A new analysis of U.S. government data has yielded some shocking results surrounding Millennials and marriage, with the Institute for Family Studies finding that 26 percent of Americans between the ages of 30 and 34 have “not yet started a family.”
This means that these Millennials have neither had kids nor married. Meanwhile, an additional 18 percent have children, but haven’t yet married and 56 percent have been married before (76 percent of these Millennials in the latter group have children).
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Wendy Wang, a sociologist and the director of research for the Institute of Family Studies, explained what, in her view, is happening among American Millennials.
“Throughout history, marriage and parenthood have been defining milestones of adulthood. But for today’s millennial generation, these social institutions are not only loosely linked, but also beginning to lose ground.” Wang wrote. “Millennials’ delay in ‘settling down’ marks a clear distinction from earlier generations. When the Baby Boomers (specifically, the late cohort born between 1957 and 1962) were the same age, only 13% had not formed a family. And only 10% had never married but had children.”
In the end, young adults seem to be postponing marriage and parenthood, with Wang writing that there’s no way to know what the future holds when it comes to the question of whether family patterns will change.
Based on her past research, though, she made a fascinating potential projection surrounding Millennials and marriage.
“According to an earlier projection that I conducted at the Pew Research Center, there has been a steady increase since 1970 in the share of young adults who have never married by the time they reach ages 45 to 54,” she wrote. “Assuming the current trend continues, when today’s never-married young adults reach their mid-40s and 50s, a quarter of them are likely to have never tied the knot.”
Wang continued, “Given … demographic trends, we expect that while many of today’s 30-somethings may eventually marry and become parents, a significant share will remain unmarried and/or childless when reaching older ages.”
Read the fascinating analysis in its entirety here.
(H/T: Christian Post)