February 5, 2026—Right-wingers are promoting marriage before children (MBC). Indiana is considering a bill to require teaching this in school. I am sympathetic with this view. That’s what I did. I got married and then we had kids.

Considering the fact that schools have basically been doing this since I was a kid, I’m not sure how legislation will actually change anything. It sounds more like they want clicks rather than happy families.

But let’s forget the do-nothing effect of their efforts and consider the issue itself.

The folks promoting it say that MBC promotes prosperous families. On the surface, that seems to make sense. Having two parents committed to a child is usually better than one.

They say this is an anti-poverty measure. And they have statistics to back them up. But statistics can be tricky. Maybe married parents lead to successful kids. Or maybe it’s only people who have been able to keep their heads above water financially who go on to get married.

The irony of this type of effort is that, typically, the folks promoting MBC education are opposed to any sort of education on subjects like birth control. Because, here is the news that they have missed. In the modern world, it takes longer to establish careers than it used to. That means hormones are flowing for many more years before marriage than once was true.

So, if you want to promote MBC, teach kids how to accomplish that.

And don’t have welfare programs that penalize poor married couples.

And maybe think about teaching kids how to live respectfully with a partner.

And so on.

It’s tempting to latch on to simple solutions. But simple isn’t always the best. Maybe MBC needs more support from society, not just a class about it. Without the support, it’s just another case of do what I say, not what I do.

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