Key Takeaways

1. New research from the Institute for Family Studies finds that marriage functions as a powerful developmental motivator for young men — and its benefits begin years before the wedding takes place.

2. Married men work 20–30% more hours than their never-married peers. But crucially, that increase in work begins up to five years before marriage — when it’s simply on the horizon.

3. Young men who see marriage as a near-term goal are significantly less likely to binge drink, use drugs, engage in casual sex, or engage in other risk behaviors.

4. The retreat from marriage isn’t just a consequence of men failing to mature. It’s a cause of it. When marriage disappears as a developmental horizon, so does much of the motivational structure that drives young men to grow.

5. The local church is uniquely positioned to restore that horizon — by casting a compelling vision of marriage and building the relational culture where young men can move toward it with purpose.

The Research: What Happens When Marriage Disappears From View

Every week brings a new headline about the struggles facing young men. Declining workforce participation. Rising rates of addiction and isolation. A generation of boys falling behind in education and disengaging from adult responsibility. The diagnoses vary, but the concern is consistent: something is going wrong in the development of young men, and society is only beginning to reckon with the cost.

A new article published this week by the Institute for Family Studies offers a fresh and clarifying lens on this crisis — one that points not to technology, education policy, or economic conditions as the primary culprit, but to the collapse of marriage as a developmental horizon.

Dr. Jason S. Carroll, Director of the Marriage and Family Initiative at BYU’s Wheatley Institute and a Senior Fellow at IFS, has spent 20 years developing and testing what he calls “marital horizon theory.” His conclusion is both simple and striking: when young men can see marriage clearly on the horizon of their lives, it shapes everything — how hard they work, how they manage risk, and how they prepare for the future. When that horizon disappears, so does much of the motivational structure that drives adult development.

The Core Finding: Marriage Doesn’t Just Reward Mature Men — It Creates Them

The conventional wisdom about marriage and men tends to run in one direction: men need to grow up first, then get married. Maturity leads to marriage.

Dr. Carroll’s research challenges that sequence with data.

According to analysis from Vanderbilt University and the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, married men consistently work 20–30% more hours than their never-married peers — translating to roughly 400–600 additional hours worked per year. That alone is striking. But the more important finding is what drives that gap.

The increase in hours worked is not primarily explained by the selection of more productive men into marriage. It begins in the years leading up to marriage — with the biggest jump occurring in the five years before a man weds. Marriage doesn’t reward men who already have their lives together. It motivates men to get their lives together in anticipation of it.

The same pattern holds for risk behavior. Using data from the National Dating Landscape Survey, Dr. Carroll’s research finds that young men with a closer marital horizon are significantly less likely to binge drink, engage in casual sex, or pursue the range of self-undermining behaviors that have become disturbingly common among young adult men. The marital horizon functions, as Carroll puts it, as a “behavioral organizer” — shaping what young men pay attention to, how they invest their time, and how they weigh short-term pleasure against long-term flourishing.

When that horizon recedes — or vanishes entirely — the motivational scaffolding that has historically shaped young men’s development goes with it.

The Counterintuitive Angle: We’ve Been Telling Young Men to Wait — and It’s Making Things Worse

Here is the finding that should prompt every pastor, parent, and youth leader to pause.

For decades, the prevailing cultural message to young adults has been: wait. Get your education. Establish your career. Travel. Figure yourself out. Then think about marriage. The well-intentioned logic is that older equals readier.

But Dr. Carroll’s research points to a marriage preparation paradox: many of the behaviors young adults engage in while waiting — cohabitation, multiple sexual partners, extended relational drift — are precisely the behaviors that predict lower marital quality and higher divorce rates down the line. We have been preparing a generation for marriage in ways that make their marriages less likely to succeed.

More than that, by pushing marriage to the distant future — treating it as a capstone achievement rather than a developmental cornerstone — we have removed the very horizon that gives young men’s development its direction and momentum. The result is a generation of young men who are not lazier or less capable than their fathers, but who are genuinely adrift — lacking the orienting vision that has historically called men toward their best selves.

As Nobel Prize-winning economist George Akerlof observed, “Men settle down when they get married; if they fail to get married, they fail to settle down.” Dr. Carroll’s research adds a crucial corollary: that settling down begins not at the altar, but years earlier, when marriage becomes a real and proximate horizon in a young man’s life.

What This Means for Your Church

At Communio, this research speaks directly to some of the most urgent work happening in local churches across the country.

The young men in your congregation are not exempt from these trends. Many of them are navigating a culture that has systematically stripped away the vision of marriage as something worth pursuing and preparing for. They are surrounded by messages — subtle and explicit — that marriage is a risk, a constraint, or something to be deferred indefinitely. And without a community that actively counters that narrative and helps them build toward commitment, many will drift exactly as the research predicts.

This is where the local church has an irreplaceable role. Not just in teaching a theology of marriage — but in cultivating a culture where marriage is visible, celebrated, and attainable. Where young men can see healthy marriages modeled by men they respect. Where the pathway from young adulthood into committed partnership is supported, not left to chance. Where singles ministry is taken seriously as the front end of a marriage culture, not an afterthought.

Communio’s work with churches across the country is built on this exact conviction. When a church invests in its singles, young couples, and families together — creating the relational culture where marriage is a genuine and proximate horizon — young men respond. They engage. They prepare. They grow into the men their communities and their future families need them to be.

The data is clear. The need is urgent. And the local church is the most capable institution in society to answer it.

Take the Next Step

Communio partners with churches to build relationship ministry for every stage — from singles and young adults to married couples and families — rooted in research and proven to produce results.

► Read the full IFS article by Dr. Jason S. Carroll → ifstudies.org

► Explore Communio’s Nationwide Study on Faith and Relationships → communio.org/study

Credit: This post draws on research by Dr. Jason S. Carroll published by the Institute for Family Studies, data from the National Dating Landscape Survey, and analysis from Vanderbilt University and the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond. Read the original IFS article here.