Why are young people taking so long to get hitched?
Many adults wonder why they're not so serious about marriage. So, if we're going to help the next generation move toward establishing good marriages, we need to understand the issues they face.
Scholars have noted that the culture of dating young adults experience today is very different than the one experienced by their parents and grandparents and there's been an erosion of traditional courtship patterns. Without the formal structure of traditional courtship, a number of dating pitfalls have emerged:
Pessimism about marriage: Having grown up in a society saturated with divorce, many young people are pessimistic about their chances of having a happy marriage. Nearly one in three young adults today agree with the statement, "One sees so few good or happy marriages that one questions it as a way of life." Simply put, when it comes to marriage, many young adults today have high aspirations, but low expectations.
Getting ahead before getting wed: The responsibilities of adulthood in past generations centered on caring for one's spouse, providing for a family, and nurturing children -- all of which involved duties toward others. However, recent research reveals that young people no longer consider marriage and parenthood to be criteria for adulthood. Instead, many young people are focusing their attention on personal responsibility and financial independence.
Hanging out and hooking up: The "dating" culture has become a "hanging out" culture. Several studies have found that traditional dating, where a man asks a woman out on a date and pays for the evening's events, is becoming rare. The common pattern today is for the young to informally hang out-- in a group or with just each other -- rather than go on planned dates.
Sexual permissiveness: Along with hanging out, today's dating culture is one often characterized by casual attitudes toward sexual relationships. Even though premarital sexual behavior has been shown to be a significant risk factor limiting future marital success, single life in American culture has become synonymous with sexual experimentation in noncommittal romantic relationships.
Acceptance of cohabitation: Recent
research shows that 62 percent of young adults believe living together
before marriage is a good way to avoid eventual divorce, and more than
half of all marriages in America today are preceded by cohabitation.
However, studies on cohabitation and later marital success have
consistently found that couples who cohabit before marriage are more
likely to divorce than couples who do not cohabit before marriage.
Parental attitudes about marriage: One final trend worth
mentioning is the shifting views parents are offering to their young
adult children when it comes to marriage preparation. In addition, the
encouragement of delayed marriage by parents may be exposing their
children to additional marital risk factors such as cohabitation and
premarital sexual behavior. Simply put, parents may be preparing their
children for divorce, rather than marriage.
So, what's to be done? First and foremost, parents need to lead out by
modeling for their children how to have a good marriage. Children need
to develop positive attitudes about marriage and feel confident that
they can make their hopes for a successful marriage a reality. To this
end, we should collectively consider ways to provide relationship
education during the teen and young adult years. Also, there has been a
virtual disappearance of adult participation in, or even awareness of,
today's new dating culture. Parents, college administrators and
community leaders should find ways to recapture their historical role
of guiding and supporting the courtship process.
Only 50 percent of college women report that they have been asked
out on six or more dates, and one-third said they have only been asked
on two or fewer dates.
Sources:
See Independent Women's Forum. (2001), "Hooking Up,
Hanging Out, and Hoping for Mr. Right -- College Women on Dating and
Mating Today," www.iwf.org.
T. B. Heaton (2002), "Factors Contributing to Increasing Marital Stability in the United States," Journal of Family Issues, Issue 23.
B. D. Whitehead and D. Popenoe (2001), "The State of Our Unions." The National Marriage Project, Rutgers University.
L. Bumpass and H. H. Lu (2000), Trends in Cohabitation and Implications for Children's Family Contexts in the United States, Population Studies, Issue 54.
J. Teachman (2003), "Premarital Sex, Premarital Cohabitation, and the Risk of Subsequent Marital Dissolution Among Women." Journal of Marriage and the Family, Issue 65.
Thomas B. Holman is chair of marriage, family and human development at Brigham Young University. Jason Carroll is an assistant professor of marriage, family and human development at Brigham Young University.
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