Today, people have very different ideas about marriage than they did just 20 years ago. Whereas in 1994, featuring a gay couple on an IKEA commercial was considered controversial, today, companies like Chick-Fil-A are being vilified for not believing in same-sex marriage. Regardless of what your opinion is on the matter, the truth remains that many people in younger generations have very different views on marriage and what that means to them, and also what leads them to the divorce process more often as well.
First and foremost, for many in their twenties and thirties, it is a financial decision. With record numbers of high school graduates choosing to move on to higher education (and taking on some massive student loan debts in the process), many are putting off the decision to get hitched so that they can become educationally and financially stable before getting married.
Again, though, this costs money, and with the worst job market, young grads are finding that “working hard in school will get you a good paying job if you go to college” isn’t completely true. In generations past, that may have been the case, but with so few job openings available to those with no prior experience and companies with plenty of applicants, finding a job–any job, not just one that will support a single person, let alone two–is incredibly rare for many. When the average cost of a wedding (before honeymoon) is north of $25,000, then it is no wonder why many are putting this no-longer necessary ceremony on the backburner until later.
Why is it no-longer necessary? It isn’t that it is unnecessary, but many of the social factors that used to play a role in couples getting married (as well as those keeping them from filing for divorce) no longer carry the weight that they used to. For instance, the stigmas that used to apply to cohabitation while not married are largely ignored these days. Additionally, our social perspectives on pre-marital sex have changed with the culture at large, which has become a lot more lax. In fact, the very definition of family itself is changing. To expand on that a bit further, many Millennials are finding that they can have all the benefits of a traditional marriage without having to fork over money that may better be spent on a down payment on a home.
For some, the advances in modern medicine have been a deciding factor. With the average life expectancy for people of all races increasing almost 10 years over the past 40, many are choosing to make the commitment to another person down the road.
However, there are still some who still opt to get married younger. For some of these people, though, it is about getting out of their current living conditions. Often, these are simply temporary hurdles, which has many looking for online divorce forms to offset the expense of the ceremony, but also to keep from spending more money on an attorney when one is not needed.