As Thanksgiving approaches, one iconic image comes to mind: Norman Rockwell’s painting of a family gathering for that holiday feast. The title of that work, created in the 1940s, has special significance—“Freedom from Want.” In those days, viewers readily understood the link between family and financial well-being. Just as important as the feast on the table in Rockwell’s painting were the generations of the family that surrounded it.

Sadly, that scenario is less common today, in an era in which the proportion of single-parent households and rates of births outside marriage are surging and the marriage rate is plummeting.

The once widely held understanding of the link between the intact family and the well-being of men, women, and children has been lost. Today, teams of researchers and analysts are tasked with establishing what was formerly common knowledge. The Heritage Foundation has taken on that challenge with the publication of the Index of Culture and Opportunity, a book that charts a decade of cultural trends ranging from marriage and family structure to dependency on welfare, food stamps, and public housing—all of which have risen sharply. The demographic trend charts are accompanied by experts’ explanations of their consequence in the lives of individuals and American society.

Contributors to the Index who commented on their findings at a recent Heritage forum underscored what Heritage president Jim DeMint wrote in the book’s preface: “The presence of opportunities may influence an individual’s prospects for the future, but the culture of a family or community affects the extent to which an individual takes advantage of those opportunities.”

As the analysts explained, the family is the transmitter of values such as personal responsibility, self-discipline, and delayed gratification—qualities necessary for success in the workplace—and work is essential to access the first rung of the ladder of upward mobility. The family also provides layers of support that promote resiliency in times of trouble.

In addition, as Brad Wilcox of the National Marriage Project wrote in the Index:

The retreat from marriage disadvantages children, especially children from poor and working-class homes most affected by this retreat, as they move into adulthood. Children whose parents fail to get, and stay, married to one another are more likely to end up pregnant as teenagers, run afoul of the law, to flounder in school, and to end up idle as adults…. The retreat from marriage fuels the growing social and economic inequalities between highly educated and less-educated Americans.

Hopefully this message will reach those who can have influence in the policy arena.