Did you know that there’s a life sequence that makes a huge difference in avoiding poverty, finding happiness, and generally doing well?
A new study on millennials has found a simple life sequence that, if followed, results in 97% of people not being poor.
Does it involve getting a professional university degree? Landing an awesome job? Getting into a prestigious school?
Brookings scholars Ron Haskins and Isabel Sawhill have identified the “success sequence,” through which young adults who follow three steps—getting at least a high school degree, then working full-time, and then marrying before having any children, in that order—are very unlikely to become poor. In fact, 97 percent of millennials who have followed the success sequence are not in poverty by the time they reach the ages of 28 to 34.
That’s it: Graduate from high school; get a full time job; marry before having kids.
Since this is wedding week in my family, I thought I’d end the week with this thought which shows how important marriage is. You don’t need to be an academic genius to do well in life. You just need to do things in the right order!
I’ve been beating this drum for many years now, and back in 2010 I wrote my column that used to appear in secular papers about this phenomenon. I thought I’d run that again. Please share it with young people you know: the decisions you make now really do matter in the long term!
Did you follow The Plan?
You know the one; our parents drilled it into us. Get an education, get a job, get married, have a baby. And do it in that order! No marriage before a high school diploma, no babies before a job, but most of all, no babies before marriage.
According to a new Time/Pew study, 39% of us are giving up on the Plan because we think marriage is superfluous. Yet statisticians will tell us that The Plan makes sense. Those who follow it are far more likely to escape poverty, be personally happy, and raise kids who are well-adjusted. But here’s the even bigger kicker: they’re far less likely to get divorced.
You don’t need to be an academic genius to do well in life. You just need to do things in the right order!
Why does this happen? Kay Hymowitz, author of The Marriage Gap, has found that while divorce rates may be high today, they tend to be high for a certain subset of the population: those who didn’t follow The Plan. Those who wait until they’re married to have children, and those who get their education first, tend to make it a priority to stay married.
At face value, this seems counterintuitive. It’s the educated women, after all, who don’t need a husband to support a child; they can afford to raise one on their own. Yet these women are waiting for marriage to have children, while other women don’t tend to in the same numbers. And when the latter group does marry, those marriages tend to be more fragile.
Essentially, Hymowitz argues, we are dealing with two different cultures: those that still believe in The Plan our grandmothers would have recognized, and those who think it’s archaic. Those who accept The Plan tend to be careful sexually, because the thing that would most upset their goals would be to get pregnant without being married.
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On the other hand, if marriage really is considered superfluous, then the order in which you do things suddenly doesn’t matter.
If you’re not waiting for the right spouse, but instead you’re more interested in finding a guy now, then you may enter into relationships which aren’t stable or healthy, and you’re more likely to end up pregnant. And this can easily derail many educational plans—and even romantic plans.
Sociologist Charles Murray crunched the numbers, and found that among American university educated women in families making more than $100,000 a year, the rate of illegitimacy was only about 2%. They’re still living in Leave it to Beaver days. Go down to the working class, who have a high school education but earn less than $60,000 a year in family income, and the illegitimacy rate is up to 10%. But among the underclass, who never graduated high school? It’s 45%. And that’s not because those girls got dropped out because they were pregnant; most of those pregnancies happened long after they left school. And since single parenthood is one of the highest indicators for childhood poverty and abuse, that’s a problem.
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Not only this, but if choices around marriage and parenting really are primarily cultural ones, then these mini-cultures are likely to be replicated. People who believe in The Plan—even if they themselves made mistakes in the past—will raise kids who follow it. People who don’t believe in it will raise kids who likely won’t follow it. And it will be increasingly difficult to cross over into these two groups. Rising out of poverty, then, is not just an educational issue; it’s also a cultural one.
Our schools preach that students should get an education, but maybe they need to start talking about marriage, too. Wait until you’re married to have kids, and you are dramatically less likely to end up poor, more likely to be in stable marriages, and more likely to be happy in the long run. We need to get back to The Plan. Marriage is good for you. It’s good for your kids. Let’s stop pretending it doesn’t matter, and maybe we’d be the land of opportunity once again.
What do you think? How can we show our culture that Following the Plan is worth it? Let’s talk in the comments!
Sheila Wray Gregoire has been married for 27 years and happily married for 22! She loves traveling around North America with her hubby in their RV, giving her signature "Girl Talk" about sex and marriage. And she's written 8 books. About sex and marriage. See a theme here? Plus she knits. Even in line at the grocery store.
I agree with much of this but also there a curcumstances when it’s impossible to get a job before marriage – my American husband had to get a marriage visa before he was allowed to work in the U.K. We also chose to work for ministries that were support based not salaried. Poverty isn’t the enemy. We want to be good stewards with what we are given and to honour God and each other with our choices, but poverty isn’t a sin. It isn’t simply down to choices. It’s a complex issue that sadly isn’t answered by a formula. The idea of seeking to be able to care for a spouse and family, then get a spouse and family is right because it’s right. Wealth isn’t the reward for doing things in the right order. Poverty is not judgement for making bad choices. And now I’m off on my hobby horse… sorry!
“Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.”
Amen Rachel! Sadly, when it comes to marriage many Christians serve mammon and not God, in that financial considerations drive their decisions and take precedence over the word of God.
The Lord brought the first couple together without first getting their consent, and placed them in an environment of plenty. They were commanded to be fruitful and multiply. After they sinned, the Lord in his wisdom cast them into an environment of relative scarcity — he made them poor. His command and blessing of marriage, however, was never rescinded. Adam and Eve, like us, were expected to walk by faith, not by sight.
Tevye was correct in Fiddler on the Roof. When asking Motel for his daughter’s hand in marriage he said “even a poor tailor is entitled to some happiness.”
We have to be careful we don’t make marriage and family out to be something only for the rich.
The point is, that we follow God’s plan.
God’s plan is for people to marry first, before having sex, and therefore before having children.
People who follow God’s plan generally gets God’s blessings. These blessings are not only in the material sense, but many times includes material blessings.
Never is the point about marriage only for the rich or even that marriage is the pathway to riches. The point is that marriage before those other things is God’s plan. And God’s plan is the best.
God’s Plan is the the best Plan.
Wait until marriage to have a kid.
Wait until marriage to have sex.
Wait until marriage to have foreplay.
Sheila, You are so right that marriage is a good thing. Sadly, marriage is looked at as a crowning achievement instead of a foundational support as God designed it. It is said marriage is now looked at as a capstone instead of a cornerstone. I disagree, though, that it is a way to avoid poverty. The data is kind of misleading as pointed out in a March 2016 article in The Atlantic, “Marriage Will Not Fix Poverty.” Generally, a majority portion of those who marry and have a SAHM will fall below the poverty line. The married ones who prosper financially are the marriages where both spouses work outside the home, thus the financial gain comes at the expense of the children. The financial gain is simply a matter of addition — two incomes v. one. Truth is, many young families will need community support well past the initial wedding if they are to have children and raise them as well. Previous generations had it much better in this respect.
You make a good point Doug. Also our concept of what constitutes poverty has shifted. By today’s standards quite a few of my parents generation would be considered poor when they started out married life. They didn’t see it that way then. They followed the Plan and worked hard and saved hard and went without what they considered luxuries and what are often considered essentials today and as time went on, they got financially more secure. Economic decisions in Western society in the last few decades have not been very pro marriage or pro family. In the UK house prices have rocketed, making it difficult for a couple with two good jobs to afford them easily. In the past you could get a good job after leaving school, now lots more go to University, have lots of debt and still sometimes struggle to get a well paid job. The plan is still the best way because it is God’s way and it may not make you rich or even avoid poverty but you will be more secure as a family to face whatever financial hurdles come your way.
Yeah, that’s simply not true. I’m in a “poor” area, Appalachia. My church is not super wealthy. But there are a whole lot of people here who are SAHM (they home school) with a 3-9 kids who aren’t poor by any stretch of the imagination. They are graduated school (and college), got married and then had kids.
I now work at the community College. My husband and I make less tham $60 k combined, neither have a full time job, and we’re both PhD’s. We’re ok. We’re well above the poverty line and we have savings.
The students/ people at the college who really struggle are the single parents. The ones who dropped out of school pregnant. The ones who has 3 kids and has never been married. They are the ones working 80 hrs/ week to make ends meet, who get food at he food bank, who need financial aid to attend the community college ($160/ credit hour. It’s really not expensive).
I can see in my own live where the plan made a difference. If we’d had a kid before marriage, I’d have dropped out of the PhD program. Then my husband having a hard time getting a job better than adjunct would have been a major crisis. Bacause BS jobs in my field around here is pretty scarce too. Now it’s merely inconvenient. Because we are married and don’t have a kid.
I’m 25, well educated, have a great full time job and full heartedly agree with The Plan. I’m in a long term relationship and have made it clear to my boyfriend that there needs to be a ring on my finger before kids enter the picture. I know a fair amount of people personally who had kids either before graduating high school and/or before marriage and most, if not all, are struggling financially.
The 3 things outlined, I feel help mature a person, teach them how to prepare and plan for things, and most importantly, help you be stable. Though I’m no parent, I’m fairly certain that being a stable person and having a stable home life will in turn help you succeed and raise stable children.
Thanks for writing this Sheila! Great work as always.
Sorry but this sounds… like my mother! And I’m 49 and a mother of 3 boys. After my own experiences I would not give them that advice. I graduated from university, got a job, no, I didn’t marry but had a long term relationship. We strugg led with infertility for 6 years. By the time I finally conceived I was 36. Then I became a mum again through adoption when I was 40 and 48. I would tell my kids – children never really fit into your life. Don’t wait until it’s too late. I regret having waited so long. You never know what will happen in life. You can always change jobs and work on your career but having children is something that you can’t plan. We think we can plan having children that way and wait until they fit into our designed life plan but life taught me something different.
Best wishes, Anna
So, are you suggesting that people have children out of wedlock because that’s what’s they want and not part of God’s plan? It’s very clear that God tells us to wait to be sexually active until marriage, not because he wants to punish us but, rather, to protect us. We live in a time when it’s what we want and not listening to what God wants for us. I don’t think we have to look very far to see that that ideology doesn’t work at all.
Anna, I think we’re actually on the same page here. I definitely think that you should have kids as young as possible. But the point of the article is that you should have a full-time job BEFORE you marry and have kids. That doesn’t mean have a dream job or have your career settled out or have a nice house or anything. You could have a lousy job making minimum wage and live in an apartment. But as long as there is SOME income coming in to the household, and you are married, then you tend to do well. But I’d agree–don’t wait until your career is settled. We had kids when my husband was just starting his medical residency, we didn’t wait until he was done and was working as a doctor. But he at least was making an income, albeit small!