By now, I feel like I’ve become something of a wedding expert. In addition to planning my own upcoming nuptials, I’ve attended four weddings just this summer, with a fifth around the corner. Not to mention, I served my time as a bridesmaid last summer. My closet may not be bursting with all twenty-seven dresses quite yet, but I now own navy blue regalia for every dress code, which I can wear without fear of accidentally matching the bridal party.
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Until I don that white gown and walk down the aisle this fall, however, my understanding of marriage will remain incomplete and secondhand. And even after my wedding, my knowledge will only grow as the months and years pass. The wedding, after all, is only the beginning.
Still, I’m quite looking forward to getting married. From my perspective as a bride-to-be, the benefits of marriage are obvious. I’ll build a life with my husband, who conveniently happens to be my best friend. I’ll have someone with whom to share joys, sorrows, minor inconveniences, and, hypothetically at least, household chores. We hope to have children and grow together as parents. I’ll never again have to participate in the bouquet toss at future weddings.
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By national standards, I’m a bit early to the altar. In 2023, the U.S. Census Bureau reported that the average age at first marriage was 28 for women and 30 for men. Some of our friends have gotten married younger than us, tying the knot at 22 or 23, rather than our wisened 24 and 26.
Younger generations increasingly view marriage as the “cherry on top” that follows other adult goals like launching a career and starting to crawl out of the student-debt pit. And with the erosion of taboos around cohabitation, more young adults are moving in together prior to marriage. The percentage of adults ages 25 to 34 who were married declined from 2012 to 2022, but the number of adults in that age range who were cohabitating increased over the decade.
As marriage is delayed or eschewed — one in four 40-year-olds have never married — so too is the decision to have children. In 1972, the average age of first-time mothers was 21. By 2021, the average age had risen to 27.3. And the number of couples who are “childless by choice” is on the rise even as birth rates plunge. Less than half of women between ages 18 and 34 who are not yet mothers want children in the future.
Rightly concerned by the drop-off in marriage rates, some conservatives seek to make the world’s oldest institution appealing by emphasizing its practical benefits. After all, the data is on their side. Studies show that married men and women experience a “20-percentage point advantage” when measuring satisfaction with life, and marriage often boosts household income — among other positive data. Children, too, can be justified with economic logic: The investment in childcare and education pays dividends later when the kids support dear old mom and dad in their later years.
All this is well and good, but very few people proceed through life with such detailed attention to the optimization of their personal satisfaction. (And, frankly, those few are usually weeded out by the third date, forever stymied in their quest for felicity maximization.)
Art by Bill Wilson
That’s not to say that financial arguments aren’t employed by young adults as factors impacting their decisions not to get married or not to have children. But economic reasoning is often just the tip of the iceberg — a practical justification for deeper, far more personal hesitations. While it’s worthwhile to address the discrete barriers to family formation, people consistently act on their priorities, and they prioritize what is appealing.
It’s not impossible to find positive examples of marriage and family life in culture, but they’re few and far between. Husbands and fathers are often depicted in film and TV as pushovers or comic fools — if they’re even present in the story. “Wine mom” culture turns a nightly bottle of rosé into an escape hatch from the grubby horrors of life with young children. Widespread acceptance of contraception, abortion, pornography, and no-fault divorce have displaced the center of gravity in relationships by giving heightened priority to individual desires, shifting the emphasis from “we” to “me.”
Despite this, marriage could be viewed as an expression of the security of a long-term, exclusive romantic partnership — until polyamory (formerly known as cheating) rose to prominence in public discourse. With major outlets like the New York Times, Washington Post, and Wall Street Journal writing sympathetically about the latest phenomenon in cultural dysfunction, even exclusivity isn’t necessarily a marital guarantee.
At best, marriage means warm fuzzy feelings and joint tax filings. At worst, it’s a trap, an imbalanced power dynamic, or a bond that’s just as susceptible to a breakup as a dating relationship.
No amount of financial prosperity can smooth over the wounds of broken relationships, prompt the emotional vulnerability necessary for a healthy marriage, or repair the trust needed to start a family. At the end of the day, the positive case for marriage and family can’t be made purely through practical logic and sociological data. Ironically, the romance of the relationship — of joining two lives into one — is often sidelined. But younger generations need an antidote, not an argument.
Marriage is order and mystery wrapped up in one. It’s an adventure of constructing a shared world as a couple into which new life can be brought. It’s the union of two persons who, despite knowing each other deeply, can never grasp the full mystery of their spouse. It’s a relationship predicated not on selfish spontaneity but on order and reciprocity.
Marriage and family life bear witness to the reality that order and freedom are two sides of the same coin. Through married life, individuals cooperate with God’s creative genius to bring about children and domestic order. This is fairly apparent to Christians, who understand marriage as an imitation of the communal life of the Trinity, but it’s lost on much of our culture.
However, the instinct toward order is natural. Some young women — often in Christian or conservative circles — push back against dominant narratives about female empowerment by embracing a more traditional vision of femininity that emphasizes marriage and children. The “trad wife” aesthetic glamorizes domestic hobbies like baking sourdough from scratch, cooking homemade meals, and cultivating interior decor. But the reversion to seemingly traditional gender roles in an increasingly nontraditional culture leaves women adrift when faced with ordering the home.
Domestic delights like sourdough are fun, but they are primarily aesthetic elements of order that can only be appreciated when other aspects of home life have been tended to. The irony is obvious when a woman prides herself on her “trad wife” abilities while neglecting external order in the home — leaving the space cluttered and disorganized or failing to follow through on unglamorous chores.
And, ultimately, internal order is less obvious but far more essential for marriage and family life. To embrace the freedom intrinsic to marriage, both parties need to cultivate virtue, bringing their own impulses and desires to heel for the benefit of the other. Many happy marriages have flourished without sourdough loaves, and house cleaners can be hired — but there is no substitute for the internal order brought about by continuous self-discipline.
The simultaneous order and freedom found in and brought about by marriage spills over and brings order to the rest of life. There’s no sufficient logical argument for marriage and family life because those relationships transcend the spare logic of practical reality. Far better to argue by example — I certainly hope to do so.
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