Why don’t more people get married?

Listen to Dave’s Commentary: Why don’t more people get married?

Latest figures show just 51 percent of all adults 18 and over are married.

That’s about where it was in the 1890’s, but way below what it was in the 1960’s. Stephanie Coontz teaches history and family studies at Washington State’s Evergreen College.

“I don’t think that this is the death of marriage,” Coontz says.

A lot of the drop is due to marrying later and feeling less pressure to marry for the sake of marriage — and so she’s not particularly worried, in fact she thinks marriage can go too far!

“Marriage becomes sort of the emotional equivilant of today’s gated communities where nobody else is let in, and in the long run it’s bad for marriage because you need to have new blood, new ideas, even new stories interacting with other people.”

Plus — too much marriage can actually create social INSECURITY.

“Married couples spend so much more time together than in the past, but they’ve cut back on their aid to people outside the family so it’s the single, unmarried children who take care of the aging parents.”

By the way — there’s a clear path to boosting marriage rates.

“Isn’t it ironic that the people who are very concerned about the decline of heterosexual marriage are adamantly resisting the demand of the one group that is demanding for it more enthusiastically than perhaps any other — gays and lesbians.”

And far from HURTING heterosexual marriage.

“As a matter of fact, in some Scandanavian countries, I don’t think that a casual relationship after same-sex couples gained their rights there was actually an uptick in heterosexual marriage.

Professor Stephanie Coontz. Now this.