Wedding Bells Aren’t Ringing
USAToday reports: “Divorce is on the decline in the USA, but a report to be released today suggests that may be due more to an increase in people living together than to more lasting marriages.”
Begs the question: What cultural drivers in society have led our nation to this statistic?
Aversion to commitment? Failing credibility of the institution? Or the decline of religious belief?
Couples who once might have wed and then divorced now are not marrying at all, according to The State of our Unions 2005. The annual report, which analyzes Census and other data, is issued by the National Marriage Project at New Jersey’s Rutgers University.The U.S. divorce rate is 17.7 per 1,000 married women, down from 22.6 in 1980. The marriage rate is also on a steady decline: a 50% drop since 1970 from 76.5 per 1,000 unmarried women to 39.9, says the report, whose calculations are based on an internationally used measurement.
“Cohabitation is here to stay,” says David Popenoe, a Rutgers sociology professor and report co-author. “I don’t think it’s good news, especially for children,” he says. “As society shifts from marriage to cohabitation - which is what’s happening - you have an increase in family instability.”
You can just hear the proponents of homosexual marriages working on a press release, misusing this report as news to advance their interests.
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