Marriage as an institution seems to be fading, and people know it.
But that doesn’t mean they don’t still want it for themselves. A recent Time/Pew poll found that “although 44% of Americans under 30 believe marriage is heading for extinction, only 5% of those in that age group do not want to get married.”
The poll had a number of other interesting findings. Fewer people are married. When they are, the increasing tendency is to marry someone of the same socioeconomic status as themselves, probably because the pool of women making decent salaries is higher than it used to be. The number of unmarried people living together has jumped in the last year, probably as a result of the recession. The rate of unwed parenthood is high, especially among those without college degrees, although the parents often live together for a while. Here’s a depressing statistic:
About 21% of American children will see at least two live-in partners of their mothers by the time they’re 15…And an additional 8% will see three or more.
That sort of revolving boyfriend/stepfather situation does not bode well for American children, nor for their perception of marriage as an institution.
As I wrote back in a lengthy post from three years back, marriage has lost out because so many of the practical benefits it used to confer are no longer so clear, and the costs seem more so:
What’s marriage needed for these days, anyway? Most people can have plenty of sex without getting married, and even become parents (although out-of-wedlock parenthood does not absolve the parent from the duty of child support on the dissolution of the partner relationship). Most people can support themselves without marriage, as well””at a lower level than they can with a working spouse, it’s true; but still, decently enough. And it’s simpler and easier not to have to cater to the wants and needs of another person.
The benefits of a good marriage””which are very real, and very valuable””seem far more amorphous than they used to be, because they now exist primarily in the realm of the emotional, and because the proliferation of divorce means they can’t be counted upon to last. There’s love, and trust, and companionship. There’s the satisfaction of a shared commitment, the deep and rewarding pleasure of knowing another human being intimately over time. There are still some economic benefits, too. But all of this requires a level of emotional maturity that seems more and more rare these days, and an ability to compromise and to regard the needs of another person as equal (or nearly equal) to one’s own.
Divorce was once the target of disapproval and even ostracism. Remember, for example, the days (not so long ago) when it was quaintly but universally acknowledged that a divorced politician would have a very hard time being elected? Likewise, in my youth there were only one or two kids in my entire community whose parents were divorced, and they reported that their status was somewhat pariah-like.
Now, of course, it’s changed, and to a certain extent that’s a good thing; I’m not advocating the shunning of the divorced. But marriage is one of the foundations of our society and especially important to child-rearing. It’s not that children can’t survive and even prosper in a divorce situation; it’s just that it becomes more difficult and less likely. Children more commonly thrive in a situation of stability, where they know that their parents have made a serious commitment to each other. Unfortunately, that is becoming increasingly rare.
[NOTE: I was thinking about that sentence I wrote, “I’m not advocating the shunning of the divorced.” It occurs to me that it’s difficult to know which came first, the relaxation of such shunning or the rise of the divorce rate.
My guess is that they may have been simultaneous. As women’s economic status rose and allowed them more often to support themselves, and the so-called sexual revolution allowed men easy access to sex outside of marriage, divorce become more desirable, easier to obtain legally, and society no longer disapproved all that much.
The shunning of the divorced had worked to discourage divorce. But it was only one piece of an integrated system all of whose parts discouraged the dissolution of marriages. Putting a single piece back in place in isolation would be ineffective and probably impossible, even if we wished to do so.]
