Americans
are falling out of love with marital bliss. Look at the data. As of
2010, only 51 percent of Americans 18 or older were married, compared
with 72 percent in 1960. Exacerbated by a weak job market, the drop is
starker still among the young. Today, just a fifth of Americans ages 18
to 29 have a spouse, down from roughly three-fifths in 1960. The number
of marriages performed in the United States fell by 5 percent from 2009
to 2010, according to the Pew Research Center. That was partly the
result of a sagging economy, but it also represents an acceleration of
longer-term trends seen in the United States, Europe, and elsewhere in
the developed world.
Americans aren’t starry-eyed anymore about
marriage as an aspiration. Roughly four of every 10 Americans told the
Pew center in 2010 that they thought matrimony was becoming obsolete.
It’s certainly no longer a necessary station on the route to adulthood.
Millions of educated young Americans now buy homes and sock away money
for retirement, all without a wedding ring or even a significant other.
Nor does child-rearing need the imprimatur of marriage: More than half
the women under age 30 who give birth in the United States are single.
The
traditional path of marriage, homeownership, and children–strictly in
that order–is no longer regarded as de rigueur.
