Who needs Marriage?
When an institution so central to human experience suddenly changes shape in the space of a generation or two, it’s worth trying to figure out why.” Belinda Luscombe of TIME magazine made that observation in the course of reporting on a major study of marriage undertaken by TIME and the Pew Research Center.
In the cover story for the magazine’s November 29, 2010 edition, Luscombe summarizes their findings with a blunt statement: “What we found is that marriage, whatever its social, spiritual, or symbolic appeal, is in purely practical terms just not as necessary as it used to be.”
Without doubt, marriage has been utterly transformed in the modern world. In Western nations, the concept of marriage as a sacred covenant has given way to the idea that marriage is merely a legal contract. The limitation of sexual intercourse to marriage went the way of the Sexual Revolution, even as the ideal of permanence gave way to no-fault divorce and serial monogamy. And as for monogamy, that may be on shaky ground, too. These days, you can’t take anything for granted.
The debates over the legitimization and legalization of same-sex marriage have, among other things, revealed the fact that far too many people (including Christians) are simply unarmed for any intellectual conflict on any question related to marriage.
Statistics can inform or misinform, and it is possible to find statistical support that puts a happier face on the health of marriage. But in order to find these happier statistics, it is necessary to redefine the question. For example, some marriage defenders will assert, accurately, that most people will at some point be married. But that fact lowers the question of marriage to the minimalist level of “at some point.” Let's look at American Statistics. By any honest measure, marriage is in big trouble. And the demographics? Brace yourselves. In 1960, 70 percent of all American adults were married. Now, that number is just over half. Eight times as many children are born out of wedlock as compared to that same year. In the 1960s, two-thirds of all young adults in their twenties were married. Now, only 26 percent of twenty-somethings are married.
In Australia 2005, 109,000 new marriages were registered in Australia. This was equivalent to 5.4 marriages for every 1,000 people in the population. This rate has been in overall decline since 1986 when there were 7.2 marriages per 1,000 people.
Over the same period, the crude divorce rate has remained relatively unchanged with 2.6 divorces for every 1,000 people in 2005 and 2.5 divorces per 1,000 people in 1986. The greatest annual number of divorces occurred in 2001 when there were 55,300 divorces recorded. This peak has been followed by recent declines, with 52,400 divorces in 2005.
As well as marrying less, Australians are tending to marry later than in the past. In 1986, the median age at first marriage for men was 25.6 years, increasing to 30.0 years in 2005. For women, the median age at first marriage increased from 23.5 years in 1986 to 28.0 years in 2005.
People are also divorcing at older ages. In 2005, the median age of divorcing men was 43.5 years, compared with 37.5 years in 1986, while for women the median age in 2005 was 40.8 compared with 34.7 years in 1986.
Over the same period, the crude divorce rate has remained relatively unchanged with 2.6 divorces for every 1,000 people in 2005 and 2.5 divorces per 1,000 people in 1986. The greatest annual number of divorces occurred in 2001 when there were 55,300 divorces recorded. This peak has been followed by recent declines, with 52,400 divorces in 2005.
As well as marrying less, Australians are tending to marry later than in the past. In 1986, the median age at first marriage for men was 25.6 years, increasing to 30.0 years in 2005. For women, the median age at first marriage increased from 23.5 years in 1986 to 28.0 years in 2005.
People are also divorcing at older ages. In 2005, the median age of divorcing men was 43.5 years, compared with 37.5 years in 1986, while for women the median age in 2005 was 40.8 compared with 34.7 years in 1986.
When Belinda Luscombe argues that marriage is “in purely practical terms just not as necessary as it used to be,” she has a rationale to back up her argument. “Neither men nor women need to be married to have sex or companionship or professional success or respect or even children.”
All that is true — when marriage is viewed on the canvas of our culture. Marriage no longer regulates sex. The Sexual Revolution severed sex from marriage in a social sense, and the arrival of The Pill offered a pharmaceutical means of severing sex from reproduction. Divorce arrived as a legal accommodation to marital impermanence, effectively redefining both marital and family law in the process. Social status and professional expectations were liberated from the question of marriage, and many feminists declared that marriage itself was an impediment to the full liberation of women.
And yet, Luscombe ends her argument about the “not as necessary as it used to be” status of marriage with these words — “yet marriage remains revered and desired.” Really? Well, that all depends on how you define reverence and desire.
TIME reports that 40 percent of Americans believe that marriage is now obsolete, up from 28 percent in 1978. Cohabitation is now the norm for American adults — not just before marriage, but increasingly instead of marriage. And American cohabitation is an exceedingly weak arrangement. As Andrew Cherlin of Johns Hopkins University explains, Americans “have the shortest cohabiting relationships of any wealthy country in the world.” Less than half of all Americans believe that cohabitation is morally wrong.
In Australia, the proportion of marriages preceded by cohabitation has risen from 30% in the 1980’s to around 75% in 2003. Sociological theories of the family propose that the increasing rate of cohabitation is, at least in part, a risk-management strategy in response to the perceived risk of divorce. In a social climate where marriage is no longer guaranteed for life, cohabitation offers the opportunity for a ‘trial marriage’, where a couple can get to know each other, negotiate roles, and develop communication skills prior to marriage, which should, in theory, reduce the likelihood of marriage breakdown .
Divorce is now an institutionalized part of life, complete now with an industry putting out divorce announcements, greeting cards, and party plans. The American divorce rate, though now somewhat stable, is so disastrously high that even social scientists are shocked.
- In Australia, every third marriage ends in divorce;
- About 29% of Australians never marry;
- During the past two decades, Australians started to marry less and divorce more;
- About one-third of children today are born outside the traditional marriage;
- Men are more likely to die than to divorce (33.4% chance for a marriage to end in divorce, and 47% chance for a man to die while married);
- Women are more likely to divorce than to die (33.4% chance for a marriage to end in divorce, and 22% chance for a woman to die while married) - this is due to longer life expectancy for women;
- Divorced people have a higher chance of re-marriage than those who are widowed - nearly half of divorced people re-marry;
- The number of joint divorce applications increased in the last years;
- About three-quarters of people who marry today lived with their partner for some time prior to marriage;
- Divorced people who are in de-facto relationships are less likely to marry their partner than the ones who have never been married;
- Married people are twice as likely to have children than the ones in de-facto relationships;
- Most people aged 35-64 years have been in at least one live-in relationship (95%);
- Marriages are now lasting longer before the divorce than 20 years ago (the median duration of marriage to divorce was 12.5 years in 2007 compared with 10.1 years in 1988);
- The divorce rate in Australia per 1000 of population remains around the level of 2.5% (plus-minus 0.2%) since 1988, as well as the average number of children per divorce of 1.88;
- Women file more divorce applications than men;
- Most men divorce at the age 40-44, women at the age 35-39;
- Most divorces in Australia are granted in New South Wales, followed by Victoria and Queensland;
- According to the latest divorce statistics available, the divorce rate in Australia is on decline: after the peak divorce rate of 2.7% in 2001, it reached 2.3% in 2007 for 1,000 of residential population - the lowest since 1988.
As Professor Cherlin remarked: “One statistic I saw when writing my book that floored me was that a child living together with unmarried parents in Sweden has a lower chance that his family will disrupt than does a child living with married parents in the U.S.”
That statistic should floor all of us. The TIME/Pew study also revealed more visible contours of the “marriage gap” that has emerged with respect to income and education levels. For most of the twentieth century, the age of one’s first marriage rose for those young adults pursuing a college education, while those without a college education married earlier. That is no longer the case. Now, it is those marked by lower incomes and educational levels who are marrying late — if at all.
In a stunning reversal of social patterns, it is the more highly educated who are now more likely to marry. Economic factors are most often cited as the reason for this reversal, but this is not fully convincing. In far more desperate economic times, couples have managed to get married, stay married, and raise a family. Furthermore, as TIME notes, this pattern becomes a formula for disaster, since marriage uniquely provides the stability needed to escape poverty and many social pathologies.
TIME’s cover asks the question straightforwardly — “Who Needs Marriage?” The magazine and its team sought to answer that question “in purely practical terms,” doing their best to leave questions of morality and theology aside. But Christians, who rightly see the practical benefits of marriage as exemplars of common grace, cannot stop there. We believe that humanity needs marriage. God created the institution of marriage — defined on his terms — as the central institution of human society. Marriage was given to us by our Creator as the central institution for sexual relatedness, procreation, and the nurture of children. But, even beyond these goods, God gave us marriage as an institution central to human happiness and flourishing. Rightly understood, marriage is essential even to the happiness and flourishing of the unmarried. It is just that central to human existence, and not by accident.
There is much more to the Pew Research Center’s report, but TIME’s cover story put the most crucial questions before its readers. The question on its cover demands a faithful answer.
Who needs marriage? I do. You do. We all do — and for reasons far more fundamental than can be explained “in purely practical terms.”
