The M.Guy Tweet, Week of August 11, 2013

1. I Do ... Cost a Lot: Weddings By The Numbers, CNN
$28,427: Average cost of a wedding in the United States in 2012, according to data from the 2013 Real Weddings Survey by TheKnot.com of 75,000 brides.

2. Marriage Is the New Middle-Class Luxury Item, Slate
Many of the working-class Americans interviewed by Silva and Corse are now too concerned with maintaining their “own survival” to “imagine being able to provide materially and emotionally for others.”

3. Marriage Beyond Reach of Many Working-class Americans, MyFoxWasau
Job insecurity and uncertainty about the future may be a key part of what's keeping many working-class Americans from getting or staying married, a new study suggests.

4. Family And Religion Play A Critical Role In Economic Mobility, Business Insider
"For instance, high upward mobility areas tend to have higher fractions of religious individuals and fewer children raised by single parents," the researchers write. "Each of these correlations remained strong even after controlling for measures of tax expenditures."

5. 'Hookup Culture' Isn't Real, The Atlantic Wire
77 percent of today's students said they had a regular partner or spouse, while 85 percent said the same in the earlier generation. Monto attributes this slight decline to the "change in age of marriage."

6. Your Siblings Are Saving Your Marriage, Slate
While the difference between being an only child and one kid out of two or three is not enormous, says study co-author Doug Downey, “when you compare children from large families to those with only one child, there is a meaningful gap in the probability of divorce.”

7. The Goal, Children's Hope for Family Act
Recent studies offer conclusive evidence that about one third of couples entering the divorce process report an interest in reconciliation.

For more, see here.