More on Marriage

This past week the New York Times has had two article on marriage: "51% of Women Are Now Living Without Spouse" by Sam Roberts on Tuesday, 1/10/07, and "The Elusive Altar" by David Brooks in today's Times. Tuesday's article reports that for what is probably the first time in the U.S. there are more women living without a husband than are. There are a number of reasons for this change, among which are women marrying at an older age, the rate of cohabitation has increased dramatically, the increase in the divorce rate, and women who tend to live longer lives than men.

Roberts also notes that among African American women the marriage rate is low: approximately 30% of African American women are married. The rate is 49% for Hispanic women, 55 % for white women, and 60% for Asian women.

Stephanie Coontz, director of public education for the Council on Contemporary Families and the author of a recent book on the changing status of marriage, writes, "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...Most of these women will marry, or have married. But on average, Americans now spend half their adult lives outside marriage."

Roberts shares several quotations of women who are not married or were married and divorced and feel a new freedom. I would judge the tone of the article as informational with a slightly positive cast of this new change in marriage.

David Brooks article is not quite so sanguine about this trend. He notes that this change might be welcome for the wealthy, but for many,

the fact that many more people are getting divorced or never marrying at all is not such good news. For voluminous research shows that further down the social scale there are millions of people who long to marry, but who are trapped just beyond the outskirts of matrimony. They have partners. They move in together. Often they have children with the people they love. But they never quite marry, or if the do, the marriage falls apart, with horrible consequences for their children. This is the real force behind the rise of women without men.

In addition to his more negative assessment of this change than the other article is his inclusion of children in the discussion. Interestingly, Roberts never includes children in the equation--his focus is primarily on the desires of autonomous individuals.

What do you make of this change in marriage?