How Women Start the Marriage Strike and Men Complete It
Today, there is no doubt that Americans are delaying marriage. However, there is significant disagreement as to whether it is women or men that are driving this delay and decline in marriage. This analysis suggests that women are more to blame than men.
Many feminists celebrate the delay of marriage as liberation for young women. At the same time, many in the manosphere gleefully argue that men are going their own way and have started a marriage strike. All these claims should be taken with a grain of salt, as they may amount to wishful thinking or empty boasts. There is also significant disagreement as to whether this delay translates into people never marrying, or just marrying later. Many in the liberal mainstream media argue the latter, suggesting that the delay in marriage is a good thing, as people who marry older are less likely to divorce.
I have set out to look into the truth of these matters by looking at actual data. First I analyzed the ages at which women are marrying using US Census data.
Comparing the dark blue (2010) with the light blue line (1960), it would appear that many women today are not getting married in their 20s, but most still get married by their 30s. However, this is deceptive, as the women who're getting married in their 30s are not the same women who are unmarried in their 20s today. To get a clearer picture, it is useful to categorize women by birth cohort.
Something to note is that among the younest Gen X women (green line) about a fifth of women were never married by their early 30s, and only a small fraction of these women were able to get married by their late 30s. Amongst the older Millennials (yellow line), a quarter of women are now unmarried in their early 30s. Interestingly, younger Millenials (currently in their late 20s) are also unmarried at a record rate, and no doubt will provide stiff competition to their older sisters on the marriage market. But more on that later.
Who Is Driving The Delay In Marriage?
Who is driving this delay in marriage? Is it men, women, or both? A look at median ages of marriage for the two sexes is instructive.
What's interesting is that from ~1970 to ~2000, the median age of marriage for women rose faster than that of men, with the difference decreasing from about two and a half years in 1970 to well under two years in 2000. This isn't a large difference, but it is suggestive that young women put off marriage and young men reluctantly followed suit. It should be noted that the in a recent survey, people reported the ideal age difference to be over four years.
The possibility that it is young women -- not men -- who're delaying marriage certainly makes sense given cultural trends. Young women today are told to work on their careers, and pressured to avoid relationships, let alone marriage.
Advertisement
So much that has been written about hookup culture and 20-something women would suggest that successful young women don't care anymore about love and relationships. That they're not waiting for romance, but assessing their next sexual conquest. As a sociologist who's interviewed several 20-something women on their sexual development, I've found straight young women aren't necessarily embracing hooking up because they're masters of their own destiny, but because they face a new taboo and it's not about sex or money or power. Instead, it's a taboo about that traditional province of women: relationships. Ambitious young women in their 20s feel they shouldn't want relationships with men at this phase in their lives.
A large survey found that a majority of female college students view the late 20s as the ideal age to get married. Less than a fifth want to get married in their early 20s. This suggests that young women might be actively avoiding marriage in their early 20s, even if they meet the right guy. This leaves only a short period of time for them to try to find a spouse before they reach the age of 30. The article that reports this study is also a perfect example of the kind of delusional message that young women are getting from the media:
But there's never been a better time to NOT be married by 30. Not only are more women having kids well into their 30s and beyond, being a single woman is just plain fun. Plus, Coontz says, if women do postpone marriage to get an education, they are as likely to marry as any other group of women, more likely to marry than less educated women and much more likely to stay married than any other group of women.
"I really don't think there's much cultural stigma about being unmarried after 30, or even after 40, ESPECIALLY for women, oddly enough," she says. "Back in the 1950s and early 1960s, women often 'settled' for someone they didn't really love because they were so afraid of missing the 'deadline.' Very few women do that nowadays."
The Shifting Marriage Market Dynamics
Finally, according to a Match.com survey, single men aged 21-24 are more likely than their female counterparts to be willing to get married now.
However, this changes with age. The same Match.com survey found that women aged 35-44 had a greater desire to get married than their male counterparts. A pew research survey had a similar result: men aged 30-50 are far more likely than women of their age to say that they do not wish to marry.
The conclusion is simple. Women in their 20s are playing a game of high stakes poker. They're focusing on their careers and fooling around with hot men in the belief that when they finally decide they want to settle down, there will be men waiting for them. Upper class women and other alpha mares might be succeeding at this strategy, but it isn't working out for many everyday women. Older men hold more power in the sexual marketplace than older women, and many of these men are choosing to opt out of marriage.
The Reality Of What Women Actually Want
Now that people think more highly of themselves, expectations of what a relationship should be like have skyrocketed into the realm of superlatives. Twentysomethings not only expect to waltz into high-level career positions right out of college, they also expect partners who have the moral fortitude of Nelson Mandela, the comedic timing of Stephen Colbert, the abs of Hugh Jackman, and the hair of Patrick Dempsey. In many cases, these women have confused their own narcissism with having high standards, when in reality they are setting themselves up for failure in the marriage market.
The Cautionary Tale For Women Delaying Marriage
The marriage strike is on, but women who wish to avoid it should get married while they're young and attractive. It's important to understand that what matters in the long-term is prioritizing the marriage partnership and the responsibilities that come with it, rather than focusing on the missing pieces. A marriage is far more encompassing than just one dimension of a relationship, and failing to maintain it while pursuing other goals can have serious consequences.
Women in their late 30s and early 40s who have delayed marriage often find themselves facing a new reality: fewer eligible men, diminished attractiveness relative to younger women, and a shrinking window to have children. Kate Bolick should serve as a cautionary tale of what not to do.
Today I am 39, with too many ex-boyfriends to count and, I am told, two grim-seeming options to face down: either stay single or settle for a "good enough" mate. At this point, certainly, falling in love and getting married may be less a matter of choice than a stroke of wild great luck. A decade ago, luck didn't even cross my mind. I'd been in love before, and I'd be in love again. This wasn't hubris so much as naïveté; I'd had serious, long-term boyfriends since my freshman year of high school, and simply couldn't envision my life any differently....
We took for granted that we'd spend our 20s finding ourselves, whatever that meant, and save marriage for after we'd finished graduate school and launched our careers, which of course would happen at the magical age of 30.
That we would marry, and that there would always be men we wanted to marry, we took on faith.
