Declining Marriage Rates
http://thedianerehmshow.org/shows/2012-03-14/declining-marriage-rates
Whiskeygonebad via Flickr:http://www.flickr.com/photos/badwsky/
Men and women are marrying later, and an increasing number are choosing not to marry at all. In fact, married couples now make up less than 50 percent of U.S. households. In addition more than half of American women under thirty who become mothers are single. New statistics suggest marriage rates correlate with education levels: today those with only high school diplomas are much less are likely to be married compared to those with college degrees, a trend that many fear could serve to deepen the divide between rich and poor in this country. Join us to discuss the economic and political implications of today’s marriage trends.
Guests
Isabel Sawhill
senior fellow, Economic Studies, The Brookings Institution.
D'Vera Cohn
senior writer,
social and demographic trends project, Pew Research Center
Andrew Cherlin
professor of sociology and public policy,
Johns Hopkins University
author of "The Marriage-Go-Round: The State of Marriage and the Family Today."
Kris Marsh
professor of sociology, University of Maryland
Comments
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It would be nice for a change to have a serious discussion without all the divide and concur rhetoric about an issue that highlights the decline of the United States and the threat it implies to the prosperity of it's future.
Simply put marriage is down because there are so many people that are children of divorce. If the norm that you grew up with is to be single than you will emulate that as an adult. Cure the divorce rate, and you have marriage rates rise again, albeit slowly.
I'm unclear what your opinion is on this issue, but am delightfully distracted by the term "Divide and Concur"...!
You ignore another factor: when a generation sees an institution at its worst---and a marriage heading to divorce is typically not a sight for the faint-hearted or for young eyes---it is only reasonable that it should be wary of joining.
Most children now grow up in a divorced or separated family, leaving one parent responsible for a child's safety, whereabouts, gender modeling (notice how many effiminate boys perpetuate the DC/MD area?!) , involvement in schools....all this and more is caused by shunning marriage and (what should be) the ministry of raising children. This culture raises children with less regard than that deliberation given careers, car & shoe choices, nailcare. Is it any wonder children are self-absorbed and trying to hide inside a TV set? Remember when the playgrounds were full of safely playing children? What was the marriage rate then?
Lifetime marriage rates are still very high. Young people are just waiting a lot longer before they get married. Our ideas of adulthood are no longer to get married get start a family but rather to get through years for higher education, find a foothold into a career, get financially independent, and then finally think about settling down. The plus side of this trend is that these couples that wait longer do tend to have significantly lower divorce rates than those that marry earlier. As a former psychology student with an interest in mating, gender, and relationships I know the stats for long term cohabiting couples, and if you think the marriage statistics are grim, I would encourage you to look at those to get a perspective. While each relationship is unique, overall, the marriage certificate and the mindset around marriage do appear to matter in increasing the chance of the long term success of couples.
The situation in Afghanistan, the I/P conflict situation, Syria, Darfur, US soldiers returned, fracking and all your producers can come up with is declining numbers in marriage. Ouch
Actually, children growing up without leadership & ethics affects how this country relates to problems within & without. Selfish parenting breeds selfish, jaded children, and those children remain unaffected by such world challenges.
It is a financial decision!! My experience with many of my co-workers who make between $8 to $15 per hour is to avoid marriage. Our company provides healthcare coverage but it is expensive and has a $4000 deductible. They are in committed relationships and having children, but if unwed they qualify for Medicaid which covers all the costs of prenatal care and delivery.
In St. Louis... and this may be too simplistic or broad but based on our friends, the cost of divorce and the distinct possibility that it will happen are enough to make most middle-class men and women avoid marriage regardless of age or income.
Why has it become socially more acceptable to co-habitate rather than marry over the past 50 years? One of the answers has to be government programs which do not allow married couples to receive certain type of benefits and/or credits. Tax and welfare laws undermine the institution of marriage and has done a great disservice to the minority communities.
Why does anyone have to get married to create a stable environment for the children?!!!!! Have you seen how many unstable and unhappy marriages there are out there?
I am in a stable 5-year relationship with my opposite-sex partner. Both of us are highly educated (I have a PhD and my girlfriend has two Masters degrees); I work for NASA as a scientist, my girlfriend is a librarian. We are trying to have a baby now and have no intention of getting married. For us, marriage is an outdated social convention that has little relevance. Our relationship is far more stable than many married (and divorced!) couples out there!
It is a shame that some people may choose not marry because they get more financial supports by staying single and cohabiting.
I would be very interested to hear the guests opinion on the trend towards over the top weddings today. My grandparents were married in a tiny ceremony with their families during the week, and celebrated with a breakfast at my great-grandmother's house. Although I had one friend who was married at City Hall, all the weddings I hear about now are huge, costing thousands of dollars. (And this includes mine!) Do your guests think that part of the reason that poorer couples are not marrying is because they can't afford their idea of a wedding?
It would be interesting to hear the panelists comment on whether the rise in cultural acceptance of being homosexual in some regions has perhaps reduced the amount of gay people staying closeted and thus reduced the number of homosexuals marrying a person of the opposite sex despite their orientation. In short, has the outing of gay people concomitant with restrictions on gay marriage had anything to do with the decline in marriage?
Diane - I would be curious as to your thoughts on the decline of marriage, particularly as someone who has written a book with your husband on this very topic (fabulous read, by the way).
Making it into the middle class and raising healthy children are not synonmous.
Middle class consumerism defeats many of the goals of a healthy family environement. I am of African decent. I am a single mother. I am an attorney. To date I am unmarried and I am willing to remain unmarried. What my son and I value most about our family life is serenity. Do we jointly lament about what things we might be able to do if his father was my husband? Yes. But we both agree that we are happy and at peace with the absense of his income due to the compromise of emotional peace is presense would smother.
My son is in an emotionally stable environment and the financial consquensces of living on one salary do not out weight the peace in our home. Is it hard? Yes? Is being married to the wrong person for the wrong reason harder? Definitely!!!!!!
What ? One poor person + another poor person = less?!?
I think that's sociology math and not actual arithmetic.
The only way that adds up is if the individual(s) are counting
on state/federal aid.
I think this new term of "marriageable" ought to be
re-evaluated through the prism of love
rather than "will-I-be-able-to-own-a-house-with-a-white-picket-fence".
A house won't teach you how to deal with life's challenges...love
and faith does. And if you're looking
to marriage as a financial stepping stone,
may I direct you to the address of a slew of other hucksters
tryin' to get over/get by ::
Financial Industry / Bankers
Wall Street
New York NY
I hate to say this, but why are people worried about how other people choose to live? Does it make a difference in the lives of those inquiring, one way or the other? Is it your business if others choose not to marry. With the 50% divorce rate, why should a person put themselves through all the headache?
I would not be so quick to assume that unmarried cohabitating couples are unstable, as one of the speakers put it. My "husband" and I are in our late 40s and have been together for 25 years. We both have advanced degrees and are high income earners. We have a child and we do pool our resources despite not being legally married. The real question for us is: Why get married? We were born unmarried. We are not religious. Our family, friends, colleagues and society in general are accepting of our lifestyle. We as a couple and our child have legal protection through a will, health care will, power of attorney, etc. So why? Legal marriage is not the issue. What we are looking for is stable families, whatever our definition of family might be, where children can thrive. So the really issue for me is: are American families becoming more or less stable and why?
Diane, I have been married for 40 years and have 2 adult unmarried children - both highly educated. I have a number of close friends my age who have told me that if they had the opportunity to live their lives again, they would choose not to marry and not to have children. Altho I don't feel that way, I can understand their feelings. What does that tell you about marriage?
It seems to me that it's also somewhat generational. I'm 29 and for people my age, some people get married, some people just live together (who are planning to stay together) and it really doesn't matter much. Among people I know it's just not considered necessary for people to get married, although some people do choose to. I don't think that was really an option fifty years ago, so the increased acceptability of "cohabiting" and having kids without being married probably contributes to the declining marriage rate.
The various on-going studies represented on the show seem to mostly share a common underlying false assumption: that a married couple is automatically more stable than a cohabiting couple. There is very little to support this assumption yet at least three of the guests have clearly adopted this as if it were a fact.
When scientists look at trends in US marriage rates they are ignoring the massive changes in the characteristics of marriage over the last half-century. "Til Death Do Us Part" is an anacronism with no meaning today.
We ask our children to excel in school with academics and sports. We demand they go to college, take out HUGE loans and get a degree. I think young people are pressured in so many ways that love and marriage are forced to wait until after bachelor/master degrees are obtained. By that time, the kids are in so much debt, they have a hard time seeing themselves as being able to have a family. - My daughter's comment to me.
There is also a marriage penalty in the US. When my husband and I first married and lived in DC we prepared our taxes and found out we owed $5000 more just by getting married. With all the politicians talking about family values, it was interesting that they would not be fighting against a tax policy that encourages us to live in sin.
Being a child of divorce and seeing how friends of mine who parents remained married, I can say that the most important aspect of living in our society is how we treat each other. Loving relationships can be found in cohabiting couples and married couples also. Treat each other how you are supposed to and work through any problems that arise.
R.R. Banks (author of Marriage, Is it for White People) has a good point that marriage is now seen by both whites and blacks as the capstone of being established financially and in a relationship. It used to be the beginning and the means of becoming established. In addition to changing economic factors, our culture has seen the poverty of a mostly social and economic model of marriage and switched to more emphasis on personal fulfillment. Unfortunately, this emphasis on fulfillment comes with its own poverty, a poverty of commitment and security for every member of the family unit, both emotionally and sometimes also economically. What humans thrive on is commitment to each other sexually, economically, emotionally, and I would add, spiritually. The way to get there is to do the necessary emotional and spiritual growth needed to commit to a marriage, then within the framework of a commmited marriage work together on the sexual, economic, emotional and spiritual unity that a family needs.
Who quoted Charles Murray? A bit of advice: If Charles Murray says something tangentially correct, someone without his willful ignorance, social baggage, and unique "draw the curve, plot the points" scientific (sic) method (sic) is saying it better elsewhere.
And this is another vote to not ignore how in the '50s and such, young people would get married, as virgins, in order to have sex, as extramarital sex was simply not done in some circles. And gays or lesbians used to enter in sham marriages for cover. I don't know that either of these things made for happy marriages, but they did increase marriage rates. I'm curious if that lead to more or fewer divorces when compared to other social groups.
First get an education, then get a career (stable job), then get married, then have children. It still works, the only problem is how long it now takes to get an education and how long it takes to get a stable job. What used to be a High School diploma is now at least a 4 year college degree if not a masters.
It's hard to put off the drive to have children into your thirties. I know most of my female freinds worry about waiting too long to have children, they want to be relatively young mothers.
My parents married because my mother got pregnant and that is what you did in those days. My mother is of Italian descent, born in Chile. My father is Persian. They stayed married because getting divorced was frowned upon.
However, they were not happy together. And it made our lives, as their kids, a little less stable. My father soon became our main caretaker and, my sisters and I look at him as a single parent. The three of us have college degrees. One has a juris doctorate. Another a Master's Degree. And I'm working on my Ph.D. in Anthropology.
Is marriage necessary to us? No. One sister is married. Another hasn't made up her mind. I don't plan on ever getting married. I feel like the relationship I'm in is stable and that I don't need a piece of paper to be fully committed to my boyfriend (who is white). He feels the same way. Marriage doesn't speak to us - it just seems to make things more complicated.