Is Marriage Dying? No. (Well, Probably Not)
What does the future hold for the institution of marriage? I ask because we're constantly hearing about the 'deinstitutionalisation' of marriage. Marriage no longer occupies the central, solid role it once did, divorce is on the rise and people are getting married later. All these seem to point to a weakening of marriage in many Western societies.
So, how will marriage be viewed in the future? As a quaint custom fast dying out whose proponents can only be found amongst die-hard traditionalists? As an indicator of advanced age, social backwardness and constriction? In short: is marriage dying?
Clue to marriage's future
Well, we'll have to wait and see, but a clue about the future of marriage comes from a new study published in the Journal of Marriage and Family. Manning, Longmore and Giordano (2007) asked adolescents whether they expected to get married in the future and/or whether they saw themselves engaging in marriage's ambiguous rival: cohabitation. And perhaps the results might surprise those who feel marriage is on the long slide to oblivion.
First you need to know who the participants were before you can judge the results. They were kids from the 7th, 9th and 11th grades (that's 12, 14 and 16 year-olds respectively) from Lucas County, Ohio in the US. This is a mostly urban, metropolitan environment. Bear in mind that it can be difficult to generalise these findings to other areas, although they are useful indicators.
Surprisingly, then, adolescents expected it was much more likely they would marry than they would cohabit. Here are some of the headline findings for marriage:
- 76% of adolescents expected to marry in the future (probably or definitely).
- 19% thought it 'a little' or 'somewhat likely' they would marry.
- 5% thought they would never marry.
And for cohabitation:
- 30% expected to cohabit (probably or definitely).
- 26% thought it 'somewhat likely' they would cohabit.
- 21% said there was 'a little' chance they would cohabit.
- 23% expected never to cohabit.
We can also make some inferences from the patterns of adolescent's responses. For example, half the adolescents thought they would cohabit and marry at some point. Also, only very few adolescents thought they would cohabit but never marry.
There were a number of factors that affected whether young people thought they would marry. For example those from single-parent families thought themselves less likely to marry, as did those from ethnic minorities and those who had never dated.
Social expectations
While these results seem positive for the institution of marriage, my main reservation is that the adolescents, especially the younger ones, are simply answering how they think they are supposed to be answering. Does a 12 year-old really know what it means to cohabit or to get married? Perhaps this study is telling us more about existing social norms than it is about the future of marriage itself.
That said, if young people still think marriage is important, then it probably still is. And it will probably continue to be important for quite some time.
Read more on the psychology of relationships.
Reference
Manning, W.D., Longmore, M.A., & Giordano, P.C. (2007). The Changing Institution of Marriage: Adolescents Expectations to Cohabit and to Marry. Journal of Marriage and Family, 69(3), 559-575.
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I would imagine most of these people are getting their ideas of marriage and the social norms surrounding it from popular culture, mainly TV and movies. The fact that it is still relevant in those contexts does, I would imagine, indicate that it is still important to us and will continue to be so.
On the other hand, without wanting to discount the value of this study, I believe it's of limited use to ask people what they're "going to" do, especially when dealing with such a nebulous subject. I think that all of us find ourselves in situations where the obvious thing to do is not what we would have predicted we would do ten years before. For example, I wonder what the results would have been had the researchers also asked whether they thought they would get divorced, if they had indicated that they would get married. Very few people (in my experience) predict that they will get divorced, yet obviously, many of them will.
It also brings to mind the programs that have elementary-age kids promising that they'll never do drugs or smoke cigarettes or what-have-you. Whenever I see one of those t-shirts I have to wonder if those promises mean anything. And I may be a pessimist, but I doubt they really count for much. Being a young adult and the attendant stresses and pressures lead to much more difficult choices that appear simple when one is a child.
Incidentally, I just noticed that the title of this article conceals a double meaning that is, well, trembling hand perfect.
"Is Marriage Dying?" could mean what I'm sure it's intended to mean - is the institution of marriage dying out, that is to say, going away? Then again, it could also be read as: is being married equivalent to being dead?
Ha.
Will, nicely crowbarred in!
If you use a transactive model of relationships, marriage is not seen as providing a reasonable balance of risks and rewards, particularly for men. Once upon a time, in exchange for bread winning, males could expect emotional security, care for home and children and a certain social status. None of these things are readily avaiable or necesarily desirable, and at the same time the "debits" of marriage have increased significantly, through the legal, fiscal and consequent social changes of the past 20 years. In particular the financial penalties of a failed marriage and societys' ambivalent and contradictory attitudes to fatherhood are making marriage increasingly risky and unattractive.
For women, the diminishing number of high status potential mates, particularly for middle class women, is exposing the downside of closing the earnings gap and for working class women, the state has effectively usurped the economic and social purpose of a husband.
TAXI !!
Matt, yeah you make a strong point for why marriage is becoming less popular. I think many adults are still in the midsts of trying to work out what marriage is for or what it means.
For the adolescents in this survey, though, they've got this realisation to look forward to.
My feeling is that the children surveyed, like all in our education system, aren't being told the truth about what the marriage contract actually says. Our lawyers and judges have redefined it over the past 30 years to the point that what these kids think marriage is bears almost no resemblance to what is defined in courts. Especially, the boys are not being told that they, at any time, without recourse, can be dragged into court, forced to pay tens of thousands of dollars to the legal system to lose 1/2 of their assets, be separated from their children, and pay through the nose to a person who has betrayed their marriage vows. Teaching this simple aspect of civics to our kids would kill marriage dead; not a moment too soon in my opinion; I have no desire to share the world with rich and slimy divorce lawyers or family court justices.