[landryraccoon]

This is counterintuitive. The obvious benefit of marriage is producing children.

Producing children is extremely costly for both parents. This is true both in animals and humans - you would generally not say that rearing children is good for the health of the parents. It probably brings emotional benefits to the parents (which it would have to, otherwise they wouldn't do it), but there's no reason to assume that couples are automatically better off in terms of their finances or physical health than singles.

Edit: Since people correctly pointed out that you can have children without marriage, please replace marriage with "romantic relationships that produce children".

[dragonwriter]

> The obvious benefit of marriage is producing children.

No. Marriage doesn’t produce children.

Marriage can provide social obligations relating to the support of children, though. (It also provides social obligations of mutual support between spouses.)

[sudosysgen]

You can produce children without marriage and a lot of people don't get married to have children.

[srean]

> The obvious benefit of marriage is producing children

Have been married a long time. Today I learned from you that apparently we are missing out on an obvious benefit