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Move over, marriage. When it comes to romantic commitment, you're not the only game in town.
While the culture wars rage on — conservatives doing their darndest to ban same-sex marriage, domestic partners gay and straight clamoring for the same legal rights as their married neighbors, and singles shouting, "Hey, where's our piece of the government pie?" — a funny thing happened: Marriage slipped off its pedestal.
That's not to say we're all a bunch of misanthropic commitphobes. In fact, most women (and men) can expect to tie the knot at some point in their lives. Controversy still swirls around the statistics used in the New York Times' recent attention-getting report that "51% of Women Are Now Living Without a Spouse." But regardless of that questionable snapshot in time, experts will tell you that thanks to death, divorce, separation and shifting attitudes toward marriage, the average American (woman or man) lives half their adult life spouse-free.
Love still may be a many-splendored thing. But now that women don't need marriage to secure a roof over our heads (thank you, Mom, for marching in the '70s), we can afford to be choosy about whom we commit to, when we commit and if marital vows figure into the picture at all.
The result? Many of us remain single. Others cohabit. Some shun traditional marriage for a commitment ceremony. And for those who do get hitched, playing "wife" thankfully looks nothing like the repressive gender role many of our mothers were cast in.
In other words, when it comes to commitment these days, we've got options galore.
Commitment 2.0
"The concept of marriage needs to evolve a little bit," says Joriel Foltz, a 31-year-old Capitol Hill copywriter who pledged lifelong commitment to her boyfriend in 2005 but chose not to marry. "It hasn't really caught up with the way the world is and how I feel."
Meaning she doesn't want to marry until all couples can legally do so and didn't want a church ceremony, something she wasn't sure her Lutheran family would understand. So when her boyfriend said, "I feel like I should propose to you, but I don't think that's what you want," the two decided on a commitment ceremony, living wills and powers of attorney.
Foltz is hardly a renegade. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the number of domestic partnerships (including same-sex ones) jumped 72 percent between 1990 and 2000.
As it turns out, Foltz and her partner easily got on one another's employer health plans here in liberal Seattle, and her parents accepted her choice of commitment. "They have a lot more trouble understanding me being vegan than me not being married."
Marrying later than Mom
In her book "Marriage, A History: How Love Conquered Marriage," Stephanie Coontz of The Evergreen State College calls today's shift in the nuptial landscape "a historical revolution every bit as wrenching, far-reaching, and irreversible as the Industrial Revolution."
One aspect of this conjugal sea change is that as women enjoy their own careers and earn their own keep, we can saunter to the altar rather than sprint, as our mothers did.
Back in the Pliocene Era (aka 1970), the average age when American women married was 21; in 2000, it was 25. Here in King County, that figure is slightly higher — between 25 and 29 — because, as experts tell us, the more educated we are as a region (ahem!), the later we marry.
Case in point: Gigi Jhong, 33. While she's all for romance, she's focused on career: acting in New York and now back home in Lynnwood studying nursing. "That whole marriage/kids fairy tale is not something I strive to have," she says. "I want to get my life together first and then see what happens."
Contrary to popular belief (paging Forbes.com, which recently published a delightful little ditty called "Don't Marry Career Women"), pursuing a career or graduate degree does not lessen a woman's chances of marrying.
"More than 80 percent of high-achieving men want a woman who is as, or more, accomplished and educated than they are," says Christine Whelan, citing a Harris survey of people in their 20s to 40s. She commissioned the survey for her book, "Why Smart Men Marry Smart Women."
Right to choose
"I think people who are getting married are doing a lot more thinking and processing of what marriage means in 2007," says Lori Leibovich, editor of the Web community Indiebride.com.
Now that "till death do us part" is a choice rather than survival tactic, we need a truly compelling reason — not to mention a truly worthy partner — to take the leap.
"Ironically, in countries such as the U.S., where women's equality has progressed furthest, women are more favorable toward marriage, even though they don't feel it's essential, than in countries such as Japan or South Korea, where women see marriage as much more repressive," adds Coontz, the Evergreen social historian.
Maybe that's because in America, being a wife doesn't automatically assign us to a life of lunch-making and laundry anymore.
Take Christa Fleming, 36, a Web designer in Des Moines. When her business began making enough to support her family, her husband decided to try staying home with their 2-year-old and newborn. Luckily, it was love at first diaper change.
No big news these days, and that's the point: "It wasn't so much that we were trying to be revolutionary or anything," Fleming says. "Our lives just kind of went that way."
The future of marriage
While some of us are giving this whole knot-tying business a long, hard ponder, others are passing on it altogether.
A recent United Kingdom study found that nearly one in three women think marriage is no longer necessary in today's society. And "this is becoming true all over the industrial world," adds Coontz. "As women learn that they can support themselves outside marriage, achieve fulfilling lives, even have sex without penalty — and even raise a kid without having to marry the father if he turns out to be inappropriate — they no longer feel compelled to marry."
Still, a marriage certificate comes with a host of legal and financial perks, as any gay marriage or singles-rights advocate will tell you. And with U.S. women still earning about 75 percent of what men make and many employers wary of flexible work arrangements, the economic and child-rearing merits of a two-parent household are undeniable.
So will social policy eventually catch up with the new complexities? Here at this connubial crossroads, no one can really predict.
One thing's certain, though: Love is here to stay. And as long as people fall in it, our society will keep on marrying, divorce rate be damned.
"Marriage is one of the last communal, shared rituals our society has left," says Kamy Wicoff, author of "I Do But I Don't: Walking Down the Aisle Without Losing Your Mind."
"And human beings have a deep need for ceremony that marriage, in front of friends and family, with vows and rituals, satisfies."
Numerical relationships
One-quarter of American households consist of a married man and woman and their children.
41 percent of American women ages 15 to 44 have lived with an unmarried different-sex partner at some point.
41 percent of unmarried partners (both gay and straight) who live together have children under 18 years old.
33 percent of all births are to unmarried women.
45 percent of people in their twenties say the government should not be involved in licensing marriage.
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