America's on/off relationship with wedlock

THAT'S pushed in part by a booming wedding industry, in part by popular culture, she says. Average cost of a wedding? $20,000. A recent issue of Bride's magazine weighed in as the largest consumer magazine ever. Several TV sitcoms (think "Friends") portray single people as neurotic and always looking for the right person.

Meanwhile, Gen-Xers she interviewed who had been married often hadn't broached basic questions - how many children, handling money, flexibility on a spouse's career moves - during their courtships. The result: what she calls the "starter marriage," which lasts no more than five years and ends with no children.

It's a tough way to learn hard lessons about lifelong relationships, she says. "My personal ideal ... is lifelong marriage, particularly when child-rearing is involved," she says. Her interviewees repeatedly said they would have benefitted from pre-marriage counseling or education - something their parents didn't provide.

Perhaps they couldn't. According to today's Census report, grandparents did a better job than parents at long-term commitment. For example, 92 percent of the men born between 1925 and 1934 had married and only 15 percent divorced by the time they reached 40. Early male Baby Boomers (born between 1945 and 1954) nearly equaled the marriage rate (88 percent) but had double the divorce rate by the time they reached 40.

"We're very, very good at rushing into things," says Marian Salzman, worldwide director of strategy and planning for Euro RSCG Worldwide, an advertising agency network based in New York. "We're also very good at rushing out of them."

On the other hand, having seen first-hand the impact of divorce, some couples are taking their time before making a commitment. Statistically, at least, such relationships last longer.

"Our expectations were probably lower than our parents were when they got married," says Joanna Brinen-Klein, the child of divorced parents who got married last May. "On the other hand, we got married later in life so we had a better sense of the person who would be right for us. I don't anticipate any division in the future."

On the whole, the institution - if not the marriages themselves - looks likely to remain a fixture in American life. "Marriage is an institution that is clearly surviving in the US in the 21st century," says Ms. Kreider of the Census Bureau. The marriage rate remains high compared with other countries. In 1999, for example, Americans notched 8.3 marriages per 1,000 population, according to United Nations statistics, while Belgians and Swedes stood at roughly half that rate.

But the US divorce rate remains stubbornly high, too: higher than France and Germany, twice the rate of Romania and Portugal.

• Staff writer Seth Stern contributed to this article.

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