The Brookings Institution, says the shift is “a clear tipping point, reflecting the culmination of post-1960 trends associated with greater independence and more flexible lifestyles for women.”
And the takeaway lessons?
This is yet another of the inexorable signs that there is no going back to a world where we can assume that marriage is the main institution that organizes people’s lives,” said Prof. Stephanie Coontz, director of public education for the Council on Contemporary Families, a nonprofit research group. “Most of these women will marry, or have married. But on average, Americans now spend half their adult lives outside marriage.”
“Although we can help people ‘do’ marriage better, it is simply delusional to construct social policy or make personal life decisions on the basis that you can count on people spending most of their adult lives in marriage,” said Professor Coontz.
(Emphasis mine.)
Your title is most curious. I’m not sure that this is evidence either way for the impact neutering the marriage definition will have on the institution. I don’t even see it as a shift of focus from one boogey-man to the other.
First point, Fitz over at Opine pointed out an article from Thomas Sowell. It catches out some important mistakes in the findings of the NYT article. Its worth a read.
Secondly, if this is a victory for feminism I won’t have anything of it. People who choose not to marry would not be a problem except for the children that are born outside of marriage. As that rate increases, we see an increasing schism between children from intact families and those who’s parents either never married or were divorced. This article by Kay Hymowitz puts it rather well.
Long before this development happened, the cries to return to taking care of our children under marriage were heard from the likes of Malcolm X and other civil rights leaders. While they gained equality marching together, the audience largely abandoned those principles. Today the unmarried rates are highest among african-americans. And it shows, as William Raspberry notes.
Was that because of feminism? Was it because some people felt that marriage was supposed to be about romance instead of responsible procreation (as if the two were really in dillema)? I’m not sure.
But I have to cringe anytime it seems heralded or even accepted with disappointment as Coontz has been pushing for.
Why is it phrased that 51 percent of “women” are unmarried. Doesn’t that work out to 51 percent of men, too? What does it say about society that both men and women are finding this institution less relevant to their lives?
I think it’s because it’s based on what people self-report on the census. Some of those who are separated, for example, or even widowed, might still choose to say they are “married,” so there may not be a one-to-one match on the percentages between men and women.
That is exactly what is answered in the Thomas Sowell article I left.
Here’s the quote: