The proportion of adults who are married has plunged to record lows as more people decide to live together now and wed later, reflecting decades of evolving attitudes about the role of marriage in society.
Just 51 percent of all adults who are 18 and older are married, placing them on the brink of becoming a minority, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of census statistics to be released Wednesday. That represents a steep drop from 57 percent who were married in 2000.
This is both another symptom of more underlying issue that is also behind the acceptance of same sex marriage and reinforces it. If you don’t value marriage you won’t get married. And if you don’t get married then you don’t have as much stake in it and so don’t care as much if it gets redefined, or even if what it stands for (sexual exclusivity and commitment within a couple) is substantially sidelined.
And yet, once again, we find that the relatively well-off, the college graduate, is able to enjoy the ‘perks’ of this sexual arrangement in society by sleeping around in their younger twenties and still end up (relatively) securely married. And so they’ll continue their leadership in society of thinking that this works for everyone – when in fact marriage is collapsing precisely in those sections of society that could do with the stabilizing and securing force that it offers. Like most of these freedoms, it really only benefits the well-off (ultimately it hurts them too, but that’s another, more important, story).