These days, men and women are waiting longer than ever to get married for the first time. In the 1950s, women married at age 20 and men at 23. However, the trend has been changing slowly.
Let us discuss a few things here:-
- More people are living together
Living together has become a common practice before tying the knot. Many use it as a way to test whether they’re compatible.
Greater social acceptance has enabled more young couples to live together. The stigma associated with sex, cohabitation, and children outside of marriage has dropped significantly. At the same time, the legal protection of unmarried couples and the children born to them has greatly increased.
With the use of birth control, choosing not to get married didn’t have to mean choosing between abstinence or unwanted pregnancy. That made it easier for women, in particular, to choose careers that required more education, and made living alone more attractive for everybody.
- More people go to college
The number of men and women who attended college rose steadily through the 1980s. Then, men’s rate of enrollment began to plateau as women’s continued to climb. Today, women earn more college degrees than men.
That helps partially explain why the gap between men and women’s ages at first marriage has narrowed. It also helps explain the increase in age for both sexes, since attending college pushes back marriage timelines.
- People have smaller families
When you expect to have fewer kids, you don’t need to start as early. American women had an average of more than three children in the ’60s. Now they have less than two.
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