Scientific research is valuable insofar as it can reinforce the truths of the Bible and principles of natural law; namely, that when we observe the way the world works (and does not work), it becomes abundantly clear that marriage matters for human flourishing almost more than anything else.

Humanly speaking, there is nothing more important for personal well-being, positive social behavior, and general success in life than being raised by one’s biological parents committed to each other in a stable marriage. Over the past forty years, a vast body of research has demonstrated conclusively that children are deeply affected by family structure and that married parents are best for children. Any efforts — whether governmental, educational, or ecclesiastical — that mean to encourage human flourishing must take this reality into account as both an explanation for many societal ills and as a means to the end of hoped-for societal health and vitality.
Not a Myth
Family life in America has changed dramatically in a relatively short period of time. In 1960, 73% of children lived with two parents in their first marriage. By 2014, less than half (46%) of children were living in this type of family. Conversely, the percentage of children living with a single parent rose from 9% in 1960 to 26% in 2014. An additional 7% of children now live with cohabiting parents. Moreover, the increase in non-traditional family arrangements has coincided with the decoupling of marriage and childbearing. In 1960, just 5% of all births occurred outside of marriage. By 2000, around 40% of all births occurred outside of marriage (a percentage that has held steady over the last twenty years). As of 2014, 29% of births to white women, 53% of births to Hispanic women, and 71% of births to black women were out-of-wedlock. In the span of only 60 years, what were once considered exceptional family circumstances have become the norm.[1]
Given the changing portrait of the American family, it is not surprising that many people believe — or, given the uncomfortable prospect of implicitly judging others, feel compelled to say they believe — that there is no difference between one parent or two parents when it comes to raising children. According to one online survey, “more than 70% of participants believed that a single parent can do just as good a job as two parents.” Further, 60% of women “agreed that children do best with multiple adults invested and helping, but that two married parents are not necessary.”[2] Christina Cross, writing in the New York Times, went so far as to decry “The Myth of the Two-Parent Home,” citing evidence that black children in two-parent families still fare worse than white children in two-parent families.[3] But Cross’s argument fails to take into account how much better all children do in two-parent families compared to one-parent families of the same race. The percentage of white children living in poverty goes from 31% in families with only a mother, to 17% in families with only a father, all the way down to 5% in families with a married couple. The same percentages for black children go from 45% (mother-only), to 36% (father-only), to 12% (married couple). We can lament that black children in two-parent families are still 2.4 times more likely to be in poverty than white children (12% v. 5%), but we should also observe that white children raised by only a mother are 2.6 times as likely to be in poverty as black children raised by two parents (31% v. 12%). While there are still advantages to being white in this country, he much bigger advantage is being raised by two parents. It is better in America to be a black child raised by two parents than to be a white child in a one-parent home. The breakdown of the family is not a black problem; it is a problem wherever two-parent families decline and single-parent households become normalized.[4]
Family Structure and Child Well-Being
The conclusion that children raised by their biological, married parents do better, by almost every measure,  has been proven in hundreds of studies over the last several decades.[5]
One of the best and most concise summaries of the academic literature comes from a policy brief published in 2003 by the Center for Law and Social Policy.[6] Citing a 1994 study by Sara McLanahan and Gary Sandefur, the 2003 brief notes that children who do not live with both biological parents were roughly twice as likely to be poor, to have birth outside of marriage, to have behavioral and psychological problems, and to not graduate from high school.[7] Another study found that children in single-parent homes were more likely to experience health problems, such as accidents, injuries, and poisonings.[8] Other research found that children living with single mothers were five times as likely to be poor.[9]
Importantly, not all types of single-parent households fare the same. Children of widowed parents, for example, do better than children in families with divorced or cohabiting parents.[10] Children of divorce are two-and-a-half times as likely to have serious social, emotional, or psychological problems as children from intact families.[11] Likewise, children in cohabiting families are at a higher risk of poor outcomes in a host of economic and emotional categories. Critically, these poor outcomes are not erased when the single-parent family is better off financially.[12] Marriage is the issue, not economics. In short,
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Far from being an artifact of the past, hymnals are vital resources that ensure we remain grounded in modes of piety above and beyond our cultural contexts and fixed in orthodox doctrine. When we consider that worship songs are one of the primary ways that Christians are catechized in the Christian life, it is hard to understate how important this is.

The hymnal is, for the most part, a dying artifact. Fewer and fewer churches have hymnals in stock, and even fewer actually make use of them during Lord’s Day worship. On the one hand, this makes a great deal of sense. It is expensive, after all, to buy a considerable number of physical books that eventually must be replaced—potentially soon, even, if children with Crayons get their hands on one or somebody spills their coffee on one. Why not just project the lyrics to whatever “Psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs” are being sung, up on the big screen? Some people will claim, too, that worship with screens has the added benefit of creating a more somatically natural worship experience. Instead of looking down at a book, one can look forward, project his voice outward, and see the rest of the congregation worshiping alongside him. And instead of holding an object in his hands, his hands are now free to be elevated or held open in a posture of worship. I recently had a lengthy argument with another Presbyterian friend who made all these points.
As compelling as these arguments may be, the demise of the hymnal comes with an unintended, but horrible, consequence: evangelical worship that is marked by “chronological snobbery.” This reveals something about our current moment and has significant theological implications. Abetted by the strong influences of liberalism and consumer capitalism, our culture is one that suffers greatly from historical amnesia and is obsessed with the here and now.
For example, if you quiz a typical American about pre-World War II history, most likely, they have scant knowledge. What little they do know might well be that whatever happened was certainly racist, sexist, homophobic, backward, anti-intellectual, unsophisticated, and outdated. C.S. Lewis, in his book, The Screwtape Letters, labeled this attitude “chronological snobbery,” and rightly characterized it as antithetical to Christianity. Indeed, our religion is not one that has to do with what is hot and fashionable in the current moment but is one that is predicated upon fixed eternal truths and, as J. Gresham Machen insists in Christianity and Liberalism, upon events—especially a set of particular events: the incarnation, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ—that occurred in the past. We assert, with the church catholic through the ages: “As it was in the beginning, [it] is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.” In fact, this creed, itself—known as the Gloria Patri —is one of the oldest hymns in the Christian tradition, dating back to the first few centuries of the church. It is an heritage of the early church that has been shared by all major branches of Christianity, including evangelical Protestantism. Indeed, it was included in most of the Protestant hymnals published over the last few centuries—even the low-church Baptist Hymnals! But it is a safe bet that most evangelical Christians today have never heard of it. This illustrates the problem we face.
Hymns and spiritual songs from different periods in history reflect different emphases, based on the cultural milieus in which those texts were written. If one looks at the Trinity Hymnal—one of the best modern hymnals out there—one will find a constellation of hymns from different time periods that have different theological emphases or use different sorts of language and style. For example, there are a few of those hymns that have no clear author but have been universal standards in the church catholic since the few centuries immediately following the Council of Nicaea, such as, again, the Gloria Patri, the Te Deum, which appears in the Trinity Hymnal as, “Holy God, We Praise Your Name,” and the Gloria in Excelsis, which appears in the same collection as “All Glory Be to Thee, Most High.” These texts have a characteristic emphasis on the Trinity properly understood, and the centrality of this doctrine in redemption and the Christian life. And far from being relics of Popery, these texts remained centerpieces of worship following the English Reformation. Thomas Cranmer included English translations of all three of these texts in the Book of Common Prayer. Even today, for Prayer Book Anglicans (and Presbyterians), these texts remain important. Other hymn texts in the Trinity Hymnal that were composed by Church Fathers or other early church poets generally emphasize these same themes—dwelling heavily on the Trinity, or walking, over their several verses, through the themes of the Nicaean or Apostles’ Creeds. Examples include the fourth-century text, “Of the Father’s Love Begotten;” “O Light That Knew No Dawn,” written by the Cappadocian Father, Gregory of Nazianus; and Ambrose of Milan’s poem, “O Splendor of God’s Glory Bright.” These texts, unlike the previous three, were less known to early Protestants. They were re-sourced and translated by English clergymen during the nineteenth-century Oxford Movement, which, despite its multiple theological issues that can be fairly summarized as “crypto-Romanism,” nevertheless wrought a laudable emphasis on resourcing hymn texts from the early church.
However, apart from “Of the Father’s Love Begotten,” which has become somewhat of a Christmas standard, and a very small part of the Latin text of Gloria in Excelsis—which, again, appears in the chorus of the nineteenth-century English Christmas carol, “Angels We Have Heard on High,” few evangelicals today know any of these early church hymn texts. Yet the doctrine of the Trinity is one of the doctrines that has most plagued the contemporary evangelical church. I could point to the heterodox doctrine of “social trinitarianism” that has so insidiously pervaded so much evangelical scholarship in the last half century, or simply call to mind all of the poor analogies for the Trinity that venture into modalism, Sabellianism, Arianism, and a whole host of other classic heresies that are prevalent enough among laypeople for Hans Fiene’s Lutheran Satire to have, years ago, created a funny video entitled “St. Patrick’s Bad Analogies” that remains evergreen and salient to all its watchers. Even in the Reformed evangelical world, the most popular systematic theology written the last few decades, Wayne Grudem’s Systematic Theology, despite its general ease-to-read and helpfulness, is unfortunately marred by the crypto-Arian error known as “Eternal Functional Subordination of the Son—a doctrine that ignited a firestorm of controversy in the evangelical world about ten years ago. I must wonder, if the evangelical church had been more diligent in catechizing its members by preserving, in regular worship, these ancient hymn texts that dwell so richly on Nicaean Trinitarianism, would we be dealing with so many trinitarian errors today?
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According to numerous polls, many children of believers in Europe and North America are leaving the church once they reach young adulthood. Older Christians do not need polls to tell them this. It is evident in the pews. When we think about the reasons why, we often start by pointing outward—to the influences of the world on our children. It’s Hollywood’s fault. It’s the schools’ fault. It’s his fault. It’s her fault. Many external things certainly are contributing factors, but how often do we stop pointing at others and look at ourselves to ask whether we have said and done things that have caused these little ones to stumble? Is any of it our fault?
Our little ones watch us and listen to us. They are quick to notice inconsistencies in speech and behavior. Have they ever heard their parents, pastor, or other Christian adults say one thing to them about the kind of behavior and speech God requires, only to witness these same adults contradicting what they claim to believe in their own speech and behavior?