Great article, Amanda. As a recent university grad, I find that most people around me are a little more ambivalent when it comes to marriage than the peers you describe, but I suspect that this is more a result of another five years being thrashed around by the world and relationships than it is a sign of a genuine lack of desire for a committed, sincere and intimate relationship.

It is true that people of our generation want careers and children, but I wonder if the desire for these things alone is enough to guarantee we'll actually get them. Women ten or fifteen years older than us are finding it very difficult to do both, and there seems to be a greater acknowledgement that, for now, we DO have to make a choice. To be able to choose both, I'd wager, would require some shift in public policy approach to the matter.

As someone looking forward to my own wedding in the coming months, and as someone from a family of what would no doubt be classified as "intellectuals", I always read these kinds of articles with a certain fascination for just where all this talk of "disintegrating nuclear families" is coming from. Perhaps I'm not drinking enough lattes or hanging out at the right cafes, but in neither my family, nor my circle of friends have I found any resistance to the idea of marriage and family.

Indeed, my personal following of the media would seem to suggest that the number of panic-stricken, 'sky is falling' articles such as this one far outweighs the number of articles which actually promote an end (or serious alternative) to the nuclear family.

The painfully obvious irony is that the people bemoaning the imminent death of the nuclear family are the same ones lobbying to prevent gay couples from forming their own families in the full, legal sense of the word. It is this sort of prejudice which is the true threat to families. That the children in families based around a gay couple should be disadvantaged is an injustice that no social conservative can ever adequately defend.

Amanda, you are doing exactly what you seem to be criticising "the baby boomers" for doing. That is, speaking for a broad group of people based on your own relatively narrow experience.

I'm 24 and don't wish in any way whatsoever for marriage. I do hope one day to become a father, but I think that our society will have evolved by the time I'm ready for that to make it possible to be a good father without marriage. Infact, I think it may well be more possible to be good parents never having married than to be good parents who are divirced.

The point here is not any problems or contradictions within my own ideas of family, but that there is no reason to assert our own perception of what we want as somehow generalised.

Ofcourse, if you want everyone to live acording to your principles, then you should be open about it. Otherwise be content to state that there are people who agree with you and that their opinion should not be overlooked. Please don't try and represent your entire generation because I suspect I'm part of that group and I don't think you represent me or many of my friends.

Thanks.

I find the above discussion rather strange because before marriage became a rite of the church it was the sexual act that constituted marriage. Weddings came much later as a way of ordering society. So to say that someone is not married when they are living together places too much emphasis on the wedding,in the biblical mentality they are already married and the husband has responsibility for his wife and any children that may arise from the union. The only thing that has changed for us is the availability of reliable contraception that masks what is really the case, men and women who live togther as husband and wife are in fact husband and wife.

Something else has changed, and that is technology. A big part of the historical cause of marriage was that men wanted to be sure that they were in fact the father of their children. This was important for inheritance aswell as whatever phsycological factors might be involved. Now, if your in doubt, there are ways of being sure that you are the father of a child (I'm assuming that it's always been obvious who the mother is).

Historically marriage enforced monigomy on women for men's benifet. Obviously I'm not claiming there were no other benifits of marriage because I think there have been many, but I think it helps to conceptualise social structures as historical rather than natural.

I think its great that there is so much public discussion about family structures. The idea that only one model of family is acceptable clearly leaves alot of people unsatisfied. Making alternative models socially acceptable would be a big step forward.

Kalpa, I agree with the dangers of generalising about generations, but there are some interesting straws in the wind in terms of how the younger generation views the world. A story www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,11801883%255E2702,00.html in today's Australian shows younger people being more conservative than baby-boomers on the abortion issue; and then there is the phenomenon of the younger people called "Howard's fogies".

While generalisation is invidious, it is also invidious not to generalise, because then you forgo the opportunity to make out underlying principles. We know that moral attitudes are not a constant between generations but that they are rather cyclical.

I think Amanda may be on to something.

I agree with Kalpa, especially his first post. I am one of those 40 something guys that is supposedly telling you 20 somethings what to do. If it seems so, it is not out of arrogance or malice. It is out of experience that I wish to share with my fellow travellers...

Amanda, I like what you say and sincerely hope you are right, and I am wrong.

To start with, I cannot help but think there are some serious gaps in expectations between the genders and perceptions of their roles over the last 20 years - exasperated by mixed signals, wrong assumptions, and lack of appropriate education on the subject. In my observation, many seem confused, and in my opinion, justifiably so. The waters have sufficiently muddied, and it is understandable (to me), to hear Kalpa say he will wait for “society to evolve” some more, before he takes that plunge.

In fact, I’ll go more radical here and claim that young men have no idea of what they’re getting themselves into. No one, especially young men, understand Family Law, and tend to assume it is somehow as wholesome as that somehow perfect girl. Not so, my idealistic friends. I would urge every young couple to do thorough research on the subject, and to fully understand what their rights and responsibilities are (all responsibility, no rights for men), and what the marriage contract really means. Depending on depth of this research, you are likely to find it is like no other legal contract. You are likely to be discouraged and wish for further social evolution/adjustment, before you feel you should choose to partake.

To some extent it has been shown that marriage is no longer a distinguishable state from being unmarried (the gays come into this about now). And in the case of divorce, for unimpeachable men, marriage in the UK (and elsewhere) is now more damaging than cohabitation. If you don’t believe me, or don’t understand, then please read the full UK submission to the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights at http://www.c-g.org.uk/camp/hr/iccpra23&7.htm.

Another bit of reading before you go to bed tonight, could be The Emperor's New Clothes : Divorce Process & Consequence at http://www.ukmm.org.uk/publics/tenc/report.htm#contents. It is a long yellow brick road that negotiates some serious cliff face.

I know, these two links are 4 or 5 years old. They couldn’t possibly be relevant now… in that case, you are probably safe – just ignore me and go for it my dear friends…

Chris_b. Can you tell me how, exactly, children of same sex couples are disadvantaged? I don't think I've ever heard a social conservative advocate the infliction of injustice upon innocent children of gay couples.

While you're gathering your facts & figures I'll try & get some together in relation to the number of children sent back to alcoholic, abusive, violent homes (whether gay or not) by the social progressives of D.O.C.S in New South Wales and the Department of Child Safety(??!!!) in Queensland.

Amanda Fairweather's column is great. Is she really 18 or younger? She must be smart!
In any case, I'm just sorry that so many divorced social commentators are scared of traditional family values.
Yes, marriage is good but some of us are too proud to admit it! Just read, "The Case for Marriage" by Linda Waite from Chicago University or "Parenthood by Proxy" by Dr.Laura! Shacking up is not the same as a public commitment to each other. You could win that argument in your sleep.

I'm sorry but this article had me laughing out loud. Is there an award of the most generalisations in one article? Some choice quotes;

'In contrast, the more liberally minded are more likely to have shorter relationships, and will not actively seek to marry until at least their late 20s, but there goal is still to marry'. What??

'I can’t wait to be a dad,” is not that far from most boys’ lips'. Oh really? Which boys would these be then? The one's at your church? Of course the rocketing population growth supports your argument.

'Although the boys by now, cannot see anything wrong with this, the girls are stuck in the situation of desperately crying out for a wedding ring, with little hope of procuring one'. Believe it or not, not everyone is as desperate as you.

'It might seem strange to admit it, but traditional marriage is what most young people seek. Females are more in tune to it, or at least more vocal about it, than males.' If this was true then marriage rates would have gone up over the last fifty years, not down. Maybe less people get married because, er, THEY DONT WANT TO BE.

The last paragraph is a corker;
So you mean anyone over 30 doesn't want these things?Do you really mean 'We want careers, yes, but more we want children'? And people wonder why there is a pay gap between men and women. Can you see yourself getting promoted at 30 with an attitude like that? Go ahead, set equal oppotunities back 50 years.

All the women who have done so much to improve the lot of women in society, give them a choice of doing more than being baby machines, must love hearing stuff like this.

As a man in my late twenties, I like to think my wife has a few more prospects than bearing me as many children as she possibly can. Oh and I've been married for six years and I consider myself pretty liberal. And that people who get married because they feel they have some religious duty to do so are ignorant.

I agree with Kalpa. Perhaps there is a movement towards conservatism in young people. But Amanda cannot claim to represent the entire generation of people in their twenties- or prescribe just one method of achieving happiness and a fulfilling relationship. People have different wants and needs, some would not be fulfilled without marrige and children, other are happy just to live with each other and some just want to be single. I would hope that our generation is able to recognise this.

As a woman, I do not want to be generalized as "desperately crying out for a wedding ring". If this is what you want, then say that, don't tell us what we want... let us figure that out for ourselves.

I think that Amanda raises some interesting issues, and ones that myself and my friends are currently struggling with. She mentions that

"We want careers, yes, but more we want children, and we want the dads to hang around for them. We want a university degree and a parent of the year award, not in that order, but we do want both. We want sex with someone that means something to us, and we want to mean something to them. In short, we seek what is best offered in marriage and in a nuclear family."

The thing that I am not sure Amanda realises is that it becomes hard to dedicate the necessary time and energy to all of these pursuits to do any of them as well as many people would like to. Growing up post-feminism, I was taught to believe that I could do everything. My mother raised me, and has a hugely successful career, and I have always believed that I would do the same. But I am now finding that I do not how this will be able to happen.

My career choice is not condusive to having children, but I do not want to give up on it, as it is a passion as well as a job. Equally, all the best adjusted children I know have been raised by parents and/or grandparents who are stay-at-home carers, and who can dedicate time and energy to the education and entertainment of their child. And so, if I am to be a mother, I want to be able to be a stay-at-home parent myself - something that could effectively end the career path I have been fighting for for quite some time. I can understand why many women have been delaying childbirth, and yet it is not something I want to do. The rights that women fought for for so long for have in some ways backfired, because rather than just having the CHOICE to do anything they want to, women are now expected to do EVERYTHING.

I have a number of friends who can think of nothing better than being a stay-at-home mother when they have children, but the same economic freedom that has ensured that our quality of life is incredibly high through out the majority of our country (mind you, at the time that we give the least foreign aid than at any time in our past) has also shackled these women to work, to ensure that they can afford to feed those same family members that the wish to be at home with.

I am incredibly grateful to those feminists who fought for me to have equal rights, because all people are born equal and should have the same rights as everyone else. There is no way I could be working within my chosen careers without their efforts. However, Amanda might be too young to realise that wanting everything does not mean it is possible or easy to achieve it all.

Now, onto a separate issue raised by this article. Marriage. I am a 25 year old who was married almost two years ago. Getting married to my husband is one of the most wonderful things I have ever done, because it suits me and it suits us and our life. Equally, I grew up not expecting to get married until I was much older than I am, and I do not believe that I would have even wanted to if it wasn't for the fact that my husband came along. For you see, I did not want marriage young at the risk of missing out on living, and learning all about who I am in different relationships and situations - and even better, learning to be ok with myself when I am alone.

Amanda, you judge marriage as being somehow superior to the other choices people make in life. I think it would be great if you thought about the arrogance that your opinion promotes. It says that my friends and I who want this are somehow better than those with other situations. And while marriage is wonderful for some, it is certainly not the best situation for everyone, and it is not even legal for some people. I think that everyone has the right to be happy, and within this, people should be protected from the judgement of the small-minded other, who laud their way of life as being better than the choices of another person.

I understand your goal with this article. You are young and optimistic and that is wonderful. However, age does bring experience. I am still only young at 25, but what I know now is so much more enlightened than what I knew at your age. Often those who have lived a little might try to tell you about their experiences in an effort to protect you from the hurts they have experienced. It is not meant to crush your spirit, but to help you. For instance, I wish your three 19-year-old friends well, but I also know that not one single one of my friends is in their first really important relationship now - engagements were broken off when people grew in different directions, as most people do when they discover real life instead of just school.

Amanda, I hope that your optimism continues - life just gets better once you start to get older. I am so excited about 2005, because so far in life, each year is a little harder, and a lot better. Equally, you might also realise that the burden of expectation that you SHOULD be achieving everything in life is a hard one to bear. And that just because you want something in life (such as marriage) doesn't mean that everyone does, or even should. All of those people who have been raised differently have as many rights to their opinions as you, and their right to choose a life that suits them is equally as valid.

I read Amanda's article with interest and saw in it all the heigtened anticipation of things to come (which is great). I am 40 and am always curious about what the younger generations think and feel and felt compelled to respond to Amanda's article. And far be it that I would want to tell 20-somethings what to do.... However, the only thing that concerns me is that it excludes the desire for self-development and that is what our generation has not delivered to you in a tangible way. Just remember amidst all your yearning for a satisfactory career and marriage (with the compromises that are required - because you cant have it all at the same time until corporates become sympathectic to the impact of children on women and until we enable men in our society and stop acting as surrogate mothers in our marriages) that you include a sizeable portion of your twenties to dedicating time in understanding yourself. Careers and marriage do provide pieces to this puzzle but it frustrates me that we dont have more social commentary about the learning that is required to understand yourself. If this was in place the fallout that your generation sees in society's views on marriage and relationships in general would have been translated and our concern would be focused not on these external factors but more on the human condition.

Marriage is evil. Marriage is a form of social control that allows men to 'own' their WIVES. Men can also own cows, farms, camels and empires as well as a few wives. Marriage allows women to secure their financial status in an unequal society. Marriage allowed one king to form a peace pact with another king. One would marry of his daughter to a rival kingdom. (Most times this did not work).

Marriage is used by religion to oppress free sexual will and to discriminate against sexual minorities. In many cultures (not trying to stereo-type any group here, this applies to every man in every culture), domestic violence within marriage is "ok" (or at least hidden and taboo to talk about).

As more people move towards being conservative in an insecure world. (The world was never secure to begin with). They head towards marriage for security (or at least ignorance). Yet the ones who do/help the most for the world's poor are not married, they do not have children.

Marriage can help you forget about over population, environment problems, third world debts, etc as well as the normal daily trival grind. Yet the baby boomers were right in challenging our social norms such as marriage. (Been a racist was once normal as well).

Yes, I have seen many people become happier because they got married. Yes, I have also seen alot of people get unstruck (some tragic stories here). I would rather serve the world than just a wife. Have the world's children than just a few brats of my own. Life is not linear, so if many people say marriage is bad, then it is their right to hold that opinion and they have the evidence to back that statement up.

I think the way that you approach marriage reflects the way in which you approach the social world. People do not understand my decision to live with but not marry my long term partner because they choose to believe that our political passions are amusing footnotes that we like to discuss at dinner parties rather than a way we define ourselves and try to live our lives.

Marriage is a legal contract. I cannot think of anything less romantic than having to have the state involved in my relationship in order to enhance how committed we feel. I do not want to feel as though when times are bad between my partner and I that we work our issues out 'for the sake of the marriage' (read: sake of the contract). We work it out because we are in love and will always be happier together than apart. I don't think that the state should have any part in this most intimate of relationships at all - I think they have enough control already.

To assume that marriage is everyone’s innermost desire completely ignores any of the debates people have been putting before you. It seems that you have been interpreting everything that you have read with your own personal philosophy of life as the filter. When women, such as myself, say that we really do not desire a piece of paper to validate our relationship we mean it.

Secondly, I want stress that while I believe everyone wants genuine companionship this is not always in the form of a one on one connection. This can be found through friendship, family, community groups. There is too much stress for people to feel that they can only be happy when they find that ‘one’ person, sometimes forgetting to appreciate the other bonds that they share with those close to them. Or worse, stick it out with a bad relationship when it is completely suffocating them.

I really had hoped that we had developed out of these same old arguments of ‘this is what we all want’. All of the social experimentation of the last 40 years came from deep dissatisfaction from this simplistic and alienating approach.

Well said, Suse and clara.

The idea that attitudes to marriage or relationships have changed much is a fallacy.

Marriages or relationships work or not as they always have, depending on the attitudes of the people involved in them. To say that young people today want marriage is reflective only of a small slice of society in a country with a small population.

It is presumptuous to speak for all others as though the people Amanada knows are typical of her generation as a whole. Most people have friends who have a generally similar outlook on life, so obviously her friends will want similar things that she does as they most likely come from a similar socio-economic background.

I am 30 and about 2/3 of my friends are married already but I am sure there are those that will not. A certain percentage of my parents' generation never married or married then divorced. My great-grandmother ran off with her lover and moved to Australia because divorce wasn't available to her, but the fact is she still left him and created a life seperate to him. A certain percentage of her generation did the same sort of thing, or never married in the first place.

The majority of people will get married, or want to. That is nothing new, and hasn't changed. I doubt that the number ot these marriages which fail has even got up much, it is more that people talk about it more now. As long as people are happy, who cares?

Teenage girls just want to marry and stay home http://observer.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,6903,1066298,00.html

Sells, my friend. Go read some theology. Or perhaps the bible. As an agnostic I find neither of these sources authoritative but your claim that marriage is constituted merely by the sexual act has no biblical basis, let alone any other.

Vis - John 4:18 where Jesus says to the adulterous woman 'the man you now have is not your husband'. The entire concept of adultery makes no sense if you automatically marry someone by having sex with them. How then can it be forbidden?

The church's rejection of pre-marital sex also makes no sense under this definition (though that prescription, too, has little biblical backing).

I think the article has merit, and prompts us to some serious thinking. Amanda has a very good point about cohabitation being tipped in favor of men. It is HEAVILY in favor of men.

Regarding someone's post above, I find the idea of marriage causing men to own their wives funny. I'm a married 30-something guy and, um, that's news to me. :P Seriously, any form of unhealthy control by one over the other has more to do with the couple than with the marriage itself. If one is abusive, it doesn't matter if they're married or not: the abuse will happen, coming from other factors, including their own family backgrounds.

Here's a pretty good read:

http://health.discovery.com/centers/loverelationships/articles/marriage%5Fmyths.html

by Prof David Popenoe, National Marriage Project at Rutgers University. Some of the sobering conclusions in the article:

- Men DO NOT benefit more from marriage than women. They do so about equally.

- "Many studies have found that those who live together before marriage have less satisfying marriages and a considerably higher chance of eventually breaking up. One reason is that people who cohabit may be more skittish of commitment and more likely to call it quits when problems arise."

See also this one:

http://www.s-t.com/projects/DomVio/livein.HTML

Amanda's point that women want dads to be around for the kids is touching. Would unmarried men be more committed to the kids than married men? Assuming that we're talking about men who deliberately decided one way or another (either to get married or not), which would logically be more committed -- to their partners/wives, to their kids, and to the relationship?

Of course, if we're talking about men who DIDN'T think about why they were getting married, or not getting married, then all bets are off. They didn't seriously think about what they were getting into, so they're logically more likely to get into a domestic mess, regardless of their married or unmarried state.

I'll say it again: the article has merit, and rather than cynically dismiss the points Amanda made, readers should commit (pun intended) to some serious thinking.

Lastly, for Catholics and Orthodox at least, marriage is not just a legal contract. It is a sacrament. We recognize that marriage is such a huge undertaking that it takes more than just the couple to do it right: we need God. At least for those groups (I belong to one of them), that's what we've been taught, and I, for one, believe it.

Jeff, commitment to children, commitment to a partner and commitment to marriage are three seperate but related issues. Personally, I expect that if I have children I will be completely commited to them and I would share that with their mother. Whether I stay in a commited relationship with her really depends on the situation, I obviously don't know what will happen in the future. I can say that precisely because I can't predict the future, it will extremely unlikely that I will ever marry.

This is not cynically dismissing anything. This is a position that I've come to (and it is a fluid position, ie: changing) after thinking about the issue for a long time and very seriously, and in conversation with people whose opinions I respect.

I think its great that Amanda is engaging in social commentary and I would love to see more young people doing that, but if you publish you have to be aware that people are going to disagree with you and they aren't going to hold back with their opinions. This is called public debate.

Final point: I don't understand why cohabitation is in favour of men. The way I see it, the state has no business in my relationship and I'm mature enough (and so would be anyone I would ever want to live with) to come to an equal, shared and mutually satisfying arrangment. I'm interested to hear why you think it would be imbalanced though.

I had to smile at the anecdote about one of her friends wanting 7 kids but the others only wanting 2-3 - since Australia's birth rate is only around 1.75 which is well below replacement level, having only 2-3 children won't help that - the one who wanted 7 is actually on a better track.