Jackson
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Nina Chen, Ph.D.
Human Development Specialist
According to a national survey, about 60% of married people met their partners through an introduction by family, friends, co-workers, or acquaintances. This finding suggests that social networks can provide opportunities to bring individuals of similar interests and backgrounds together that also help find a future marriage partner. People who select a marriage partner with similar values and networks, background, and life goals are likely to have a successful marriage.
Another national survey found that the men who are not from traditional, religiously observant family backgrounds are less likely to seek marriage and have positive views of marriage and family life. Unmarried men who experience a nontraditional family structure in their childhood show greater propensity to delay marriage and have greater ambivalence about marriage.
Challenges of the marital search, time constraints on dating, and achieving financial viability are some reasons that today's men are putting off marriage. Women also delay marriage and put financial independence before marriage. Cohabitation is becoming an alternative to marriage and is more accepted by individuals with lower educational and income levels and less religious beliefs. More young people, especially men, believe living together is a way to find out more about a partner before marriage. However, research reveals that cohabitation has not proved useful as a trial marriage.
A gallup survey (2002) that was commissioned by the National Marriage Project found a "soul-mate" relationship is what the majority of young men are looking for. They thought a soul-mate could provide emotional, sexual, and spiritual needs as well as sharing financial responsibility. Finding a wife to be a full-time stay home mother and sharing a similar religious and ethnic background are not as important as in the past. Social pressure to marry is weak. For men, entering marriage is not according to a set of social expectations, but personal calculations.
The survey also shows that college-educated men and women are less likely to divorce then people with less well-educated peers. However, the growing gender gap in college education may cause some difficulties for college women to find well-educated men in the future. Teens who marry are about two to three times more likely to divorce than people who marry in their twenties or older.
References:
Bumpass, L. & Lu, H. (1998). Trends in cohabitation and implications for children's family contexts in the U.S. CDE Working paper No. 98-15, Center for Demography and Ecology, University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI.
Popenoe, D. & Whitehead, B. (November 2004). Ten important research findings on marriage and choosing a marriage partner, Information brief. Piscataway, NJ: The State University of New Jersey.
Popenoe, D. & Whitehead, B. (2001). Who wants to marry a soul mate? Piscataway, NJ: The National Marriage Project, The State University of New Jersey.
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University of Missouri Extension Jackson County Jacksonblsp@missouri.edu Updated 12/13/06 |
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