Are South Carolina Couples Done Saying "I do?" Not Necessarily Says One Expert
As of 2010, married couples had fallen to barely 51% of U.S. households, according to the Pew Research Center, with a full 5 percent drop in new marriages between 2009 and 2010 alone. The data for last year isn’t yet in, but if the decline continues then less than half of all adults will be married. Does this mean that marriage as we know it is dying? Not necessarily, according to Stephanie Coontz, a professor at Evergreen State College. Coontz’s most recent book is "A Strange Stirring: The Feminine Mystique and American Women at the Dawn of the 1960s."
The decline in marriage rates is dramatic when compared to the 1960s. Back then nearly half of all 18-24 year-olds and 82% of 25-34 year-olds were married. Those same figures in 2010 fell to 9 and 4% respectively. Today, the average age of first marriage is almost 27 for women and 29 for men, up from 20 and 22 in 1960.
This does not mean marriage is going the way of the dodo. Divorce rates have actually been falling for most of the last 30 years. More people are also marrying for the first time as late as their 60s and as gays and lesbians gain marriage rights many more young people previously barred from marriage might start taking the plunge.
The role of marriage as a stepping stone along the path to a stable future has eroded. Still, marriage is an important factor in financial success. In the 1960s, even a college-educated woman typically earned less than a man with only a high school degree, so getting married was seen as a tremendously wise investment in a woman’s future.
Even high school dropouts were seen as a good catch because wages were often enough to support a family once a steady job was secured. Since 1969, the wages for men with a high school diploma have declined 47%.
This means that women in low-income communities are now wary of marrying men without at least a college degree. If a woman does marry and then does not invest the needed time and money into her own education and career development but is hitched to a high school grad with limited prospects she might actually end up in a worse position economically than if she had stayed single. This explains why many couples in low-income communities tell researchers that they intend to wait for marriage until they have achieved some degree of economic stability.
Not being married further exacerbates economic inequality because the majority of marriages now involve two wage earners, multiplying the advantage of those who are able to find a partner and avoid a costly divorce.
Coontz does not believe that marriage is disappearing anytime soon. Most unmarried Americans say they want to eventually marry. However, times have changed and it is unlikely we will return to the era of early and lifelong marriage seen in the 1960s.
Source: “Marriage: Saying 'I don't',” by Stephanie Coontz, published at SacBee.com.
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