Q: What is happening to the institution of marriage? Both of my adult children are divorced, my closest friends are divorced, my neighbor is separated from his wife. My husband and I are one of the only “still married” couples we know! Is the whole institution of marriage falling apart?
A: There are two ways to look at current state of marriage in America. Family scholars refer to these two perspectives on marriage as the marital decline perspective and the marital resiliency perspective.
According to the marital decline perspective, personal happiness has become more important in our society than marital commitment and family obligations. The increase in divorce, according to this pessimistic view, contributes to social problems such as poverty, delinquency, substance abuse, violence, and the erosion of neighborhoods and communities.
A more optimistic view is the marital resiliency perspective, which views divorce not as a sign of the decline of marriage, but rather as an option that allows adults (and their children) to escape from dysfunctional and unhappy home environments and have a second chance at happiness. According to this perspective, many marriages in the past were troubled, but because divorce was not socially acceptable, these problematic marriages remained intact. There is evidence to support the idea that the institution of marriage and family is still strong.
First, most people eventually do get married. About 95 percent of U.S. women and men in their early 60s have been married at least once. Among young adults (ages 18–29), three-quarters (76 percent) are either currently married, were previously married, or plan to marry some day. Second, a national Gallup survey shows that Americans rank their family as the most important aspect of life. And in a national survey of first-year U.S. college students, about three-quarters of both women and men indicated that “raising a family” was an “essential” or “very important’ objective.
A Pew Research Center survey found that most U.S. adults say that they have “old-fashioned values about family and marriage,” although the percentage endorsing this statement has declined from 87 percent in 1987 to 76 percent in 2007. And most U.S. adults value monogamy within marriage.
According to a Gallup Poll, only 4 percent of U.S. adults say that a married man and woman having an affair is morally acceptable. Although the high rate of divorce seems to suggest a weakening of marriage, divorce may also be viewed as resulting from placing a high value on marriage, such that a less than satisfactory marriage is unacceptable.
In effect, people who divorce may be viewed not as incapable of commitment but as those who would not settle for a bad marriage. Indeed, the expectations that young women and men have of marriage have changed. Whereas once the main purpose of marriage was to have and raise children, today women and men want marriage to provide adult intimacy and companionship.
Caroline Schacht has a master’s degree in home economics and another in sociology. She has been trained as a divorce mediator and a teacher at East Carolina University, specializing in courtship and marriage classes. She is the co-author of several textbooks, including "Choices in Relationships and Understanding Social Problems." She can be reached a cschacht@suddenlink.net.