August 6, 2006
About 18 percent of men ages 40 to 44 with less
than four years of college have never married, according to census estimates.
That is up from about 6 percent a quarter-century ago. Among similar men ages
35 to 39, the portion jumped to 22 percent from 8 percent in that time.
At virtually every level of education, fewer Americans
are marrying. But the decline is most pronounced among men with less education.
Even marriage rates among female professionals over 40 have stabilized in
recent years.
The decline in marriage can be traced to many
factors, experts say, including the greater economic independence of women and
the greater acceptance of couples living together outside of marriage.
For men without higher education, though, dwindling
prospects in the labor market have made a growing percentage either unwilling
to marry or unable to find someone to marry them.
Doug Thomas, 45, a computer technician with one
year of college, has spent more of his adult life securing his financial
footing than he has searching for a wife.
“I make enough where sure, I could get married, and
sure, the girl would not have to work,” said Mr. Thomas, of
But he worries what that would mean for the
relationship and whether he and his wife would have time together. “Well, now
you’re locked into working all those hours,” he said.
Jeff Enos, 40, a high
school graduate and a construction foreman in
Perhaps most significant, many men without college
degrees are not marrying because the pool of women in their social circles —
those without college degrees — has shrunk. And the dwindling pool of women in
this category often look for a mate with more education and hence better
financial prospects.
“Men don’t marry because women like myself don’t need to rely on them,” said Shenia
Rudolph, 42, a divorced mother from the
In 1980, only 6 percent of men in
their early 40’s at all levels of education and 5 percent of women in their
early 40’s had never married.
By 2004, this portion had increased to 16.5 percent of men and about 12.5
percent of women.
Of the men remaining single, the greatest number are high school dropouts, especially blacks and
unemployed men. But marriage is also declining among white men and men with
jobs who lack college degrees.
There is no conclusive evidence that marriage helps
men. Still, some social scientists worry that not marrying
may further marginalize men who are already struggling.
“It is a mistake to think of this as just happening
to the underclass at the bottom,” said Christopher Jencks, a professor of
sociology at Harvard. “It is also
happening to people with high school diplomas or even some college. That is the
group that has been most affected by the decline in real wages in the last 30
years.”
The course of Mr. Thomas’s life has been determined
as much by his finances as by circumstance or his own character. He is a tall,
athletic man with cropped, George Clooney-style hair who projects a kind and
upbeat persona — surely a catch to some women in
It is only now, working for Hewlett-Packard, that he has been able to pay off debts and build a
nest egg. The job, however, which pays about $56,000 a year, could end next
year, leaving Mr. Thomas, who would like to begin a lower-paying career as a
graphic designer, feeling a greater urgency to save.
One way he has cut costs is by giving up his
expensive one-bedroom apartment. Two years ago, he rented a room in a town
house from Anna Mahoney, a single woman four years his junior. They pool
household purchases and buy in bulk. Their platonic friendship serves as a
stand-in for their families, who live out of state.
Yet their domesticity has also bred a level of
intimacy that can alienate romantic partners. Ms. Mahoney frequently refers to
herself and Mr. Thomas as “we.” Mr. Thomas dutifully churns the oil in the jars
of almond butter and takes out the garbage.
“She always says: ‘You’re going to be my roommate
forever. Then when I get married, you’re going to live in my basement,’ ” Mr.
Thomas said. “I’m like, ‘Pleeease. When you start
dating, I’m going to be so out of there.’ ”
When Mr. Thomas fell in love last year and began
bringing his girlfriend to the town house, Ms. Mahoney complained that his
girlfriend, a 33-year-old dialysis technician, was sloppy. Meanwhile, his
girlfriend objected to the time that he spent with Ms. Mahoney, Mr. Thomas
said.
“It was a constant form of stress,” he said. The two
had discussed moving in together, but the bickering made them wonder if it was
a good idea. In February, after one year together, they broke up.
“I miss her horribly,” Mr. Thomas said quietly one
recent Saturday after stopping at a health store to buy vitamins on Ms.
Mahoney’s shopping list.
Pool of Potential Mates Shrinks
A quarter-century ago, when fewer women went to
college, there was a plentiful supply of potential mates for men who had only a
high school diploma. Even men who dropped out of high school could get
blue-collar jobs paying decent wages and could expect to find, and support, a
wife.
As women started climbing the educational ladder,
first equaling and then surpassing men in college attendance and graduation
rates, the pool of potential partners shrank.
At the same time, broad changes in the roles of men
and women upended the traditional marriage contract in which the husband
provided a paycheck in return for the wife’s housework and child care.
First, as more women joined the work force, they
became less dependent on men’s earnings. More than 70 percent of women ages 25
to 54 are working today, up from about half of such women 30 years ago.
While women were gaining economic independence,
wages were slumping in the blue-collar jobs that in the past allowed
less-educated men to support a family. Women, largely employed in service
industries more resilient than manufacturing, fared better.
Between 1979 and 2003, the earnings of men with a
few years of college but no degree barely kept up with inflation, while those
for women rose by 20 percent in real terms. For high school graduates with no
college experience, men’s earnings declined 8 percent over the period, while women’s advanced 12 percent.
“In the past guys could drop out of school after
finishing high school, or even without finishing, and go into a factory and get
a steady job with benefits,” said Valerie K. Oppenheimer, professor emeritus of
sociology at the University of
California,
Not all men have adjusted to the new dynamics of
marriage and work, as women have gained greater clout and become more vocal
about what they want from their mates. By 2001, wives earned more than husbands
in almost one of four marriages in which both partners worked, compared with 16
percent in 1980.
“Changing women’s expectations about what married
life should be like has put more tension into these relationships,” Mr. Jencks
said. “Men who have graduated from college have been more responsive and ready
to accommodate those changes than those who haven’t.”
Though many unmarried men and women do end up
living together, cohabitation is a less stable arrangement. There is a 43
percent chance that a couple living together will split up within three years,
compared with a 12 percent chance for a breakup of a first marriage in that
time. “It’s more like a stopgap,” said Andrew J. Cherlin,
a professor of sociology at Johns Hopkins University.
In 2005 there were nearly 5 million households of
unmarried partners of the opposite sex, according to census estimates, up from
1.6 million in 1980. In 2004, 36 percent of babies were born to unmarried
women.
As a response to some of these trends, many women
with limited education have turned theirs sights on “marrying up,” choosing men
who may be older, more established and more educated.
“Why would you want to be in a stable relationship
with somebody who is unstable?” asked Ketny
Jean-Francois, a never-married 30-something from the Bronx who has supported
her 3-year-old son on her unemployment check and food stamps since leaving her
job as a security guard a year ago. “It’s a myth that all women want to marry.”
Ms. Rudolph has sworn off blue-collar men. For a
man to be marriage material, “you have to have a job;
you have to be educated; you have your own apartment and a car,” she said.
“Both have to contribute something.”
She speaks from experience. She married her high
school boyfriend right after graduation, a 2-week-old baby in arms. But her
husband, who never graduated, was unemployed for most of their marriage, and
the couple broke up after six years.
Determined to find a man who had better prospects,
Ms. Rudolph entered a relationship with a basketball player and had three
children with him. It ended when she learned he was married to someone else, a
revelation that left her badly shaken. “I don’t trust men to marry them,” she
said.
Tax policy does not encourage poor couples to
marry. At the lower end of the income scale, couples with two incomes face
higher marginal tax rates if they marry. Couples can also lose federal dollars
when marriage increases their household earnings above the threshold for
welfare payments.
According to C. Eugene Steuerle
of the Urban Institute, a single mother of two children who earns $15,000 a
year gets an earned income tax credit of $4,100. If she marries a man making
$10,000 a year, the benefit drops to $2,100.
David Popenoe, a
sociologist at
Joe Callender, 47, a retired
“Marriage, that’s sacred to me; I’m committed to
you for the rest of my life, my last breath,” Mr. Callender
said, describing his vision of the institution. “I’m not cheating, looking.
Work, home, that’s it. It’s you and me against the world.”
Fears of Divorce
Relaxed mores have also encouraged more gay men to
live openly homosexual lives. “I think this could be a minor factor but not a
major one” in the decline of marriage, Professor Cherlin
said. But it would not explain the gap between the educated and the less so.
The percentage of college-educated men who marry has been relatively stable the
last few years, while the marriage rate among college-educated women has
actually ticked up.
For some men, living with a girlfriend is an
attractive alternative given the possibility of a messy divorce. Many men fear
that a former wife will take all their money. For blue-collar men, the divorce
rate is twice that of men with college degrees.
“From the view of the male, there are pretty big
reasons you would not marry,” Professor Popenoe said.
It was his parents’ divorce that showed Mr. Enos, the
After high school, Mr. Enos
joined the Marines. Once his service was complete, he moved back to
He has vowed not to mix personal and legal affairs.
He has worked too hard, he said, to lose his house and his savings if a
marriage were to fail. “I told my girlfriend a long time ago: ‘Don’t pressure
me. I don’t want to get married and then divorced,’ ” Mr. Enos
said.
The same fear has lurked in Tom Ryan’s mind. Mr.
Ryan, 54, an electronics specialist who lives outside
His girlfriend, who had been with him for six
years, had wanted to marry and have a child. But Mr. Ryan, who attended music college for a year and spent his 20’s singing in a
local rock band, did not feel ready.
He loved her, he recalled one afternoon this
summer, but was reluctant to settle down. After a decade of playing concerts
(including a tour in
Comfortable Being Alone
Mr. Ryan, who grew up without a father, learned how
to be alone. A new girlfriend came along, but he was unwilling to let her move
in as much as a toothbrush. They broke up. He went to a community college and
got an associate’s degree in electronics. He renovated the basement. He built a
soundproof recording room. He learned to enjoy the silence and the ability to
be as fastidious at home as he pleased.
When he walks in the front door after a weekend
trip or a run or a bike ride, he often puts a commemorative baseball cap on his
coat rack, and now, about three dozen hats cover the rack, with no apparent
space for a purse or a diaper bag.
“Later in life, will I miss the fact that I don’t
have a little son or daughter around?” Mr. Ryan asked. “I probably will. But
it’s not totally out of the question.”
For every man who fits into one of the categories
of unmarried men put forth by social scientists — men who cannot commit, men
who are afraid of divorce, men who have been forced to the edges of the economy
— there is a man like Chris Cunningham of Staten Island.
Mr. Cunningham, 41, a sanitation worker, seems to
defy any theory about why he is single. He has, he said, simply not met the
right woman.
Born and raised in Brooklyn, and now assigned to an
office job in
He makes a comfortable living at about $80,000 a
year. He appears self-deprecating and sweet, and is clean-shaven (his head,
too). Eager to have children of his own, he bought Christmas presents last year
for several children in
With most of his friends paired off, and few single
women in the Milltown clique, his dating life has stalled. “It’s funny,” he
said one Saturday as adults mingled and children scampered with water toys at a
block party. “You feel kind of like they met someone and got their lives
started, and you’re still waiting for it to happen to you.”
Some social scientists have found that married men
are healthier and earn slightly more than unmarried men. But it is unclear
whether marriage produces higher incomes and better health, or whether people
who are richer and healthier in the first place more often choose to marry.
Beyond the questions of finances and health, there
is the issue of how content these men are. All the men interviewed for this
article looked younger than their age. All said they were happy with their
lives, even Mr. Cunningham, with his clear longing for a family of his own, and
Mr. Thomas, of
Mr. Ryan, too, said he enjoyed being single. He
stood talking in his kitchen on a Saturday when he had no plans other than a
solo bike ride. It was a slow weekend day — his birthday, in fact — and though
the phone never rang, he was free for dinner.