeply personal. We experience our best memories and worst wounds in family. I fully acknowledge this reality, but extend an invitation to look beyond our own experiences into some of the well-known but under-publicized data and research on marriage. This is not a book telling you your own divorce was unwarranted. Neither does it say the unmarried must immediately head for the altar. Instead, one recently divorced woman reading the book offered that she would be giving it to her own daughter, who was now feeling estranged from marriage altogether courtesy of witnessing the difficulties in her parents’ marriage. 

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For my money, looking at family trends today, marriage is the pivotal aspect of family life that requires more attention. Do I think two ads will change the trajectory of family stats gone awry over several decades? Absolutely not. But do I think two ads, accompanied by great research, alongside other changes could compel renewed attention on the things that truly matter? Maybe, just maybe. Because the family is central to our lives, and that basic truth is not now, nor will it ever, be easily extinguished. As Chesterton put it: “This triangle of truisms, of father, mother and child, cannot be destroyed; it can only destroy those civilizations which disregard it.” 

Andrea Mrozek is co-author of the recently published I…Do? Why Marriage Still Matters.