Relationships August 11, 2016
Your parents won’t stop nagging about when you’re finally going to give them grandkids, and lately it seems like all your friends are paired up with their perfect soulmates. You can barely imagine being a responsible cat owner in the next few years, so how are you expected to get married? Don’t fear, though, because you aren’t alone. Marriage rates are declining, but that doesn’t mean you won’t find the person of your dreams.
Millennials have forged a new path for the American Dream. According to the Pew Research Center, one of the growing trends millennials are spearheading is delayed marriage. The average rate for marriage according to Twenty Something Marriage is 27 for women and 29 for men. These ages are considered “late,” when you compare marriage practices from the 1950s and 1960s, during which time men married at 22 and women at 20.
Comparing these rates to the 1950s showcases the decay of the nuclear family, a construct that was solidified in that decade. Today, the amount of nuclear families decreases, gay marriage is more prevalent, divorce rates have risen and many people are choosing not to marry at all.
Delayed marriage makes sense when you think about the 2007 recession and the increase in education requirements for jobs. Marriages are costly and young men and women just don’t have the same sort of financial security that their parents had in order to settle down.
In 2010, The Wall Street Journal reported that in San Francisco, Minneapolis, New York and Atlanta, over 75 percent of those aged 24 to 34 were unmarried. They also found that the drop in marriage was more pronounced among people with less education. But, despite these declining marriage rates, Wall Street Journal feels confident that marriage will remain strong. WSJ reports that 90 percent of people are still likely to get married eventually.
The Atlantic, on the other hand, reported in 2013 that getting married at a later age proved beneficial for college educated women. College educated women who married after the age of 30 made 56 percent more money a year than college women of the same age who married before the age of 20. Men, on the other hand, have the opposite trend: men of all education levels benefit financially from marrying younger.
Women without college degrees are also financially at risk because the average age women first get pregnant has not risen proportionately to the average age of marriage. While college educated women are less likely to have a child out of wedlock, women without a college education are likely to get pregnant before marriage. In addition, unmarried couples with children are statistically more likely to split up.
But, despite these statistics and the increasing desire to get married at a later age, millennials don’t seem to be giving up on the idea of wedlock. The US Council of Economic Advisors found that in high school, 80 percent of millennials reported wanting to someday get married and over 60 percent wanted to someday have kids. Both percentages are higher than the responses given by those from Gen X and the Baby Boomer era.
