Getting Married? Maybe Later…

When Martha and I got married in August of 1974, it seemed as if that was what everyone was doing right after college. Today, that’s not what everyone is doing. Today, many young adults are waiting until much later to get married or are forgoing marriage altogether.

For every subsequent generation in the last fifty years, fewer young adults are getting married and, if they do, they are marrying when they are older. There have been a number of reasons suggested for this trend today:

• Many women with full-time careers are more economically independent and can afford to wait before plunging into marriage.
• Couples with less financial means tend to put off marriage and are cohabitating for longer periods of time.
• Young adults are waiting until they are financial stable before getting married.

Several weeks after Martha and I were married, we drove to Clinton, New York, where we lived while Martha completed her senior year in college. I had just completed a two-year graduate program and was looking for work. We were both in our early twenties.

When we reflect on that time of our lives, neither of us can remember having much money. Neither one of us was employed yet we felt that our future was bright. We were going to make it up together by “the seat of our pants.” We planned to support each other in building our careers and our financial success.

For young adults today, the calculus seems completely different. Cherlin (2009) in his book, The Marriage-Go-Round, says that marriage has become a “capstone” or a milestone that marks the arrival of adulthood for young adults. Today, young men and women want to achieve some measure of financial independence and success in their careers prior to jumping into marriage.

There is a good deal of evidence that marriage today favors those who are college educated and financially more successful. If the forecast of economic growth in this country continues to be lackluster, one wonders if marriage rates also will continue to fall and couples will continue to put off getting married until later.

Reference

Cherlin, A.J. (2009). The Marriage-Go-Round: The state of marriage and family in America today. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.

Posted in Partnership Marriage