R: Marry Rich

As Federalists, we agree that families form the bedrock of righty-ordered society. We agree that the fundamental purpose of families is to raise and nurture children. For their foundational position in our society, and for the sake of the children they nurture, we better hope that families are stable. Whether we like it or not, economic stability is highly correlated with better outcomes for children and marriages in the west. An analysis conducted by University of California Irvine based economist, Greg Duncan found that, at every stage of development, “A life of poverty is statistically associated with higher rates of activities detrimental to individuals and to society, such as crime, violence, underemployment, unemployment, and isolation from the larger community.” He goes on to say that, “The costs of poverty are borne not only by the children reared in such circumstances but by society at large” (Duncan 16). Given that marriage’s primary end is the rearing and educating of children, should financial circumstance be a serious consideration for potential couples? Should we be actively looking for a spouse that comes from wealth? Shakespeare, Tolstoy and… Disney, tell us that love between two people does, and indeed should, transcend all social and economic barriers, but does sentimentalizing marriage to the extent that we disregard all pragmatic realities that must be considered put us at risk of disadvantaging ourselves, our offspring, and our society?

Then again, mere statistics of a broken culture may not tell the whole story. Perhaps we don’t need wealth. Perhaps all we need is faith, a true commitment to raising children well, and love for our spouse. Historically in the west, some of the most tightly-knit, multigenerational family structures have existed in the lower classes of society. While we cannot naively wax nostalgic about the glory of the medieval agrarian family, we can agree that the family is in crisis like never before seen in the west. Most would argue that decline is not due to a lack of gold digging. To the contrary, the disintegration of class barriers in marriage seems to be positively correlated with this decline of the family. To that end, does a complete emphasis on marriage as a means of social mobility risk cheapening it into a simple transaction. After all, the model for all families, the Holy Family, did not have wealth or notoriety. Is this not some indication that wealth in families, if not destructive, is at least unnecessary? Or does the economically driven society in which we live mandate that we seriously consider the wealth of our spouse before entering into the lifelong journey of marriage?