With This Ring

Executive Summary

A national telephone survey of 1,503 Americans age 18 and older conducted late in 2003 and early in 2004 that asked questions about attitudes toward marriage, aspirations for marriage, and past experiences with marriage yielded the following findings:

1. Although only 60 percent of the respondents were married at the time of the survey (virtually the same percentage as shown by recent Census surveys), Americans clearly are not rejecting marriage. Most of the older respondents were married or had been married (96 percent of those age 60 and older), and most of the unmarried younger respondents said they wanted to marry. Only two percent of the respondents had never married and said they did not want to marry. In spite of much talk about a “retreat from marriage” among African Americans, only three percent of the black respondents had never been married and said they did not want to marry.

2. One of the most surprising and important findings of the survey casts doubt on the widespread belief that persons can increase their chances of having good marriages by postponing marriage until their late twenties or their thirties. Although respondents who married after their midtwenties were only about as likely to have divorced as those who married in their mid-twenties, they were much more likely to be in intact first marriages of poor or mediocre quality.

3. A very large majority of the respondents to the survey expressed pro-marriage attitudes and a very small minority expressed attitudes that could reasonably be considered “anti-marriage.” For instance, most of the respondents to the survey said that marriage should be a lifelong commitment (88 percent) and that fathers are just as important as mothers for the proper development of children (97 percent). A substantial majority (71 percent) disagreed with the statement that “Either spouse should be allowed to terminate a marriage at any time for any reason,” thus expressing their disapproval of unilateral no fault divorce (though that term was not used in the question).

4. Although the respondents were not asked specifically about healthy marriage initiatives and similar governmental and private efforts to strengthen marriages, most of them expressed agreement with the goals of such efforts and confidence in some of the methods being used. For instance, 94 percent agreed that divorce is a serious national problem, and 86 percent agreed that all couples considering marriage should get premarital counseling. Furthermore, almost half (47 percent) thought that premarital counseling should be

5. Although very few of the respondents agreed with such anti-marriage statements as “Marriage is an old-fashioned, outmoded institution,” such sentiments were expressed more frequently by younger respondents than by older ones (possibly indicating a trend), by poorly educated than by better educated respondents, and by secular than by religious ones.

6. Sentiments that some observers consider a threat to marriage, though they are not clearly anti-marriage, were expressed more frequently by younger than by older respondents. These include approval of cohabitation as a means of testing compatibility for marriage, believing that divorced parents can parent just as effectively as married ones, and rejection of the notion that, in the absence of violence and extreme conflict, parents should stay together until their children are grown. These age differences almost certainly reflect a trend toward less traditional attitudes toward marriage.

7. In contrast to widespread aspirations to marry amongunmarried young persons, a large percentage of the unmarried but once married middle-aged and elderly respondents said theydid not want to remarry. This includes 82 percent of those age 60and older and 49 percent of those ages 35 through 59. At each age level, men more than women, and divorced persons more than widowed ones, were likely to say they wanted to remarry. However, the persons who had rejected marriage for themselves still generally expressed pro-marriage attitudes.

8. The responses of the married respondents to questions about their marriages indicate a generally high level of marital quality. Sixty-nine percent said their marriages were “very happy,” and 88 percent said they were either “completely satisfied” or “very satisfied” with their marriages. Survey respondents may tend to exaggerate the quality of their marriages, but 73 percent of all of the respondents agreed that “Most married couples I know have happy, healthy marriages.” An astounding 97 percent of the married respondents said they expected to be married for life, and 93 percent said they would marry their spouses if they had it to do again.

9. High levels of marital happiness and satisfaction do not, by themselves, mean that the institution of marriage is healthy, and other indicators of marital health are less positive. For instance, of those respondents who first married 15-25 years before the survey, 44 percent had divorced, two percent were separated, and another 21 percent were in intact first marriages they reported to be less than “very happy.” This leaves only 33 percent of the marriages that can be considered successful, in the sense of being both stable and of high quality. Another negative indicator of the health of marriage is that fewer than 40 percent of the survey respondents age 25 and older were married and reported their marriages to be “very happy.”

10. A Relative Marital Success Index based on both the stability and quality of the first marriages of the survey respondents reveals substantial differences in marital success among different portions of the American population. Among the people with unusually poor average marital success are those who have little education, who have little or no religiosity, who live in the South and West, whose parents divorced before they were age 16 (females only), who lived with their spouses before marrying, and who married before age 20. These findings identify portions of the population whose marriages warrant special attention from policymakers and others concerned about American marriage, and they suggest, but by themselves cannot prove, some of the reasons for marital success and failure.

11. The ever-divorced respondents reported what they considered to be major reasons for their divorces by selecting from a list of reasons thought to be important by marriage researchers. “Lack of commitment” of one or both spouses was the most frequently selected reason, followed by “too much conflict and arguing" and “infidelity.” “Married too young,” “unrealistic expectations,” “lack of preparation,” and “inequality” were among the other frequently selected reasons. Many of the frequently given reasons can be addressed by the kinds of interventions included in healthy marriage initiatives and similar programs. The reason on the list that probably can be least effectively addressed by such programs, “financial problems,” was not often chosen.

12. Two questions on the survey asked ever-divorced respondents (a) if they wished that they, themselves, had worked harder to save the marriage, and (b) if they wished their ex-spouse had done so. Only about a third of the respondents answered no to both questions, and 62 percent of both the ex-husbands and the ex-wives answered yes to the question about their ex-spouse’s efforts. Neither this finding nor the fact that “lack of commitment” was the most frequently chosen reason for the respondents’ divorces is consistent with the claim made by some commentators on American marriage that most divorces occur only after the spouses have done their best to make the marriage work. 

For a full copy of this report, please see: http://www.fatherhood.org/download_files.asp?DownloadID=10