A headline in yesterday’s New York Times read, “Married Couples Are No Longer a Majority, Census Finds.” The story noted a Brookings analysis of census data that married couples represented 48 percent of American households in 2010, and quotes Red Families vs. Blue Families author June Carbone, who suggests that “Employment instability depresses marriage rates.” Explaining the reasoning, Carbone says that “I can support myself and the kid, but not myself, the kid, and him.”
Employment instability surely is one factor that contributes to declining marriage rates, particularly among the non-college-educated. But it would be a mistake to suggest that it’s the only, or even primary, factor. For one thing, there’s the riddle that non-college-educated women are willing to take on the costs of raising children before marriage, but not willing to get married? If employment instability is really the primary concern on people’s minds, then why are non-college-educated women bearing children?
What do individuals cite as the reasons for not getting married? Florida asked this very question in their 2003 survey about individuals’ attitudes towards marriage. Theyincluded the following question to individuals who were in a relationship but not married (so this is presumably anyone who is in a relationship, not necessarily just cohabiting): ”Is this a major reason why you and your partner might not be planning to get married?” Table 41 at this link lists the responses. Here are the top ten reasons that individuals cited:
“You both are happy the way things are”: 56 percent.
“You worry that the marriage would end in divorce”: 31 percent.
“The two of you are living apart”: 26 percent.
“Hasn’t come up or haven’t talked about it”: 25 percent.
“Not enough money in savings”: 18 percent.
“You don’t believe in marriage”: 16 percent.
“Too much arguing or conflict”: 16 percent.
“Questions about whether your partner is trustworthy”: 15 percent.
“You cannot afford a place to live together”: 11 percent.
“You don’t make enough money”: 10 percent.
It struck me that “You both are happy the way things are” was the top response. It reminded me of an interview I had with James, a 27 year old roofer who had been in a live-in relationship with his girlfriend for seven years before she broke up with him. I asked him why, five years into their relationship, they stil weren’t married. He kept on talking about the fact that “they weren’t in any rush”–that they both wanted to eventually get married, but things were going well, so why rush it?
Me: What would you say was the main reason for not rushing?”
James: Mainly probably because things were going so well. There just wasn’t any rush to do it…. Things were going really well… But, yeah, I think things were going so smoothly at the time, it’s just something we didn’t have to rush into … I think we kind of had that thought in the back of our heads that if we rushed into marriage that maybe things would kind of fall apart because we just kind of rushed into it, whereas we just kind of wanted to let life take us there. Do it when you feel the time is right, rather than puttin’ it on a calendar and just countin’ the days down.
Me: You said [divorce] was kind of a thought in the back of your head. Did you ever voice that to to each other. you know, ‘If we get married, it would put pressure on the relationship’?
James: Um, it’s something that we kept in the back of our heads, but we never really voiced it to one another about our relationship. But as I was sayin’ earlier, we seen people spend a large chunk of their life livin’ together with one another and then gettin’ married, then two years later just puttin’ up for reasons unknown. I’m sure we each knew what we were thinkin’, even though we didn’t specifically talk about our relationship. We kinda—I guess in a sense kind of compared our relationship to other people that we knew, like other older couples that we know that had gotten married and then a couple years down the road and had gotten divorced. And this is a man and a woman that got along really well. You know, livin’ together. They got a marriage license, they got married, then, like I said, reasons unknown, two years later they’re divorced. Things in their relationship mighta spun out of control.
As the above Florida data suggests, the lack of good-paying, stable jobs for non-college-educated young people surely contributes in some instances to young people’s hesitations to get married. But what the conventional wisdom often misses is how the normalization of sex and children outside of marriage “cheapens” marriage, so that young people sense no rush to get married. If we can have sex and children outside of marriage, and if we love each other and are committed to each other (at least we think we are), what is the “added value” of marriage?
Another important factor is what some scholars have referred to as “the long arm of divorce.” The Florida data–31 percent say they are not marrying anytime soon because they’re worried that their marriage will end in divorce–and James’ response bears this out: James says while they never really articulated their fear that marriage would ruin their good relationship, he thinks they did have it in the back of their heads. “In the back of our heads”–it’s a telling phrase.
The point is this: “employment instability” is one of the factors that can help us to understand why young adults are opting–at least in their twenties–for cohabitation over marriage. But there are important cultural reasons to consider as well.
