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LORAIN, Ohio — It used to be called illegitimacy. Now it is the new normal. After steadily rising for five decades, the share of children born to unmarried women has crossed a threshold: more than half of births to American women under 30 occur outside marriage.

Once largely limited to poor women and minorities, motherhood without marriage has settled deeply into middle America. The fastest growth in the last two decades has occurred among white women in their 20s who have some college education but no four-year degree, according to Child Trends, a Washington research group that analyzed government data.

Among mothers of all ages, a majority — 59 percent in 2009 — are married when they have children. But the surge of births outside marriage among younger women — nearly two-thirds of children in the United States are born to mothers under 30 — is both a symbol of the transforming family and a hint of coming generational change.

One group still largely resists the trend: college graduates, who overwhelmingly marry before having children. That is turning family structure into a new class divide, with the economic and social rewards of marriage increasingly reserved for people with the most education.

“Marriage has become a luxury good,” said Frank Furstenberg, a sociologist at the University of Pennsylvania.

The shift is affecting children’s lives. Researchers have consistently found that children born outside marriage face elevated risks of falling into poverty, failing in school or suffering emotional and behavioral problems.

The forces rearranging the family are as diverse as globalization and the pill. Liberal analysts argue that shrinking paychecks have thinned the ranks of marriageable men, while conservatives often say that the sexual revolution reduced the incentive to wed and that safety net programs discourage marriage.

Here in Lorain, a blue-collar town west of Cleveland where the decline of the married two-parent family has been especially steep, dozens of interviews with young parents suggest that both sides have a point.

Over the past generation, Lorain lost most of two steel mills, a shipyard and a Ford factory, diminishing the supply of jobs that let blue-collar workers raise middle-class families. More women went to work, making marriage less of a financial necessity for them. Living together became routine, and single motherhood lost the stigma that once sent couples rushing to the altar. Women here often describe marriage as a sign of having arrived rather than a way to get there.

Meanwhile, children happen.

Amber Strader, 27, was in an on-and-off relationship with a clerk at Sears a few years ago when she found herself pregnant. A former nursing student who now tends bar, Ms. Strader said her boyfriend was so dependent that she had to buy his cigarettes. Marrying him never entered her mind. “It was like living with another kid,” she said.

When a second child, with a new boyfriend, followed three years later — her birth control failed, she said — her boyfriend, a part-time house painter, was reluctant to wed.

Ms. Strader likes the idea of marriage; she keeps her parents’ wedding photo on her kitchen wall and says her boyfriend is a good father. But for now marriage is beyond her reach.

“I’d like to do it, but I just don’t see it happening right now,” she said. “Most of my friends say it’s just a piece of paper, and it doesn’t work out anyway.”

The recent rise in single motherhood has set off few alarms, unlike in past eras. When Daniel Patrick Moynihan, then a top Labor Department official and later a United States senator from New York, reported in 1965 that a quarter of black children were born outside marriage — and warned of a “tangle of pathology”— he set off a bitter debate.

By the mid-1990s, such figures looked quaint: a third of Americans were born outside marriage. Congress, largely blaming welfare, imposed tough restrictions. Now the figure is 41 percent — and 53 percent for children born to women under 30, according to Child Trends, which analyzed 2009 data from the National Center for Health Statistics.

Still, the issue received little attention until the publication last month of “Coming Apart,” a book by Charles Murray, a longtime critic of non-marital births.

Large racial differences remain: 73 percent of black children are born outside marriage, compared with 53 percent of Latinos and 29 percent of whites. And educational differences are growing. About 92 percent of college-educated women are married when they give birth, compared with 62 percent of women with some post-secondary schooling and 43 percent of women with a high school diploma or less, according to Child Trends.

Almost all of the rise in nonmarital births has occurred among couples living together. While in some countries such relationships endure at rates that resemble marriages, in the United States they are more than twice as likely to dissolve than marriages. In a summary of research, Pamela Smock and Fiona Rose Greenland, both of the University of Michigan, reported that two-thirds of couples living together split up by the time their child turned 10.

In Lorain as elsewhere, explanations for marital decline start with home economics: men are worth less they used to be. Among men with some college but no degrees, earnings have fallen 8 percent in the past 30 years, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, while the earnings of their female counterparts have risen by 8 percent.

“Women used to rely on men, but we don’t need to anymore,” said Teresa Fragoso, 25, a single mother in Lorain. “We support ourselves. We support our kids.”

Fifty years ago, researchers have found, as many as a third of American marriages were precipitated by a pregnancy, with couples marrying to maintain respectability. Ms. Strader’s mother was among them.

Today, neither of Ms. Strader’s pregnancies left her thinking she should marry to avoid stigma. Like other women interviewed here, she described her children as largely unplanned, a byproduct of uncommitted relationships.

Some unwed mothers cite the failures of their parents’ marriages as reasons to wait. Brittany Kidd was 13 when her father ran off with one of her mother’s friends, plunging her mother into depression and leaving the family financially unstable.

“Our family life was pretty perfect: a nice house, two cars, a dog and a cat,” she said. “That stability just got knocked out like a window; it shattered.”

Ms. Kidd, 21, said she could not imagine marrying her son’s father, even though she loves him. “I don’t want to wind up like my mom,” she said.

Others noted that if they married, their official household income would rise, which could cost them government benefits like food stamps and child care. W. Bradford Wilcox, a sociologist at the University of Virginia, said other government policies, like no-fault divorce, signaled that “marriage is not as fundamental to society” as it once was.

Even as many Americans withdraw from marriage, researchers say, they expect more from it: emotional fulfillment as opposed merely to practical support. “Family life is no longer about playing the social role of father or husband or wife, it’s more about individual satisfaction and self-development,” said Andrew Cherlin, a sociologist at Johns Hopkins University.

Money helps explain why well-educated Americans still marry at high rates: they can offer each other more financial support, and hire others to do chores that prompt conflict. But some researchers argue that educated men have also been quicker than their blue-collar peers to give women equal authority. “They are more willing to play the partner role,” said Sara McLanahan, a Princeton sociologist.

Reviewing the academic literature, Susan L. Brown of Bowling Green State University recently found that children born to married couples, on average, “experience better education, social, cognitive and behavioral outcomes.”

Lisa Mercado, an unmarried mother in Lorain, would not be surprised by that. Between nursing classes and an all-night job at a gas station, she rarely sees her 6-year-old daughter, who is left with a rotating cast of relatives. The girl’s father has other children and rarely lends a hand.

“I want to do things with her, but I end up falling asleep,” Ms. Mercado said.

For Women Under 30, Most Births Occur Outside Marriage, NYT, 17.2.2012,
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/18/us/for-women-under-30-most-births-occur-outside-marriage.html

Prince William and Kate Middleton engagement announced

Clarence House statement reveals engagement of second in line to throne
and his long-term girlfriend after weeks of speculation

Stephen Bates and James Meikle
Guardian.co.uk
Tuesday 16 November 2010
15.29 GMT
This article was published on guardian.co.uk at 15.29 GMT
on Tuesday 16 November 2010.
It was last modified at 09.15 GMT on Wednesday 17 November 2010.
It was first published at 11.31 GMT on Tuesday 16 November 2010.

Kate Middleton today spoke of the "daunting prospect" of joining the royal family as she and Prince William announced they would get married next year.

Wearing the blue sapphire and diamond engagement ring that the prince's father gave to Princess Diana in 1981, Middleton said "hopefully, I will take it in my stride", while adding that her future husband was "a great teacher".

Prince William said the ring "was very special to me" as was his bride-to-be. Giving it to her was "my way of making sure my mother didn't miss out on today" and the excitement that the couple were going spend their lives together.

The long-expected news that the second in line to the throne was to marry his long-term girlfriend was announced by Clarence House earlier in the day .

The prince asked Middleton to marry him during a private holiday in Kenya last month and has, the royal press office stressed, asked her father's permission.

Middleton said, during a brief press conference and photocall at St James's Palace, London, that the prince had been "a true romantic", was "a loving boyfriend" and "very supportive of me in good times and also through the bad times".

Prince William said of their engagement: "The timing is right now, we are both very, very happy. We both have a very good sense of humour and we take the mickey out of each other a lot."

He added that Middleton had "plenty of habits that make me laugh that I tease her about".

The formal statement said William's father, Prince Charles, was "delighted".

Speaking at his Poundbury model village in Dorset, Charles said that he was "thrilled, obviously", and joked: "They have been practising long enough ... it makes me feel very old."

William's stepmother, the Duchess of Cornwall, on her way to an official engagement at the Apollo Theatre in London, told a wellwisher: "It's brilliant, isn't it? It's absolutely wonderful."

Middleton's parents, Michael and Carole, were "thrilled". Her father Michael, reading a statement outside their home near the Berkshire village of Bucklebury, said they had got to know the prince very well: "We all think he is wonderful and we are extremely fond of him. They make a lovely couple, they are great fun to be with, and we've had a lot of laughs together. We wish them every happiness for the future."

Earl Spencer, the prince's uncle and brother of Princess Diana, said: "It's wonderful news. Very exciting. My family are all thrilled for them both."

The Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh were also "absolutely delighted", Buckingham Palace said. During a reception this afternoon at Windsor Castle for leaders of British overseas territories including Bermuda, Montserrat and the Falklands Islands, the Queen told a guest who congratulated her: "It is brilliant news. It has taken them a very long time."

Political leaders and the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, echoed the sentiment.

Full details of the wedding plans have yet to be announced. The statement said only that the wedding would take place in London next spring or summer.

St Paul's Cathedral and Westminster Abbey are possible venues, although both have painful resonances – St Paul's was where Charles's ill-fated wedding to Princess Diana took place in 1981, while the abbey hosted Diana's funeral in 1997.

William and Kate have known each other for eight years, and met as students at St Andrews University. They subsequently shared student accommodation for two years and, apart from a brief separation in 2007, have been together ever since.

Middleton will be the first commoner to marry an expected future king for 350 years, since Anne Hyde married the future King James II in 1660.

Middleton is eldest of three children in a family whose fortune is based on a mail-order children's party accessories business.

The prime minister, David Cameron, said the whole country would join him and his wife, Samantha, in wishing the couple "great joy".

Later, he said that he had spoken to the prince to pass on his congratulations and predicted "a great day of national celebration".

The prime minister told a press conference at Downing Street that it felt "great to have a bit of unadulterated good news", and said a cheer had gone up when he told ministerial colleagues at today's Cabinet meeting.

The Labour leader, Ed Miliband, said via the social network Twitter: "Delighted for Prince William and Kate Middleton on their engagement. The whole country will be wishing them every happiness."

Scotland's first minister, Alex Salmond, congratulated the couple and said: "Of course, this was a match made in St Andrews, and everyone in Scotland will join with me in wishing the prince and Ms Middleton every happiness as they look forward to their wedding day and a long and fulfilling married life together."

The Welsh first minister, Carwyn Jones, said: "I'm very pleased to hear that they plan to begin their married life in north Wales."

Graham Smith, spokesman for Republic, a group campaigning for an end to the monarchy, said: "We mustn't see the government wasting limited resources paying for a major set-piece event ... if people are being told to tighten their belts, if the government is making thousands unemployed, if welfare payments are being slashed, it would be sickening for the government to allow a single penny more to be spent on the royals at this time."

Prince William and Kate Middleton engagement announced, G, 16.11.2010, http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/nov/16/prince-william-kate-middleton-engagement

Marriage Is a Constitutional Right

August 4, 2010
The New York Times

Until Wednesday, the thousands of same-sex couples who have married did so because a state judge or Legislature allowed them to. The nation’s most fundamental guarantees of freedom, set out in the Constitution, were not part of the equation. That has changed with the historic decision by a federal judge in California, Vaughn Walker, that said his state’s ban on same-sex marriage violated the 14th Amendment’s rights to equal protection and due process of law.

The decision, though an instant landmark in American legal history, is more than that. It also is a stirring and eloquently reasoned denunciation of all forms of irrational discrimination, the latest link in a chain of pathbreaking decisions that permitted interracial marriages and decriminalized gay sex between consenting adults.

As the case heads toward appeals at the circuit level and probably the Supreme Court, Judge Walker’s opinion will provide a firm legal foundation that will be difficult for appellate judges to assail.

The case was brought by two gay couples who said California’s Proposition 8, which passed in 2008 with 52 percent of the vote, discriminated against them by prohibiting same-sex marriage and relegating them to domestic partnerships. The judge easily dismissed the idea that discrimination is permissible if a majority of voters approve it; the referendum’s outcome was “irrelevant,” he said, quoting a 1943 case, because “fundamental rights may not be submitted to a vote.”

He then dismantled, brick by crumbling brick, the weak case made by supporters of Proposition 8 and laid out the facts presented in testimony. The two witnesses called by the supporters (the state having bowed out of the case) had no credibility, he said, and presented no evidence that same-sex marriage harmed society or the institution of marriage.

Same-sex couples are identical to opposite-sex couples in their ability to form successful marital unions and raise children, he said. Though procreation is not a necessary goal of marriage, children of same-sex couples will benefit from the stability provided by marriage, as will the state and society. Domestic partnerships confer a second-class status. The discrimination inherent in that second-class status is harmful to gay men and lesbians. These findings of fact will be highly significant as the case winds its way through years of appeals.

One of Judge Walker’s strongest points was that traditional notions of marriage can no longer be used to justify discrimination, just as gender roles in opposite-sex marriage have changed dramatically over the decades. All marriages are now unions of equals, he wrote, and there is no reason to restrict that equality to straight couples. The exclusion of same-sex couples from marriage “exists as an artifact of a time when the genders were seen as having distinct roles in society and in marriage,” he wrote. “That time has passed.”

To justify the proposition’s inherent discrimination on the basis of sex and sexual orientation, he wrote, there would have to be a compelling state interest in banning same-sex marriage. But no rational basis for discrimination was presented at the two-and-a-half-week trial in January, he said. The real reason for Proposition 8, he wrote, is a moral view “that there is something wrong with same-sex couples,” and that is not a permissible reason for legislation.

“Moral disapproval alone,” he wrote, in words that could someday help change history, “is an improper basis on which to deny rights to gay men and women.”

The ideological odd couple who led the case — Ted Olson and David Boies, who fought against each other in the Supreme Court battle over the 2000 election — were criticized by some supporters of same-sex marriage for moving too quickly to the federal courts. Certainly, there is no guarantee that the current Supreme Court would uphold Judge Walker’s ruling. But there are times when legal opinions help lead public opinions.

Just as they did for racial equality in previous decades, the moment has arrived for the federal courts to bestow full equality to millions of gay men and lesbians.

Marriage Is a Constitutional Right, NYT, 4.8.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/05/opinion/05thu1.html

Love, Sex and the Changing Landscape of Infidelity

October 28, 2008
The New York Times
By TARA PARKER-POPE

If you cheated on your spouse, would you admit it to a researcher?

That question is one of the biggest challenges in the scientific study of marriage, and it helps explain why different studies produce different estimates of infidelity rates in the United States.

Surveys conducted in person are likely to underestimate the real rate of adultery, because people are reluctant to admit such behavior not just to their spouses but to anyone.

In a study published last summer in The Journal of Family Psychology, for example, researchers from the University of Colorado and Texas A&M surveyed 4,884 married women, using face-to-face interviews and anonymous computer questionnaires. In the interviews, only 1 percent of women said they had been unfaithful to their husbands in the past year; on the computer questionnaire, more than 6 percent did.

At the same time, experts say that surveys appearing in sources like women’s magazines may overstate the adultery rate, because they suffer from what pollsters call selection bias: the respondents select themselves and may be more likely to report infidelity.

But a handful of new studies suggest surprising changes in the marital landscape. Infidelity appears to be on the rise, particularly among older men and young couples. Notably, women appear to be closing the adultery gap: younger women appear to be cheating on their spouses nearly as often as men.

“If you just ask whether infidelity is going up, you don’t see really impressive changes,” said David C. Atkins, research associate professor at the University of Washington Center for the Study of Health and Risk Behaviors. “But if you magnify the picture and you start looking at specific gender and age cohorts, we do start to see some pretty significant changes.”

The most consistent data on infidelity come from the General Social Survey, sponsored by the National Science Foundation and based at the University of Chicago, which has used a national representative sample to track the opinions and social behaviors of Americans since 1972. The survey data show that in any given year, about 10 percent of married people — 12 percent of men and 7 percent of women — say they have had sex outside their marriage.

But detailed analysis of the data from 1991 to 2006, to be presented next month by Dr. Atkins at the Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies conference in Orlando, show some surprising shifts. University of Washington researchers have found that the lifetime rate of infidelity for men over 60 increased to 28 percent in 2006, up from 20 percent in 1991. For women over 60, the increase is more striking: to 15 percent, up from 5 percent in 1991.

The researchers also see big changes in relatively new marriages. About 20 percent of men and 15 percent of women under 35 say they have ever been unfaithful, up from about 15 and 12 percent respectively.

Theories vary about why more people appear to be cheating. Among older people, a host of newer drugs and treatments are making it easier to be sexual, and in some cases unfaithful — Viagra and other remedies for erectile dysfunction, estrogen and testosterone supplements to maintain women’s sex drive and vaginal health, even advances like better hip replacements.

“They’ve got the physical health to express their sexuality into old age,” said Helen E. Fisher, research professor of anthropology at Rutgers and the author of several books on the biological and evolutionary basis of love and sex.

In younger couples, the increasing availability of pornography on the Internet, which has been shown to affect sexual attitudes and perceptions of “normal” behavior, may be playing a role in rising infidelity.

But it is the apparent change in women’s fidelity that has sparked the most interest among relationship researchers. It is not entirely clear if the historical gap between men and women is real or if women have just been more likely to lie about it.

“Is it that men are bragging about it and women are lying to everybody including themselves?” Dr. Fisher asked. “Men want to think women don’t cheat, and women want men to think they don’t cheat, and therefore the sexes have been playing a little psychological game with each other.”

Dr. Fisher notes that infidelity is common across cultures, and that in hunting and gathering societies, there is no evidence that women are any less adulterous than men. The fidelity gap may be explained more by cultural pressures than any real difference in sex drives between men and women. Men with multiple partners typically are viewed as virile, while women are considered promiscuous. And historically, women have been isolated on farms or at home with children, giving them fewer opportunities to be unfaithful.

But today, married women are more likely to spend late hours at the office and travel on business. And even for women who stay home, cellphones, e-mail and instant messaging appear to be allowing them to form more intimate relationships, marriage therapists say. Dr. Frank Pittman, an Atlanta psychiatrist who specializes in family crisis and couples therapy, says he has noticed more women talking about affairs centered on “electronic” contact.

“I see a changing landscape in which the emphasis is less on the sex than it is on the openness and intimacy and the revelation of secrets,” said Dr. Pittman, the author of “Private Lies: Infidelity and the Betrayal of Intimacy” (Norton, 1990). “Everybody talks by cellphone and the relationship evolves because you become increasingly distant from whomever you lie to, and you become increasingly close to whomever you tell the truth to.”

While infidelity rates do appear to be rising, a vast majority of people still say adultery is wrong, and most men and women do not appear to be unfaithful. Another problem with the data is that it fails to discern when respondents cheat: in a troubled time in the marriage, or at the end of a failing relationship.

“It’s certainly plausible that women might have increased their relative rate of infidelity over time,” said Edward O. Laumann, professor of sociology at the University of Chicago. “But it isn’t going to be a huge number. The real thing to talk about is where are they in terms of their relationship and the marital bond.”

The General Social Survey data also show some encouraging trends, said John P. Robinson, professor of sociology and director of the Americans’ Use of Time project at the University of Maryland. One notable shift is that couples appear to be spending slightly more time together. And married men and women also appear to have the most active sex lives, reporting sex with their spouse 58 times a year, a little more than once a week.

“We’ve looked at that as good news,” Dr. Robinson said.

Love, Sex and the Changing Landscape of Infidelity, NYT, 28.10.2008, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/28/health/28well.html

How Marriage Survives

October 12, 2010
The New York Times
By JUSTIN WOLFERS

Washington

THE recession has taken a toll on the institution of marriage, we keep hearing. Last month, for instance, when it was reported that the proportion of Americans aged 25 to 34 who are married fell below the proportion who have never married, it was quickly attributed to the economic downturn. Young adults, according to this narrative, have less money to spend on a wedding and are less eager to enter into a lifetime commitment during times of uncertainty.

Again last week, when a report from the Pew Research Center noted that, for the first time, college-educated 30-year-olds were more likely to have been married than were people the same age without a college degree, the news was interpreted as another side effect of the recent recession. After all, the downturn has been especially hard on young men with no college degree.

But if you look at marriage in the United States over the past century, this interpretation doesn’t stand up. Marriage and divorce rates have remained remarkably immune to the ups and downs of the business cycle. Unfortunately, the marriage statistics are easy to misread.

It’s misleading to count the wedding rings among people in their 20s and early 30s, because the median age at first marriage in the United States has risen to 28 for men (from 23 in 1970) and 26 for women (from 21 in 1970). The fact that these folks aren’t married now doesn’t mean they won’t marry — many of them just aren’t there yet.

Look instead at 40-year-olds, and you see that 81 percent have married at least once. Yes, this number used to be higher — it peaked at 93 percent in 1980 — but, clearly, marriage remains a part of most people’s lives. These statistics are not a perfect barometer either, however, because they reflect weddings that were celebrated years earlier.

To most accurately track marriage rates, you need to focus on the number of wedding certificates issued. In 2009, the latest year for which we have data, there were about 2.1 million marriages in the United States. That does represent a slight decline since the recession began. But it’s the same rate of decline that existed during the preceding economic boom, the previous bust and both the boom and the bust before that.

Indeed, the recent modest decline in marriage continues a 30-year trend. And even as the number of marriages falls, divorce is also becoming less prevalent. So a greater proportion of today’s marriages will likely persist 30 years into the future.

This is not to say that marriage looks the same today as it always did — over the past several decades, there has been a tremendous shift in married life.

It used to be that a typical marriage involved specialized roles for the husband and wife. Usually he was in the marketplace, and she was in the home, and this arrangement led to maximum productivity.

But today, when families have easy access to prepared foods, inexpensive off-the-rack clothing and labor-saving technology from the washing machine to the robot vacuum cleaner, there’s much less benefit from either spouse specializing in homemaking. Women, now better educated and with greater control over their fertility, are in the marketplace, too, and married couples have more money, more leisure time and longer lives to spend together. Modern marriages are based not on the economic benefits of playing specialized roles but on shared passions.

This new model of “hedonic marriage” has had an effect on who marries, and when — as research I have conducted with my better half, the economist Betsey Stevenson, has documented. In the old days, opposites attracted; an aspiring executive groom would pair up with a less-educated bride. And they would wed before the stork visited and before the couple made the costly investment of putting the husband through business school.

But today, that same young executive would more likely be half of a power couple, married to a college-educated woman who shares his taste in books, hobbies, travel and so on. Indeed, marriage rates for college-educated women rose sharply through the 1950s and ’60s, and have remained remarkably stable since. These women tend to marry after they have finished college and started their careers.

The decline in marriage, it turns out, is concentrated entirely among women with less education — those who likely have the least to gain from modern hedonic marriage.

This is not to say that the economic downturn has had no effect at all on domestic life. Census data show that the number of unwed couples living together rose sharply last year. With rents high and jobs hard to come by, it’s no surprise that people are doubling up.

Still, given that the marriage rate remains on trend, the rise in cohabitation isn’t coming at the expense of marriage. Instead, many young couples who might otherwise merely be dating are moving in together. Some of them, no doubt, will eventually marry. Truly, the recession has not torn young couples apart; it has pushed them closer together.

Justin Wolfers, a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution, is an assistant professor of business and public policy at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.

How Marriage Survives, NYT, 12.10.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/13/opinion/13wolfers.html

3pm GMT update

Marriage rates fall to lowest-ever level

Wednesday March 26 2008
Guardian.co.uk
David Batty
This article was first published on guardian.co.uk on Wednesday March 26 2008.
It was last updated at 15:08 on March 26 2008.

Marriage rates in England and Wales have fallen to the lowest level on record, government figures published today have revealed.

The proportion of adults who chose to marry in 2006 fell to the lowest level since marriage rates were first calculated in 1862, according to provisional figures published by the Office for National Statistics.

In 2006, 22.8 men per 1,000 unmarried men aged 16 and over got married, down from 24.5 in 2005.

The marriage rate for women in 2006 was 20.5 per 1,000 unmarried women aged 16 and over, down from 21.9 in 2005.

In 2006, the number of marriages fell by 4%, compared with the previous year, to 236,980. This is the lowest annual number of marriages since 1895, when there were 228,204.

More than three-fifths (61%) of all marriages in 2006 were the first for both parties, while remarriages for both parties accounted for just under one fifth (18%).

First marriages have fallen by more than one third (37%) since 1981, while remarriages have fallen by a quarter.

The figures show that people are also waiting longer until they marry. The average age at which men married was 36.4 years in 2006, a rise of almost five years since 1991.

The average age at which women married in 2006 was 33.7, an increase of just over 4.5 years since 1991.

Final figures for 2005, published by the ONS today, show marriages fell by 9% from the previous year.

The largest fall occurred in London (29%) and the smallest in the north-east of England (3%).

Final figures for divorces in 2005 also showed a drop on the previous year. Divorce rates in England and Wales fell by 8% between 2004 and 2005, declining to 13.1 divorces per 1,000 married people.

Kathleen Kiernan, a professor of social policy and demography at the University of York, said the figures reflected the rise in the number of couples opting for "informal unions".

Kiernan said marriage rates had declined across the developing world, with people choosing to cohabit for longer before they married.

"It's not that people are not choosing to form partnerships," she said. "People are spending longer cohabiting, but they do eventually marry.

"If you were to look at the proportion who do eventually marry, it's likely that the decline would not be as striking."

Jill Kirby, the director of the centre-right Centre for Policy Studies thinktank, blamed the declining marriage rate on the government, saying the welfare system and tax breaks penalised married couples.

"It's obviously worrying that they [marriage numbers] have reached such a low ebb, but perhaps not surprising in view of the lack of government policy over the last 10 years encouraging marriage," she said.

She also voiced concerns about the detrimental impact if marriage was "lost as the core institution of society".

"A clear reason for concern is that research demonstrates how important marriage is to maintain stability for children," she added.

"The break-up of cohabiting couples is much higher than married couples. Cohabitation is clearly not a satisfactory arrangement as far as children are concerned."

Marriage rates fall to lowest-ever level, G, 26.3.2008,
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/mar/26/gender

Grant Shaffer

After the End of the Affair

NYT

21.3.2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/21/opinion/21druckerman.html

Op-Ed Contributor

After the End of the Affair

March 21, 2008
The New York Times
By PAMELA DRUCKERMAN

Paris

AS Eliot Spitzer and his wife, Silda, rattle around their Fifth Avenue apartment, it’s a pretty safe guess that their life as a couple is hell.

They may want to get some marital advice from Mr. Spitzer’s replacement as New York governor, David A. Paterson, who said Tuesday that his own extramarital affairs ended several years ago and that his marriage was back on track. But the Spitzers are less than two weeks past D-Day. In the parlance of American couples recovering from adultery, “D-Day” is the day you discover your spouse has been cheating on you. And as with the birth of Jesus, time is reset from there.

The reason why everything from the puffiness of Mrs. Spitzer’s eyes to the number of inches between her and her husband at press conferences have been scrutinized is that we treat D-Days like natural disasters. The American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy has warned, “The reactions of the betrayed spouse resemble the post-traumatic stress symptoms of the victims of traumatic events.”

No comparison seems big enough. “9/11 always reminds me of how it felt — one floor collapsing into another,” said a woman in her 40s who lives near Seattle. Another woman, writing in an Internet chat room, compared her husband’s affair to the Asian tsunami of 2004, which killed a quarter of a million people. The jargon of people recovering from adultery sounds like wartime code: X.O.W. is the “ex-other woman,” O.N.S. is a “one-night stand,” and N.P.D. is the often diagnosed “narcissistic personality disorder.” A “cake man” is a husband who wants to have his wife and his mistress, too.

Married people the world over are devastated to discover that their partners have been, as the Dutch say, pinching the cat in the dark. French wives were shocked when I suggested that it was their custom to look the other way. (Even French first ladies don’t do this anymore.) Wives from sub-Saharan Africa, a part of the world with the highest levels of male infidelity, told me how they went running down the street after their husbands, begging them to sleep at home.

But American D-Days are even worse because we have such improbably high standards for marriage. If your spouse cheats, you’ve been living a lie. Americans describing their D-Day experiences say that they weren’t just shocked, jealous and profoundly upset, but that their whole view of the world had collapsed. “It robs you of your past,” one husband said. “What is real? What is fake?”

We Americans are particularly preoccupied with honesty. We’re the only country that peddles the idea that “It’s not the sex, it’s the lying.” (In France, it’s not the lying, it’s the sex.) America is also the only place I found that has a one-strike rule on fidelity: if someone cheats, the marriage is kaput.

We might not strictly hold ourselves to this script, but we expect our politicians to follow it. That’s why people doubted that Bill and Hillary Clinton could have a “real” marriage if she stayed with him after the Lewinsky affair. It’s why a reporter felt free to shout, “Silda, are you leaving him?” at the Spitzers last week. And it’s why David Paterson took pains to say that he and his wife were still very much in love and that he’s now faithful, despite the fact that he had had “a number of women” (and his wife had cheated, too).

Political spouses have some of the worst D-Days, because they have them in public. Dina Matos McGreevey, the estranged wife of New Jersey’s former governor, says she found out her husband was gay just hours before he told the world. Mrs. Spitzer discovered her husband’s apparent penchant for call girls only the night before he announced his “private matter” to the press.

Mr. Paterson said he and his wife had gone into counseling, another stalwart of America’s adultery culture. Our marriage-industrial complex offers tens of thousands of couples therapists, as well as support groups for wounded spouses and sexual addicts, “accountability partners” for straying church members, and countless seminars and healing weekends, many led by “reformed” cheaters and their spouses.

Because lying is the problem, truth-telling has become our national cure. On the frenetically active SurvivingInfidelity.com, “Erica” says she spent 20 months interrogating her husband about his affair, and then “with the aid of my master calendar and 1000+ emails, the photo albums, Visa receipts and his old expense reports, he and I set out to put all of those two and a half years of infidelity on a timeline.”

Not surprisingly, all this makes recovery a long and often unhealthy process. A woman in Tennessee told me that she had gained 60 pounds since her husband found out she had been sleeping with a co-worker, in part because the couple now spends most of their free time on the couch rehashing the affair. “Neither of us cries as much as we used to, because of the antidepressants,” her husband said.

The fact is that many couples, like this one, end up staying together. The Patersons did. The Spitzers might, too, if we give them a chance. Whatever Eliot Spitzer’s and David Paterson’s sins, just surviving infidelity in America may be punishment enough.

Pamela Druckerman is the author of

“Lust in Translation: Infidelity From Tokyo to Tennessee.”

After the End of the Affair, NYT, 21.3.2008,
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/21/opinion/21druckerman.html

NYT October 14, 2006

To Be Married Means to Be Outnumbered

NYT

15.10.2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/15/us/15census.html

To Be Married Means to Be Outnumbered

October 15, 2006
The New York Times
By SAM ROBERTS

Married couples, whose numbers have been declining for decades as a proportion of American households, have finally slipped into a minority, according to an analysis of new census figures by The New York Times.

The American Community Survey, released this month by the Census Bureau, found that 49.7 percent, or 55.2 million, of the nation’s 111.1 million households in 2005 were made up of married couples — with and without children — just shy of a majority and down from more than 52 percent five years earlier.

The numbers by no means suggests marriage is dead or necessarily that a tipping point has been reached. The total number of married couples is higher than ever, and most Americans eventually marry. But marriage has been facing more competition. A growing number of adults are spending more of their lives single or living unmarried with partners, and the potential social and economic implications are profound.

“It just changes the social weight of marriage in the economy, in the work force, in sales of homes and rentals, and who manufacturers advertise to,” said Stephanie Coontz, director of public education for the Council on Contemporary Families, a nonprofit research group. “It certainly challenges the way we set up our work policies.”

While the number of single young adults and elderly widows are both growing, Professor Coontz said, “we have an anachronistic view as to what extent you can use marriage to organize the distribution and redistribution of benefits.”

Couples decide to live together for many reasons, but real estate can be as compelling as romance.

“Owning three toothbrushes and finding that they are always at the wrong house when you are getting ready to go to bed wears on you,” said Amanda Hawn, a 28-year-old writer who set up housekeeping near San Francisco with her boyfriend, Nate Larsen, a real estate analyst, after shuttling between his apartment and one she shared with a friend. “Moving in together has simplified life,” Ms. Hawn said.

The census survey estimated that 5.2 million couples, a little more than 5 percent of households, were unmarried opposite-sex partners. An additional 413,000 households were male couples, and 363,000 were female couples. In all, nearly one in 10 couples were unmarried. (One in 20 households consisted of people living alone).

And the numbers of unmarried couples are growing. Since 2000, those identifying themselves as unmarried opposite-sex couples rose by about 14 percent, male couples by 24 percent and female couples by 12 percent.

Matt Foreman, executive director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, said gay couples were undercounted because many gay people were reluctant to disclose their sexual orientation. But he said that inhibition seemed to be fading.

“I would say the increase is due to people feeling more comfortable disclosing that they are gay or lesbian and living with a partner,” he said.

The survey did not ask about sexual orientation, but its questionnaire was designed to distinguish partners from roommates. A partner was defined as “an adult who is unrelated to the householder, but shares living quarters and has a close personal relationship with the householder.”

Some of the biggest gains in unmarried couples were recorded in unexpected places. In the rural Midwest, the number of households made up of male partners rose 77 percent since 2000.

The survey revealed wide disparities in household composition by place. The proportion of married couples ranged from more than 69 percent in Utah County, Utah, which includes Provo, to 26 percent in Manhattan, which has a smaller share of married couples than almost anyplace in the country. But Manhattan registered a 1.2 percent increase in married couples since 2000, in contrast to the rest of New York City and many other places.

Among counties, the highest proportion of unmarried opposite-sex partners was in Mendocino, Calif., where they made up nearly 11 percent of all households.

The highest share of male couples was in San Francisco, where, according to the census, they accounted for nearly 2 percent of all households. In Manhattan, they made up 1 percent of households. Hampshire County, Mass., home to Northampton, had the highest proportion of female couples, at 1.7 percent. Some of the highest numbers of unmarried couples were recorded in the South, which as defined by the census, has the largest population of any region.

David Blankenhorn, president of the marriage advocacy group the Institute for American Values, said married couples had become a minority largely because of the growing number of households made up of people who planned to marry or who used to be married.

Steve Watters, the director of young adults for Focus on the Family, a conservative Christian group, said that the trend of fewer married couples was more a reflection of delaying marriage than rejection of it.

“It does show that a lot of people are experimenting with alternatives before they get there,” Mr. Watters said. “The biggest concern is that those who still aspire to marriage are going to find fewer models. They’re also finding they’ve gotten so good at being single it’s hard to be at one with another person.”

But Pamela J. Smock, a researcher at the University of Michigan Population Studies Center, said her research — unaffiliated with the Census Bureau — found that the desire for strong family bonds, and especially marriage, was constant.

“Even cohabiting young adults tell us that they are doing so because it would be unwise to marry without first living together in a society marked by high levels of divorce,” Ms. Smock said.

A number of couples interviewed agreed that cohabiting was akin to taking a test drive and, given the scarcity of affordable apartments and homes, also a matter of convenience. Some said that pregnancy was the only thing that would prompt them to make a legal commitment soon. Others said they never intended to marry. A few of those couples said they were inspired by solidarity with gay and lesbian couples who cannot legally marry in most states.

Jennifer Lynch, a 28-year-old stage manager in New York, said she had lived on the Lower East Side with her boyfriend, who is 37 and divorced, for most of the five years they have been a couple.

“Cohabitating is our choice, and we have no intention to be married,” Ms. Lynch said. “There is little difference between what we do and what married people do. We love each other, exist together, all of our decisions are based upon each other. Everyone we care about knows this.”

If anything, she added, “not having the false security of wedding rings makes us work even a little harder.”

With more competition from other ways of living, the proportion of married couples has been shrinking for decades. In 1930, they accounted for about 84 percent of households. By 1990 the proportion of married couples had declined to about 56 percent.

Married couples have not been a majority of households headed by adults younger than 25 since the 1970’s, but among those aged 25 to 34 the proportion slipped below 50 percent for the first time within the past five years. (Among Americans aged 35 to 64, married couples still make up a majority of all households.)

“It’s partially fueled by women in the work force; they don’t necessarily have to marry to be economically secure,” said Andrew A. Beveridge, a demographer at Queens College of the City University of New York, who conducted the census analysis for The New York Times. “You used to get married to have sex. Now one of the major reasons to get married is to have children, and the attractiveness of having children has declined for many people because of the cost.”

William H. Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution, attributed the accelerated trend to the lifestyles of baby boomers.

“It’s the legacy of the boomers that have finally caused this tipping point,” Dr. Frey said. “Certainly later generations have followed in boomer footsteps, with high levels of living together before marriage, and more flexible lifestyles. But the boomers were the trailblazers, once again, rebelling against a norm their parents epitomized.

“This would seem to close the book on the Ozzie and Harriet era that characterized much of the last century,” he said.

To Be Married Means to Be Outnumbered, NYT, 15.10.2006,
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/15/us/15census.html

Get Me to the Las Vegas Marriage Bureau on Time

September 3, 2006
The New York Times
By JENNIFER STEINHAUER

LAS VEGAS, Sept. 2 — Jogging up the stairs of the courthouse, clutching hands and looking tense, Holly Otero and Blain Moos became the last couple to secure a wedding license at midnight on Friday, rushing from the airport to the clerk’s office before the door slammed shut.

Josh Harris was not so lucky. His flight from Arkansas was delayed in Dallas, felling his chances to surprise his girlfriend with a late-night trip to the court and a witching-hour wedding at the Little White Chapel, which he called after midnight, nearly starting to cry when he realized he would be too late.

There are things people like to do here at 2 a.m. that they cannot do anywhere else, like pulling on a slot machine while their clothes run through the spin cycle, discussing sumo wrestling with a topless circus performer and getting married on an indoor gondola.

But anyone who wants to say “I do” in the middle of the night will now be required to use a bit of forethought.

On Friday, the marriage license bureau here ended its tradition of staying open 24 hours a day on Fridays, Saturdays and holidays, limiting licensure to what only here could be considered the outrageously unfair hours of 8 a.m. to midnight, 365 days a year.

Of course, ending middle-of-the-night marriages in Las Vegas would be akin to shutting down bikini mud wrestling at Gilley’s, or forcing Celine Dion to wear Ann Taylor. “People can still get married,” sighed Stacey Welling, a spokeswoman for Clark County, which includes Las Vegas. “As long as they can find a chapel. They just have to plan to get a license earlier.”

The bureau, which began operating a weekend and holiday graveyard shift in 1979, will save $200,000 in the county’s $1.4 billion budget by ending the shift, during which Ms. Welling said about 5,000 of the 122,000 marriage licenses the county issues each year are acquired.

Charlotte Richards, who owns the Little White Chapel on the Las Vegas Strip, said the loss was going to come right out of her coffers. “I am really upset about it,” Ms. Richards said. She said she conducted 10 to 20 weddings each weekend night, with at least three of those couples needing the marriage license bureau in the middle of the night.

Further, she said, celebrities who want to wed in Las Vegas do not want to have to stand in line for a license with the rest of the honoring-and-cherishing world, and like the discretion of midnight hours.

She should know, because she said she had married plenty of them, though she would not name any — except for Joan Collins, Demi Moore and Bruce Willis, Michael Jordan, and Britney Spears and “her first love.” Ms. Spears took advantage of the graveyard shift to get her marriage license. The chapel’s late-night weddings will continue, Ms. Richards said, “I just have to work through this with a lot of hurt.”

Shirley B. Parraguirre, the county clerk, is not particularly tickled to hear about Ms. Richards’s displeasure. The roughly 80 wedding chapels around the city were sent notices of the change and asked for feedback, Ms. Parraguirre said, but she had heard zip. “We had an open public hearing, and no one showed up,” she said. “It is really puzzling to me.”

On Friday, the city’s marriage industry was bustling. There were brides in silky, flowing gowns, some beaming, others looking slightly terrified. One couple — he with a cigar clenched between his teeth, she unsmiling — were wed under a tree at the Little White Chapel. When it was over, the bride gave her groom a pat on the back.

Friday night, outside the wedding license bureau in the courthouse, marked in pink neon lettering above the door, the “chapel rats,” so called by the security guards for their forceful hustling of chapel services to slightly bewildered couples, hawked. Some couples were giddy. Others seemed long schooled in the ways of marital bickering.

Michael Williams, the affable guard who keeps careful watch over the bureau, said that scores more couples than normal showed up Friday, anticipating the closing hour. “The new deadline won’t stop drunk people from getting married in the middle of night,” Mr. Williams said. “They show up drunk all day long. I keep them from getting married.”

Ms. Parraguirre said the majority of people who showed up for a wedding license during the graveyard shift had no intention of racing off to get married anyway. “We think there is a misconception here,” she said. “The people coming in during those hours are normally not planning impulse overnight weddings, they fly in or drive in. They think, ‘Well, we need to do this, there are no lines, let’s just do it now.’ ”

Weddings have been a mainstay of the Las Vegas experience since the 1920’s, taking off with the widespread use of the automobile in the 1940’s, when the Hitching Post and the Wee Kirk o’ the Heather opened their doors. Inspired by the lax licensing laws — no blood test, no waiting — couples flocked from around the region, and eventually the country, to wed.

Among the earliest celebrity clients were the actors Clara Bow and Rex Bell, who tied the knot here in 1931, said Guy Rocha, the state archivist.

Just like its casinos, restaurants, hotels and adult entertainers, Las Vegas wedding chapels cater to all tastes. Couples can combine a wedding with a day package to the most expensive spa in town or drive through a chapel in a limo for a five-minute ceremony. For $365, you can get in the spirit of Lancelot, or step out of a coffin and bare fangs at your betrothed during a gothic ceremony.

Several chapel owners said they were indifferent to the change. “They probably were losing money, and there is no point in it,” said the Rev. David Nye, who is a co-owner of A Las Vegas Wedding Chapel.

“Who would this affect? Britney Spears, that’s all,’’ Mr. Nye said. “I am not sure why there is a controversy. Most people are shocked to death that it was open in the middle of the night to begin with. If 8 to midnight isn’t enough, I don’t know what is.”

Tell that to poor Mr. Harris.

Get Me to the Las Vegas Marriage Bureau on Time, NYT, 3.9.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/03/us/03vegas.html

Field Notes

www.watchmegetmarried.com

June 25, 2006
The New York Times
By ABBY ELLIN

ONLY two guests — both strangers —were in attendance on May 18, when Dawn Westman and Einar Ollander of Tarpon Springs, Fla., were married in the chapel of the Grand Princess, a cruise ship sailing the Mediterranean. But dozens were watching from home.

The audience included the bride's father and stepmother, who witnessed the event from their home in Worcester, Mass.; the bridegroom's mother in Tarpon Springs; and the bridegroom's brother in Gainesville, Fla. All awakened around 4 a.m. and flicked on their home computers so they could view the wedding couple walking down the aisle, live over the Internet.

"None of our friends or family were there in person," said the new Mrs. Ollander, 39, who, like her husband, had been married once before. "But they were able to watch it on the Webcam."

This Webcast concept perfectly melds America's couch-potato culture and its obsession with weddings. Now there is no need to rise, dress up and go. Observers can quickly take in a niece's ceremony and openly engage in catty commentary, all from the privacy of home. For the couples it offers a high-tech, low-cost way to have their "destination wedding" and connect with friends and family, too.

"I think big weddings are overblown and expensive," said Carol Angell Beauvais, who watched her cousin's Caribbean wedding last year from her den in Westport, N.Y. "You should save your money for a down payment on a house."

It would surprise few to learn that Nevada, land of drive-through weddings and Elvis impersonators, has rapidly embraced online ceremonies.

About 5,000 couples have made use of Webcams perched in the chapels at the Treasure Island and MGM Grand hotels in Las Vegas. "One of the reasons we chose Treasure Island was because of the Webcast," said Shauntea Tolliver, 29, of Beach Park, Ill., who married Ransley Denton, 33, on May 2. Only 10 people witnessed the wedding in person, but a gaggle of relatives in five states tuned in.

How do people let guests know of their Webcasting plans? Via electronic invitation, naturally.

Marc Finkel, the chief operating officer of Cashman Enterprises ( www.cashmanpro.com ), a Las Vegas photography and video service which began offering Webcasting three years ago, asks the bride and bridegroom to provide the names and the e-mail addresses of all guests. Mr. Finkel then sends digital invitations.

Two years ago, Larry Fair began noticing how few guests were present at ceremonies he witnessed on Honolulu's beaches. "Obviously not everybody could come," Mr. Fair said. So he and a partner established a business there called Live Internet Weddings that charges $400 over the cost of producing the wedding video itself to stream it live on the Internet. His company ( www.liveinternetweddings.com ) keeps it online for two weeks, in case people miss it live.

Stephanie Coontz, the author of "Marriage, a History: How Love Conquered Marriage" (Penguin), has considered this phenomenon and declared it a mixed bag. "We no longer have cookie-cutter marriages, and people are very interested in using their wedding ceremony to indicate how unique their marriage is going to be," she said.

Some tech-savvy suitors are even getting engaged via the Web. On May 20, James Lee, 27, a Yale medical student, proposed to Uschi Lang, 26, a student at Mount Sinai School of Medicine, by Internet. Knowing that a round-the-clock Webcam had been set up in the new Apple Store on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, Mr. Lee stood outside it at 5 a.m. and held up three signs that read: "Uschi Lang. I love you. Will you marry me?"

Ms. Lang watched his proposal and "started crying," she recalled. "And of course said yes."

She was not the only one watching. They sent the link to their relatives in Seattle, China, Hawaii, Germany and Peru. And then, of course, there were the thousands of bloggers who mentioned the event on their Web sites. "I started realizing the implications," said Mr. Lee, who is undecided about doing a repeat performance when they marry. "In retrospect, it was a crazy thing."

For those who view a friend's wedding on the Web and wonder if they need to send a gift, Ms. Coontz has an answer: "My gift is watching it."

www.watchmegetmarried.com, NYT, 25.6.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/25/fashion/25fiel.html

gender identity > men / women

glass ceiling

violence against women worldwide

femininism

feelings > -

feelings > frustration, anger, hate

feeling > +

oh yes

homosexuality / gay rights

gay marriage

family

divorce

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