Marriage Statistic: Marriage Rates Have Decrease in the United States

There is a staggeringly large amount of divorces in the United States (US). In total, the US had a recorded total of 2,140,272 marriages in the year 2014 alone, and of those marriages, 813,862 ended up in divorce or annulment (Center for Disease Control). This means that as recently as 2014, there was a divorce rate of approximately 40%. This supports the statistics that the divorce rate for the US has stayed within 40-50% since the 1970’s (Austin Institute, 2014). While the numbers themselves are important, it is also important that the causes for the high divorce rate be explored, so that it can be known what pitfalls to avoid when participating in such an important union as marriage. There are many causes of divorce in the US such as conflicting gender roles, socioeconomic status, religious conflicts, physical abuse, emotional abuse, alcohol addictions, and many more (Amato & Previti, 2003). This paper will look at many of these reasons, but it will also focus on the differing reasons reported by men and women.

In Andrew J. Cherlin’s essay “American Marriage In Transition”, he discusses how marriage in America is evolving from the universal marriage. Cherlin’s definition of the universal marriage in his essay is the man is the breadwinner of the household and the woman is the homemaker. In the 20th century according to Cherlin, the meaning of marriage has been altered such as the changing division of labor, childbearing outside of marriage, cohabitation, gay marriage and the result of long- term cultural and material trends (1154). During the first transition of marriage, Cherlin discusses how in America, Europe, and Canada the only socially accepted way to have sexual relations with a person and to have children is to be married (1154). The second change in marriage occurred in 2000, where the median age of marriage in the United States for men is 27 and women is 25 (1155). Many young adults stayed single during this time and focused on their education and starting their careers. During the second change, the role of law increasingly changed, especially in the role of law in divorce (1155). It is proven in today’s research marriage has a different definition than what it did back in the 1950’s. Today marriage can be defined as getting married to the same gender or getting remarried to someone who already has kids. The roles in a marriage are evolving to be a little more flexible and negotiable. However, women still do a lot of the basic household chores and taking care of the

Next, many women were under the age of nineteen got married in the 1950s and started their families with their husband (PBS). Women that went to college in the 1950s did not have a college degree because they potentially had to look for husband or else was in danger of being an old maid if they were not married. (PBS). It is different today because women can get married in the United States at any age and not be part of a social norm that happened in the 1950s. Partners that marry young in their early 20s today have a higher chance for divorce than partners who marry after the age of 25. (Pearlman pg. 203). According to Amato and Rogers (1997) says reasons that young married couples have problems in their marriage is because of infidelity, jealously, lack of maturity, and financial problems (Pearlman pg. 204). People also marry young because of the wrong reasons in today’s society For example, this wife was married to her husband because both

The patterns of marriage, divorce and cohabitation over the past 40 years has varied considerably. In 1972, over 480,000 couples got married subsequently making this the highest amount of marriages within a year ever since the Second World War. According to the Office for National Statistics (ONS) this was down to the baby boom generation of the 1950’s reaching the age of marriage.

Last, and most important, is that studies have not shown that more hours spent on homework leads to more knowledge. Time spent on homework does not correlate to better test scores. Some students can spend twice as much time as others and still not do as well. Grades do not necessarily improve with more hours of homework.

In over half a century, marriage has transformed from being a social requirement to simply being an option in today’s society. What has caused this change? Many institutions in our society have changed drastically along with marriage. Although these institutions have not caused marriage to be optional, they do strongly correlate with the decreased value. The economy, education, religion, and government have all altered since the 1950s. When any institution encounters a change, all other institutions are affected. Family is a major institution in society, and I believe that marriage is an important aspect of this institution. Cohabitation, religion, women in the work world and divorce have all effected the way marriage is viewed today.

These includes changes in social levels over time, death rates, economic conditions and laws –the no-fault divorce laws, the reduction in fertility and the legalization of abortion increased the divorce rates in the 1980s. However, scholars believe that the single most important social change which made divorce possible was the increase in the employment of women and the economic independence that employment provided. For nearly all decades, the lifetime probability of divorce for women of all ages has been increasing. For women born in 1920, the likelihood of divorce by age 55 was 27 percent. This same level of divorce was reached at a much younger age (age 30) for women born in 1950. At least 40 percent of young adult women are likely to divorce. 16 percent are likely to divorce twice if current divorce rates continue. In Document 1, in the 1990s and 2000s, divorce rates appear to decline slightly.

While it is true that young adults are waiting longer and longer to get married, Hymowitz’s aforementioned claim is a bit much. Things like identity and courtship are qualitative, and therefore, cannot be measured. It is true that this essay is by no means a scientific paper, however a claim that can have no factual backup takes away from the overall credibility of both the essay and the author. In addition to this, she ends her piece in a way that does not match the tone of the rest of the essay. At the end, Hymowitz does not seem to be concerned with pre-adults, despite spending several pages explaining how they came about: “[w]hy should they grow up?

In fact, young marriage as a whole was rarely studied through the lens of networks. Young marriage is almost always tied to early childbearing, so I first looked for sources that connected the two. Some research has been done on why marriage has become disconnected from childbearing (Edin and Kefalas, 2011; Lappegård, Klüsener, and Vignoli, 2017; Hayford, Guzzo, and Smock, 2014). Though each of these studies came to slightly different conclusions, they all focused on why people were choosing not to get married rather than why some people are still choosing to get married. Edin and Kefalas’ study focus mainly on why young women are choosing to have children before marriage. The data from Edin and Kefalas’s interviews suggest that it is rare for young people to marry young because they do not know anyone who is married at all, much less married at such a young age. This suggests there is a social network connection, but the authors did not focus much on that conclusion. This study was done in an urban area, so I searched for information about young marriage in rural areas as well. I found a study about young first marriages compared between urban and non-urban areas. The study talked about why young marriages are more common in rural areas, and it discussed how friends and family are supportive of the marriage because it is economically beneficial. Again the important of the social networks was

A survey of 14000 adults states in ‘A Guide to Family Issues: The Marriage Advantage’ that marriage was a pertinent factor contributing to happiness and satisfaction with forty percent of the married individuals being happy as opposed to 25 percent of either single or cohabiting individuals. The same study shows that ninety eight percent of never married respondents wished to marry and out of those 88% believed that it should be a lifelong commitment. Even though, divorce rates are rising numerous researches show that young people aspire to have a lasting marriage.

The age at which a couple gets married effects the fertility rate and the likelihood of the woman getting pregnant. “The longer a woman waits to get married, the longer she will wait to have children” (Last, 50). It is shown that between the ages of 24 and 34, a woman’s chance of getting pregnant increases from 3 percent to 8 percent. “By 35, half of woman trying to get pregnant over the course of 8 months will not succeed” (Last, 51). By the time a woman turns 39, she has a 15 percent chance of getting pregnant. Finally, by the time a woman turns 43, her chances of getting pregnant reaches nearly zero. “All of which is why today, 1 out of every 100 babies born in the United States is created via in vitro fertilization” (Last, 51). Due to the late age of marriage, the fertility rates

It was surprising to see the correlation between education and marriage. One quote in particular that caught my eye was “Perceptions of marriage… vary by educational level, with the highly educated feeling significantly more positively about marriage than the less educated population” (Sharp). This confirms that those who can clearly rationalize the advantages and disadvantages of the given choices will choose marriage. However, as our textbook points out, cohabitation is on the rise (168) and is becoming a trend.

By analyzing an individual’s parental marital status and through observing individuals in the course of adolescent dating and/or young adult marriage, one can measure the attitudes and expectations concerning marriage. Young adults who have either came from a home of divorced parents or an intact family will affect the attitude toward marital relationships and the value of them. Whether the young adult has positive or negative outlook of marriage is strongly correlated with family they come from. Individuals with positive attitudes about marriage that have

Cohabitation is defined as a man and woman living in the same household and having sexual relations while not being married. There is relatively little data on health outcomes for people who have cohabitated, although there is some evidence that cohabitating couples have lower incomes (15% of cohabitating men are jobless while 8% of married men are jobless) and there may be negative academic effects for children of cohabitating mothers (Jay, 2012). Cohabitation rates are highest among those who have never married with just over a quarter of people surveyed reporting cohabitation before their first marriage (Jay, 2012). Of these, half reported that they expected their cohabitation to end in marriage; about one quarter to one third of cohabitations end either in marriage or dissolution of the relationship within 3 years (Jay, 2012). Further, cohabitation rates are highest for those who have not completed college, accounting for all but 12% of men and women reporting that they are living with their partners (Jay, 2012). Cohabitation and marriage are two significant decisions college students will make, but very little is known about what college students think about living together before marriage. Given the nearly 50% divorce rate in the United States (Jay, 2012), understanding how young adults view cohabitation as on option for life relationships needs further investigation.

In today’s society, adolescents have a positive opinion about cohabitation before marriage. The view of marriage as an institution has faded and cohabitation has taken a new part of this culture (Martin, Specter, Martin, & Martin, 2003). It has often been questioned whether or not premarital sexual activity causes marriages to be disrupted. According to Teachman, Premarital sex and cohabitation has not