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According to recent data, marriages in England and Wales are down by nearly 9% after a post-pandemic spike, while civil partnerships have risen by almost the same percentage. This downward trend is also reflected in the US. The Vatican has piped up in defence of the institution, releasing a 40-page doctrinal note, Una Caro (One Flesh): In Praise of Monogamy: Doctrinal Note on the Value of Marriage as an Exclusive Union and Mutual Belonging. Sworn celibates would not be my personal first port of call when seeking relationship advice, but to each their own – exclusively and indissolubly, if the Catholic church is to be believed.
Among the younger crowd, gendered expectations about marriage are changing, at least according to a survey by the University of Michigan, which found that only 61% of high-school girls want to be married one day, compared to 74% of the boys. Perhaps this is behind the burgeoning genre of opinion pieces in which a rightwing man complains that women don’t want to date him. Often enough, he is an avowed libertarian, leaving it a mystery why he does not simply accept the workings of the free market.
But what could be putting young girls, and women, off marriage? Well, for women who date men, perhaps it’s the fact that this is what some men’s expectations look like: “At least 20 years younger”, “good breeder”, “taller than 5ft 6in and can’t be a Scorpio”, says 79-year-old baronet Benjamin Slade, who is (in the manner of these things) in want of a wife. I will admit to having been momentarily impressed that this would-be husband knows about astrology, all the more so by his swift conversion of it into a new and exciting way to hate women. But with my rising Scorpio, 5ft 3in stature and hips better adapted to bearing a vintage bumbag than a child, I am presumably out of the running to wed him – as are you, dear reader, since the desired candidate cannot “read the Guardian newspaper”.
One potential reason for the decline of marriage occurs quite early in the pipeline: fewer people are entering the committed relationships that tend to be a prerequisite, barring impulsive antics in Vegas. According to YouGov data, half of 18- to 34-year-old Americans have been in a “situationship”, defined in the Cambridge Dictionary as “a romantic relationship between two people who do not yet consider themselves a couple but who have more than a friendship”. A central feature of such arrangements is that only one party tends to consider it a “yet”.
There are also more fundamental objections to the institution itself. For me, marriage is a form of state authority and coercion that I will not endorse through my participation. Governments use tax breaks, hospital visitation rights and other financial and legal incentives to enforce their chosen relationship structures above others: non-monogamy, communal living and other non-traditional arrangements are sidelined. I do not wish to judge anyone else for marrying, whether they do it wholeheartedly or simply pragmatically – that’s none of my business. But in terms of giving pen-pushing bureaucrats the power to legislate my own private life, it’s a no from me.
My view is not universal. “People Still Want to Marry. Why Aren’t They?” asked a New York Times podcast last month. One explanation offered is that marriage is now considered a “capstone”, not a start, to adulthood: there is increased social pressure to have your finances, career and long-term living arrangements firmly settled before tying the knot, in an atmosphere where employment is becoming ever more precarious and accommodation ever less affordable. For some, marriage is also still a life event that necessarily precedes having children; but many young women will have seen where caring responsibilities fell during the Covid pandemic, and must surely be concluding that the burdens that would be placed on them as parents are impossible.
The optimistic spin is that rather than being cut off from marriage, we’re not being forced into it any more. Nobody who truly believes in the institution should want sceptics like me entering it, anyway. Perhaps the world ahead of us is one where the only people getting married are those who fully want to. That sounds like a happily ever after to me.
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Naoise Dolan is an Irish writer and the author of Exciting Times and The Happy Couple
