It seems that I am now well and truly an adult. How do I know? Because I am facing a quintessentially adult problem: People I know; people who I view as my friends and peers and being of my own age rather than my parents; are getting married.
It started innocently enough. I became first aware, during my yearly social media purge, in which I sort through unanswered notifications, update my profile details, and suppress old posts which are no longer in line with the image which I seek to present. While briefly slipping into the rabbit hole that is the modern news feed, I was made aware that one of my acquaintances and classmates from high school was now engaged to be wed. This struck me as somewhat odd, but certainly not worth making a fuss about.
Some months later, it emerged after a late night crisis call between my father and uncle, that my cousin had been given a ring by his grandmother in order to propose to his girlfriend. My understanding of the matter, which admittedly is third or fourth hand and full of gaps, is that this ring-giving was motivated not by my cousin himself, but by the grandmother’s views on unmarried cohabitation (which existed between my cousin and said girlfriend at the time) as a means to legitimize the present arrangement.
My father, being the person he was, decided, rather than tell me about this development, to make a bet on whether or not my cousin would eventually, at some unknown point in the future, become engaged to his girlfriend. Given what I knew about my cousin’s previous romantic experience (more in depth than breadth), and the statistics from the Census and Bureau of Labor Statistics (see info graphic above), I gave my conclusion that I did not expect that my cousin to become engaged within the next five years, give or take six months [1]. I was proven wrong within the week.
I brushed this off as another fluke. After all, my cousin, for all his merits, is rather suggestible and averse to interpersonal conflict. Furthermore, he comes from a more rural background with a strong emphasis on community values than my godless city-slicker upbringing. And whereas I would be content to tell my grandmother that I was perfectly content to live in delicious sin with my perfectly marvelous girl in my perfectly beautiful room [2], my cousin might be otherwise more concerned with traditional notions of propriety.
Today, though, came the final confirmation: wedding pictures from a friend of mine I knew from summer camp. The writing is on the wall. Childhood playtime is over, and we’re off to the races. In comes the age of attending wedding ceremonies and watching others live out their happily ever afters (or, as is increasingly common, fail spectacularly in a nuclear fireball of bitter recriminations). Naturally next on the agenda is figuring out which predictions about “most likely to succeed” and accurate with regards to careers, followed shortly by baby photos, school pictures, and so on.
At this point, I may as well hunker down for the day that my hearing and vision start failing. It would do me well, it seems, to hurry up and preorder my cane and get on the waiting list for my preferred retirement home. It’s not as though I didn’t see this coming from a decade away. Though I was, until now, quite sure that by the time that marriage became a going concern in my social circle that I would be finished with high school.
What confuses me more than anything else is that these most recent developments seem to be in defiance of the statistical trends of the last several decades. Since the end of the postwar population boom, the overall marriage rate has been in steady decline, as has the percentage of households composed primarily of a married couple. At the same time, both the number and percentage of nonfamily households (defined as “those not consisting of persons related by blood, marriage, adoption, or other legal arrangements”) has skyrocketed, and the growth of households has become uncoupled from the number of married couples, which were historically strongly correlated [3].
Which is to say that the prevalence of godless cohabitation out of wedlock is increasing. So too has increased the median age of first marriage, from as low as eighteen at the height of the postwar boom, to somewhere around thirty for men in my part of the world today. This begs an interesting question: For how long is this trend sustainable? That is, suppose the current trend of increasingly later marriages continues for the majority of people. At some point, presumably, couples will opt to simply forgo marriage altogether, and indeed, in many cases, already are in historic numbers [3]. At what point, then, does the marriage age snap back to the lower age practiced by those people who, now a minority, are still getting married early?
Looking at the maps a little closer, an few interesting correlations emerge [NB]. First, States with larger populations seem to have both fewer marriages per capita, and a higher median age of first marriage. Conversely, there is a weak, but visible correlation between a lower median age of first marriage, and an increased marriage per capita rate. There are a few conclusions that can be drawn from these two data sets, most of which match up with our existing cultural understanding of marriage in the modern United States.
First, marriage appears to have a geographic bias towards rural and less densely populated areas. This can be explained either by geography (perhaps large land area with fewer people makes individuals more interested in locking down relationships), or by a regional cultural trend (perhaps more rural communities are more god-fearing than us cityborne heathens, and thus feel more strongly about traditional “family values”.
Second, young marriage is on the decline nationwide, even in the above mentioned rural areas. There are ample potential reasons for this. Historically, things like demographic changes due to immigration or war, and the economic and political outlook have been cited as major factors in causing similar rises in the median age of first marriage.
Fascinatingly, one of the largest such rises seen during the early part of the 20th century was attributed to the influx of mostly male immigrants, which created more romantic competition for eligible bachelorettes, and hence, it is said, caused many to defer the choice to marry [3]. It seems possible, perhaps likely even, that the rise of modern connectivity has brought about a similar deference (think about how dating sights have made casual dating more accessible). Whether this effect works in tandem with, is caused by, or is a cause of, shifting cultural values, is difficult to say, but changing cultural norms is certainly also a factor.
Third, it seems that places where marriage is more common per capita have a lower median age of first marriage. Although a little counterintuitive, this makes some sense when examined in context. After all, the more important marriage is to a particular area-group, the higher it will likely be on a given person’s priority list. The higher a priority marriage is, the more likely that person is to want to get married sooner rather than later. Expectations of marriage, it seems, are very much a self-fulfilling prophecy.
NB: All of these two correlations have two major outliers: Nevada and Hawaii, which have far more marriages per capita than any other state, and fairly middle of the road ages of first marriage. It took me an unconscionably long time to figure out why.
So, if marriage is becoming increasingly less mainstream, are we going to see the median age of first marriage eventually level off and decrease as this particular statistic becomes predominated by those who are already predisposed to marry young regardless of cultural norms?
Reasonable people can take different views here, but I’m going to say no. At least not in the near future, for a few reasons.
Even if marriage is no longer the dominant arrangement for families and cohabitation (which it still is at present), there is still an immense cultural importance placed on marriage. Think of the fairy tales children grow up learning. The ones that always end “happily ever after”. We still associate that kind of “ever after” with marriage. And while young people may not be looking for that now, as increased life expectancies make “til death do us part” seem increasingly far off and irrelevant to the immediate concerns of everyday life, living happily ever after is certainly still on the agenda. People will still get married for as long as wedding days continue to be a major celebration and social function, which remains the case even in completely secular settings today.
And of course, there is the elephant in the room: Taxes and legal benefits. Like it or not, marriage is as much a secular institution as a religious one, and as a secular institution, marriage provides some fairly substantial incentives over simply cohabiting. The largest and most obvious of these is the ability to file taxes jointly as a single household. Other benefits such as the ability to make medical decisions if one partner is incapacitated, to share property without a formal contract, and the like, are also major incentives to formalize arrangements if all else is equal. These benefits are the main reason why denying legal marriage rights to same sex couples is a constitutional violation, and are the reason why marriage is unlikely to go extinct.
All of this statistical analysis, while not exactly comforting, has certainly helped cushion the blow of the existential crisis which seeing my peers reach major milestones far ahead of me generally brings with it. Aside from providing a fascinating distraction, pouring over old reports and analyses, the statistics have proven what I already suspected: that my peers and I simply have different priorities, and this need not be a bad thing. Not having marriage prospects at present is not by any means an indication that I am destined for male spinsterhood. And with regards to feeling old, the statistics are still on my side. At least for the time being.
Works Consulted
Effron, Chloe, and Caitlin Schneider. “At What Ages Do People First Get Married in Each State?” Mental Floss. N.p., 09 July 2015. Web. 14 May 2017. <http://mentalfloss.com/article/66034/what-ages-do-people-first-get-married-each-state>.
Masteroff, Joe, Fred Ebb, John Kander, Jill Haworth, Jack Gilford, Bert Convy, Lotte Lenya, Joel Grey, Hal Hastings, Don Walker, John Van Druten, and Christopher Isherwood. Cabaret: original Broadway cast recording. Sony Music Entertainment, 2008. MP3.
Wetzel, James. American Families: 75 Years of Change. Publication. N.p.: Bureau of Labor Statistics, n.d. Monthly Labor Review. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Mar. 1990. Web. 14 May 2017. <https://www.bls.gov/mlr/1990/03/art1full.pdf>.
Kirk, Chris. “Nevada Has the Most Marriages, but Which State Has the Fewest?” Slate Magazine. N.p., 11 May 2012. Web. 14 May 2017. <http://www.slate.com/articles/life/map_of_the_week/2012/05/marriage_rates_nevada_and_hawaii_have_the_highest_marriage_rates_in_the_u_s_.html>.
Tax, TurboTax – Taxes Income. “7 Tax Advantages of Getting Married.” Intuit TurboTax. N.p., n.d. Web. 15 May 2017. <https://turbotax.intuit.com/tax-tools/tax-tips/Family/7-Tax-Advantages-of-Getting-Married-/INF17870.html>.