Marriage and Family Trends

Hello family and friends!! This week I wanted to write about something I found super interesting in my Family Relations class at BYU-Idaho. My professor wrote a few things up on the whiteboard and we discussed how they are impacting the world right now. He had a column titled Marriage and Family Trends, where he wrote a list of what is common today among couples and those with children and how marriage and family are being negatively affected by these growing trends. We have quite the long list of trends and I won’t go over all of them, but at the end of my post I will list all the trends we talked about and if you have any comments or questions about them, feel free to reply! I do want to discuss a few that I felt more passionate about.

The first trend we discussed was about how marriages are declining and why. There are lots of reasons as to why of course, some people are just having a hard time finding someone to spend the rest of their lives with. I know this isn’t the case for all, but for some it could be based on the mentality that we are developing in the US as I don’t want to settle and I can do better, or the fear of missing out somewhere else. Another thing we talked about is that jobs and education are put as such a priority now and marriage is seen as getting in the way in some cases. I know that marriage is a commitment but it is so worth it, I have only been married 6 months, but everyday I am reminded how amazing it is to have my husband in my life and I hope we do our best to know just how important marriage is and teach our future generation that.

The next trend I wanted to write my thoughts on was how cohabitating raises the rates of divorce and yet more and more are cohabitating. Did you know that between 60-80% of young adults are cohabitating before marriage? Some people may say, so what or no big deal. To me, this is a huge deal. I believe that if you are wanting to be with someone and live with them you should be able to make a commitment to marry them. One of the reasons cohabitating leads to divorce is because the couples develop a mindset that the relationship is temporary and cohabitating should be easier, one foot out the door. As soon as the couple are married, expectations are raised most of the time subconsciously. When expectations are raised because you are now married versus just living together, it changes your relationship. You feel trapped more because your used to one foot out the door and not having to put as much effort and work into the relationship that is now a marriage till death do you part. My thoughts about cohabitating or living with your boyfriend, girlfriend, or fiancé before marriage are pretty opinionated, I totally see that others have different ideas and thoughts, I just hope to convey a little of what I have been taught and what I hold as truth about each of these trends. But to leave you with the outcome of multiple studies done on cohabitation, if you live with someone before marriage you are three times more likely to get divorced.

My husband and I started dating when I was taking a preparation for marriage class on campus. He was up in Washington and I was down at school, we had met at a summer camp 4yrs prior. We just struck up conversation and he liked to learn about all my classes but mainly that one(the one that talks about healthy dating), I wonder why! I talked to him about how important it was to build a relationship in a healthy way, it is easy to jump the gun and involve more physical touch than you should in the beginning of the relationship, or to start getting really ahead of yourself when you are infatuated with someone. It is so hard to make sure you build trust first, and get to know someone before you start a dating. That class helped a lot in how we built our relationship and I am so grateful for that. When I saw all these trends up on the board I became so grateful for the classes I have taken and how they have helped me with big decisions regarding the rest of my life.

The trends we talked about yesterday were first that marriages are declining, there are more single households than there used to be, a lot more people are cohabitating, people are waiting longer to have kids, in fact there are less women having children in general, marriages are happening later in life as well, lots more babies are born to unmarried mothers, and the rate of employed moms for kids under 6 are rising, divorce is rising and premarital sex was rising but in the last couple years it has gone down slightly for those still in high school. I know that is quite the list, but if you are hoping to talk about the statistics of these trends or have any questions, feel free to reach out!!