More women are deciding their path to happily-ever-after isn't down the aisle. Why are so many women getting married later in life—or not at all—and are there consequences?
"Why don't you make an honest woman of her?" Whitley Louvier and her boyfriend of seven years, Brad, were enjoying his coworker's wedding when the boss's wife started giving Brad a hard time.
"Why don't you make an honest woman of her?" Whitley Louvier and her boyfriend of seven years, Brad, were enjoying his coworker's wedding when the boss's wife started giving Brad a hard time.
"I was so irritated! I'm honest now," Louvier, 24, a psychology student living near Houston, Texas, says about the comment. "We already live together. She assumed that I was longing for him to propose."
If anything, the opposite is true. Her boyfriend has tried to convince her to consider marriage and sometimes even introduces Louvier as his wife. But while Louvier has nothing but good things to say about her boyfriend, she isn't in any hurry to get hitched. "I don't even want to think about getting married until I'm 29 or 30. I want to have at least my master's degree."
As for the boss and his wife, "A week later, it turned out they were getting a divorce," says Louvier. So why was she so intent on getting Louvier to join the institution she was leaving? "Maybe she was thinking about all she would have to do to get a divorce—split the house, they have kids—and was jealous," Louvier speculates. "Misery loves company."
Louvier may feel people question her choices, but she isn't alone in waiting for a wedding. You wouldn't know it from the ever-elaborate, fairy-tale nuptials all over TV, but young women in America are not becoming an army of wannabe bridezillas. They're delaying marriage or, increasingly, not getting married at all at a rate that is only accelerating. In 1970, 60 percent of women between the ages of 20 and 24 were married, and 90 percent of women were married by the time they were 29. In contrast, in 2010, only 20 percent were married by 24, and 50 percent by age 29. According to sociologist Philip Cohen, at the current rate of decline, "the percentage of people getting married will hit zero at around 2042." (Obviously, that's highly unlikely, but the decline doesn't seem to be leveling anytime soon.)
"This is unprecedented," says Rebecca Traister, author of a forthcoming book about unmarried women (Simon & Schuster, 2014). "Marriage has never happened this late or been this infrequent in the history of the country."
That's partly because women no longer need marriage for security and they might have seen the traditional plan end up not working particularly well for their parents. At the same time, young people are struggling with debt and an uncertain economy, which makes longer-term planning tough.
When marriage does happen today, it looks different than before. "For thousands of years, people had little choice about whether and whom to marry and almost no choice in whether or not to have children," writes Stephanie Coontz in Marriage, a History. "Death ended many marriages sooner than divorce does today. A husband owned his wife's property, earnings, and sexuality and had the final word on all decisions."
The world changed. People are living longer, more healthful lives, so there's less pressure to marry or to procreate while young. And women's ability to prosper emotionally and financially on their own is at an all-time high. As of the most recent census, 25 percent fewer men than women receive college degrees. And those women are going out into the workforce with those degrees. "A half century ago, if you went to college and weren't engaged by the time you graduated, you got nervous," says sociologist and Johns Hopkins University professor Andrew J. Cherlin. "Today, if my Hopkins undergraduates do get married while they're in college, their parents get nervous."
The numbers say those parents are right. According to a study done by the National Marriage Project, Knot Yet: The Benefits and Costs of Delayed Marriage in America, women earn more money if they wait until they're 30 or older to get married. "For college-educated women in their mid-30s, this premium amounts to $18,152 per year. And women who wait longer but do wed reap other benefits: "The divorce rate in the U.S. has gone down partly because couples who marry in their teens and early 20s are more likely to divorce than couples who marry later."
Recently, despite statistical trends, there's been a media drumbeat pounding in favor of younger marriage. In the spring, Susan Patton, the so-called Princeton Mom, became a sensation when she urged the young women of the college to "find a husband on campus before you graduate….You will never again be surrounded by this concentration of men who are worthy of you." In Newsweek, libertarian writer Megan McArdle suggested that as more women without a college degree are having kids on their own while educated women shell out for fertility treatments, "it's time to revisit the notion that marriage should wait until the other parts of your life are figured out."
These arguments may be trying to shove a genie back in a bottle. "Whenever women are liberated in some way, there's almost an automatic desire to put them back in a box," says Traister. "You used to be counted only if you were married. Now you count on your own."
In her best-selling book Lean In, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg writes about being told to "marry young to get a 'good man' before they are all taken." So at 24, she obliged, "convinced that marriage was a first—and necessary—step to a happy and productive life." A year later, she was divorced. "It's really important to be a fully formed adult when you get married," Sandberg tells Cosmo. "I got married too young." She doesn't believe in telling women the right time for taking life steps, saying simply, "It's not about when, it's about whom."
The idea of being a fully formed adult before marriage makes sense to many young women, even those who may have already found the right guy. Lee Allen, a sociology student in Atlanta who also works in a restaurant, says she and her boyfriend are "pretty serious" and plan to move in together. But that's it—for now. "I take marriage seriously. If I do get married, I want everything else in my life under control," she explains.
Brad Wilcox, the director of the National Marriage Project, says this reflects current trends: "The increasing age at first marriage has been linked in part to women and men trying to establish themselves before marriage," he says. "It's called a capstone marriage, something people do once they've achieved milestones."
"Marriage was the first step to adulthood. Now, it's almost the last," agrees Cherlin.
Women tend to benefit economically from capstone marriages, says Traister: "If you come into a marriage with more power, you're going to be able to exert your preferences more, rather than be dependent on a husband."
Postponing matrimony also means women may have more freedom to take opportunities that come their way. Kaylie Coppa, 26, works for a pharmaceutical company where senior employees often travel. "I think about getting relocated," she says. Although she and her boyfriend just celebrated their third anniversary, when she thinks about that potentially globe-trotting future, "I don't always picture it with Dan."
But when her boyfriend brings up marriage, Coppa says, "I say to him, 'Are you sure you're done?'"
If young women are delaying marriage, it's not just because they're looking to find themselves. As a generation loaded with skyrocketing student debt and coming of age in a tough economy, they have deeply practical reasons.
"My mother had me at 26. But she was more ahead than I am because of my student loans," says Coppa, who lived with roommates until Hurricane Sandy devastated New Jersey and she had to move in with her boyfriend, who was already living with two roommates.
Although a few of her friends are getting engaged, Coppa says, "I'd rather buy a house. I feel pressure to do both, but I feel like I'm not ready to do either. I don't want to end up married living with roommates."
Increasingly, marriage is some thing chosen by the most privileged in America, as people without a college degree have become the least likely to get married. Virginia Ferguson, a 27-year-old massage therapist in Illinois, puts it bluntly: "Marriage is dating for wealthier people. The cost of the license, the ceremony, the potential divorce are luxuries you can buy into."
And yet marriage (as opposed to a wedding) carries with it financial benefits. Nena do Nascimento, a 27-year-old public health researcher in Washington, D.C., never really planned to marry but recently got engaged. Her decision was based in emotion—"You reach a point when the terms boyfriend and girlfriend don't make sense anymore and marriage clicks"— but also practical: "As a married couple, we can share insurance and there are benefits if we buy property."
But those considerations register only if you expect financial stability—which for some demographics, notably working-class men, is no longer the case. And many young women had examples in their lives they have no interest in replicating. Says Ferguson, "When my parents got divorced, my dad ruined their credit. I'd wondered if there was an emergency that would make me feel like I needed to get married. But I'd rather pay in other ways, instead of risking paying for a divorce."
Do Nascimento's fiancé, Alan, changed her mind about marriage, partly because he saw it as such a positive, beautiful thing. "He grew up with parents in a very solid, committed relationship, and he wanted that," says do Nascimento, who was raised by a single mom.
Interestingly, even as American women are ambivalent about marriage in their 20s, they aren't as conflicted about having kids. "The thing I want more than marriage, I think, is kids," says Allen. (Not right now though: "I can't even take care of myself yet.") But, she adds, "that's not contingent on being married." According to Knot Yet, by the time American women turn 30, about two-thirds have had a baby. And nearly half of first births are to women who aren't married, mostly in their 20s. College-educated women make up only about 10 percent of women having babies outside of marriage, says Wilcox of the National Marriage Project.
"Women often were forced to choose between an education and a husband," Coontz wrote in a New York Times op-ed. She quoted Popular Science Monthly from 1905, which said education gave women a "self-assertive, independent character" that made it "impossible to love, honor, and obey" like they were supposed to. But now, educated women are likelier to marry, and when they do, Coontz says that research shows their husbands are more likely to help around the house and that can lead to better sex lives.
All of these shifts add up to women today having more options than ever and more than one path to a happy, fulfilling adult life. "Exploding the early-marriage imperative is not about saying that marriage or early marriage is bad," says Traister. "It's about saying, wait a minute, there are millions of women with millions of needs and desires. We're adjusting our eyes to the variety of ways that women live."
For do Nascimento, staying open to all possibilities was the best recipe for finding happiness. While at 27 she is still building her career, she's glad she didn't close herself off to possibilities in her personal life. "Once we got engaged, our relationship strengthened and improved," she says. Deciding to get married when, to whom, and if it feels right to you? That sounds like a fairy-tale ending to us.
BY Irin Carmon
