Fewer Americans are married than at any time in recorded history, according to Census data released Tuesday.
Just 52 percent of adults 18 and older said they were married in 2009, compared with 57 percent in 2000. For the first time, the 46.3 percent of adults aged 25 to 34 who said they had never married outnumbered the 44.9 percent who were currently married.
The recession was causing more adults to linger outside the church before walking down the aisle, experts said.
“Men’s employment has taken a big hit, and when the guy doesn’t have a stable job, couples are more hesitant about tying the knot,” said Brad Wilcox, director of the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia, noting that employed men are “not getting drunk on a Wednesday night; work is helpful to civilize a man.”
Benjamin Karney, co-founder of the Relationship Institute at UCLA, said the faltering economy has postponed the age that people expect to enter into holy matrimony.
“In the 1950s, two people would get married as a way of starting their adult lives — that’s why you’d give them toasters and plates and linens,” Karney said. “Nowadays, marriage is something you build up to and achieve.”
Karney said this changed because men are less certain that they will find jobs to support families.
“It makes sense to postpone marriage until economic things are worked out,” he said.
Julie Gressley, 28, has not married her boyfriend of five years because she chose to work in the District and attend graduate school at George Washington University, rather than follow her boyfriend to school in Michigan.
“I had to finish my degree, he had to finish his degree. Separation was an eventuality,” said Gressley, adding that most of her friends felt “they were not ready yet.”
Kirah Rawls, 22, broke up with her college boyfriend after moving to D.C. to seek work in nonprofits.
“I want to be financially independent first,” Rawls said. “I don’t want to depend on my husband.”
Lamont Williams, a 38-year-old software engineer, said marrying his wife of seven years was part of his “master plan.”
“I’m family-oriented,” Williams said. “I love the stability, how you don’t have to worry about dating-life and all that.”
Mike, a 52-year-old federal employee who declined to give his last name, said “cultural and economic shifts not to my benefit” caused him trouble when trying to find a mate. “In my parents’ generation, women were friendly, quicker to give a guy a date or a dance.”
That’s why Mike says he turned to the Internet and married a woman in 2008 whom he met through a Russian mail-order bride service.
“It’s great having somebody to go home to.”
