No longer feeling pressure to get married by some magic age, Americans are taking their time before tying the knot.
But they also are showing less patience with problem marriages as growing numbers unravel the marriage bond with divorce.A new Census Bureau analysis found that in 1994 the typical bride was 24.5 years old and her groom was 26.7.
That's the oldest for both bride and groom since the bureau start-ed to ask about age at marriage in 1890, according to the study "Marital Status and Living Arrangements: March 1994."
In years past, many people felt pressure to marry by some magic age, observed Stephanie Kenitzer of Odenton, Md., who wed in 1992 at age 27.
But that no longer seems to be the case.
"People aren't saying, `I'm 20 or I'm 25, so I'm an old maid.' It's no longer looked upon as a negative that you're not married at a certain age," she said. "They're more free to make decision on their own and so people are waiting longer. I waited longer . . . there was no pressure."
But Carol J. De Vita, a population expert at the independent Population Reference Bureau, says that while "young adults are delaying entrance into marriage . . . very few will forgo it altogether."
In 1890 the median age to get hitched for the first time was 26.1 for men and 22.0 for women, according to Census Bureau records.
This declined gradually over the years, bottoming at 22.5 for men and 20.1 for women in 1956, before beginning to rise again as young people increasingly pursued college and careers before marriage. Median indicates that half were married by that age and half married later.
Increasing educational and employment opportunities for women have contributed to their postponing marriage, De Vita said. For men, she added, a stagnation of wages in the 1970s and 1980s made the prospects for marriage less affordable.
Of course, postponing marriage means an increase, at any given time, in the number of people who have never wed, and that is reflected in the Census study.
From 1970 to 1994 the number of Americans age 18 and over who had never married more than doubled, from 21.4 million to 44.2 million.
While slower to tie the knot, Americans are proving faster to break it. From 1970 to 1994 the number currently divorced rose from 4.3 million to 17.4 million.