The latest Census Bureau data shows that Americans are delaying marriage and many are choosing not to get married at all. It is becoming increasingly acceptable on a social level for couples to live together and not get married, and to have children outside of wedlock.
Marriage rate is measured as new marriages per 1,000 people and the number has been falling for years in both the U.S. and Europe. In 1960, 70 percent of the U.S. population was married; fifty years later, in 2011, that number dropped to 51 percent and is declining still.
Millennials are waiting much later to get married than their older Gen X counterparts. A 2014 study from the Urban Institute based in Washington, D.C. shows that the number of millennials married by age 40 will be lower than any previous generation.
Stephanie Coontz is director of research at the Council on Contemporary Families; she has been following the changes in American marriage for quite some time.
Coontz says that in 1960, about 50 percent of all women married before age 20, and that the rate of marriage was at an all-time high in America. Coontz said that the average now is age 26 for women and 28 for men. It’s good from the divorce perspective, in that the older a woman is when she marries, the lower her chances of divorce.
Marriage has long been a way of life in America; the large majority of the American population has been married and that fact has shaped people’s work life, home life and our politics.
Many policies are still centered around marriage, like work/family policies that are geared toward married couples.
Why are people waiting to marry?
One of the main reasons is that women find that there is a lack of men they’d like to marry. Women say they can’t find men with suitable education, careers, backgrounds or worldviews to marry. Women (and men) expect more out of marriage these days, on both an emotional as well as an economic level, so people are waiting until that perfect partner presents himself or herself.
Women also say they have too much college debt to marry. The average college grad starts work with $30,000 debt toward student loans, and finances are a major reason why Americans delay marriage. In times of recession, there’s all the more reason to delay.
Women are much more independent these days, and are truly weighing their options. Do I marry this man, or do I go it alone for a while with my own education, career and earnings power? It is a choice that few women had in 1960.
Romantic relationships take longer to form these days, and people are much more hesitant to take the big plunge. They’ve watched their parents fight and become embroiled in divorce battles, and they don’t want to make the same mistakes. Instead, they want to take their time to feel old enough to marry responsibly, to be ready and most of all, to find the right person for happily ever after.
Finally, millennials are much more concerned with establishing their own lives than with sharing them with a partner.
Divorce is also very easy these days. Most states have no-fault divorce rulings. The government makes it easy to get benefits without being hitched.
Traditional marriage is good for individuals all the way around. Numerous studies show it’s good for your spiritual health, your mental health, your physical health, and your fiscal health.
There’s another school of thought that says marriage is good for society on many fronts. In their book The Case for Marriage: Why Married People Are Happier, Healthier, and Better Off Financially, sociologists Linda J. Waite and Maggie Gallagher looked at a plethora of research that showed marriage as a very stabilizing factor in society. Their research concluded that in the absence of marriage, there is a great cost to families, children in particular. Society as a whole pays the cost through education, welfare, health care and higher crime.
The good news is that the majority of Americans are still marrying. And women are marrying at older ages more than ever before, even in their 40s, 50s and even 60s, so it looks like the old spinster stereotype has gone by the wayside.
It’s just that the number who choose not to marry is growing, as is the number of divorced individuals who don’t remarry. Many are now spending significant parts of their adult lives outside of marriage, and that changes everything—work, policies and politics.
~ Christian Patriot Daily
