Is Marriage Becoming Outdated?

Published February 16, 1979. Not long ago, the mother of a teen-age girl contacted me. The mother was distraught in that her daughter had recently come home from school and announced, “I’m not going to marry. It’s becoming outdated.” The mother asked me if her daughter was right, and if so, what could she, the mother, say?

Her daughter had apparently been duped by one source or another into believing that fewer and fewer people are marrying. This belief may be attributed to a high number of divorces, and some prominent people (film starts, etc.) living together and sometimes having children without marrying.

Also, the gloomy side of marriage is frequently depicted in the mass media, and we marriage and family life educators have even been known to sometimes portray the unseemly side of marriage.

The mother, and probably her daughter, may be surprised to learn that according to the 1970 U.S Census, 96 percent of Americans marry sometime during their lifetime. Apparently, we are not scaring very many away from matrimony.

In fact, one prominent observer of marriage and family life in the United States, Dr. David H Olson of the University of Minnesota, recently observed that “Marriage still continues to be the most popular voluntary institution in our society.”

Not long ago I attended the National Council on Family Relations in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania where similar statements and trends were noted. As of 1975, the following was reported for the United States:

1. Nearly 85 percent of all families are husband-wife intact families.
2. In seven out of every eight marriages, the husband is still in his first marriage.
3. Only a fraction of 1 percent of all couples are living together without being married.
4. Two of every three couples will have intact marriages throughout their joint survival.
5. Three-fourths of the women and five-sixths of the men who divorce will remarry within an average of three years.
6. Between one half and two thirds of those who remarry will remain married as long as both partners live.

Almost everyone knows that marriage is not always easy, and indeed some find it less than fulfilling. But the question might be asked, “Does marriage fail people or do people fail marriage?” It is interesting to note that many who do not find satisfaction in their first marriage will frequently seek and find it in the second.

With all its problems, the vast majority of Americans still find marriage to be the most desirable way of living with another person.

Dr. Robert Harper and Dr. Albert Ellis, in their book “A Guide to Successful Marriage,” have recently noted:

Even though modern marriage has many distinct disadvantages, it still appears to be, at the very least, tolerably satisfactory for most men and women. It can, of course, be much more than this. It can be a sheer delight, a mystic luminous joy.

Many married couples, not realizing this, go for needless divorces. They see, while they are mated to each other, all the common disadvantages of their union. What is more difficult for them to see, because human beings tend to accept as commonplace and to take for granted many of their day-to-day satisfactions, is that their marriages have many real advantages.

There are many that would lead us to believe that marriage in the United States has lost its appeal and is becoming obsolete. Perhaps marriage would appear to be more meaningful, however, if we could focus more on the large number who find it worthwhile rather than continually concentrating on those who do not.