Weather 
The nuclear family structure that once dominated American households is disappearing across the country — specifically in parts of major cities, according to a new report by the Institute for Family Studies.
The romance-less report on “marriage deserts” showed that fewer than a quarter of households with children are now headed by married couples in certain neighborhoods in Cleveland, Washington, DC, Milwaukee and Detroit, and emphasized a divide between these deserts and suburban-centric “married-family gardens.”
According to the research — which examined both the share of householders ages 15-64 who are married and households with children that are headed by married couples in geographic units that generally contained 100,000 to 200,000 individuals each — the driest marriage desert is Detroit City (South Central and Southeast), Michigan, where a meager 13% of householders have tied the knot.
The second spot was a tie between Milwaukee County, City of Milwaukee Central (WI), Cleveland City (East) and Bratenahl Village (OH) and District of Columbia (East, D.C.) at 14%, followed by St. Louis City North (MO) and Columbus (Central) and Grandview Heights Cities (OH) at 15%.
Atlanta Regional Commission, Fulton County (Central) and Southwest Atlanta City (GA) and Cincinnati City in Central Ohio snagged second-to-last spot on the list at 16%, while Boston City (Alston, Brighton and Fenway) and Chicago City (South) topped off the list at 17%.
When it came to households with children that are led by married couples, the study found these homes tended to be located in affluent suburban regions, with fewer in metropolises and parts of the Southeastern U.S.
Cleveland City (East) and Bratenahl Village (OH) had the lowest percentage of households led by a married couple in the areas involved in the study, while KIPDA Area Development District (Central) in Louisville/Jefferson Co (Northwest) (KY) was at the highest of the low-ranking areas at 26%.
Conversely, in the largest marriage gardens — with Fort Bend County in Northwest Texas ranking at the top — up to 79% of householders ages 15 to 64 years old are married.
While suburbs showing higher marriage and married-with-children rates than urban pockets may not come as a total shock — especially as city daters employ increasingly bold methods to find their forever match — the IFS pointed to the trend’s broader significance, sharing that “family structure is closely associated with economic mobility and broader measures of social capital,” and “the share of children growing up in two-parent households is one of the strongest predictors of upward mobility within a community.”
Ken Burchfiel, a research fellow at the Institute for Family Studies, told Fox News Digital that marriage and raising kids are parts of life that “force you to kind of die to yourself and live for others.”
“When you have lots of parents, lots of husbands and wives in a region, I imagine just overall the cultural focus is less on ‘How can I get ahead in life’ and more on ‘What can I do for my family?’” he continued.
Having lived in New York for a few years himself — which hosts the largest grouped married desert in the U.S. in Lower Manhattan and Brooklyn — Burchfiel shared that he understands the reasons behind the findings, adding that the choice to get married is a tough one for some “not just due to financial concerns; it’s also a matter of culture and, admittedly, perhaps a matter of affordability.”
“[Having] a high salary does not mean that it’s easy to buy a house, raise a family. It can still be extremely difficult and probably many of the people in those areas who do get married find themselves moving out to the suburbs,” he continued.
