Americans believe overwhelmingly in the importance of marriage, and believe that it is important for children to 
grow up with two parents, according to a new poll.
And a sizable number also continue to believe that it is too easy to get a divorce in the US.
Overwhelmingly, American feel that children raised by two parents have an advantage over those who grow up in a single-parent home.
Seventy-eight percent of American adults rate the institution of marriage as at least somewhat important to U.S. society, and that includes 60 per cent who consider it very important. The survey, carried out Rasmussen Reports found that only 17 per cent don’t believe marriage is a very important institution, with three percent who say it’s not at all important.
And 95 per cent of Americans say it is at least somewhat important for children to grow up in a home with both parents, with 73 per cent seeing it as very important.
Seventy-five per cent of adults believe children who grow up in a home with both parents have an advantage over children who grow up with just one parent while 16 per cent do not believe children in two-parent homes hold this advantage.
This findings are in line with a Rasmussen survey from May of last year.
Thirty-eight per cent of all adults think it’s too easy to get a divorce in America today, but that’s down from 46 per cent in June 2010. Just 13 per cent believe it’s too hard to get a divorce in this country, while 35 per cent feel the level of difficulty is about right. Fourteen per cent are not sure.
Forty-five per cent of adults who currently are married think it’s too easy to get a divorce in America, but a plurality (48 per cent) of those who are divorced rate the difficulty as about right.
Seventy-six percent of the married adults surveyed say they have been married for 10 years or more, with 48 per cent married for more than 20 years. Just two per cent have been married for less than a year.
Sixty-six per cent of these married Americans rate their marriages as excellent, up 10 points from last May, while another 25 per cent view them as good. Just two percent (2 per cent) consider their marriages poor. Those who’ve been married 10 to 20 years are the most positive about their marriages.
Seventy-five percent of Americans say children are at least somewhat important to keeping a marriage together, including 47 per cent who feel they are Very Important. Twenty percent (20 per cent) say children are not very or not at all important to a marriage’s longevity. This marks little change from last year.
Fifty-one percent (51 per cent) of adults who are married think children are Very Important to keeping a marriage together, but just 36 per cent of those who are divorced and eight percent (8 per cent) of those who are separated agree.
Adults with children in the home view them as more important to a marriage than do those without children living with them.
Only 18 per cent of Americans think today’s children will be better off than their parents. Half of adults nationwide now believe that today’s children are worse off than those of the previous generation.
Republicans believe more strongly than Democrats or adults not affiliated to either major political party that children in two-parent homes are better off.
Married adults and single adults who have never married are more likely than those who are divorced or widowed to say children who grow up with two parents have an advantage over those who grow up with a single parent.