Marriage and Divorce in America
The current divorce rate is around 50%. So is the percentage of adult Americans who are married. But the last 3 years divorce rates have been dropping. Until 1970 the divorce rate was around 25%. In 1950 78% of adults in the US were married. Having never been married, I claim no expertise regarding on how best to handle marriage. These changes above are huge and I, like most, wonder why they are changing so much.
This musing will be an attempt to identify the reasons for such great changes. For one thing, people marry much later than before, like currently 29 years for men and 27 for women. In 1960 it was 22 years old for men and 20 for females. This kind of change affects the percentage of people who are married.
The number of U.S. adults cohabiting with a partner is on the rise. In addition to the half of U.S. adults who are married, 7% were cohabiting in 2016. The number of Americans living with an unmarried partner reached about 18 million in 2016, up 29% since 2007. Roughly half of cohabiters are younger than 35 – but cohabitation is rising most quickly among Americans ages 50 and older. This brings into play another question, why is cohabitation rising so rapidly? What follows here is just speculation on my part: More people realize that each person in a coupling will change over the years and this can make their binding stronger or weaker. If divorce hits, there may be fear of the financial consequences and the emotional legal turmoil. Plus, job security is at an all time low. It is now predicted that a teenager today will have, on the average, 33 different jobs in their lifetime. It used to be if you did your job well you could have it for a lifetime with adequate salary increases. Today, good performance often takes second place to the bottom line (a person is too expensive to retain and can be replaced by a younger person at a much reduced salary).
Back in the 1960’s people thought there was something wrong with you if you still lived with your parents. Now it is quite common for young people to live with their parents for decades. In some cases they cannot afford to be independent (43% of adults today do not make enough money to even qualify to pay federal income taxes). So where did all this money go? Well, just 3 people now own more of our wealth than the bottom 50% of our citizens, and 2-5% of our citizens now own 90% of our wealth. 25% of young people between the ages of 25-35 still live with their parents. Just 54% of young people have jobs. The employment rate for young people is lower than it has been for 60 years.
4 in 10 marriages involve remarriages. In 1960 just 13% of married people had been married before. Now the figure is 23%. I guess this makes sense if divorce rates are up (doubled since 1970)
In 1967 just 3% of people married someone of a different race or ethnicity. Today (2015) that figure is 17%. What that means to anything here is a mystery to me. But it is strange that while tolerance for diversity is rapidly falling, interracial marriages are rapidly rising. I know in my wanderings around on long walks, sometimes in cities, I see many groups of young people together socially on the town and the group is totally mixed racially, varied sexual orientations, ugly and good-looking—the kind of grouping which was a rarity when I was young. On the other hand every ethnic or religious group has a strong nucleus of die hard purists for lack of a better term here. Via cyberspace these noninclusive groups are becoming more and more irate and more comfortable acting out their prejudices. Hard to say where this is all going; perhaps the growing income disparity is fueling a lot of this intolerance. It is often easy to blame other groups for one’s own economic misery: “If it weren’t for all these_’___’___my economic situation would be better”. “It is hard to get a job anymore if you are an ‘old fashioned’ white rural American” etc.
Same sex marriage adds another wrinkle to this marriage situation. Currently, 61% of all same-sex couples who live together are married. This would tend to bolster the percentage of people who are married, but still the marriage percentage of the entire population is substantially declining. Marriage is relatively new for same sex marriages so over time the percentage of same sex couples who are married may be similar to heterosexual-sexual couples.
Before 1960 only 19% of marriages were between spouses of different religious faith. Today 39% have a spouse who is in a different religious group. Religions are losing more and more control over the institution of marriage. However, what we mean by the term religion is also losing clarity. Fewer and fewer people are serious fundamentalists or dedicated church attendees these days. On the other hand, about the same percentage of of our population believe in God as in earlier years. Scriptures in all religions were, interestingly enough, all written at about the same period in history by humans, and consequently contain many notions of the distant past which have become outdated and obsolete today. Even the fundamentalists pick and choose which part of scripture they wish to believe and practice. Counting how many people are of any particular faith is impossible. Many people are still listed as, for example, Baptists or Catholics etc. even though they have not been practicing participants for years. If we stop going to Church this hardly removes us from the church membership rolls in most cases.
Aside from religion, sexual orientation, finances, health, physical appearance, sexual preferences in bed including frequency of sex, most marriages will end up involving children—and this certainly complicates the divorce likelihood.
Then we need remember that many marriages exist in name only. Sometimes the two spouses cannot afford to live separately so stay together mostly as roommates. Over time people change and often the nature of their marriage is totally different from the earlier years. Good-looking couples have less risk in getting divorced since a new mate will not be hard to find. Plain looking couples had a hard enough time finding a mate the first time, let alone get back in the game at a later date. With pornography rampant and thriving on the internet any real partner for sex is not likely for most people to remotely resemble physically those in porn flicks. While studies show single parents can be effective parents, this is not always the case. Often the case is one of whether the children involved will be better off outside a troubled marriage or worse off. And this again becomes individual unique cases in every incidence.
Actual sex frequency is now declining, especially among married couples. In 1990 couples had sex 73 times a year compared to 55 times in 2014. Never married people have sex an average of 59 times a year. Sex today is more readily available one way or another, including sex with someone you love—masturbation, and probably impacts on sex drive for many individuals. Add to this that most young people are exposed to sex on the internet before their hormones have kicked in to make it all seem sexy. It is anyone’s guess right now how much this impacts their sex drives during adolescence. The variations of sex acts engaged in today are far more extensive than say, 50 years ago. This can become a huge problem in a marriage. What is disgusting for one, may be a turn-on for the other. So where is the solution here?
Then there are the trophy marriages. What are we to think of these marriages? Essentially they are highly paid prostitutes. In some cases they are sex toys for a few years, get divorced, and live financially quite well the rest of their lives. Isn’t this a win-win situation for both spouses? Well, maybe only sometimes. What about street prostitutes or on-line prostitutes? That might be the only source of sex for the ugly outside rape. Or are only the sexually desirable to be permitted to have sex?What about those people who prefer not to be sexually active at all. Are they abnormal? Probably not, since just about every other form of sexual activity is permissible among willing partners. Is a sexless marriage a marriage?
Also, more people use on-line dating apps than before, especially young people. The percentage of 18-24 yr olds using on line dating services has tripled from 2013 to 2015. 59% percent of the American population now think online dating is a good way to meet people.
Also, people live longer today and many elderly people are leery of getting tangled up with a potential spouse with potential serious long term medical situations.
Above are related stats that impact on the state of marriage in modern America. I am not sure if marriage really has any clear definition. Each marriage is probably about as unique as the personalities of each spouse. Just as all individuals are unique, so are marriages. To the extent this is true, it reflects the difficulty as to how any government can really decide who can marry who. If we extend this line of thought, then every divorce is unique, and therefore what the proper consequences is for divorce is no one consequence fits all. To top all this off, add sex to the equation and of course this just makes reason futile.
Machines have been invented that replace humans in many human situations. Porn videos have made it possible for humans to have sexual orgasms without a partner. Should sexual orgasms without a partner be counted in how many times a person has sex a year? Studies have shown that for most people the highest orgasms are achieved via masturbation. That’s interesting. Is that cheating on a spouse?: “What do you mean you have already had sex. With whom?”
It used to be that we married in part to have kids. I suppose, in theory, the best way to ensure having the best kids would be to use a sperm bank or find the right surrogate mother. Not sure I used the right term here, but the meaning is probably there. No sense having kids deliberately from the shallow end of the gene pool in some cases.
The sense when I started this musing was that it would lead nowhere. It has ended up as an ending best stated years ago by an English gal: “I don’t care what they do as long as they don’t do it in the street and scare the horses.” If someone says to you when out for dinner that they most enjoy as a couple having anal sex hanging from a chandelier, it is probably safest to say: “That’s nice, would you please pass the salt” and change the subject. Personally, when it comes to promiscuous sex, I have the best protection—my personality/appearance. If anyone says something nice to me I immediately seize the opportunity: “Your place or mine?” True to form, most serious discussions about marriage, sex, divorce, etc. end with jokes. Maybe it all just proves that God has a sense of humor. We all know if sex comes up in any social conversation it almost immediately shifts to humorous jokes. Avoid anything serious like “I have trouble lately getting an erection for my wife, but when the neighbor’s wife comes through the door I get an erection almost immediately.” Honesty about sex is rarely the best policy. This musing, appropriately, has no ending. It just ends.
