Jonathan Rauch, discussing Naomi Cahn and June Carbone’s analysis of the red state/blue state marriage divide, notes that “for a lot of people, a graduate education or even a bachelor’s degree is unrealistic. The injunction to delay family formation until you are 24 and finish your master’s offers these people only cold comfort.”
It’s an important point. The prevailing social script tells us that young people should get (at least) a undergraduate degree, establish career path, get financially stable, and—probably by the time you’re in your late mid-late 20’s—get married. While this works well enough for the young people who actually can and do get a college degree, it’s out of touch with the almost 70 percent of young people ages 25-29 who don’t have a college degree—whether because they can’t or they don’t want to—and who as a result often value getting married and establishing a family earlier in the life course. I can’t help but wonder if our refusal to reckon with this reality is contributing to the growing marriage divide between the college-educated (who tend to cluster in the blue states) and the non-college-educated (who tend to cluster in the red states).
I don’t think the solution is that everyone should go to college and postpone marriage until the later 20’s. Rather, if a non-college-educated young couple wants to get married in their early 20’s, we should find ways to create a culture that helps sustain their commitment.
Categories: Marriage
