Five years ago, married couples made up at least 52% of US households. Last year, the numbers dipped to 49.7%.
Alarm bells tolled when a report titled “It’s official: To be married means to be outnumbered” appeared in the New York Times recently.
“My phone rang non-stop when the figures came out as people called, concerned about how we can save marriage,” said Stephanie Coontz of the Council on Contemporary Families, a non-profit organisation.
Coontz, who has visited Malaysia with her husband, is more optimistic.
“Unlike many women in Japan and Singapore who forgo marriage, Americans ARE getting married and the birth rate is high. The husbands and the US government, like the French, are more supportive of the working women; and there is more time spent on childcare,” she said.
But people delay marriage as they get more educated, said Coontz, whose book on Marriage, A History: From Obedience to Intimacy, or How Love Conquered Marriage” was picked by The Washington Post as one of the best books of 2005.
As for the birth rate, nearly four in 10 babies were born last year to unwed mothers mostly in their 20s. They were not teenage births as often assumed. This, they say, was proof that more couples are postponing marriage or opting for cohabitation.
“Most people will eventually marry. The Census Bureau estimates that about 90% of people will marry at some point in their life. People still believe in marriage but they just don’t want to rush into it,” said Thomas F. Coleman, the executive director of Unmarried America, a California-based information service which focuses on the nation’s estimated 89 million singles.
As he pointed out, marriage is popular with same-sex couples.
“Many gays and lesbians are fighting for the right to marry. There is a high level of interest in marriage among them,” he said in an e-mail interview.
“However, among heterosexuals, there is a reluctance for people to marry early. They want to have fun. They want to go to college and establish a career.”
Besides, the well-trodden path of divorce so common among the generation of their parents and grandparents is unappealing. About half of the marriages will end in divorce.
“The rate of divorce peaked in the 1980s and has been slowly declining since then,” Coleman said. “I don’t think that the divorce rate is alarming. It’s just a fact of life.”
(Coontz attributed the drop to education, affluence and maturity.)
Massachusetts has the lowest divorce rate at 5.7 divorces per 1,000 married people in 2003.
Marcella Simmons, an office manager in Manhattan, observed that most of the single people she knew were divorced.
At 30, Simmons’ own two-year marriage ended in May when her husband had an affair.
She recently earned a degree in business management, saying that she wanted to better herself.
The dating scene, she said, was difficult because it wasn’t easy finding someone who was compatible and shared similar personality and goals.
Most of her friends were single, too. “One of my friends has four kids but she has never been married. I guess she prefers it that way.”
People now were more cautious about who they dealt with, said Simmons, a vivacious woman who previously spent five of her seven years in the military as an auto mechanic.
“You may be dating for three months and you realise that he’s a slob. For me, I am picky. If you don’t have the credentials, I move on.”
She has quite a long list of her choice of the most preferred male.
“He must be passionate, sympathetic, energetic and a traveller. He must also want to have kids because I want to have kids later.”
An AP report last year called Manhattan the loneliest place in the United States for having the most number of single-person households.
Then again, loneliness is perhaps just a New York state of mind.