When I’m around
young adults I like to ask them how they are
thinking about the big commitments in their lives: what career to go into,
where to live, whom to marry. Most of them have thought a lot about their
career plans. But my impression is that many have not thought a lot about how
marriage will fit into their lives.
اضافة اعلان
The common operating assumption seems to be that
professional life is at the core of life and that marriage would be something
nice to add on top sometime down the road. According to an analysis of recent
survey data by
University of Virginia professor Brad Wilcox, 75% of adults ages
18 to 40 said that making a good living was crucial to fulfillment in life
while only 32% thought that marriage was crucial to fulfillment. In a
Pew Research Center survey, 88% of parents said it was “extremely or very”
important for their kids to be financially independent, while only 21% said it
was “extremely or very” important for their kids to marry.
It’s not that I meet many people who are against marriage. Today, as in the past, a vast majority of Americans would like to tie the knot someday. It’s just that it’s not exactly top of mind.
It’s not that I meet many
people who are against marriage.
Today, as in the past, a vast majority of Americans would like to tie the knot
someday. It’s just that it’s not exactly top of mind.
Fewer people believe that marriage is vitally important. In
2006, 50% of young adults said it was very
important for a couple to marry if
they intended to spend the rest of their lives together. But by 2020 only 29%
of young adults said that.
Many people have shifted the way they conceive of marriage.
To use sociologist Andrew Cherlin’s language, they no longer view it as the
“cornerstone” of their life; they view it as the “capstone” — something to
enter into after they’ve
successfully established themselves as adults.
Partly as a result of these attitudes, there is less
marriage in America today. The
marriage rate is close to the lowest level in U.S. history. For example, in 1980, only 6% of 40-year-olds had never been
married. As of 2021, 25% of 40-year-olds have never been married.
As I confront young adults who think this way, I am seized
by an unfortunate urge to sermonize. I want to put a hand on their shoulder and
say: Look, there are many reasons you may not find
marital happiness in your life. Maybe you won’t be able to find a financially stable partner, or one who
wants to commit. Maybe you’ll marry a great person but find yourselves drifting
apart. But don’t let it be because you didn’t prioritize marriage. Don’t let it
be because you didn’t think hard about marriage when you were young.
“When it comes to predicting overall happiness, a good marriage is far more important than how much education you get, how much money you make, how often you have sex, and, yes, even how satisfied you are with your work.”
My strong advice is to obsess less about your career and to
think a lot more about marriage. Please respect the truism that if you have a
great career and a crappy marriage you will be unhappy, but if you have a great
marriage and a crappy career you will be happy. Please use your youthful years
as a chance to have romantic relationships, so you’ll have some practice when
it comes time to wed. Even if you’re years away, please read books on how to
decide whom to marry. Read
George Eliot and Jane Austen. Start with the
masters.
This is not just softhearted sentimentality I’m offering. There
are mountains of evidence to show that intimate relationships, not career, are
at the core of life, and those intimate relationships will have a downstream
effect on everything else you do.
Last month, for example,
University of Chicago economist Sam Peltzman published a study in which he found that marriage was “the most
important differentiator” between happy and unhappy people. Married people are
30 points happier than the unmarried. Income contributes to happiness, too, but
not as much.
As Wilcox writes in his vitally important forthcoming book,
“Get Married”: “Marital quality is, far and away, the top predictor I have run
across of
life satisfaction in America. Specifically, the odds that men and
women say they are ‘very happy’ with their lives are a staggering 545% higher
for those who are very happily married, compared to peers who are not married
or who are less than very happy in their marriages.”
This is not just softhearted sentimentality I’m offering. There are mountains of evidence to show that intimate relationships, not career, are at the core of life, and those intimate relationships will have a downstream effect on everything else you do.
“When it comes to predicting overall happiness, a good
marriage is far more important than how much education you get, how much money
you make, how often you have sex, and, yes, even how satisfied you are with
your work.”
Economists Shawn Grover and John F. Helliwell studied two
groups of adults over time, some who married and some who didn’t. They found
that marriage caused higher levels of life satisfaction, especially in middle
age, when adults’ average level of satisfaction tends to be at its lowest. It
wasn’t only the traits people brought into the marriage; marriage itself had
positive effects.
We could do a lot to
raise the marriage rate by increasing
wages — financial precarity inhibits marriage. But as a culture, we could
improve our national happiness levels by making sure people focus most on what
is primary — marriage and intimate relationships — and not on what is important
but secondary — their career.
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