It seems like nearly every week we encounter a new headline about the struggles facing boys and the decline of men. As awareness has spread, it has led to increasing appeals for the development of programs and policies that will better support young men. Often these calls focus on educational programs, increased vocational training, access to mental health services, boundaries on harmful technologies, and other initiatives to better assist young men in transitioning into adult roles. These are all worthwhile efforts that deserve our collective attention and serious investment.
However, there is one part of the conversation about how to help young men thrive that needs more attention—and that is how the falling rates of dating and marriage are playing a significant role in undermining young men’s capacity to flourish in life. Currently, when the topic of marriage is discussed in relation to men’s life trajectories, the focus is typically on a lack of “marriageable men” in our society and how this trend is contributing to a retreat from marriage by women. From this perspective, men’s developmental trajectories (or the lack thereof) are the “cause,” and the retreat from marriage is the “effect.”
While there is certainly some truth to this observation, the reverse is also true. The retreat from marriage is contributing to the decline of men. The collective decline of marriage in our society is diminishing—and in some cases erasing—one of the primary motivational mechanisms of young men’s growth and development.
How is this happening? Human development scholars have long recognized the significance of a developmental process known as “anticipatory socialization.” The concept was introduced in 1949 by sociologist Robert K. Merton, to explain how individuals adjust to expected social roles, particularly when entering new stages of development. Anticipatory socialization is the process of learning and practicing the values, norms, and behaviors of a new social role before fully entering it. Anticipatory socialization eases developmental transitions and role changes by providing knowledge, skills, and expectations in advance. This developmental process also fosters identity development, increases competence, and provides a sense of socially-validated meaning and purpose.
There is a compelling body of research that shows that marriage has traditionally been, and continues to be, one of the primary motivators of adult development in young men (and this is true of young women as well). The clear prospect of marriage has long been a critical form of anticipatory socialization that promotes active marriage preparation years before a wedding takes place. And we know that the eventual results of this developmental trajectory lead to significant differences in the behavior of single and married men—with married men experiencing a “marriage premium” of well-documented advantages including higher income, better health, and greater happiness compared to their single counterparts. But the research also shows that these benefits begin to accrue years before marriage if the prospect of marriage is clearly “on the horizon” in a young man’s plans.
Marriage Delayed
The median age of marriage in the United States has increased over the last 50 years and has reached historic highs, with men generally marrying at age 31 and women at age 29. However, the good news is that most single adults still desire to marry, with Pew Research reporting that nearly 7 in 10 young adults ages 18 to 34 say they want to get married one day and only 8% say they don’t want to get married. Notably, nearly 1 in 4 of young adults (23%) say they are “not sure” if they want to marry. Men and women are about equally likely to say they want to get married.
Despite these delays, it is important to remember that not all young adults are postponing marriage until their 30s or beyond. In fact, currently in the United States, 23% of women and 20% of men have married by age 25. With a portion of their peers marrying in their early 20s, most young adults are acquainted with friends, classmates, or others in their generational cohort who are getting married or starting to consider marriage. Within this setting, young adults form marriage paradigms made up of whether they desire to marry or not, their ideal age of marriage, the type of person they would like to marry, and their sense of personal readiness for marriage.
The collective decline of marriage in our society is diminishing—and in some cases erasing—one of the primary motivational mechanisms of young men’s growth and development.
Marital Horizon Theory
For the last 20 years, I have developed and tested a marital horizon theory of young adulthood. This theory begins with a simple, but underappreciated premise: young adults’ perceptions of marriage—its importance, its timing, and the needed preparations for it—do not merely reflect their developmental stage, they actively shape it.
Marital horizon theory acknowledges that optimal development doesn’t just build on its foundations, it hangs from its apex. We must begin with a vision of flourishing and then work backward to understand what developmental conditions and milestones make that flourishing trajectory possible. For young adult men (and women), the data is clear that one of the most consequential factors of their developmental trajectories is the clarity or uncertainty of their marital horizons.
Here are three ways that marital horizons shape young men’s developmental trajectories.
1. The Motivation to Work
An awareness of the benefits of marriage has been growing over the last 25 years. Thanks to dozens of studies and a number of high profile books such as The Case for Marriage, The Two-Parent Privilege, and Get Married, our collective understanding of the emotional, physical, economic, and sexual benefits of marriage to individuals and society is at an all-time high. However, what is less appreciated is the research on the motivational power of marriage – how marriage does not merely select people who already have these benefits but actively motivates and provides people with a framework to create these benefits.
A primary example of the motivation of marriage is found in research on men’s labor market dynamics. For example, data from the Current Population Survey show that married men consistently work 20% to 30% more hours than their never-married counterparts—a gap that translates to roughly 400 to 600 additional hours worked per year. And a recent study from Vanderbilt University and the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond found that in terms of aggregate impact, the decline in marriage rates between 1970 and 2018 explains fully 72% of the decline in total hours worked by prime-age men.
The primary question that arises is whether this work-marriage relationship is simply a matter of selection—that is, whether more productive men are simply more likely to get married—or whether marriage itself changes men’s behavior. The recent analyses from Vanderbilt and the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond is notable precisely because it addresses this directly in a series of analyses where they conclude that “many of the additional hours worked by married men can be attributed to an increase in work in the years leading up to marriage.”
That study further concluded that the eventual gap in hours worked between married and single men is primarily driven by increases in the hours around the time when men first marry, especially during the 5 years prior to marriage. They explain:
Married men work substantially more hours than men who have never been married. Much of this gap is accounted for by an increase in work at the individual level in the years leading up to marriage… Selection into marriage explains only a small part of the increase in hours around marriage. Instead, the primary driver of the increase in hours is an altruistic “mou
