Saturday, May 7, 2005
Fewer people are marrying at all, even those who expected to when they were younger.
By ALANA SEMUELS
SCRIPPS HOWARD
If you believe life imitates TV, then a good education, a high-powered job and a tight-knit circle of friends are all a woman wants and needs, especially in her 20s.
For those who choose to add a husband and children to the picture sometime in their 30s, well, that typically happens right on cue, too.
In real life, it isn't always so sitcom simple.
The average marriage age for women and men has been moving later for decades. From 1970 to 2000, the average age at which women got married increased by almost five years, to 25.3, according to census data. For men it increased four years, to 27.1.
Not tying the knot
But a less-reported trend is that fewer people are marrying at all, even those who expected to when they were younger. Census data show that the number of unmarried adults has grown from 36 percent in 1970 to 44 percent in 2000, and the likelihood of tying the knot decreases substantially with each decade past the 20s.
The proportion of young, never-married women has risen sharply as well for the past three decades, tripling from 6 percent to 23 percent for women ages 30 to 34. At age 30, the college-educated demographic has a 58 percent to 66 percent chance at marriage, which decreases to 17 percent to 23 percent at age 40, according to an informal census study that followed a controversial Newsweek article saying a woman has a better chance of getting killed by a terrorist than married after 40.
For marriage-minded women, caught in a cross-current of societal trends and with biological clocks ticking, the statistics are sobering. Many have worked hard to get a good education and a good job, with the idea that a good personal life will fall into place somewhere not far down the line.
"The expectations on women can be really tough," said Dorian Solot, executive director of the Alternatives to Marriage Project, a national nonprofit advocating for equality for nonmarried people. "There's this cultural idea that a woman should get a good job, meet a nice man, all in the correct order. ..."
Her story
Pam Golubski, 34, has been hearing that idea for a while now.
She's been focused on her career ever since she graduated from college in 1993, first working 80-hour weeks as a human resources manager at Wal-Mart, and then getting a master's degree in counseling, neither of which allowed much time for dating. She now works at LaRoche College in Pittsburgh as an educational counselor and is thinking about going back to school to get a Ph.D.
"I would love to get married, but it's not looking good," she said. " People keep asking, straight out, what's wrong with me. I'm perceived as being overly picky."
She's renovated her house and is working a second job -- taking care of another woman's kids -- to pay for the construction costs.
Her busy work life is typical of many other women of her generation, and some sociologists see it as the main reason marriage is moving later or not happening at all.
"The average age of marriage has been going up ... because more women are spending a longer time in education and in getting established in jobs and careers," said David Popenoe, co-director of the National Marriage Project at Rutgers University. "And they're having a pretty good time in the new world of singlehood."
But he believes those who want to get married have to approach it the same way they approach their jobs -- and the process should start in the late 20s rather than the 30s.
Getting hitched
"You can certainly make job moves and career moves to places where there are more, rather than fewer, men available," he said.
Sometimes Golubski wishes she had organized things differently, but her priorities could have to do with the expectations on women of her generation, who are told they can do anything they want, with many feeling pressure to fulfill these prophecies.
"The fact that everything is possible makes your individual choices more responsible for your fate, and that itself is daunting," said William Strauss, co-author of four books about generational trends.
Golubski sometimes wonders if her independence and success intimidate potential mates. It's a theory backed up by a recent British study that found that a woman's chances of getting married dropped by 40 percent for every 16-point rise in her IQ. The same IQ rise for a man increased his chances of getting married by 35 percent, the study found.
A book published last year, "Midlife Crisis at 30," claims to offer "hope for many of today's twenty- and thirtysomethings struggling with the unreasonable expectations that society and the media have placed on them."
The book's authors, broadcast journalists Lia Macko and Kerry Rubin, say college-educated women face a lot of pressure at 30 to be on their way to career, marriage and children. When they're not, they blame themselves, while their parents' generation blamed the male power structure.
Alexis Pierce of Mount Washington, Pa., has just reached 30 and isn't feeling any kind of midlife crisis. She's an account manager for Microsoft and got into the tech field during the dot-com boom.
She spends her spare time volunteering outside of work and keeping busy with other activities. And while she's open to marriage, she's content with her life as a singleton, an attitude she recommends to other women who'd like to settle down.
"Consuming ourselves with being worried," she said, "is a waste of time."