(Articles) Marriage Rate At All Time Low

(Articles) Marriage Rate At All Time Low

All I care to say about this newest report on marriage rates:

1. Many conservative Christians will incorrectly assume that the reason all or most women over the age of 35 remain single is because they choose to be – which is not true.
Many Christian women desired to get married, but there were no single Christian males available, or they did not get any marriage proposals.

2. Christians will choose to complain that the decline of marriage rates can be blamed on feminism (or something like that), and complain about feminism (or whatever societal change), rather than help singles actually get married.
They will shake their fist in anger at declining marriage rates but tell an unmarried person who approaches them for help with being set up on dates, or for prayer to get a spouse:
“Stop it, be content in your singleness, stop idolizing marriage.”

(Link): Marriage Rate is Lowest it’s Been in a Century at 31 Percent

(Link): The Average Age of an American Bride Is…. [27 and getting higher]

(Link): The Disestablishment of Marriage

This next link is from a conservative Roman Catholic news site, so you can predict their spin on this newest finding – the author assumes women are voluntarily dismissing marriage.

There is no understanding among most Christians that there are thousands of Christian singles who want marriage, but they are not meeting eligible partners. Here’s the link to the Roman Catholic news site:

(Link): Time to reverse a trend: marriage rates in the US

This next link is from a right wing, social conservative foundation, so you can guess what their views are on this marriage rate dip – note that a marriage rate dip is viewed as being negative for “families,” but these authors are never concerned or address the 45% of the U.S. population that is single:

(Link): Family Fact of the Week: What the Record-Low Marriage Rate Means for Americans’ Well-Being

Further notice that this page doesn’t give a rip about singles age 30 or higher, but only with the current 20 somethings (quote):

Within the next two years, there will be a slight rise in the number of weddings as Millennials hit the marriage life stage, according to a recent study by Demographic Intelligence.

(Link): Marriage Is Changing in the US, and Not Just for Gay Couples

(Link): Why are fewer and fewer people getting married these days?

In Christian circles these days, you still get looked at strange if you are over 35 and never married. Quote:

Brown says people are getting married later on in life because they want to pursue more education.

“Increasingly, young adults are spending more time in school as they pursue college and advanced degrees,” she said. “This tends to delay family formation — whether childbearing, cohabitation, or marriage — as most people aim to achieve financial security prior to starting a family.”

But Coontz says just because the marriage rate is going down, it doesn’t mean that people view it negatively — it just means there are more people who are fine with being single.

And the overall flow of life has changed too, she says. There was a time that women were looked at strangely if they didn’t get married. But that isn’t the case anymore.

(Link): Why Fewer Women Getting Married

(Link): Marriage Rate Lowest In A Century

The marriage rate, between heterosexual couples respectfully, is at its lowest rate in a century.

The marriage rate has declined for all racial and ethnic groups, but the greatest decline is among African Americans.

A new Family Profile from the National Center for Family and Marriage Research (NCFMR) at Bowling Green State University, states fewer women are electing to get married. And women who do decide to marry are delaying when to take the stroll down the aisle.

Researchers used data from the National Vital Statistics “100 Years of Marriage and Divorce Statistics United States 1867-1967,” the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics, and the US Census Bureau to assess their results.

According to “Marriage: More than a Century of Change,” the US marriage rate is 31.1. That is the lowest it’s been in over a century. It equals roughly 31 marriages per 1,000 married women. Compare that to 1920, when the marriage rate was a staggering 92.3.

Since 1970, the marriage rate has declined by almost 60 percent.

Dr. Susan Brown, co-director of the NCFMR says, “Marriage is no longer compulsory. It’s just one of an array of options. Increasingly, many couples choose to cohabit and still others prefer to remain single.” She was quoted in Science Daily.

Much of this has been due to several feminist, equality movements pushing womankind forward out of domestic roles. Now instead of being socially subdued into the roles of wife and mother, women have more choices. They can choose to be a wife and mother, or they can opt to have a career, or both.

There is also less of a social stigma to remain single, or to have children out of wedlock.

Americans are progressively getting married later in life. The average age of first marriage in the United States is 27 for women and 29 for men. This is up from 23 for women and 26 for men in 1990, and 20 and 22 in 1960, reports The Atlantic.

But there are benefits of marrying later. The relationships longevity of those who do marry later statistically lasts longer than those who marry younger. And financially, college-educated women benefit the most from marrying later. Women who marry later make more money per year than women who marry young.

This is according to “Knot Yet: The Benefits and Costs of Delayed Marriage in America,” a new report from the University of Virginia’s National Marriage Project.

… There has also been a dramatic increase in the proportion of women who are separated or divorced. In 1920, less than 1 percent of women held that distinction. Today, it is 15 percent. Divorce rates remain high in the US, and individuals are less likely to remarry than they were in the past.

Not America, but interesting:

China:
(Link): Divorce Rate Outstripping Marriage Rate in China

Britain:
(Link): The lonely generation: Late-life divorce. Husbands lost to dementia. Or marriages that are just empty shells

Angela Townshend sleeps alone every night, wistfully recalling the not-so-distant time when she shared a bed with her husband, Ned. Where once she and Ned would have been engaged in spirited debates about theology, or mulling over the everyday events of family life, now she spends much of her day in silence.

The 64-year-old from Bath describes the loneliness she feels as ‘so intense it makes me impossibly sad to remember how idyllically happy we were’.

Angela is not, however, a widow. Her 70-year-old husband is still very much a physical presence and huge responsibility in her life. But serious illness means that the man she married 14 years ago — a second marriage for both of them — is long gone.
In 2006, Ned was diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease and, four years later, with Lewy body dementia, which is closely associated with both Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s. Since then, the Townshends’ lives have changed beyond recognition and fallen into a familiar routine.