WASHINGTON (ABP) — New data from the U.S. Census Bureau confirms young adults are waiting longer to get married. The result, however, may be healthier marriages.
Since 1970, the average age at which men marry for the first time rose from 25.3 years to 27.1, according to the bureau's Current Population Survey. The average marrying age for women rose from 20.8 to 23.2.
Also, the percentage of men age 30-34 who have never married has quadrupled since 1970, now accounting for about a third of men in the age group. About a fourth of women age 30-34 have never married, which also is a fourfold increase from the 6 percent of 1970.
Sociologists who viewed the report said young adults are focusing more on their education and jobs than marriage. An increase in cohabitation also is contributing to the postponement of marriage, they said.
Two researchers who direct the National Marriage Project at Rutgers University see some encouraging signs in the trends, however. “There is a common belief that, although a smaller percentage of Americans are now marrying than was the case a few decades ago, those who marry have marriages of higher quality,” said David Popenoe and Barbara Dafoe Whitehead.
“It seems reasonable that if divorce removes poor marriages from the pool of married couples and cohabitation 'trial marriages' deter some bad marriages from forming, the remaining marriages on average should be happier,” the pair wrote in the 2004 study “The State of Our Unions.”
Popenoe and Whitehead, who studied attitudes about marriage among young men age 25-34, found that 80 percent of men view marriage favorably and are good candidates for matrimony. “The men who are the best 'marriage bets' are those who are more traditional in their family and religious background characteristics and in their attitudes toward marriage,” the researchers said.
Their research showed that the prime time for men to search for and marry their “soul mate” occurs roughly during the years between ages 25 and 30, and that the meaning of marriage has changed for those men.
“Compared to earlier generations of men, young men today are less likely to equate marriage with becoming an adult,” the researchers said. Neither do they view marriage primarily as a means to have children. Instead, the researchers said, young men tend to marry in order to build a life with their “soul mates.”
Other recent studies have shown that Christian men and women are more likely to marry and tend to marry younger than the general population, perhaps because cohabitation is still frowned upon in many Christian circles.
But Christians also divorce at a higher rate than the general population. According to a 2001 study by the Barna Research Group, 27 percent of born-again Christians have been divorced, compared with 24 percent of adults who are not born-again.
But Popenoe and Whitehead, in an earlier study, said the higher divorce rate among Christians has more to do with education than faith. “Born-again Christians have a somewhat lower level of education than the population as a whole, and this educational level is very highly associated with divorce — the higher the education level, the lower the divorce rate,” Popenoe said.
“One reason is that people with a higher education level don't marry as young,” he said. “And the age at marriage is extremely sensitive to the question of divorce — the younger you are when you marry, the higher the divorce rate.”