Why Are More Men Waiting to Marry?

Aug. 14 -- Men are waiting longer and longer for that first trip to the altar, and researchers at Rutgers University say they have figured out why.

Men don't need to get married to get what they want these days — mainly sex — so they feel comfortable in putting off that long term commitment until they have a few bucks in the bank, and a mortgage to pay off.

Those are among the conclusions in the latest annual report issued by the National Marriage Project at Rutgers, a long term research program aimed at understanding why marriage has declined in this country by one third since 1970.

More Mature — and Stubborn

Men are now waiting on average until the age of 27 to marry, compared to 25 for women, but that doesn't mean they are against marriage as an institution, according to the co-directors of the project, David Popenoe, a behavioral scientist and professor of sociology at Rutgers, and Barbara Dafoe Whitehead, a marriage expert.Men, they conclude, just aren't in any hurry.

"The good news is that men who marry later may be more financially stable and emotionally mature," says Popenoe. The bad news is they may be so set in their ways that they are lousy at making the compromises that help a marriage get over the rough spots.

The researchers conducted eight meetings with 60 "not-yet-married" men in northern New Jersey, Chicago, Washington, D.C., and Houston. The men were ages 25 to 33, and none of them were gay.

The researchers note that most people think it's men, not women, who are "dragging their feet about marriage," and they state "our investigation of male attitudes indicates that there is evidence to support this popular view."The primary reason given by men for taking their sweet time:

They can get sex without marriage more easily now than in the past.

And they aren't all that interested in having children anytime soon, which is of concern to the researchers because the biological clock is clicking on the women they will someday expect to mother their kids.