By Sage Erickson

Picture a third world country: desperate poverty, a daily struggle to survive, widespread suffering, minimal sanitation, and diminished economic opportunities. Now picture the United States. Although the United States has long been known as a first-world country politically and economically, has it become a third world country when it comes to romantic relationships? The evidence of that is everywhere: A divorce rate of 50%[1], an epidemic of unwed childbirth with 41% of children being born to unmarried women[2], and reports of 1 in 10 high school students becoming victims of dating violence.[3] However, the United States wasn’t always like this; most of these changes have happened in the last 40 years.[4]

Unlike several decades ago, today children reside in increasingly complex and often unstable families where they have seen their parents divorce, lived in a single-parent home, and then witnessed at least one of their parents remarry or form a new cohabiting union.[5] This only scratches the surface of the mountain of data documenting U.S. relationship “poverty.”

And the results are not good, with these relational problems affecting us, our families, and our communities in a number of detrimental ways. Indeed, research shows that everyone suffers when relationships fail. Unwed childbearing is correlated with greater poverty and welfare assistance.[6] Children raised outside of marriage have a greater propensity for health risks like headaches, emergency room visits, and domestic violence than children living with married parents.[7] More dramatically, these children have greater risks for depression, truancy, substance abuse and suicide.[8] Why is this? Researchers believe that these and other negative effects might be due to family instability. Family instability varies greatly by birth context.[9] Most children born to cohabiting parents or single mothers experience at least one transition in their lives. And instability (like marital transitions) has negative effects on child well-being.[10] In contrast, children living with two biological, married parents experience better educational, social, cognitive, and behavioral outcomes than children in unstable family models.[11]

The negative effects of failing relationships, however, impact not only children. Employees in failing relationships cost employers money due to productivity declines.[12]  One economist conservatively estimated that family fragmentation costs taxpayers at least $112 billion a year.[13] Furthermore, divorce and separation among adults is associated with lower levels of physical and mental health, increased depression and anxiety, more substance use, and greater risk of mortality.[14] Another aspect of America’s relational problems is the rate of dating violence among teenagers and young adults. Dating violence among teenagers is associated with poor emotional well-being, low self-esteem, suicidal thoughts and attempts, risky sexual behaviors, teen pregnancy, and eating disorders.[15] Overall, every aspect of relationship-poverty that characterizes the United States hurts the economy, the community, families, and individual lives.

Because of these circumstances, many Americans lack hope in the ability to form successful lifelong marriages. This overall attitude can be seen clearly in young adults that still value marriage highly, but have less confidence than previous generations that they will achieve it.[16] Having hope is even harder for lower income and disadvantaged populations, where casual and unstable relationships have become the norm.[17]

What can be done about this? Perhaps in order to solve third world problems, we need to look at third world solutions. Education in third world countries can help alleviate suffering and bring new occupational possibilities for each person.[18] Education enables people to help themselves and improve their own situations[19], lifting people out of poverty and into more stable situations. In theory, education is a self-help mechanism that invests in the people, and then the people reciprocate by giving back and improving their lives and surroundings. Since this has been successful numerous times with scholastic education, could the same principle apply to a country that is poor in “relationship” knowledge? (Of course, there are more forces at play than a lack of relationship knowledge. Circumstances like poverty, unemployment, abuse as a child, and substance abuse also make it harder for people to form happy, stable relationships.) But knowledge about how to form good relationships—and how to avoid bad ones—could help. Thus relationship education, where participants learn more about how to have healthy and stable relationships[20], might be able to relieve some of the suffering that comes from failing relationships and help people help themselves. This could be the underlying rationale for why relationship education programs have been receiving public funding over the past decade in the United States.[21] The theory is simple: knowledge empowers.

In summary, there is no doubt that the United States is a first world country and often a leader in technological, scientific, and scholastic advances. However, somehow the quality of the interpersonal family relationships in the United States has sunk dramatically, letting us pose the question of whether the United States has become a relationship third world country. The negative effects of these failing relationships are obvious and multifaceted. The only question that remains is: what will we do about it? Can the United States change this destructive trend and become a relationship superpower and leader in the world? I believe it can, but such changes will require effort. And education just might be the key.

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