(LifeSiteNews) – The Institute for Family Studies (IFS) launched a new initiative aimed at encouraging young people to better recognize marriage as a key component of a successful life and prepare accordingly.

The Get Married Initiative is a “research program that reviews the data on marriage, family formation, and life outcomes,” according to its website. “Through this initiative, we aim to provide resources for a rising generation of Americans considering how to get married and establish a stable family life.”

The site is a one-stop shop of news, scholarship, and conversations about the issue, including the current demographics, the benefits of marriage for both men and women, the societal ramifications of young people leaving the institution behind, and more.

“We aim to help young people understand the growing value of marriage, how to date more successfully with an eye towards marriage, and advance policies and civic efforts to help them marry,” University of Virginia sociologist Brad Wilcox, who spearheaded the initiative, told The College Fix.

The project hopes to compensate for a persistent emphasis in higher education on “career advancement over all else,” sometimes compounded by “ideological hostility to marriage and family formation,” that has left young people hoping to marry but unsure “how to get there.”

The initiative comes at a time when much of the world is facing a demographic crisis, and the United States appears poised to join them.

Earlier this year, data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC) showed a little more than 3.6 million births were reported in 2025, a sum 24,000 fewer than the year before. 

Further analysis found the fertility rate at a record-low of 53.1 births per 1,000 women and, more alarmingly, the total fertility rate dropped to 1.57 births per woman, below the replacement rate of 2.1 that is necessary for a native population to stop itself from shrinking. The trend appears largely driven by women delaying parenthood until later in life, with 2025 the first-time births to women in their late 30s exceeded births to women in their early 20s.

 “We have a fertility crisis because we have a marriage crisis,” Katy Faust, founder of the parental rights group Them Before Us, has argued. “We have a marriage crisis because we have a dating crisis. We have a dating crisis because young people are forming few in-person relationships. Christians, it’s time to model every layer of faithful connection, from friendship to courtship to covenant.”

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