Marriage has been considered an institution by all societies of the world and a mandatory path charted for all humans. In every culture, community pressure to get girls and boys married begins at the onset of puberty, followed by the pressure to procreate children at the earliest.
For thousands of years, people have observed that path without ever questioning it. Now, times are changing with people taking charge on deciding on marriage away from parents, communities, and society. Attitudes toward marriage as life’s ‘be all end all’ are going through turbulent changes. The recent statistics prove that the generations born after 1980 have a radically different attitude toward this institution. This article delves into the differences in how the new generations are looking at and examining this institution.
I was stumped when I saw the demographics on Americans who consider themselves single, as in “not married and living alone.” There are other types of Singles, as in the single mothers with kids, or single due to divorce or death, i.e., becoming single through circumstances. What surprised me was that the many younger never-married people choose to avoid marrying altogether or postponing it far into the future. The median age at first marriage has reached 30 for men and 28 for women in 2019, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Interestingly, an old article in Psychology Today by Bella DePaulo, April 3, 2011, describes Singles with nuanced differences; Legally Single, Socially Single, and Personally Single. For details, go to https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/living-single/201104/what-does-single-mean.
According to Pew Research conducted by Richard Frey and published in October 2017, six in ten Americans without partners have never married before. Overall, the number of people living without a partner has increased from 39% in 2007 to 42%. And among the young adults under 35 years old, 61% today are without partners in 2017. That is a staggering number! For details, see http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/10/11/the-share-of-americans-living-without-a-partner-has-increased-especially-among-young-adults/.
The subject interests me because I have friends with adult children in their mid-thirties and even forties, with no immediate plans to shed their singlehood. It’s not that they have not thought about marriage, but they are sitting on the fence, unwilling to compromise.
Lately, I have also come across discussions in blogs and media about marriages on the decline and marriage losing status as a societal “must.” Looking at the megatrends and changing attitudes, I had wondered if marriage as an institution is passé. That’s not to say that the idea of marriage has gone out of style. Still, the traditions, including laws that made marriage a natural “destiny” for all grown-ups, have been going through serious scrutiny because, in modern times, the fundamental values about morality and religiosity have changed.
Megatrends behind the decline of marriage
Historically, marriage was essentially an economic transaction, accompanied by the Dowry system, where the bride or groom’s price was demanded and given. In some Third World countries with old cultures rooted in agri-business and farming, the practice is still alive, and parents and elders arrange marriages. In these ancient cultural systems, girls were treated as property in a patriarchal society, “to be given away” to another who needed a fertile woman to bear children and continue the lineage and family name. If you have carefully heard the words in the vows, “To have and to hold,” or similar versions in different cultures, it was more about the exchange of property, like exchanging the deed of land deals. Religion gave a different interpretation and a more pleasant layer to these words creating an aura of romance around joining hands in an enduring partnership.In the modern world, a daughter is no longer considered a ‘property’ to be given away “To have and hold” as in transference of deeds! The attitude and self-perception of young adult women have changed significantly.
And, economically speaking, today, daughters are no longer dependent on a male for financial security or protection, or even achieving status in society. Advances in women’s rights have opened up women’s opportunities to earn and create their financial safety nets at near parity with men. Thus, two of the three primary reasons why men and women married are no longer valid. The third reason, to create progeny for perpetuating the family line, still appeals to some, but not all. And, sexual relations have become free from stigma; virginity is no longer a pre-condition for marriage placed by the religions. Parenthood outside of marriage is acceptable between two consenting adults.
Now, the only reason to marry is for spouses’ legal rights to inherit property and other forms of wealth (including investments, pension, social security, and life insurance) and for providing legal protection to children.
Marriage: A lifestyle choice, not a biological destiny
The prevailing attitude of young adults and adults without partners is that marriage is not a biological destiny but a lifestyle choice. Attitudes toward marriage have been changing since the Hippie movement of the 1960s, ushering in various alternative arrangements that removed religious and social constraints. Cohabitation without marriage is common now, as is childbearing and raising children without marriage. Divorcing out of wedlock has also become socially acceptable.
As the Feminist movement took hold, women looked for partners not just as providers but also as someone economically solvent who would improve their quality of life. Men have similar expectations too. It is not uncommon to look at matrimonial ads or match-making sites to state that they are looking for an educated and professional partner. The current level of indebtedness incurred in seeking advanced college degrees and the shrinking of economic opportunities are also creating different role expectations from marriage. Two income families are the norm rather than the exception. And male sharing equally in the household chores and raising children also is a common expectation.
An increase in divorce rates, remarriages, and mixed families’ formation has also blurred the definitions of what family is and clarity about who is responsible for children’s welfare. The lines of accountability in blended families are causing dysfunction in family relationships in some cases. Children who grew up in such homes and suffered the consequences saw the personal costs of marriage up close. And in some cases, they also became victims of outright domestic abuse and violence. For such children, when they come into adulthood, marriage may appear a sham or social hypocrisy with too high a personal cost. It is not worth the disruption in their lives over which they exert full control as singles.
Even in average households with young adults, children observed in their parents’ relationships the loss of independence, compromising every decision, putting everyone else before self, and postponing personal dreams and hopes. On the other hand, young people who saw happy marriages, financial stability, love, and romance up close in their parents’ marriages still aspire to marry and carve out the traditional life for themselves.
Rise of individuality as a core value and uncertainty about future
However, today, most people in the under 35 age group place a high value on individuality and personal freedom. There is a great reluctance to give it all up even though they find themselves torn between wanting to retain autonomy as a single person and how society, economy, and social, political, and legal systems still favor coupledom and idealize marriage. The social customs and the marketplace still operate around married people and people with the nuclear family. Societies have yet to figure out how to deal with the single status of a large population.
Changing attitudes toward the roles that now require equal responsibilities in caregiving for their children and sharing household-related chores gives a pause to many men. Men are unwilling and reluctant to take on the additional burden or give up their entitlement bestowed in a patriarchal society.
Add to these, the current factors like pressure to succeed in the hyper-competitive workplace or business have led to a lopsided focus on career and business. Success has now become an either/or proposition. Combining family and career success has become problematic because maintaining a work-life balance has become a thorny issue to resolve without at least one spouse willing to take the back seat. When marriages were for a lifetime, perhaps that sacrifice held the promise of financial and emotional security. But the increase in divorces has exposed the mirage of marriage.
The same competitiveness has necessitated arming oneself with advanced college-level education leaving young people in considerable debt at the starting gate of their adult life. Add to that the uncertainty of economic growth and an invasion of robotics taking away jobs that once promised at least a middle-class living.
It is not surprising that in present-day America, adult children cannot afford to start their own homes. Their feeling is that they cannot take on additional financial responsibility to create and support a family just yet. Even something as necessary as jobs is no longer guaranteed in the Globalized world as the corporations ship jobs to the lower-cost countries to pursue profit maximization. Given such an unstable future, committing to marriage seems outright scary to many. There is very little in the external world that they can control, so postponing or altogether avoiding is one strategy to sustain self-sufficiency.
Marriage: a lifestyle option
Ah! But the idea of romance and love still has a broad appeal among this group. Dreams of togetherness, the warmth of own home and hearth, and a family of one’s own is not entirely out of the picture. Human society (religion, the literature, arts, and popular culture, the laws, and peer pressure) extolls the virtues centered on the warmth of togetherness and companionship, so it is hard to escape from the concept of marriage. Still, it has now become a lifestyle option among other options like cohabitation without marriage, long term relationships without formalizing marriage. The biggest hurdles in fulfilling this dream today are young adults and adults’ tendency to leave all options open. There is a great fear of commitment.
Marriage has become a non-issue for partners who have mutually decided that marriage is not for them, and they prefer to co-habit for as long as the relationship lasts. But the problem arises when one person in the relationship expects to have a firm commitment to marry, and the other partner may be too afraid to commit for own reasons. Adult men are now delaying marriage into their early to mid-forties, and women into their late twenties and early thirties. Women still feel the pressures about their biological clock ticking and missing the deadlines for healthy pregnancies. So how to deal with the dilemma?
Thinking through the dilemma
- Dig deeper and ask yourself why do you want to get married? Do you feel social pressure because all your friends are married, living, and doing things as couples? Are you feeling stressed about issues like my biological clock is ticking, and I may miss out on having children, or I may not feel as vigorous and able to keep up with all the demands of a marriage? Are you concerned because family and friends expect me to get married, or they will think something is wrong with me?
- Stare fear in the face and identify what about marriage is scary? Loss of Freedom? Financial responsibility? Potential of Children and all associated responsibility? Fear of being abandoned? Potential falling out of love? What if the partner does not grow along with you socially or intellectually?
- Now flip it. For every fear named, think the opposite, e.g., Loss of Freedom vs. closeness and intimacy—financial responsibility vs. two incomes and so on.
- Now think of the fear column as the cost to you and the flipped statements as the gain.
- Now convert every cost, such as loss of freedom, having to change me to accommodate the other, into investments. Why? Because cost is a sunk element, there is no return accruing to your life. On the other hand, investment means yes, I will have to give up this, but I will gain that. If the column on the cost side outweighs the investment column, then you are just not ready or willing to take the step.
- If your answer is anything other than I want to marry (not I need to), back off from committing.
- If you want to marry, do not assume that your potential life partner has the same vision for life as you have. Discuss the expectations openly. For example, if you envision that you will travel to faraway places and the partner wants to start the family right away, that’s a potential conflict. If you expect that you would like to be the sole earner, but the potential spouse has ambition and own dreams or vice versa, it needs to be discussed upfront, not afterward. If you want a pre-nuptial contract vs. the other party taking that as a lack of trust and not as a pragmatic decision in the light of high divorce rates, that’s a conflict.
- Consider the potential spouse’s family’s subculture because they will influence your life for better or worse. Though it’s not a deal-breaker, do not underestimate.
Our traditional literature and other entertainment forms have glamorized love and romance so much that people leap with faith, which works sometimes given time, and sometimes not. However, ignoring the reality on the front-end usually can come back to bite. So do your due diligence to increase the potential for happiness in marriage. Of course, one can always roll of dices and take chances because life never comes with a guarantee! People have ever done it, notwithstanding the risks!