Being married is not an indicator for living in a happy or even functioning relationship. Yes, children learn through observation and a child being raised within a healthy family environment is certainly more likely to apply those factors observed later in their own life. However, there are plenty couples out there who are not married and raising children within that healthy environment, and, on the opposite site, plenty of married couples who fight and contempt each other and living in highly disfunctioning relationships. The article itself btw uses ‘marriage’ and ‘two-parent family’ interchangeably, which discredits the argument they are trying to make, leaving me with the assumption that, taken the results of the study are correct, in fact a child doesn’t receive its advantages in life because their parents are married, but because it has been raised in a two parents household.
