The value of marriage is not that adults produce children but that children produce adults.

De Vries flips the usual utilitarian defense of marriage—its role in reproduction—into a paradox about moral and emotional formation. The line suggests that the deeper “value” of marriage is not merely producing offspring, but the way the responsibilities of raising children force adults to mature: to become steadier, more selfless, and more accountable. It also carries De Vries’s characteristic satiric edge, implying that adulthood is not a fixed state achieved at a certain age but something earned (or at least pressured into being) through commitment and caregiving. The aphorism thus treats family life as a crucible that manufactures character as much as it manufactures descendants.