Why Younger People Are Choosing Not To Marry
Marriage used to be the default “next step,” like graduating, getting a job, and pretending you understand retirement accounts. Now, a lot of younger adults see it as optional, not inevitable.
That doesn’t mean young people are all anti-romance. In a Pew Research Center survey, 69% of adults ages 18 to 34 who’ve never been married said they do want to marry someday, while 8% said they don’t. What’s changed is the why and the when, plus the fact that plenty of people feel perfectly fine never making it official.
Money Isn’t Romantic
Housing costs have a way of turning “Let’s build a life together” into “Let’s split streaming services and survive.” Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies reported that half of U.S. renters were cost-burdened in 2022, meaning they spent more than 30% of their income on rent and utilities. When keeping a roof over your head already feels like a high-stakes puzzle, a wedding can look less like a milestone and more like a luxury purchase.
Student loans also have a bad habit of lingering. The Federal Reserve Bank of New York notes that a higher number of grads have started missing their student loan payments. If your budget is already committed to debt and rent, committing to marriage can feel like adding pressure instead of stability.
Even when paychecks inch upward, purchasing power doesn’t always keep pace with real life. The Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that the month-to-month changes aren’t exactly the kind of glow-up that makes big financial leaps easy. For a lot of people, marriage is getting treated like the cherry on top, and the sundae isn’t built yet.
It’s Not For Social Currency Anymore
A big shift is that younger adults don’t automatically tie marriage to a fulfilling life. Pew found that 20% of adults ages 18 to 34 said being married is extremely or very important for living a fulfilling life, which is far lower than the share who said the same about feeling fulfilled by a job, a community, or their platonic relationships. That’s a quiet revolution: meaning and identity are being sourced from places that don’t require a romantic connection.
Family pressure also seems to be easing, which matters more than people admit. In that same Pew research study, 73% of never-married young adults said they feel little or no pressure from parents to get married. When the “When are you getting married?” interrogation loses steam, it becomes easier to choose your own pace, or choose out entirely.
Culturally, marriage has shifted from “required” to “opt-in.” Many younger folks want partnership, but they’re less convinced that partnership must come with the same script their parents followed. If you grew up watching friends build chosen families, prioritize mental health, or move cities for opportunity, you’re more likely to treat marriage as one possible avenue for your future, but certainly not the only one.
Education and Independence
Marriage used to be partly about economics: combining resources because survival was easier as a unit. Now, more women have the credentials and earning potential to make adult life work without needing a spouse as financial backup. The U.S. Census Bureau reported that in 2022, 39.0% of women age 25+ had a bachelor’s degree or higher, compared with 36.2% of men.
Among younger adults, the education gap shows up clearly, too. Pew reports that women ages 25 to 34 are more likely to have completed a bachelor’s degree than men of the same range, and that pattern appears across major racial and ethnic groups.
Independence doesn’t make relationships less valuable, but it does raise the standard for what’s worth merging your life for. If you can pay your bills, travel, and build community on your own, a marriage proposal has to compete with the peace of a life that already works. That’s why you’ll see more people hold out for a partnership that’s emotionally and practically balanced, not just socially approved.
Preferring Cohabitation and Long-Term Partnership
A lot of couples are building committed lives without a wedding, and they’re not exactly hiding it. Pew’s analysis of Census Bureau data found that in 2023, 7% of U.S. adults were living with an unmarried partner, up from 6% in 2019.
Even broader patterns point in the same direction. Pew also reports that 42% of U.S. adults were “unpartnered” in 2023, down slightly from 2019, while the percentage of married adults ticked up from 50% to 51%. That mix suggests people are still coupling up, just not always through marriage, and sometimes not through cohabitation either.
There’s also a practical reason some couples skip the paperwork: marriage isn’t only romance, it’s law. Legal ties can make sense for taxes, insurance, and medical decisions, but they can also add complexity if your finances, family situation, or long-term plans are still shifting.
The Risk of Divorce
Marriage is easier to enter than to exit, and younger adults know it. In the U.S., the CDC reports that over 2 million marriages occurred in 2023, and nearly 700,000 divorces and annulments, with a divorce rate of about two per 1,000 people.
If you’ve watched messy breakups turn into expensive legal processes, you might treat marriage like a high-liability contract. People aren’t only thinking about heartbreak; they’re thinking about housing, debt, and whether a split could derail years of progress. That kind of risk calculus can push couples toward slower commitment, prenuptial agreements, or staying unmarried altogether.
Global patterns back up the idea that this is bigger than one country’s vibe. The OECD’s Society at a Glance 2024 notes long-term change in marriage and divorce patterns across many high-income countries, alongside shifting social norms and economic pressures. When the overall story is “traditional timelines keep moving,” a growing number of younger people decide they’d rather build stability first and choose marriage only if it truly fits.
