Marriage rate

“ In Europe likewise the marriage rate is decreasing and the divorce rate increasing, each in some countries with even greater rapidity than on the average in the United States. Moreover, the growth of divorce in recent years is a remarkable phenomenon in Catholic as well as Protestant lands. ”

“ Altogether, the outlook matrimonial is not very bright. Now, while we deplore, as a serious evil, hasty, improvident, ill-considered marriages, and hold that their consequences are very sad, we would also, scarcely less seriously, deplore that over-cautiousness which is reducing the marriage rate in quarters where it ought not to be reduced,—our lower middle-class, which is the backbone of society. ”

“ It is worth noting that in England it is usually the husband who petitions for a divorce, and almost always the wife who seeks a judicial separation." [759]
It has long been observed that in Europe the marriage rate falls in hard times and rises again on the return of prosperity. "According to all experience," declares Mill, "a great increase invariably takes place in the number of marriages in seasons of cheap food and full employment." ”

“ This explains the phenomenon, that in most civilized countries the marriage rate is stationary or declining. It was a matter of old experience, that an increase in the price of grain had [133] a detrimental effect on both the marriage and birth rates. With the growing industrial development of any country the marriage and birth rates are influenced more and more by the ups and downs of the market. Economic crises and a lowering of the general economic standard have a lasting unfavorable influence. This may be seen from the marriage statistics of various countries. ”

“ But this is a country where marriage was a very stable aspect of their culture. They had the highest marriage rate and the lowest divorce rate in Europe. They had the lowest out-of-wedlock birth rate in Europe— until what? Until a social movement began to change the definition of marriage. ”

“ It’s like suicides. It’s the easiest thing in the world to predict the number of men and women who will next year “decide” to take their own lives.
The marriage rate responds not only to the economic conditions of a whole country but to the economic conditions of its various parts. ”

“ Depressions in trade have had a tendency to decrease divorces as well as marriages;" whereas in England, while the marriage rate falls the divorce rate rises in hard times. But in that country divorce is notoriously very expensive and hence mainly a luxury for the rich. ”

“ The curves of the marriage-rates in many countries indicate a maximum about or shortly before, 1875, when the birth-rate also tended to reach a maximum, and another rise towards 1900, thus making the intermediate curve concave. There was, however, a large rise in money wages between 1860 and 1875, and the rise in the consuming power of the population has been continuous since 1850. Thus the factors favourable to a high marriage-rate must have risen from 1850 to a maximum about 1870-1875, and since then have fallen continuously. ”

“ The general tendency as regards the age of girls at marriage is summed up by Ploss and Bartels, in their monumental work on Woman, in the statement: "It may be said in general that the age of girls at marriage is lower, the lower the stage of civilization is in the community to which they belong." [136] We thus see one reason why it is that, in an advanced stage of civilization, a high marriage-rate [177] is not necessarily associated with a high birth-rate. A large number of women who marry late may have fewer children than a smaller number who marry early. ”

“ The decline has been widespread, and is most marked in Australia, especially South Australia. There has, however, been a rise in the marriage-rate in Ireland, France, Austria, Switzerland, Germany, and especially Belgium. The movement for decreased child-production would naturally in the first place involve decreased marriage, but it is easy to understand that when it is realized the marriage is not necessarily followed by conception this motive for avoiding marriage loses its force, and the marriage-rate rises. ”

“ Of recent years it has become very difficult to estimate exactly what economic factors affect the marriage-rate. It is believed by some that the marriage-rate rises or falls with the value of exports. ”

“ In communities where women take their places with their husbands in the factory or work-shop, industrial changes do not affect the marriage rate. It is where women are not expected to contribute to the family income, and where men’s wages are at first by no means adequate to meet the expenses of a household, that the marriage rate is affected. ”

“ The minimum age for marriage without parental consent is eighteen for men and sixteen for women. People generally marry young—43 percent of the men married in 1968 were aged twenty to twenty-four, and another 30 percent were twenty-five to twenty-nine; 46 percent of the women married that year were aged fifteen to nineteen, and another 32 percent were twenty to twenty-four. The urban marriage rate was dropping considerably in the late 1960s, probably owing to the housing shortage, but the rural marriage rate remained fairly stable during the decade. ”

“ It is, indeed, extremely probable that a high marriage-rate leads to a low illegitimate birth-rate, and conversely; but we are not justified in regarding such a causal sequence as unquestionable. Variations in the marriage-rate and in the illegitimate birth-rate may be the joint consequences of other common factors. ”

“ In the course of twenty years there was an increase in France and Italy, a stationary condition in Germany and a decrease in England. In France, where the children are the fewest, the proportion of married women is the greatest as is also the number of unlegitimized unions. The decreasing birth rate is not caused by a decreasing marriage rate. ”

“ For twenty or thirty years there has been a steady decline in the marriage-rate. There are powerful influences, starting partly from internal sources and partly from external agencies, which threaten the permanency and best interests of the family. If the laws of the human system can be so changed or violated as to defeat its primary objects, this institution must suffer and decay. There is a normal and healthy organization of the body as well as of the brain, which favors married life and the family relations. ”

“ If men are more timid than formerly in assuming matrimonial ties, or if women show as great a timidity in entering into a relation that promises hardships arising out of their complete economic dependence, the progress married women are making in the skilled industries and other lines of work compatible with their conception of their social status, will prove a large factor in restoring confidence in the mutual helpfulness made possible by marriage and tend to check the decrease of the marriage-rate. ”

“ Marriage.—In the civilised countries of modern Europe the number of marriages per 1000 inhabitants of all ages is from 6 to 8; whilst for every 1000 inhabitants of a marriageable age the annual marriage rate is 50. Of 1000 men over 15 years of age from 400 to 700 are married, whilst of 1000 women over 15 years of age from 440 to 640 are married. A high marriage-rate is not per se either a favourable or an unfavourable manifestation ”

“ In countries that have redefined marriage, where they've said: okay, it's not just a man and a woman, it can be two men, two women, the marriage rates in those countries have plummeted to where you have counties now in northern Europe where 80 percent of the first-born children are born out of wedlock. ”

“ Ogle finds that the lowest average age at marriage for both bachelors and spinsters, viz., 25·6 and 24·2 respectively, was in 1873, the year in which the marriage-rate was highest; and from that date to the present time the ages have gone up gradually but progressively in harmony with the general decline in the marriage-rate. ”

“ Most marriages occur between these ages and nearly all children are born when the mother is between these ages. The excess of people of these ages in Great Britain would account for an excess of marriages and births of 10 per cent, over France and 20 per cent, over Sweden. As the English population becomes stationary we may expect a decrease in marriages and births to that extent.
In Germany as in England the marriage rate is now about the same as it was thirty years ago. ”

“ Theoretically later marriage must, it would seem, lead to the lowering of the birth rate. Facts plainly disprove this, and why should higher education lessen the size of the family as all seem to assume? Because the years of marriage are less? This is a hasty assumption as will appear when we recall that all children are born on an average within 71⁄2 years after marriage, some authorities even say within 5 years. ”

“ We may,” he observes, “dismiss altogether the notion that any adequate check to the increase of population is hereafter to be found in retardation of marriage. Such retardation may defer the day when a stationary population will be necessary, but, when that day has come, will be insufficient to prevent further growth. If a stationary population is to be obtained by simple diminution of the marriage-rate, that rate would have to be reduced 45 per cent. below the lowest point it has ever yet reached. In 90short, almost one-half of those who marry would have to remain permanently celibate. ”

“ The increase in the divorce rate, it seems probable, has been effected predominantly by women; about two-thirds of the total number of divorces are granted to women. (Of course the tradition that it is decent for the man to let the woman get the divorce must not be ignored in this connection.) This increase in divorce may indicate a changing attitude toward the criteria of marriage on the part of women. Women may be demanding more of marriage than in the day when they had little to expect but marriage. ”

“ Then the rate started dropping off as men became more scarce, so that by 1944 the number of marriages was only 1,440,000. In 1945 the trend was changing. Judging from events after World War I, the postwar years will see a spurt in marriages that may take the rate to nearly two million a year for a couple of years. But that won’t change the fact that a good many girls still will not have a chance to marry. ”

“ I asked, "the wives whose hearts have been broken by plurality?"
"Well," was the reply, "there are plenty of unhappy wives. But this is surely not peculiar to polygamy, is it? There are plenty of women who find they have made a mistake. But is it not the same in monogamy? And yet, though our poor women can get divorces with no trouble, and at an expense of only ten dollars, and are certain of a competence after divorce, and of re-marriage if they choose, they do not do it. There is no greater disgrace attaching to divorce here than in Europe. ”

“ The husband cannot divorce her except under a heavy penalty."
"Observe," he answered, "that there is a grave practical inequality which even theory can hardly ignore. The wife parts with something by the very fact of marriage. At the end of two years, when she has borne two, three, or four children, her value in marriage is greatly lessened. ”

“ In the first place, they prove that, in all the countries named, the number of marriages declines. Like Germany, all these countries show the highest frequency of marriage in the beginning of 1872, and then follows a drop in most of them. ”

“ The notion that such a selection is necessary, therefore, adds a new difficulty and obstacle. Pair marriage also, partly on account of the intenser sentiment of parenthood and the more integrated family institution, increases expense, and makes the economic conditions of marriage more severe. Pair marriage forces a large fraction of the population to celibacy, and it is they who are the excluded who suffer by that arrangement. This bears chiefly on women. Everything which violates the taboo in the mores is vice, and is disastrous to all who participate in it. ”

“ But, on the other hand, where the distribution of the national resources is very unequal, the rich may afterwards as well as before continue to follow out their inclination to marry at as early a day and age as they wish; but the less fortunate must remain unmarried through life. Here, therefore, the average number of children to a marriage does not diminish; but the aggregate number of marriages does. ”

“ But if we make a step towards reality and consider a world in which incomes are unequal, and economic difficulties abound—for the present we will ignore the complication of offspring—we at once find it necessary to modify the first fine simplicity of divorce at either partner’s request. Marriage is almost always a serious economic disturbance for both man and woman: work has to be given up and rearranged, resources have to be pooled ”

“ Granted an equal number of males and females between the ages of eighteen and thirty, we have not therefore in English society an equal number of marriageable men and women. Wherever rather late marriage is the rule with men—that is, wherever there is a high standard of comfort—the disproportion is correspondingly great. In a district where boy-and-girl marriages are very common, everybody can be married and be more or less miserable ever after; but in the upper middle class equality in numbers at certain ages implies a surplus of marriageable women over marriageable men. ”

“ It is estimated that between two million and five million of the marriageable women in America today will never marry. Sociologists are already worrying about this “lost generation” of our women between twenty and thirty-five, with those in their late twenties presumably hit the hardest.
You may ask when a girl reaches the peak of her eligibility for [24] marriage. In normal years the peak is between nineteen and twenty-one, and the curve declines markedly after the twenty-fifth birthday. ”