Welcome to Breakpoint, daily look at an ever-changing culture through the lens of Unchanging Truth,

for the Colson Center I'm John Stone Street.

Last fall, Cultural Observer and former Buzzfeed writer Anne Helen Peterson published an e-book

about the difficulties of motherhood during the pandemic.

Based on her interviews with about a thousand women, her conclusion were telegraphed in the

title, quote, the moms are not all right.

But I think most parents would agree that parenting during a pandemic is, well, not ideal.

However, according to scholars Brad Wilcox and Wendy Wang and a recent article in the

Atlantic, married mothers spared quite well during the pandemic, including indicating

a greater degree of happiness than their single counterparts.

Summarizing the 2022 American Family Survey, a poll of about 3,000 respondents, Wilcox

and Wang report that, quote, affluent married mothers had a striking 30 percentage point

advantage in their reports of being somewhat or completely satisfied with their life, compared

with poor single moms.

And quote, still, the difference cannot be explained as many would claim only as a difference

in class.

While mothers with more money can benefit from the reduced stress that extra wealth brings

and can afford services that make life a children easier, Wilcox and Wang think that

marriage is the thing that makes the most difference.

In fact, middle class and upper class mothers tend to have another parent in the home at

a whopping 81 and 95% respectively compared to just 55% of mothers living in poverty.

Wilcox in particular hopes to expose the common myths about marriage.

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