In the Agora: The Exceptional As Traditional

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November 14, 2006

The Exceptional As Traditional

Conservative leaders, especially Christian ones, frequently speak out in defense of the institutions of marriage and the nuclear family. One example is Baptist seminary head Al Mohler, who not only writes eloquently on behalf on the marriage union, but takes it a step further and argues for people to get married younger than they do at present (this has landed him in some hot water from time to time). In two recent blog posts, Mohler cites something called the National Marriage Project in relaying the new demographics of marriage:

The National Marriage Project says the median age at first marriage went from 20 for females and 23 for males in 1960 to about 26 and 27, respectively, in 2005, the Marriage Project says.
Other reasons the National Marriage Project cites for declining marriage rates: the growing acceptance of unmarried cohabitation; a small decrease in the tendency of divorced people to remarry; and "some increase" in lifelong singlehood, although the actual amount of the latter won't be known until the lives of young and middle-age adults run their course.
Unmarried cohabitation is particularly popular among people who've come from divorced-parent homes, says David Popenoe, a professor of sociology at Rutgers and co-director of the National Marriage Project.

Typical explanations for people marrying later, whether you're a conservative critic of the practice or not, are fear of divorce, greater acceptance of sexual freedom and cohabitation, and a desire to get one's career in order before settling down. And for critics like Mohler, later marriage and sexual libertinism are evidence that adolescence has taken over American adulthood and the traditional union is in danger.

But what if that which some of us Christians defend as traditional early marriage is in fact the exception in American history? In its celebration of the nation passing the 300 million population mark, Time magazine produced several demographic charts of who we now are. Chart #5 is of particular interest. This chart shows that the current trend towards "late marriage" is in fact a rediscovery of turn of the 20th-century marriage practices. For example, men typically married at 26 in 1900, a number they would not reach again until roughly 1990. The trend in marriage age for the first 40 years of the 20th century was a gradual downward slope, from 26 to 24 in men and from 22 to 21 in women, followed by a steep drop in the 40s, general flatness in the 50s and 60s, and then rising again thereafter. What some defend as traditional early marriage, therefore, is really the exceptional trough in marriage age that characterized the World War II generation. It's a matter of starting one's historical clock further back into history than 1960.

What I'm writing here is not really a new argument. Historian Elaine Tyler May recognized this trend in her book Homeward Bound almost 20 years ago. Traumatized by World War II and the Communist threat, Americans in the 1940s and 50s closed ranks around their immediate families as a bulwark against trying times and social upheaval. That which 60s liberals rebelled against--and today's Christian conservatives are nostalgic for--was in fact a rather unique era of American history. This does not in any way denigrate the institution of marriage--I happen to agree with those who argue that strong marital unions critical for having a strong societal backbone--but we should be more careful of what we call "traditional" marital practices.

Posted by David Darlington at November 14, 2006 11:11 PM

Comments

Great observation, David.

However, while "late" marriage may not be historically unique as a demographic fact(for men, anyway--women today are marrying nearly four years later, on average, than at any point prior to 1980), Mohler's (and others') criticism of the phenomena underlying the trend over the last 40 years is probably still valid, considering that the *reason* why men delayed marriage in 1900 is probably much different from the reason why they delayed it in 2000.

In 1900, I'd guess most men married later because at age 20 they lacked the financial resources to support a wife who probably wouldn't work outside the home, and the children who would typically appear soon after marriage. Today, "extended adolescence" and acceptance of cohabitation most likely has a lot more to do with it.

Posted by: Eric Seymour at November 15, 2006 09:33 AM | permalink

Religion aside, is there any particular reason why waiting a while to get married is a bad thing?

Note: It could be the case that extended adolescence is bad, even though late marriage is okay - so I'm more interested in why late marriage might be a problem than whether the cause of late marriage is a bad thing. If people waited to get married because they were Nazis, that would clearly be bad, lol, so I'm just curious about the late marriage and not the reason why they marry late.

Posted by: Nick Blesch at November 15, 2006 01:06 PM | permalink

I think you need to read Mark Steyn's new book America Alone. It talks about the death of the west, not only because of late marriage but what late marriage, coupled with other trends such as birth control, smaller families and abortion, leads to: declining fertility rates. That has huge social implications. Europe is dying as are Japan and Russia. The people are just disappearing. If it happens here, it will be a huge problem. There won't be enough people to support the aging population.

There is only one culture that is producing at above replacement rates, and I think we can all be intelligent to recognize the implications of that. It's already happening in France. That is fascinating to me, especially in view of one party's desire to turn us into Europe.

Posted by: JohnH at November 15, 2006 04:36 PM | permalink

JohnH is right that fertility and early marriage go hand-in-hand, or at least have in the past. I think that's one of the reasons Mohler, et al, are pushing earlier marriage (though in Mohler's case, I think he's more concerned with "extended adolescence" from a conservative Christian perspective).

As chart #2 from the Time article I linked demonstrates, below replacement rate fertility already exists in America, except for among Hispanic Americans.

Posted by: David at November 15, 2006 06:58 PM | permalink

November 14, 2006

The Exceptional As Traditional

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