While recently sharing a meal with a group of Gen Z and Millennial young adults, we discussed whether marriage is still relevant. Marriage was once almost a given, but the pathway to family life is far less straightforward today.

Over pasta and salad, our dinner companions raised questions about what women and men want out of relationships and why the prospect for marriage seems so uncertain today. What happened? How did so many developed countries shift away from a culture where young people once confidently said “I do?”

This is the central question we ask in our new book, I…Do? Why Marriage Still Matters. We’ve identified at least five forces that have reshaped how young adults understand marriage and left them less confident about the prospect of enjoying a healthy married life.

1. Second-Wave Feminists Went After Men and Marriage

The form of feminism found still today on many university campuses preaches that marriage “annihilates woman” (Simone de Beauvoir), that marriage mainstreams rape (Andrea Dworkin), and that the demise of marriage should be generally celebrated (Kate Millett).

While this wholesale rejection of marriage never completely won the day, it has influenced our thinking. 2023 data shows 51.4 percent of women between 18 and 40 are single, neither married nor cohabiting. Also in 2023, Pew Research Center reported 28 percent of men, compared with only 18 percent of women, said being married is extremely or very important for a fulfilling life. 

An anti-family form of feminism is not the sole reason for this trend, but it is one way to rob women and men of the confidence that healthy marriage is good for both sexes. It’s time to rethink and challenge this ideology and promote positive views of family, marriage, and both sexes. 

2. The Divorce Revolution

In 1969, as governor of California, Ronald Reagan enacted no-fault divorce, a change rippling across states that led to a doubling in the divorce rate in the United States between 1960 and 1980. Some now call no-fault divorce “unilateral divorce,” meaning now one person can single-handedly get out of a marriage, surprising his or her spouse by serving papers.

While no-fault divorce made it easier for a small minority to escape abusive and harmful marriages, the resulting divorce revolution normalized divorce, and challenged the permanence of the institution for everyone.

3. The Cohabitation Revolution

A growing number of young adults live together before marriage, or cohabit instead of getting married. While this may seem counterintuitive, pre-marital cohabitation is correlated with an increased risk of divorce.

This might be in part because of the way many couples enter cohabiting relationships. As psychologist Scott Stanley writes, couples slide into these relationships instead of consciously deciding to partner. When living together happens as a test or by accident, we begin to realize its short-term nature is baked in.

Even in places like the Canadian province of Quebec, where cohabitation rates are much higher and more stable compared to the rest of North America, cohabitation remains more susceptible to break-up than marriage is.

4. The Decline in Christianity

An institution like marriage does better when supported by other institutional structures. Where religious sentiment is strong, it nurtures support for marriage by pointing to marriage as a good way to live. Religious communities also tend to be sources of support by providing counselling and guidance for those experiencing trouble in their marriage.

Therefore, it’s not surprising that cohabitation is more prominent in a place like Canada, which is less religious than the United States. In addition to promoting marriage as a norm, religious communities are also a place where young adults can meet one another.

5. Putting College and Career First

Young adults are getting married later in life, if at all. For some, marriage delayed is marriage denied. Lower-income men and women are far less likely to get married, making them more prone to miss out on the financial benefits marriage affords.

This all is partly because today too many people think of marriage like the icing on the cake, something to be done later, after paying school debts and gaining career success. This presents a problem: when are you successful enough to get married?

That we routinely wait to create lasting partnerships, or that we view them as a possible barrier to other successes, suggests we, as a society, place too much emphasis on one aspect of life — career — at the expense of another aspect of life — family. Few know that married mothers and fathers are the happiest of all people in recent surveys.

Delaying marriage means taking a short-term view. No man or woman remains young, healthy, and working forever, which makes a network of family supports more important as time goes on, but when delayed it is harder to achieve.

These five issues pushing and pulling at marriage are interconnected and complex. And there are, of course, others. What is certain is that we have altered critical aspects of the purpose of marriage, namely its longevity and connection to children. This has made marriage feel riskier.

For the sake of coming generations, we need to initiate a conversation about the value and purpose of marriage. If our dining companions are any indication, there is a sincere hunger for this kind of inquiry. In the meantime, many people are losing out because our society no longer has a working model for marriage to provide all that it should.