The New York Times reports that census data reveals a new minority: married people. This 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 consequences are intense. As time has gone by, the amount of married couples have decreased profoundly, and that only makes us imagine, what life would be like in ten, twenty years from now. Couples in the future my not even consider marriage. So we ask ourselves, what if marriage were abolished? How bad are the consequences of an unmarried couple who cohabitate? Some may say there may not be any, but we would have a less divorce rate. But others may ask, what are the consequences of bringing up a child in the world with unmarried parents?
There are various factors already existant that are said to be the main reasons for individuals to live without marriage. Some say there is less incentive for anyone to marry early because of prolonged adolescence in which people are delaying marriage until they are ready. There’s less incentive for men to marry because they are finding sexual fulfillment outside of marriage. Less incentive for women to marry because they have more means of caring for themselves financially. Less incentive for anyone to marry because there is not as much social expectation or pressure to do so, along with having watched their parents’ marriages fail and destroy their home life.
As the years go by, marriage is going to become increasingly countercultural. What many have intended to be normative at creation has now become a minority in our civilization. What’s next?