Why Young Women Delay Marriage

By Erich Goode, Sirens Magazine. Posted August 27, 2008.

If you're a woman reading this story, there's about a 50 percent chance you're not married. No judgment here; it's just the way things are these days. You're smart, world-savvy and probably have a budding career and a long list of interests you've developed over the years. You're happy waiting for your perfect guy. And you're like many young women today ... which is why it's so interesting that once upon a time, a woman putting off marriage was seen as no less than a sin: St. Paul cautioned of the temptations of the flesh and how carnal weakness would lead to condemnation. "It's better to marry than to burn," he said. And even some folks in modern times still hew to St. Paul's views. Like Al Mohler, President of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, who put it bluntly: "If you're 17, 18, 19, 20, in your early 20s -- what are you waiting for?" It's a softer message, but the subtext is the same: Being single when you're "of age" to marry is a sin.

Of course, not everyone feels that way. But single-and-fabulous or not, there is a valid question in there: What are young people waiting for? More to the point, what are young women waiting for? Historically, men have always tried to delay marriage for as long as they could, while still enjoying the benefits of sexual intimacy. By the 1950s and early '60s, young women had begun striking a kind of bargain with men: They agreed to have sex, but only within the context of a committed, long-term relationship and promise of marriage. But since that progressive decade, young-adult sex has become so widely practiced that the guarantee of eventual marriage can't be assumed. These days, the marital equation has shifted: Increasingly, young women have gotten behind the wheel.

Danielle Heim, a 25-year-old Scarlett Johansson look-alike and Berkeley grad, is one of them. "I am very reluctant to get married," she says. "I actually look at the day my parents split up as one of the happiest days of my life. They were very unhappy together." She says she wants to be "very, very sure" her marriage will be happy before she commits herself. So for now, Heim's focus is on herself. She loves her job. She's an administrative assistant at Soul-er, a solar panel installation company, with "some very nice, funny, interesting people," all of whom make her feel appreciated. The desks are painted in bright blues and greens and the floor of her office is carpeted in Astroturf. One day she walked in to work to find a giant light-up pink flamingo on the shelf next to her desk. Heim put in seven years as a Las Vegas waitress -- a vegetarian serving barbequed ribs and ground beef lasagna, no less -- and now she gets to sit at a desk and think. "I find myself looking at the clock and wondering where all my time went, wishing it were earlier in the day so that I had more time to work." She's so involved in her job that her would-be social time is dominated by work projects.

With one eye on her parents' disastrous marriage, Heim says she would only consider marriage "if I was truly happy in my relationship and madly in love with my partner." And, she explains, "he would have to be my best friend, be madly in love with me, and be able to incite raging passion within me." Are these high standards or reasonable expectations? Considering the time Heim spends working, it may seem as though she's waiting to be swept off her feet by her ideal Prince Charming. Or maybe she's just not too worried about finding a mate in her 20s -- something inconceivable just two generations ago.

According to the U. S. Census, the average age for first marriage in 1890 was 26 for men and 22 for women. Nearly a century later the numbers hadn't changed much. In 1950 and 1960 the average age remained in the early twenties, 23 for men and 20 for women. But things started to change dramatically in the new millennium. The latest government figures are from 2006 and report a jump in average age of first marriage to 28 for men and 26 for women. By the end of this decade, the Census predicts young people will have delayed the age of marriage six years beyond what it was in their parents' and grandparents' generations.

So is delayed coupling a good thing or a bad thing? Well, it depends on whom you ask. Stephanie Coontz, Professor of History and Family Studies at The Evergreen State College in Washington and author of the influential The Way We Never Were: American Families and the Nostalgia Trap, doesn't regard delayed marriage as a negative thing. "Unlike in the 1950s, today, neither young men nor young women develop false expectations the way they had when we held up unattainable romantic ideals," she said. And the benefits, Coontz says, are borne out in the statistics: The later a couple marries, the more stable it appears to be.

Cynthia Fuchs Epstein, Distinguished Professor of Sociology at the City University of New York Graduate Center and author of several books on gender, agrees. When she got married, she hadn't even graduated from college, at a time when that was common. "I think it was a very bad idea to get married at 20," she explains. Fuchs Epstein herself married straight out of college with romantic visions of living in New York's East Village, traveling the world and having great adventures. But her older husband had already experienced travel and adventure and wanted instead to settle in the suburbs. "Getting married later gives people a chance to explore who they are and to test out relationships with a number of people," she says. "Someone who went straight into marriage from high school or college, they weren't on their own at all. It's very important for young people to have a wide array of experiences instead of having them after they get married, which causes a certain amount of pain." She chuckles before adding, "They're better off living together than getting married."

David Popenoe, professor of sociology at Rutgers University and co-director of the National Marriage Project, remains skeptical of the benefits of delaying marriage. He sees it as part of a constellation of factors that leads to no marriage at all. In the U. S. in 1970, 95 percent of people under 25 eventually married; today, that average has dropped (and split) to 32 percent for men and 50 percent for women. And the figures continue to decline. In industrialized countries in Europe, this pattern can be seen even more clearly; in Sweden only 60 percent of the entire population will eventually marry. Young people don't want to live alone, says Popenoe, but they are increasingly likely to live with a partner without the encumbrance of marriage. "In my opinion, people live less fulfilling lives when they are single, but it's difficult to measure that sort of thing." Still, a higher percentage of young people, especially women, are putting their own autonomy first, at least for now.

Genevieve Aidala, 22, is slim, petite, dark-eyed, and very much a representative of her generation. "I do like being single," she explains, "and having my own free time to make plans with friends. Being single at this stage of my life would definitely be preferable to what married life would be." She says she wants to get an idea of what married life "could be like years down the road." Aidala lives in the East Village, has a degree from the University of Michigan, and is enrolled in the New York State teaching internship program. Even if she had met Mr. Right at 20 or 22 and knew then that he was The One, she'd still want to wait at least till the age of 25 to make sure. "People can change a lot during those years," she says. Her ideal marriage age? 27 to 29. "Who knows what life has in store for me?" she says.

This career-first, marriage-later trajectory of young women is more than just a generational phenomenon; it's become the norm. According to the U.S. Dept. of Labor women comprise 46 percent of the total U.S. labor force, and nearly 40 percent of all working women hold jobs in management, professional or specialty occupations that require advanced degrees and years of training. Consider that in 1960 not only were most women married and mothers in their 20s, but only 25 percent of the female population worked outside the home at all.

Women today want to get an education, see the world and develop a life plan for themselves that doesn't necessarily include a husband and children right away. "They have careers," explains Coontz. "Women have much more of a drive to accomplish something with their lives, in addition to being a wife and mother. It is very difficult to finish school and begin a career with a husband and possibly the pressure of starting a family. No matter how much the social structure changes, the social roles defining men and women infiltrate all aspects of the society." Still, women like Heim hold on to their fairytale happy ending. "I want to wake up every morning madly in love with the man next to me," she says. "As soon as I leave in the morning, I want to look forward to seeing him again at night. I want to wear a smile all day long thinking about him. I want him to make me feel good about myself. I want him to make me laugh, cry, smile, think, make my heart race, my stomach jump, my knees weak, and my legs shake." No magic formula, just the hope that, a few years down the road, she'll have it all.

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