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Why Marriage Matters: An Argument for the Goods of Marriage

A Conversation with Elizabeth Marquardt, Affiliate Scholar, IAV; Amy L. Wax, Robert Mundheim Professor of Law, University of Pennsylvania Law School; and W. Bradford Wilcox, director of the National Marriage Project, University of Virginia. Hosted by Jonathan Rauch, guest scholar at the Brookings Institution.

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More by: Jonathan Rauch

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For most of the latter-half of the twentieth century, divorce posed the greatest threat to child well-being and the institution of marriage. Today, that is not the case. New research – made available for the first time in this third edition of "Why Marriage Matters" – suggests that the rise of cohabiting households with children is the largest unrecognized threat to the quality and stability of children's lives in today's families.

This conversation was recorded in New York City on August 16, 2011.