Traditional two-parent families vanish from big American cities as ‘marriage deserts’ expand

Where are America’s married couples? A new study highlights a significant geographic divide.

Ken Burchfiel, a researcher at the Institute for Family Studies, explains how marriage rates differ between major urban centers and suburban communities, and why those variations could be significant for families raising children.

The traditional two-parent nuclear family is far less common in parts of major American cities than in suburban areas. According to a new report, fewer than a quarter of households with children are headed by married couples in certain neighborhoods within Cleveland, Washington, D.C., Milwaukee, and Detroit.

The study from the Institute for Family Studies found that the proportion of households with children headed by married couples fluctuates by roughly 70 percentage points across the regions analyzed, illustrating a clear divide between urban “married-family deserts” and suburban “married-family gardens.”

These findings reveal disparities in family structure nationwide, prompting questions about how a child’s neighborhood might influence their prospects for upward mobility.

A split image shows the Cleveland skyline, left, and a residential neighborhood in Utah, right. A new Institute for Family Studies report found that just 18% of households with children in eastern Cleveland and nearby Bratenahl Village are headed by married couples, compared with rates as high as 89% in parts of Utah County.

“Marriage and raising kids are both parts of your life that really force you to kind of die to yourself and live for others,” Ken Burchfiel, a research fellow at the Institute for Family Studies, told Fox News Digital.

“When you have lots of parents, lots of husbands and wives in a region, I imagine just overall the cultural focus is less on ‘how can I get ahead in life’ and more on ‘what can I do for my family?’”

The research utilized 2020 Census data to pinpoint where married-parent households are most and least prevalent. It discovered that suburban neighborhoods generally feature higher marriage rates, while major urban centers often report lower figures.

A map from the Institute for Family Studies shows the prevalence of households with children headed by married couples across the United States, highlighting differences between urban “married-family deserts” and suburban “married-family gardens.”

Suburban Dallas-Fort Worth serves as the nation’s largest clustered “marriage garden,” whereas Lower Manhattan and Brooklyn constitute the largest “marriage desert,” encompassing nearly 686,000 householders, more than two-thirds of whom are unmarried.

“This does not appear to describe small variations around shared national norms, but rather two distinct family-formation regimes, so stark it could even be described as family structure polarization,” the IFS report stated.

Burchfiel noted that high incomes do not automatically result in higher marriage rates. In affluent Manhattan neighborhoods, such as the Financial District and Greenwich Village, fewer than 28% of householders between the ages of 15 and 64 are married.

“It’s clear that the decision to get married is not just due to financial concerns; it’s also a matter of culture and, admittedly, perhaps a matter of affordability,” Burchfiel said.

“I recognize, having lived in New York for a few years, that having a high salary does not mean that it’s easy to buy a house, raise a family. It can still be extremely difficult and probably many of the people in those areas who do get married find themselves moving out to the suburbs,” he added.

IFS researchers stated they investigated this topic because an extensive body of research indicates that “family structure is closely associated with economic mobility and broader measures of social capital.”

They highlighted work by Harvard economist Raj Chetty, which identified the share of homes with two parents present as the most significant predictor of upward mobility within a community.

“This represents a significant discrepancy in lived experience for children growing up in these distinct environments. Those in married-family gardens grow up with married parents, in neighborhoods, schools and after-school activities where most peers experience the same. These children will be observing marriage as a stable, ordinary feature of adult life,” the study explained.

A new Institute for Family Studies report found that marriage rates tend to be higher in suburban communities than in major urban centers.

“By contrast, for children in married-family deserts, there is likely to be much greater churn in adult relationship stability, and greater inconsistency in supervision, where marriage and stable relationship bonds are atypical or distant from everyday norms — both for these children and their peers.”

Regions with some of the lowest percentages of married-parent households nationwide included eastern Cleveland and nearby Bratenahl Village, Ohio, where only 18% of households with children are headed by a married couple, followed closely by eastern Washington, D.C., at 20% and central Milwaukee at 22%.

In suburban “married-family gardens” such as Fremont City, California, Lakewood, New Jersey, and parts of Utah County, Utah, as many as 89% of households with children are headed by married couples.

Burchfiel suggested that newlyweds and young couples deciding where to live should examine these family maps alongside local job markets, while also considering personal factors like proximity to extended family.

“Living near other married couples can be really useful when you’re settling down and raising a family,” Burchfiel said.

“It’s worth seeing where those married couples are and where maybe they’re avoiding, because again, if there’s an area where 70-plus percent of individuals are married, that’s probably a good place to settle down as a married couple,” he added.