Wedded bliss not a priority for U.S. bachelors

[Guest guest]

Wedded bliss not a priority for U.S. bachelors

By Cheryl Wetzstein

THE WASHINGTON TIMES

http://www.washtimes.com/national/20020626-13999480.htm

 

Men won't commit to marriage because they enjoy a sexually active

single life in a social climate that doesn't push them to marry, a new

report says. Top Stories

Young men are indeed " commitment phobic, " which is bad news for young

women who want build a family before they get too old, said researchers

Barbara Dafoe Whitehead and David Popenoe, who run the National Marriage

Project at Rutgers University.

" The median age of first marriage for men has reached 27, the oldest

age in our nation's history, " Mr. Popenoe said.

" If this trend of men waiting to marry continues, it is likely to clash

with the timing of marriage and childbearing for the many young women who

hope to marry and bear children before they begin to face problems

associated with declining fertility, " he said.

There are several specific reasons for why young men are avoiding

marriage, Mr. Popenoe and Mrs. Whitehead said yesterday in their 2002 State

of Our Unions report, titled, " Why Men Won't Commit: Exploring Young Men's

Attitudes About Sex, Dating and Marriage. " The report is based on interviews

with 60 single men, 25 to 33, who live in four parts of the country.

Primarily, young men are enjoying a sexually active single life — often

with a live-in girlfriend — and " are in no hurry " to marry, the researchers

said.

" I'll know when I'm ready, " and " Whatever happens, happens, " were

typical responses by the men.

The researchers also found that young men are often wary of marriage

because of worries that they will marry the wrong person, be forced to make

too many compromises or take on too many burdens as a husband, or suffer

huge losses if the marriage ends in divorce.

An ex-wife will " take you for all you've got " and " men have more to

lose financially than women " were common refrains.

What young men aren't worried about is a personal, biological deadline

to have children, Mrs. Whitehead said.

" Men see marriage as the final step in a prolonged process of growing

up, " with children coming along in due time, she said. This isn't true for

young women, she said, but young men " don't have much sympathy " for women's

fertility problems. " As one man put it, 'That's their issue.' "

Women, meanwhile, have been reminded that their biological clocks are

ticking.

In April, Time magazine ran a cover article on how women's fertility

declines much earlier — after age 27 — and much faster than most people

realize.

A woman's ability to get pregnant drops considerably after age 35, and

by age 40 half her eggs are chromosomally abnormal, according to the Centers

for Disease Control and Prevention. More than 9 million women used

infertility services in 1995, the CDC said.

" Advancing age decreases your ability to have children, " the American

Society for Reproductive Medicine says in a public-service poster, which

uses an hourglass-shaped baby bottle with sand to illustrate its point.

Already the median age of first marriage for women has risen to 25,

after floating between 22 and 23 for the century between 1890 and 1990, Mrs.

Whitehead said.

Traditional social forces, such as the family, religion and the

workplace, used to pressure men toward marriage, but that is no longer the

case, she said.

With the relaxation of social pressures, coupled with general silence

about unmarried couples living together, " men can relax their timetable

indefinitely, " she said.

This means that it falls to an individual woman to press for marriage,

which is why women are more likely to ask for a definition of their

relationship or propose marriage to a man, Mrs. Whitehead said.

Mrs. Whitehead, who often laments the dearth of good statistics on

marriage, noted yesterday that the new report was only a pilot study on men

and said a nationally representative study was needed.

" The federal government, " she wrote, " issues thousands of reports on

nearly every dimension of American life, from what we eat to how many hours

we commute each day, but it provides no annual index or report on the state

of marriage. "