More and more Americans are rejecting the idea of marriage. In fact, more say, “I don’t” than say, “I do.” So what does that say about America?
For the first time since the government started keeping records on it, married people are the minority in America, although it’s not by much. 50.2 percent of Americans are unmarried. But that’s a huge difference from back in the 70s when only 37 percent of adults were single. Also up: both the percentage of people who have simply never married, and the number of people who get divorced. Bottom line: for whatever reason, more people simply are not married.
But those stats come at an interesting time in our nation’s perception of marriage. One of the hot-topic issues facing our courts right now is gay marriage. While several states have voted to recognize it, or lawsuits have forced them to, other states haven’t, or have decided gay marriage bans are constitutional. The Supreme Court doesn’t want to deal with it, but eventually, they’ll have to.
And being a parent also doesn’t seem to be much of a factor anymore. The feds say there were more than 12 million single-parent families last year. And about 4 out of 10 children are born to unwed mothers.
You used to hear about “shotgun weddings” for that kind of thing. Not any more. It makes us wonder how important you think marriage is in America. And so our married Man on the Edge, Robert Wilder, hit the streets to find out…
