Marriage used to be a foundation of families and communities. More and more these days, people, especially white liberals, see it as a simple, bilateral agreement for the good of man and wife and as not necessarily anybody else’s business.

The latest evidence: On the basic question of whether two people should marry if they have a child together, a growing number of people said it doesn’t matter. A shrinking number said it does. By more than a 2-to-1 margin in 2006, more people in the United States (49%) said it was “very important” for parents to marry than said it was not important (23%) in Gallup surveys. In 2020, though, the “not important” crowd is 40% of the population, while those who say it is very important make up only 29%. About 26% to 31% have remained in the middle on this question.