Buying the perfect white dress, setting up a guest list, paying for photographers and smearing cake across your spouse’s face appears to be a thing of the past. According to a new survey reported by Agence France Presse (AFP), unmarried households have outnumbered traditional married couple households.
The U.S. Census Bureau in its 2005 American Community Survey indicated 50.2 percent of the population was not cohabiting as married couples. The face of the “traditional household” is being replaced by households headed by 14 million single women, five million single men, and 36.7 million heterosexual couples and same-sex couples, all of which are known as “nonfamily households.”
The census also reported that were more than 30 million unmarried women and men living alone. Although there is a large amount of unmarried couples co-habitating, traditional households with married couples were 49.8 percent.
“It’s normal,” said Nicole Eltzroth, a receptionist at the Cal State Long Beach Testing Office. “I lived with my ex-boyfriend for nine months. I think it’s the step before marriage now.”
This perspective reflects the times and is a dramatic turn from just six years ago when out of the 105.5 million American households, 52 percent of the couples were married. The study indicated that despite attempts by the Bush administration to reinforce traditional families by promoting tax breaks, special legislation and church-sponsored campaigns, the results have not been fertile.
“I want to get married but it’s acceptable not to,” said senior political science major Rachel Rosenfeld. She said she feels there are so many ways people can live without getting married, illustrating same-sex couples as an prominent example.
Women’s studies department Chairwoman Elyse Blankley speculated that the rise in unmarried couples over married couples is not due to a decline in morality or family values as much as it is a question of economic security.
“People are becoming cautious to things that could precipitate economic uncertainty in their lives,” Blankley says. “It’s far more pedestrian than moving away from Christian values. The cost of living has become so high and there are many anxieties and pressures to who is going to be bread-winner.”
She said divorce is a very expensive process. When she got married in ’97, there was a tax increase. Taxes for her and her husband as a married couple were more expensive than if they filed taxes separately.
“One in every two marriages ends in divorce and in the South, I believe it’s slightly higher,” Blankley said, adding that divorce happens in the South despite its apparent emphasis on family values.
With a growing divorce rate in the United States, she speculated that couples are taking what they consider a safer route in avoiding the amount of time and money spent on a divorce and the price tag that can go with a joint marriage.
Experts say the Republicans and Democrats’ exertion in utilizing “family value” politics may not offer the same success in the future as it has in the past.
In the article from the AFP, a sociologist with the American Enterprise Institute, Douglas Besharov, stated, “Change is in the air. The only question is whether it is catastrophic or just evolutionary.”
Besharov also said, “Overall, what I see is a situation in which people, especially children, will be much more isolated, because not only will their parents both be working, but they’ll have fewer siblings, fewer cousins, fewer aunts and uncles. So over time, we’re moving toward a much more individualistic society.”
