filed in Daily Life
Down is Up
A prominent story in today’s Washington Post is about the plunge in numbers of people getting married. According to statistics released by the Pew Research Center, married couples are barely hanging on to the majority, weighing in at a little over 50%. It makes me feel positively on trend.
Photo by Carl Kleiner
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The article did note that a majority of people have been married in their life. It also seemed to indicate that more adults are not currently married — because they are waiting longer to get married. So people are definitely still marrying. They’re just waiting a longer time (staying single in their 20s). Fortunately, isn’t a trend of people never marrying. That would be bad for society.
Thanks for commenting. I’d love to hear you talk more about why not marrying is bad for society.
Well societies need people in order to survive. And it needs good people — i.e., well raised children. the importance of marriage can be seen even studies like this one, http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1741-3737.2009.00678.x/full , which is supportive of gay families but acknowledges that there needs to be two supportive parents raising a child (i.e., a family) for the child not to grow up with the typical risks of growing up in a single home: increased risk of juvenvile delinquency, growing up in an abusive home, etc.
Yes, societies need people. But you don’t need marriage for that.
Unmarried couples can raise children.
And single people can raise children too. Some say there are more risks, but others dispute this. I’m not really into single parent issues, so I’m not sure how I stand on this.
And I’d point out that there are many married couples who have no children. In fact, I’d bet that there are more childless married couples than childless singles. So the issue of having/not having children is not an issue specific to singles.
If you’re concerned about a lack of children, you would probably be better off addressing those concerns to one of the “childfree” sites.
You actually do need marriage for that. Children raised in single family homes, statistically, are more likely to become criminals, commit suicide or do drugs. There are no reputable studies that dispute the existence of these risks.
My original comment corrected a major error in this post. There is not a “plunge” in people getting married. People are marrying letter.
I pointed out that it’s good for society that people continue getting married, because a) Societies need children in order to survive and thrive, and b) Children thrive the best in married households, whether straight or gay.