For decades, pop culture norms have told us that girls dream of their perfect wedding from a young age. However, a newly published analysis of 2023 survey data suggests those tides are starting to turn, and perhaps it’s boys who are more eager to piece together vision boards and scrapbooks in anticipation of their big day.
Marriage on the decline
Pew Research recently published an analysis of survey data collected by the University of Michigan in 2023. According to their findings, U.S. high school students are taking an increasingly dim view of marriage, compared to a similar survey conducted three decades prior.
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Whereas 80% of 12th-grade students surveyed in 1993 said they’ll likely choose to get married in the future, only 67% held the same view in 2023.
Likewise, the percentage of students who said they were unsure if they would get married jumped from 16% to 24%. Those who definitively said they don’t want to get married increased by a mere four percentage points, from 5% to 9%.
Dr. Jennifer Randles, associate dean at the College of Social Sciences at Fresno State University, said the shift isn’t surprising.
“As family diversity becomes more socially acceptable, including building and sustaining families without marriage or children, fewer young adults see these milestones as major life goals to which everyone should aspire,” Randles told Straight Arrow News.
Girls vs. boys
Perhaps more interesting, though, was the shifting attitudes toward marriage between girls and boys. Pew’s analysis found that the share of girls who say they want to get married one day plummeted 22 percentage points between 1993 and 2023. Now, 61% of 12th-grade girls say they see nuptials in their future, versus 74% of boys.
Randles said the shift can be attributed to “persistent gender inequities in the benefits of marriage.”
“Compared to women, men have long benefited more from marriage in terms of earnings, happiness, health, housework and childcare,” Randles explained. “Marriage tends to have a ‘traditionalizing’ effect, in that spouses tend to divide labor within the relationship along more traditional gender lines whereby wives do more unpaid care labor and husbands do more work for pay.”
Despite the declining rate of girls who say they want to get married, the percentage of boys who hold that view remained relatively stagnant over the past three decades.
“Most young adults say they want an egalitarian relationship, but if they can’t have that, boys’ plan B tends to be a more traditional route as the higher-earning spouse with a wife who provides more unpaid care,” Randles told SAN. “On the other hand, girls are more likely to say that they would rather eschew marriage altogether if they can’t have equality.”
Where do we go from here?
Meanwhile, the survey results and subsequent analysis illuminated other aspects of high schoolers’ outlooks on marriage.
In 1993, 59% of respondents said it’s very likely that they will stay married to the same person for their entire life. As of 2023, that number stood at 51%. The number of teens who say they want kids of their own has also decreased over the past 30 years, from 64% in 1993 to slightly less than half (48%) in 2023.
According to Pew, there were no significant gender disparities in these other questions.
“When it comes to having kids, young adults are astute; having and raising children is increasingly expensive, and in the United States, governments and workplaces are still relatively unsupportive of parents,” Randles told SAN.
So what should society take away from Pew’s analysis? According to Randles, the lesson is two-fold.
“One, younger generations have a broader view of acceptable families and life choices; and two, if we want to encourage marriage and parenthood, which many young people still want, we should work to make both more equal and easier, such as by supporting parent-friendly policies and workplace practices.”
