To read this provocative account is to think that America\u2019s relationships are in chaos. Even when we live together without marrying, we break up faster than in other places, he says. In one of the book\u2019s surprising findings he says that American children whose parents are married are more likely to experience the turmoil of a parental break-up than Swedish children whose parents live together without being married.<\/p>\n
Marriage is nevertheless an American ideal. We are the only Western nation that actually spends government money to support it. The 2005 federal Healthy Marriage Initiative now allocates $100 million a year to promote marriage. It doesn\u2019t seem to be working; marriage rates are declining precipitously, though most Americans are still expected to marry.<\/p>\n
Marriage is our battleground. Only in America, Mr. Cherlin says, are gay people campaigning so determinedly for the right to marry. Most gay men and lesbians in Europe, he maintains, view marriage as another oppressive heterosexual institution.<\/p>\n
How to explain this peculiar paradox \u201d\u201d we idealize marriage and yet we\u2019re so bad at it.<\/p>\n