Supporting the designation of the month of July as “American Families Month”.

Supporting the designation of the month of July as “American Families Month”.

Whereas parents are the first and primary caretakers and educators of their children;

Whereas the 2022 Joint Economic Report states that “the most intimate and central form of social capital is the family—an institution with primary responsibility for nurturing and transmitting societal values to the next generation of children. Strong families enable investment in the human capital of children that increases their skills and productivity as adults, leading to increased long-run economic growth.”;

Whereas parents equip the next generation with the skills, morals, and ideals necessary to create a functioning society;

Whereas family structure is the basic building block of society upon which civilization rests;

Whereas former Chair of the Boston University Department of Sociology, Brigitte Berger, has written that “the nuclear family provided the emerging democratic capitalist societies of the West with their organizing principles and moral charter” and “the degree to which this particular type of family gave shape and meaning to the political and economic institutions of modern democratic societies is so pronounced and lasting that family and culture have become inextricably intertwined”;

Whereas healthy marriages between a man and a woman are an unmitigated good for families and society;

Whereas the nuclear family is an integral part of American society;

Whereas Alexis de Tocqueville wrote in 1831, “There is certainly no country in the world where the tie of marriage is more respected than in America.”;

Whereas the stability and security of the nuclear family have contributed to and are the most effective at providing a social safety net;

Whereas the social safety net a healthy family provides contributes to a culture of entrepreneurship and risk-taking which has resulted in unprecedented innovation and enterprise;

Whereas healthy families contribute to safer neighborhoods, towns, and cities;

Whereas Harvard sociologist Robert Sampson concluded that “family structure is one of the strongest, if not the strongest, predictor[s] of variations in urban violence across cities in the United States”;

Whereas University of Virginia sociologist Brad Wilcox and colleagues found that “the share of single parents in a neighborhood, it turns out, is a bigger predictor of incarceration in adulthood than race, education, and poverty in a neighborhood”;

Whereas family stability is the best predictor of outcomes for children;

Whereas former Princeton professor and sociologist Sara McLanahan concluded in her study “Fragile Families and the Reproduction of Poverty” that “non-marital childbearing reproduces class and racial disparities through its association with partnership instability and multi-partnered fertility”;

Whereas the “Fragile Families and the Reproduction of Poverty” study also states that “children who live with stably single mothers and children who live with mothers who experience multiple partnership changes show higher levels of aggression and anxiety/depression than children who live with stably married parents”;

Whereas stably married families provide the optimal conditions for positive outcomes for children;

Whereas marriage and the nuclear family are among the most effective means to combat poverty;

Whereas, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, marriage rates fell to an all-time low in 2020; and

Whereas declining marriage rates and family formation pose a threat to the social and economic well-being of the United States: Now, therefore, be it

Resolved, That the House of Representatives—

(1) recognizes that stably married mothers and fathers provide the best outcomes for children;

(2) recognizes the importance that the nuclear family has played in the success and prosperity of the United States;

(3) acknowledges the far-reaching detrimental impacts that declining marriage rates have on the United States;

(4) calls for policies that support nuclear families and remove barriers to family formation; and

(5) supports the designation of “American Families Month” to raise awareness about the importance and benefits of strong, stably married families and to call the general public to actions that support and build strong, stably married families.