Being happily married is three times more likely to happen for husbands who regularly go to church with their wives and children and twice as likely for wives, according to a new analysis conducted jointly by the Institute for Family Studies (IFS) in Charlottesville, Virginia, and the Wheatley Institute (WI) in Provo, Utah.

“For husbands, regular shared church attendance was associated with a 212 percent boost in their odds of being very happy in marriage compared with their less religious or non-religious peers,” the analysis found, based on a series of logistical regressions that began with 11 significant factors and determined that regular church attendance was among the four most central to achieving and maintaining marital happiness.

“Our analysis found that wives who attended church regularly with their husbands had odds of being very happy in marriage that were 112 percent higher than women who attended less often or not at all,” according to the analysis.

The same analysis found that regular church attendance is a key factor in marital endurance over long periods of time.

“Again, we also found that shared religious attendance is strongly linked to having a marriage that lasts. Specifically, wives reporting regular joint worship service attendance had odds of reporting high marital stability that were 124 percent higher than other wives’ odds. Husbands reporting regular joint worship service attendance had odds of reporting perceived stability that were 116 percent higher than their less religious peers,” the research said.

Similarly, the authors reported that they “found that the benefits of religion for marriage increase even more when spouses engage in shared home-centered religious practices. Specifically, we found that married couples who consistently engage in home-centered religious practices are nearly twice as likely as their less-religious peers, and more than four times more likely than their nonreligious peers, to report feeling a high sense of meaning and purpose in their lives.”

Such couples also reported high levels of life satisfaction, relationship stability, emotional closeness, and sexual satisfaction in their marital lives, according to the authors, as well as more joint decision-making and fewer financial difficulties.

In addition to regular church attendance, the analysis pointed to three other factors that are most significant for marital happiness, including being intensely committed to a marriage, husbands being protective of their wives and children, and maintaining a regular schedule of date nights that enable couples to maintain a romantic sense in their relationship.

The IFS is closely linked with the University of Virginia, while the WI is associated with Brigham Young University in Utah. Study author Brad Wilcox is a UVA faculty member and a senior fellow at IFS. Author Jeffrey Dew is a professor in BYU’s School of Family Life. Author Jason Carroll is director of WI’s Marriage and Family Initiative at BYU.

While the authors said the four factors “are especially predictive of higher quality and more stable marriages in the 21st century,” they also cautioned that “although we cannot be sure that our results are causal, they are suggestive for husbands and wives looking to forge strong and stable marriages in the 21st century. In particular, this report indicates that embracing commitment, communion, and a protective spirit towards your spouse — as well as communities that emphasize the importance of the first two virtues in marriage — boosts the odds of being married ‘happily ever after.’ These findings are especially noteworthy for couples looking to form and sustain good marriages in the face of rising elite and popular skepticism regarding our most fundamental social institution.”

The association of “elite and popular skepticism” about the value of marriage in contemporary society refers to a steady stream of negative commentary in the mainstream media. As an example, the authors cited a New York Times op-ed by journalist Amy Shearn and noted that “given the rise of so many anti-marriage voices in the public square, not to mention technological, cultural, and educational shifts that have made it harder to find a romantic partner, it should come as no surprise that a growing share of young adults are discounting marriage and turning towards work as the focus of their lives.”

They also cited a Pew Research Center Survey that found “that today’s men and women are about three times more likely to consider ‘career enjoyment’ as the ‘key to living a fulfilling life,’ compared with ‘marriage.’”

The problem with such analyses, according to the authors, is the fact “that, in general, married men and women across the United States are much more likely to be both prosperous and happy than their single peers. Married men and women, for instance, have about 10 times the assets as their single peers in their 50s, heading towards retirement, as both married men and women are almost twice as likely to be ‘very happy’ with their lives, compared to their unmarried peers. … They also report more meaning and less loneliness than their unmarried peers.”