A “Record Share of Americans Have Never Married.” Really??

Here’s another recent example of news headlines giving a way too discouraging view of marriage, based on a study that really wasn’t discouraging.

I just read the entire September 24, 2014 Pew Report, “Record Share of Americans Have Never Married.” Although the report itself is fascinating and valuable, its headline and the many news reports about it (“More Americans Forego Marriage”! “I do? No Thanks!”) are giving a far too discouraging picture of the state of marriage.   The only reason for the ‘record share of Americans have never married’ headline is that the Pew researchers were looking at those who had never married by the age of 25. As the report itself says, the median age of marriage for women today is 27, and for men it is 29… rendering their boundary of age 25 almost meaningless.

The headline would have been far more accurate – and far less discouraging – if it would have said “Record share of Americans getting married in late twenties.”

This is yet another reason why it is so critical that people get a quick primer into the actual, encouraging truths about marriage today – so they can see the holes in these types of news reports when they read them.

The other commonly-featured and seemingly-alarming statement from the Pew report is this:

Today’s young adults are slow to tie the knot, and a rising share may end up not getting married at all. According to Pew Research projections based on census data, when today’s young adults reach their mid-40s to mid-50s, a record high share (25%) is likely to have never been married.

Yeah? And according to my projections for my family income, when I reach my mid-50’s a record high number will be in my bank account! Why? Because that is the wishful-thinking assumption I just made in my calculations. Just like the Pew researchers explained, in the fine-print text that nobody reads, that they’re assuming that since several generations of young adults have been “slower to tie the knot”, leading to 5-10% never getting married at all, that the “slow” will automatically become “never” at higher and higher rates. Leading to the frightening-looking number of “25% never getting married at all by 2030.”

Could it end up being that way? Sure. Is it likely? Based on my own and many other research studies, I don’t think so. Most researchers find that most single adults want to be married someday. They are more likely to live together first – in part because of the widespread caution about marriage spread by headlines like these! – but they still eventually get married. Yes, if we extrapolate the current trends out to a ridiculous degree, the “never married” numbers could theoretically reach 25% within fifteen years.

But that’s sort of like being ten pounds overweight, losing about a pound each week because you start running, and extrapolating that you could theoretically lose fifty pounds if you run every day for a year. At some point there’s a natural ceiling. I think it is highly likely the same holds true for marriage.

Yes, marriage rates are declining somewhat. But mostly, people are just waiting longer to get married. And since that preserves marriages (those who get married later are far less likely to divorce), eventually we can expect people to see long-lasting marriages everywhere, realize that excessive cynicism is no longer warranted, and become a bit more positive about marriage again.

Now we just have to figure out a way for news reporters to do the same.

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