The Wall Street Journal recently analyzed a study of more than 50,000 women by the government's National Survey of Family Growth (NFSG), and they discovered an interesting trend that defies conventional wisdom.
According to the WSJ, "[women] find themselves caught between their career ambitions and pressure to settle down and start a family. The conventional wisdom is that they should get launched professionally in their 20s and wait until 30 or after to marry."
The reasons behind this logic are simple. First, the idea is that if young adults wait until their 30s to wed, then they can establish themselves as independent adults, capable, responsible, and able to show their true colors to a future spouse.
But despite this popular belief, the main reason that the "experts" have recommended putting off marriage for so long is that it "...is also supposed to maximize [the] odds of a lasting bond because the conventional wisdom also holds that early marriage increases the risk of divorce." according to the WSJ report.
Gaping holes have been found in this kind of "conventional wisdom" before. Namely, the study that found that at least 60% of Americans have believe that their children are better off socially and economically with at least one parent staying home.
But the most recent problem found with this kind of "conventional wisdom" lies in the WSJ's report of the most recent NFSG study on marriage.
Brad Wilcox and Lyman Stone wrote for the Wall Street Journal put it this way, "When it comes to divorce, the research has generally backed up the belief that it’s best to wait until around 30 to tie the knot. The sociologist Nicholas Wolfinger of the University of Utah found that women who got married “too early” (the mid-20s or earlier) were more likely to break up than their peers who married close to age 30."
But the "science" which has generally backed up this belief, as it turns out, has left out one key demographic: those who get married without having cohabited with a partner or having entered into an intimate relationship with them.
According to the WSJ, "Research shows that marrying young without having ever lived together with a partner makes for some of the lowest divorce rates [in any population set.]"
According to the NFSG survey, men and women who married between the age of 22 and 30, without first living together, had some of the lowest divorce rates in the NFSG.
The survey also pointed out, as the WSJ notes, that "...a growing body of research indicates that Americans who live together before marriage are less likely to be happily married and more likely to land in divorce court."
Contributor(s)
Al K. Scott
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