Yes, according to a recent N.Y. Times story. Highlights:
The American Community Survey, released this month by the U.S. Census Bureau, indicated that 49.7 percent, or 55.2 million, of the nation’s 111.1 million households last year were made up of married couples, just shy of a majority and down from more than 52 percent five years earlier.
The author suggests that while “the total number of married couples is higher than ever, and most Americans eventually marry, increasing numbers of adults are spending more of their lives single or living unmarried with partners, and the potential social and economic implications are profound.”
(HT: Steve Watters)
Update: Michael Medved calls the NY Times report “just another lie.” Albert Mohler weighs in with a strong reaction as well. His conclusion:
“These statistics can be very misleading — and some will attempt to present a misleading picture. Marriage is not falling out of favor. It has been weakened by social trends and divorce, but one big reason that fewer households are reported as married couples is longevity. Put simply, the fact that people live longer means that more persons will spend more years as a widow or widower. This is not due to any weakening of the marriage bond. This trend will be even more significant as the Baby Boomers reach senior adult years.
We should be honest about the challenges now faced in a culture that has progressively weakened marriage over the past four decades. These factors represent very real challenges. But the idea that marriage is falling out of favor with the American people is just not sustained by the data. By common grace, social tradition, and human intuition, most adults find their way into marriage. That ought to tell us something.”
I should have pointed this out earlier: Some of the media reports that are covering the decline of marriage have a specific agenda of promoting the “normality” of cohabitation and/or same-sex domestic partner living arrangements. This leads them to, in a sense, claim victory by presenting data in a distorted fashion. In this study, for example, they counted households, not individuals. To quote Medved:
“To get some sense of the difference [between households and individuals], imagine a block on a suburban cul de sac that includes six homes. Three of them are occupied by married couples; the other three are in inhabited by an elderly widow, living alone; a struggling single mom with her kids, and a swinging bachelor with a succession of glamorous dates. In other words, there are a total of six households on “Wisteria Court” and, like the national figures, only half of them feature married couples. But of the nine adults (total) who reside on this block, two thirds are currently married.”
So while it is true that people are marrying later (and sometimes for poor reasons), most still marry (85%) and many others look forward to doing so. So the sky isn’t falling!