What's Happening to Marriage?

Americans haven’t given up on marriage as a cherished ideal. Indeed, most Americans continue to prize and value marriage as an important life goal, and the vast majority of us will marry at least once in a lifetime. By the mid-thirties, a majority of Americans have married at least once.

Most couples enter marriage with a strong desire and determination for a lifelong, loving partnership. Moreover, this desire may be increasing among the young. Since the 1980s, the percentage of young Americans who say that having a good marriage is extremely important to them as a life goal has increased slightly.

But when men and women marry today, they are entering a union that looks very different from the one that their parents or grandparents entered.

As a couples relationship, marriages are more likely to be broken by divorce than by death. And although one might expect that greater freedom to leave an unhappy marriage might increase the chances that intact marriages would be very happy, this does not seem to be the case. Marriages are less happy today than in past decades.

As a rite of passage, marriage is losing much of its social importance and ritual significance. It is no longer the standard pathway from adolescence to adulthood for young adults today. It is far less likely to be closely associated with the timing of first sexual intercourse for young women and less likely to be the first living together union for young couples than in the past.

As an adult stage in the life course, marriage is shrinking. Americans are living longer, marrying later, exiting marriage more quickly, and choosing to live together before marriage, after marriage, in-between marriages, and as an alternative to marriage. A small but growing percentage of American adults will never marry. As a consequence, marriage is surrounded by longer periods of partnered or unpartnered singlehood over the course of a lifetime.

As an institution, marriage has lost much of its legal, religious and social meaning and authority. It has dwindled to a "couples relationship," mainly designed for the sexual and emotional gratification of each adult. Marriage is also quietly losing its place in the language. With the growing plurality of intimate relationships, people now tend to speak inclusively about "relationships" and "intimate partners," burying marriage within this general category. Moreover, some elites seem to believe that support for marriage is synonymous with far-right political or religious views, discrimination against single parents, and tolerance of domestic violence.

Among young women, social confidence in marriage is wavering. Until very recently, young women were highly optimistic about their chances for marital happiness and success. Now, according to youth surveys, their confidence in their ability to achieve successful marriage is declining. Moreover, they are notably more accepting of alternatives to marriage, such as unwed parenthood and cohabitation.

At the national policy level, marriage has received remarkably little bipartisan study or attention. During a four-decade period of dramatic historic change in marriage, no national studies, government commissions or task forces have been set up to examine the status of marriage or to propose measures to strengthen it. [1] Indeed the United States lags well behind England, Australia, and Canada in the level and seriousness of governmental response to the widespread evidence of the weakening of marriage.

The Marriage Relationship

One reason Americans prize marriage so highly is that it is the source of deeply desired benefits such as sexual faithfulness, emotional support, mutual trust and lasting commitment. These benefits cannot be found in the marketplace, the workplace or on the Internet.

Most people aspire to a happy and long-lasting marriage. And they will enter marriage with the strong desire and determination for a lifelong and loving partnership. While they are married, most couples will also be sexually faithful to each other as long as the marriage lasts. According to the most comprehensive study of American sexual behavior, married people are nearly all alike in their sexual behavior: "once married, the vast majority have no other sexual partner; their past is essentially erased." [2]

However, although Americans haven’t stopped seeking or valuing happy and long-lasting marriage as an important life goal, they are increasingly likely to find that this goal eludes them. Americans may marry but they have a hard time achieving successful marriages. One measure of success is the intactness of the marriage. Although the divorce rate has leveled off, it remains at historically high levels. Roughly half of all marriages are likely to end in divorce or permanent separation, according to projections based on current divorce rates. Another measure of success is reported happiness in marriage. Over the past two decades, the percentage of people who say they are in "very happy" first marriages has declined substantially and continuously. Still another measure of success is social confidence in the likelihood of marital success. Young people, and especially young women, are growing more pessimistic about their chances for a happy and long-lasting marriage.

The popular culture strongly reinforces this sense of pessimism, even doom, about the chances for marital success. Divorce is an ever-present theme in the books, music and movies of the youth culture. And real life experience is hardly reassuring; today’s young adults have grown up in the midst of the divorce revolution, and they’ve witnessed marital failure and breakdown first-hand in their own families and in the families of friends, relatives, and neighbors. For children whose parents divorced, the risk of divorce is two to three times greater than it is for children from married parent families. But the pervasive generational experience of divorce has made almost all young adults more cautious and even wary of marriage. The percent of young people who say they agree or mostly agree with the statement "one sees so few good marriages that one questions it as a way of life" increased between 1976 and 1992, while the percent of those who say it is very likely they will stay married to the same person