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June may be the month they invented “romance”
Honey moons and all that.
But let’s face it Americans have been retreating from marriage
for the last four decades.
Rates have dropped 30% since the early 1970’s.
Married couples are a minority of all American households for the
first time
in our history
Half of adult lives are spent outside marriage.
And nearly 11% of us have gone thru the divorce mill.
Now I hear that television has a new reality show next season:
“Divorce Wars.”
. I’m expecting “knock-down-drag- out” confrontations.
Loan sharks can be more forgiving.
There is no intention here of engaging in journalistic marriage
bashing,
or discounting holy matrimony. It‘s been the major institution in
organizing
people’s lives. But the Ozzie and Harriet era of my youth era is
long gone.
Over the past years, the popular notion has been that one of every
two American
marriages end up on the rocks. Yet a new federal study puts the
divorce rate at a
37-year low. But there’s a hitch. That doesn’t include TOTAL couple
“break-ups,
which still run between 40 and 45%.
Post-1960 trends brought greater independence for women and a more
flexible
lifestyle. Society now easily accepts single mothers. Women wait
longer than ever
to tie the knot. Fifty one per cent of women now live without
spouses
There are a lot of ands, ifs and buts when it comes to this
fundamental
shift in patterns. The actual magnitude and demographic impact is
not wholly clear.
Not surprisingly, the toughest category to measure is unmarried
couples
living together, including same sex partnerships. According to
federal stats, overall,
they are probably ten times, what they were fifty years ago
.
In any event, we’re still averaging 2.3 million newly married
couples a year,
“I do’s “ are significantly higher in the mountain states, thanks to
Las Vegas quickies.
Lowest is in the Northeast. Median age for brides last year --
26.73. Grooms -- usually a few years older.
Show biz names always seem on a matrimonial merry-go-round. So many
marriages,
they’re throwing wild rice.
Long ago, comics turned love, sex and marriage into punch lines
. Milton Berle said that half the jokes in the history of the
business were about
married people.
According to Uncle Milty, it was material that couldn’t miss.
“Take my wife, please.”
“We sleep in separate rooms. We have dinner apart,
We take separate vacations We’re doing everything we can
to keep our marriage together.”
But let’s leave the last word to that old home plate philosopher
Yogi Berra.
“Marriage is 90% mental and the other half is physical.
So, you’ve got to be very careful,
Because if you don’t know where you’re going,
You might not get there. “
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Gene Farinet, an award winning veteran newsman, spent much of his long
career at NBC News as a writer and producer working with Frank McGee,
Ed Newman, John Chancellor and Tom Brokaw, covering space, politics
and special projects everywhere in the world.
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TO
BE OR KNOT TO BE?